California governor Gavin Newsom is road-testing a familiar blend of hard-left economics and anti-Israel rhetoric on the national stage, signaling a calculated bid to position himself as the progressive standard-bearer for the 2028 presidential race.
Appearing in Portsmouth, New Hampshirethe traditional proving ground for presidential hopefulsNewsom reprised his inflammatory description of Israel as an apartheid state and sat silently as his chosen interviewer asserted, without challenge, that Israels actions in Gaza amount to what every expert has called genocide.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the governors performance combined two themes that have become staples of the modern progressive playbook: punitive taxation of the wealthy and the demonization of the Jewish state, a pairing that has already helped propel far-left figures such as New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani to power.
Newsoms rhetoric and policy flirtations suggest a politician carefully triangulating within a Democratic Party that is increasingly hostile to Israel and increasingly enamored with European-style wealth confiscation.
On Israel, Newsom attempted to launder his apartheid smear through the authority of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, telling the audience, I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman column last week.
That explanation strains credulity, given that Friedman has been publishing Israel apartheid columns for more than two decades, and it underscores that Newsom is not breaking new intellectual ground but rather joining a long-running campaign to delegitimize the worlds only Jewish state at a moment when he believes it will benefit his national ambitions.
The governors language toward Israel and its elected leadership was not merely critical but openly contemptuous.
Speaking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuwho holds two degrees from MIT and has led Israel through multiple wars and coalition governments in one of the worlds most fractious democraciesNewsom, who famously scored a 960 on his SAT, dismissed him as stupid.
Newsom went further, personalizing his anger at Israels wartime leadership and at the broader U.S.-Israel alliance.
I'm very angry with what he is doing and why he is doing it, he said of Netanyahu, adding in reference to the joint U.S.-Israel military response to Iranian aggression, I'm very angry about this war.
The governor framed American support for Israels defensive operations against Iran as a zero-sum choice against domestic welfare spending. He claimed U.S. money was being diverted from Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps to fund the war against Iran, a charge he has conspicuously not applied to the tens of billions in U.S. and allied support for Ukraineaid he recently boasted that California has helped underwrite.
In a telling moment, Newsom likened his decision to attack Israel while it is under Iranian missile and drone assault to his 2004 move as mayor of San Francisco to authorize same-sex marriages in defiance of state law. He cast both as matters of values and beliefs, suggesting that, for him, branding Israel an apartheid state is not a question of evidence or history but a moral posture aligned with the cultural left.
On economic policy, Newsom used the New Hampshire stage to praise a sweeping federal wealth tax proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna, a plan that would impose an annual 5 percent levy on billionaire fortunes and that its backers claim would raise $4.4 trillion over a decade.
Although Newsom has opposed a one-time confiscatory wealth grab in California itselfapparently aware that state-level expropriation would trigger an exodus of high earnershe was effusive about the Sanders-Khanna national scheme, declaring, The imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. Bernie Sanders has been absolutely right about this for decades and decades. There's no question about it.
The governor argued that a federal wealth tax would be more rational than state-level measures because it would be harder for the wealthy to escape by moving across state lines. My state of mind absolutely is aligned with this notion that we're going to have to substantively address this wealth disparity in a much more progressive manner, and look at it from thehe said either prism or prison, an ambiguity that unintentionally evoked the image of a country that traps its most productive citizensnationally, where we're able to capture, I think, a stronger rationale, as opposed to this race to the bottom or the top in each state competing as it relates to the prospects, you're going to lose population. So that's where my position is on this topic.
Implicit in Newsoms argument is the assumption that the wealthy will not, or cannot, simply move their capital and residency abroad if Washington adopts the kind of confiscatory regime he now endorses.
That assumption runs counter to decades of experience in global finance and tax policy, but it aligns neatly with a progressive worldview that treats private wealth as a public resource to be centrally managed and redistributed.
On Israel, Newsom tried to inoculate himself against charges of anti-Jewish bigotry by invoking a familiar some of my best friends are defense. His effort extended beyond citing Friedman, who, as documented in Edward Alexanders 1993 book With Friends Like These: The Jewish Critics of Israel, was part of a pro-PLO cell at Brandeis University in 1974, to a series of personal anecdotes about Jewish relatives and childhood experiences.
Many members of my family are Jewish, Newsom told the audience, before launching into a series of name-drops that seemed designed to reassure progressive listeners that his hostility to Israel comes with a veneer of Jewish validation. My aunt, Cindy, was married to Ed Asner, the actor, for years and years and years, he said. And she's a big part of this book as well. My uncle, Paul Scheer, and you know, first time I went to Israel with him and family. And so I grew up JCC camps every summer, Camp Tawonga, which is my favorite camp. And so I was very much part of the, particularly in the Bay Area of San Francisco, Jewish community.
The past tense in that recollectionhe was part of that communityspeaks volumes about where Newsom now locates himself politically and culturally. Last month he went out of his way to emphasize that he has never taken, and never will take, contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the countrys leading pro-Israel advocacy group, a boast that plays well with the activist left but distances him from mainstream Jewish and pro-Israel voters.
Even the Jewish figures Newsom cites as moral cover for his anti-Israel posture are hardly reassuring to those who care about the survival of the Jewish state. Ed Asner, whom Newsom invoked as a kind of cultural credential, described his own disillusionment with Israel in a 2018 oral history interview with the Yiddish Book Center, saying, Oh, I was all gung-ho. Very gung-ho, yeah. Carried guilt that I hadn't dropped everything and joined up. But then, over the years, of course, that's changed. Israel has become the New York Jews, as far as I'm concerned, and that Jewry is being split into two: the liberals of America and the apartheid creatures of Israel who no longer allow conversions, I guess.
Asner also served on an advisory board for Jewish Voice for Peace, a group widely regarded as virulently anti-Israel despite its name.
Newsoms reliance on such figures and organizations as a permission structure allows progressives to support campaigns that undermine Israels legitimacy while telling themselves they are merely following the lead of Jewish voices, not engaging in anti-Jewish animus.
Behind Newsoms maneuvering lies a clear political calculation about the future of the Democratic Party.
His team may believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is compromised by her association with President Joe Bidens supposed Gaza genocide, and that pro-Israel donors and voters will gravitate instead toward figures such as Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, former Chicago mayor and Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, or New Jersey senator Cory Booker.
If that analysis is correct, Newsom may see an opening to claim the anti-Israel lane before Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or another hard-left figure fully occupies it. Whether this strategy aligns with the actual Democratic primary electoratedominated by older voters and African-American moderates who chose Biden in 2020or with the broader general electorate is far from clear, raising the possibility that Newsom and his advisers are trapped in a left-wing podcast and social media echo chamber.
The New Hampshire event itself underscored that dynamic, both in tone and in choice of interlocutor. Newsom closed the March 5 appearance by warmly embracing his interviewer, Jack Cocchiarella, telling him, thank you for doing this, buddy, even though Cocchiarella had just advanced the demonstrably false claim that Israels campaign against Hamas in Gaza is what every expert has called genocide.
Cocchiarella is not an uncontroversial figure in Democratic circles.
As NH Journals Michael Graham has noted, Cocchiarella was kicked out of the Dartmouth College Democrats after serious accusations of abusive behavior toward women began circulating, yet Newsom not only shared a stage with him but initiated a public hug at the events close.
Newsoms media strategy going forward appears to lean even further into the online hard-left ecosystem. He is reportedly planning to appear on the podcast of Hasan Piker, a close ally of Zohran Mamdani and a figure whom Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres of New York has described as the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America.
That prospective appearance has already drawn sharp criticism from within the broader Jewish community. Podcaster Jonah Platt, a member of a prominent California Jewish family, warned, Unless the plan is to go on and excoriate Piker for being a vicious anti-Jew hater and anti-American grifter (and I don't think it is), this will be a Rubicon moment for Newsom he will never come back from, and good riddance.
Taken together, Newsoms embrace of a Sanders-style wealth tax, his adoption of the apartheid label for Israel, his refusal to challenge false genocide rhetoric, and his eagerness to associate with figures on the radical anti-Israel fringe paint a picture of a governor courting the far-left base at the expense of traditional Democratic constituencies and longstanding American allies. For voters who still believe in a strong U.S.-Israel partnership, in the rule of law abroad, and in an economic system that rewards work and innovation rather than punishing success, Newsoms New Hampshire performance offers a revealing preview of the ideological battles that may define the 2028 presidential contest.
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