HARDEEVILLE, South Carolina – Most of the crowd that gathered Thursday morning in a small church community room were fans of Gavin Newsom, eager to take a photo with the California governor and likely presidential candidate.
But Sylvester Kimbrough wasn’t convinced. He came to Newsom’s meet-and-greet because his wife wanted to go. He sat toward the back of the room where more than 100 people gathered to see the Democrat speak.
“I haven’t really had the chance to think that hard about him,” said Kimbrough, 73. “I don’t follow politics very much, but I do vote.”
Democrats like Kimbrough are exactly the people Newsom will need to win over if he wants to secure the Democratic nomination in 2028. The Democratic Party last month chose South Carolina to hold the first primary of the presidential cycle, vaulting the state into the national spotlight as the party searches for a candidate to replace Donald Trump in the White House.
A vendor sells Gavin Newsom 2028 and Newsom for President buttons outside an event in Hardeeville, South Carolina, on Sept. 3, 2026. (Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle)
Newsom, who has not formally declared his candidacy but has spent years laying the groundwork for a campaign, pitched himself Thursday to South Carolinians as a fighter eager to tangle with Trump and Republicans. It was a refrain he repeated at each stop he made throughout the day – at the church in the small city of Hardeeville near the Georgia state line, at a cultural center on St. Helena Island nestled among trees draped with Spanish moss, and at an events space in the suburban community of Summerville.
“The way back to the majority is through the fight,” Newsom told the crowd on St. Helena. “We have got to be better fighters. Our politics has changed. We, Democrats, need to change. And I think that’s the most important message I want to leave with you.”
At each stop, Newsom gave a different version of his stump speech – the governor struggles with dyslexia and doesn’t read from prepared remarks. But the themes were the same. His primary reason for coming to South Carolina, he told the crowds that flocked to see him, was to help flip congressional and state legislative seats from red to blue and help Democrats retake the majority in Congress.
Newsom’s visit prompted some ire from Trump’s campaign team, which berated his trip in a social media post that used the president’s preferred epithet for the governor.
Brady Bowyer, of Summerville, holds a “Go Home Gavin” sign outside The Clubhouse at King’s Grant as they await the arrival of California Gov. Gavin Newsom in Summerville, South Carolina, on Sept. 3, 2026. (Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle)
“Gavin Newscum is coming to South Carolina to peddle the same failed Democrat policies that destroyed California?” Team Trump wrote. “People are RUNNING from California, not to it!”
Newsom’s swing through three southern states offers an early look at his temperament on the campaign trail. After Democrats moved South Carolina to be the first state to hold a presidential primary in 2028, it will be a bellwether for Democrats vying for the nomination. While Black people make up just over 6% of California’s population, they make up 25% of South Carolina’s. And Black voters are even more consequential in a Democratic primary: In the last competitive Democratic primary in 2020, they made up more than half of the electorate, according to exit polls.
Newsom spent his first day in the South in Montgomery, Alabama, where he toured the city with Mayor Steven Reed and discussed its evolution from a former hub of the slave trade to a center of the Civil Rights movement. The tour included stops at a former slave-auction site, a church once led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the state Capitol where civil rights activists marched from Selma in 1965. He also met with civil rights attorney and author Bryan Stevenson at the Legacy Museum on the history of slavery and discrimination against Black Americans.
Supporters stand in line to see Gov. Gavin Newsom on Helena Island, South Carolina, on Sept. 3, 2026. (Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle)
In Hardeeville, he mentioned his time in Montgomery and remarked how one could walk back and forth on the same street between the church where King had been a pastor and the site where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the leader of the Confederacy.
“That’s a microcosm of the world we’re living in right now, isn’t it?” Newsom said. “I’ve seen the expansion, the nationalization of rights across the spectrum decade after decade, and here we are today, no longer rights expansion, it’s rights regression.”
Newsom is not the only Democratic hopeful flocking to South Carolina, but he is getting in on the action early. In Beaufort County, state party Chair Kathleen Hughes said he was only the second major candidate after Cory Booker to visit the county. Dee-Dee Johnson-McKell, party chair for Jasper County, said Newsom was the first 2028 hopeful to visit their community.
Gov. Gavin Newsom laughs after Dee-Dee Johnson-Mikell, chair of the Jasper County Democratic Party, referred to Newsom as a “tall glass of sweet tea” following an event in Hardeeville, South Carolina on Sept. 3, 2026. (Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle)
Newsom’s visit “is showing the citizens of Jasper County that we matter,” even though they are in a very red part of the country, she said.
Michele Ashby arrived at the Hardeeville event wearing a “Newsom for President 2028” pin she purchased on Amazon. She said she first became aware of Newsom and his politics during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was the first governor to shut down his state to contain the virus. Ashby, who works in health care, thought he made the right decisions even though he faced intense criticism.
“I’ve liked him since the very beginning,” she said. “Seeing him in the news, I kept thinking, ‘I want him to be president.'” At the event in Beaufort County on St. Helena Island, dozens of people lined up under the trees to see Newsom speak at the site of a now-closed school that served formerly enslaved people. In Summerville, Newsom was delayed by traffic, so supporters waited around for over an hour, sitting in folding chairs and sipping chilled bottled water, before the governor arrived.
Gov. Gavin Newsom takes a photo with Michele Ashbym of Bluffton, South Carolina, during a meet-and-greet event at the St. Stephen ME Fellowship Hall in Hardeeville, South Carolina on Sept. 3, 2026. (Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle)
“I’m an hour and a half late, and you are still here,” Newsom told the cheering crowd.
When Newsom finished speaking in Hardeeville, attendees eager to snag a photo with him rushed to form a line that wound around the room. Kimbrough held back, watching as his wife waited for her turn. He didn’t need a photo, but he said he liked what he heard. Newsom’s refrains about fighting back against Trump and preventing the country from regressing back to Civil Rights-era oppression, in particular, impressed him.
“I’m definitely gonna consider him,” Kimbrough said. “I’m gonna listen to some others, but he’s at the top of the list.”
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This article originally published at In South Carolina, Gavin Newsom makes an early play for 2028 voters.