Newsom vs. DeSantis – the inevitable showdown?

ANALYSIS – They are each governor of a major state; each is being mentioned as a presidential possibility, perhaps as early as 2024.

They don’t like each other very much.

The two governors are, of course, California’s Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and Florida’s Ron DeSantis, a Republican.

Recognizing the increasingly visible feud, The Wall Street Journal thinks the two ought to have a debate, pronto.  “Newsom vs. DeSantis: Bring It On,” the Journal proclaimed on June 15.

The cross-country feud escalated when DeSantis, oddly, dared Newsom to “stop pussyfooting around” and begin an improbable Democratic primary challenge to President Joe Biden.

“Are you gonna throw your hat in the ring and challenge Joe?” DeSantis said at a news conference. “Are you going to get in and do it? Or are you just gonna sit on the sidelines and chirp?”

Newsom has declared that he has “sub-zero interest” in running for president.

While mostly political, the feud occasionally veers into the personal.

“I think his hair gel is interfering with his brain function,” DeSantis said of Newsom recently.

“He’s cruel,” Newsom said of DeSantis in a recent interview. “I have no respect for bullies and people who’ve made their entire political careers on attacking vulnerable communities.”

DeSantis has not suffered Newsom’s assaults in silence.

“He’s got huge problems in his state – I mean, like, huge problems in his state,” DeSantis has declared. “Yet with all those problems, he has a real serious fixation on the state of Florida. I think it’s just bizarre.”

While mostly political, the feud between California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis occasionally veers into the personal.

DeSantis has also argued that on Newsom’s watch, productive people are leaving California in droves, referring to a “mass exodus of productive Americans” from states that “coddled criminals,” “imposed unreasonable burdens on taxpayers,” and “imposed medical authoritarianism in the guide of pandemic mandates.”

Both governors can boast of huge political victories in their home states. DeSantis had an almost 20 percent victory in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial election. It was the state’s biggest victory margin in 40 years. Newsom had a 61percent-to-38.1 percent victory in an October 2021 recall election and easily won re-election last November with 62 percent.

He took a swipe at DeSantis in his victory speech.

“We have governors that won their reelections tonight in other states that are banning books, that are banning speech, that are banning abortion, and here we are in California moving in a completely different direction. That’s a deep point of pride.”

DeSantis has flown more than three dozen asylum seekers from Florida to a Catholic church in Sacramento, a move that Newsom has suggested could result in criminal charges against the Florida governor.

Earlier, the DeSantis administration helped arrange a flight of some 50 Venezuelan migrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard, a Democrat/liberal stronghold island seven miles off the Massachusetts coast.

Neither governor has shied away from creating headlines and both have notable life histories.

As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom  gained national attention in 2004 when he directed the city–county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, violating state law.

Newsom supported a failed measure in 2012 that sought to end capital punishment in California. In 2016, Newsom supported Proposition 62, another unsuccessful attempt to repeal the death penalty in California

Despite his good ol’ boy, countryfied public image, DeSantis graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A., magna cum laude. He subsequently attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2005 with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.

DeSantis signed a 2013 “No Climate Tax Pledge” against any tax hikes to fight global warming.  As a congressman, he voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. DeSantis made headlines most recently when he signed legislation restricting drag performances. He has restricted teaching about racial oppression throughout the public education system.

Although it is not generally known, Newsom is afflicted with severe dyslexia that has challenged his abilities to write, spell, read, and work with numbers.

With the help of his wealthy uncle Gordon Getty and investors, Newsom in 1991created PlumpJack Associates L.P. From a winery, the group grew to 11 enterprises and now has more than 700 employees.

Undergirding the cross-country insults is the real possibility that Newsom, 54, and DeSantis, 44, could face each other in a 2028 presidential election.  Political experts predict a large field of candidates, but as governors of two large and very visible states, the two would have a built-in advantage.

Political junkies can hardly wait.