California Governor To New Hampshire Democrats: Get 'Ruthless' And Get Behind Warmington

By Leonard Robinson, NH Journal

The Democratic Governors Association won’t give her a dollar.

Former nominee Joyce Craig won’t give her an endorsement.

And Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has dominated the fundraising battle.

But in Nashua on Saturday, Gov. Gavin Newsom gave Democrat Cinde Warmington something her struggling campaign has sorely lacked: the spotlight.

The California Democrat and likely 2028 presidential candidate made a hard sell for Warmington, something noticeably absent when Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, stumped for her in September.

“Cinde, she gets it. She gets it done. There’s a hard-headed pragmatism to Cinde,” Newsom said. “You’re on the front lines of these battles as Donald Trump wants to take us back to a pre-1960s world. America’s in reverse right now. Women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, voting rights. States are on the front lines of the rights battles. Governors matter. Cinde matters.”

Speaking to a crowd of roughly 80 at the Nashua field office backed by his Campaign for Democracy organization, Newsom explicitly laid out the stakes for Democrats if they did not gain a majority in the U.S. Senate and House.

“It’s all on the line, Democrats,” Newsom said. “Do not focus on 2028 because we may not have free and fair elections unless Maggie is back in the majority and Chris is in the United States Senate.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) campaigns in Nashua, N.H.(CREDIT: Leonard Robinson)

Newsom portrayed a battle between himself and the Trump administration over California’s Proposition 50, a ballot measure that temporarily overrode the state’s prohibition on partisan gerrymandering in order to eliminate five GOP-held seats.

“The day of the election, he sent the border patrol tactical units, Apache helicopters and sent them out on Election Day in front of Dodger Stadium just before the polls opened to send a message to every single person: Don’t even bother showing up to the polls,” Newsom said. “He sent out a Truth Social saying the election was rigged, sent out the Department of Justice personnel to prove the election was rigged.”

Newsom, in turn, argued that Democrats needed to be willing to take a more aggressive approach to combating President Trump’s agenda.

“The right is ruthless. Trump is ruthless,” Newsom said. “We need to be a little more ruthless.”

As policy chair of the DGA, Newsom expressed frustration that Democrats have abandoned state-level campaign efforts, citing a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed by GOP strategist Karl Rove explaining how he was spending $30 million on state races to get an upper hand in redistricting battles.

Democrats, in turn, lost nearly 1,000 state House and Senate seats across the country under President Obama, including in New Hampshire, where Republicans took control of both chambers of the Legislature.

“It wasn’t like we lost the argument,” Newsom said. “We just lost the habit of trying.”

Newsom is near the top of the list of potential 2028 contenders, both in public polling and among national pundits. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, he’s trailing only former Vice President Kamala Harris. And veteran political reporter Mark Halperin has Newsom atop his latest “8 for ’28” rankings of possible candidates.

During his remarks, Newsom emphasized that Democrats should take a “big tent” approach to campaigning and engage with voters who might have previously supported President Trump but have since become disillusioned.

Newsom’s “big tent” approach included having conservative activist Charlie Kirk as the first guest on his “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast, which has published 86 episodes since launching in March 2025.

Asked if he supported President Trump’s decision to offer a National Day of Remembrance for Kirk, who was murdered on Sept. 10, 2025, Newsom praised Kirk but said that he could not support a national day.

“I respected what he did in terms of his advocacy, work and organization and he as a human being,” Newsom said. “But no, I don’t think I’d be in a position for a national day.”

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.