“I don’t have a sense, with Gavin Newsom, as to what would attract people to get on board,” former Rep. Annie Kuster told POLITICO.
Kuster, a longtime Pete Buttigieg supporter, described Newsom as “flashy,” saying of New Hampshire voters, “They’re not looking for a traditional sort of big government, big state, ‘Oh, whoo-hoo! It’s the governor.’ They don’t know how being governor of California is going to translate into helping their life in New Hampshire [and] this focus on the high cost of living, the focus on the corruption in Washington.”
Or as former New Hampshire Senate leader Sylvia Larsen put it: “Here comes another California politician who thinks he can win up here.”
The attitude was a marked contrast to this spring, when Newsom last visited New Hampshire after a California gerrymandering campaign that drew widespread praise from Democrats across the country. His polling nationally, while strong, slipped in the months since. And nowhere is that clearer than New Hampshire. Since his last visit to the state in March, his support in the 2028 presidential primary fell from 15% to just 7% in the most recent Saint Anselm College survey, trailing Buttigieg, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. University of New Hampshire polling over the summer registered a similar decline.
“I think there’s this sense of looking for the new, freshest, most powerful statement we can find,” said former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Kathy Sullivan. While maintaining that Newsom could still regain his footing, she said, “Gavin had that leadership, or at least that attention, but now people have moved on, you know, and they’re looking deeper in the woods.”