The potential for a gubernatorial throwdown didn’t sit well with White House advisers leery of what an elevated California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) meant for the Biden-Harris re-election bid and beyond.
Earlier this year, the bravado of the Golden State executive was met head-on by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) who enthusiastically accepted a debate challenge. However, with the latter running in the GOP presidential primary and rumors swirling about the former’s own eye on the Oval Office, those close to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were reportedly voicing concern.
Advisers to the top Democrats spoke with NBC News and expressed their views on how a Newsom-DeSantis debate would look to the public and what it might mean for the incumbents’ reputations, especially for Harris and a potential 2028 bid.
“It’s disrespectful. Joe Biden is running with Kamala Harris. That’s the Democratic ticket,” an outside adviser to the vice president expressed while the outlet detailed, “Some Biden advisers have complained privately that the planned debate, which Fox News host Sean Hannity would moderate, could make voters think Newsom is running a shadow 2024 campaign at a time when most Democrats say they’d prefer a different candidate at the top of the ticket.”
The suspected territorial defense from the Harris camp is hardly a new development as there had been suggestions around the 2020 presidential election that the then-senator’s team had taken extra measures to ensure she received the nod for VP.
“Even Joe Biden wondered aloud: Was Harris’s team driving this?” New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote in their book on the election about the scrutiny faced by then-Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and former national security adviser Susan Rice who were being considered for the role as well.
New book says Biden suspected Team Kamala of sabotaging other minority veep contenders https://t.co/VSiwQgdmPj pic.twitter.com/vcngcLLb9R
— BizPac Review (@BIZPACReview) April 26, 2022
Meanwhile, some from Biden’s team were open to the potential debate and NBC News reported of DeSantis, “…White House advisers initially perceived [him] as a greater threat to Biden’s re-election hopes than the GOP front-runner, former President Donald Trump.”
One adviser for the president said of Newsom, “What he’s doing here is appropriate for a surrogate. It would not be appropriate for the president or the vice president.” No specific mention was made of the vice president’s attempt to pick a fight with DeSantis over Florida’s curriculum, a matter the governor was willing to debate over.
“We’re in close touch with him. This is the kind of thing we want surrogates to do,” the Biden adviser added of Newsom.
However, as previously reported, after DeSantis accepted the challenge and said to Hannity, “just tell me when and where,” Newsom appeared to balk through a spokesperson quibbling over the proposed format of the matchup.
Gavin Newsom balks at Ron DeSantis ‘live audience’ proposal for debate, wants to set all the rules https://t.co/fCObGQStem via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) August 6, 2023
Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz added to NBC News, “Governor Newsom is a strong partner and surrogate for the Biden-Harris Campaign. We coordinate closely on campaigning, whether it’s fundraising or media. When he brought the debate idea to us, we endorsed it.”
While both governors had provided a November date for their potential head-to-head bout, it remains to be seen whether the event will actually take place.
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Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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