Gavin Newsom Tees Up For Likely Presidential Run By Belittling Entire Region Of Country
Gavin Newsom attacks seven Southern states for redistricting while ignoring his own aggressive map-making in California that slashed Republican seats.
Gavin Newsom launched a direct attack on the South Thursday, posting a map of Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina with the claim that "Confederate states are rushing through rigged maps to erase Black districts off the map." He added: "If this doesn’t make you angry, it should."
The California governor, who openly admitted in an October 2025 CBS interview that he would be "lying" if he claimed he wasn’t considering a 2028 presidential run, has chosen the opposite of the old rule about making voters like you. Instead he’s nationalizing a culture-war grievance that treats redistricting as a racial crime when Republicans do it.
Newsom’s post never mentions that California Democrats, under his watch, engineered their own aggressive redistricting to eliminate Republican congressional seats. The hypocrisy is glaring: what he calls a threat to democracy in the South is standard operating procedure at home when it delivers Democratic majorities.
The Confederate reference lands as a historical obsession that conveniently ignores the race-based privileges Newsom himself champions. His rhetoric demands anger rather than "dispassionate analysis," turning policy disagreement into moral panic. Staff may write the posts, but the candidate owns the tone.
Commenters on the right were quick to note the double standard. One observed that gerrymandering is "okay when Democrats do it, but is a crime against humanity if Republicans do the same." Another called Newsom the "Joe Isuzu of politics," a reference to his habit of stretching truth while insisting "I can’t do that" about lying.
Whether this Southern-bashing preview helps or hurts a national bid remains secondary to the pattern it reveals: a politician who lectures half the country on democracy while rewriting rules to entrench power in his own state. The map he condemns may be redrawn; the one he drew in California is already in use.
Original reporting: Free Republic.
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