California’s best candidate for president is not Gavin Newsom. Another is emerging | Opinion

Gavin Newsom is not the best candidate from California for president in 2028.

Neither is the sitting vice president, Kamala Harris. Rather, it is somebody who has been quietly visiting places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and West Virginia, and somebody who does not rant about the politics of red states.

“My core issue,” said Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley, “is that there have been too many people left out of the inclusive economy in California and the United States. And if the aspiration of America itself and the modern Democratic Party is to have an America that includes everyone, we have to extend that to an America where everyone is contributing and having dignity in a modern economy.”

In many respects, the 47-year-old Khanna is the Anti-Newsom in substance and style.

And as Khanna continues to emerge on both the state and national stage as a thought leader with a provocative new economic message, Newsom is stuck in a tiresome, hyper-partisan narrative that was exemplified by his recent, pre-recorded State of the State speech.

In that speech, Newsom boasted of 63,000 new millionaires in California. Khanna worries about those left behind in the new economy.

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Newsom, 56, congratulated California for its tourism economy rebounding to pre-pandemic levels. Khanna talks about those who can not afford a vacation.

Newsom epitomizes privilege, a politician from a family connected to great wealth who has gotten every break imaginable in his life. Born into a middle-class Philadelphia immigrant family, Khanna (who says he considers the governor a friend) was on a privileged path as well, a Yale Law School graduate who first specialized in intellectual property law. But he chose to represent those economically less fortunate, knocking off a 16-year incumbent and fellow Democrat to gain his congressional seat in 2017 — and hasn’t looked back.

An example of Newsom’s self-anointed status is how he avoids unscripted moments before the press. He has infamously avoided the Sacramento Press Club, for example, for his entire tenure as governor, a record in modern history for political aloofness. Khanna, in contrast, recently sought out a meeting with McClatchy’s California opinion team, seemingly craving more questions. “Thank you for taking the time,” he said. “I’m grateful.”

He always seems calm, unflappable, wearing a suit and usually a tie, perfectly knotted. His conservative fashion is in contrast to his politics, that of a self-described progressive, which automatically associates him with the left of the Democratic Party. But Khanna appears to be reinventing the progressive identity on the national stage. He is advancing a new concept of governing through shared economic prosperity in hopes of uniting the country. This message defies a one-word political label.

“That means deep structural reform on an economy that isn’t working for too many in the working class,” he said. “That means deep structural reform on issues of race where we need strong voting rights laws. It means we’re standing up for equality of women, with women having the right to…control their own bodies and standing up for the rights of LGBTQ-plus communities (the non-heterosexual spectrum).”

Khanna, among other things, would raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help underwrite this economic transformation. He wants the federal government to play a bigger role in building affordable and middle-class housing to increase economic security and decrease homelessness. He was against the Congressional “symbolic ban” on Tik Tok and instead, he supports the passage of an “Internet Bill of Rights” that protects data privacy and prevents any transfer of data to foreign governments.

Khanna is politely critical of Israel’s conduct of its military campaign in Gaza. “I would have made it clear that (operations) could not include the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals and refugee camps,” he said. Newsom has largely avoided the topic, although he once likened Israel’s spirit to that of California — whatever that means.

Newsom openly despises the red states and its leaders. Khanna wants to win them over. He has a plan to revive the nation’s steel industry and American manufacturing. “We’ve got to be candid that the price of gas is still too high,” he said. There is an arresting crossover appeal to many of his ideas.

Most confounding of all, from a politician, is how Khanna is okay with dissent, something that seems to unnerve Newsom to his core.

“Even if you disagree on an issue, maybe that’s a common ground that can…unite people,” he said. “It means treating people with respect and humanizing them, trying to understand where they’re coming from.”

Granted, Khanna has not taken nearly the political shrapnel over the years as Newsom. But everyday Americans are increasingly worried about their families’ place in the country’s future economy. That is a deep mainstream vein that Khanna is trying to tap. Newsom simply doesn’t have it in him.

In political terms, four years is a long time from now. But it’s not too soon to pay attention to California’s Anti-Newsom. Maybe nobody can find a political and economic message to better unite the country. But watch Ro Khanna. He is testing how to crack the code.