By no means thoughts the Republican presidential debate Wednesday. The extra fascinating faceoff will possible be between the haggling governors of California and Florida in November.
If it really happens, that’s. The 2 are nonetheless squabbling over debate guidelines. However I determine they’ll settle their comparatively minor variations and go at it on nationwide tv, entertaining tens of millions.
There’s an excessive amount of potential profit for each California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for them to go up this golden alternative to achieve nationwide consideration.
A Newsom insider advised me there’ll completely be a debate as a result of each governors want one. It was first proposed by Newsom final 12 months and DeSantis has accepted. Fox TV host Sean Hannity would average.
“It’ll be essentially the most attention-grabbing debate within the subsequent two years as a result of it’ll be concerning the future,” the Newsom confidant mentioned.
Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, together with DeSantis, will debate Wednesday in Milwaukee and once more Sept. 27 on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. However these debates will principally sound like echo chambers.
GOP candidates will largely reiterate the identical fundamental conservative views with solely hair-splitting variations of their scripted speaking factors.
They usually’ll battle to distinguish themselves from the multi-indicted former President Trump with out riling his massive and dependable voter base.
However in a debate with the liberal California governor, DeSantis — a distant GOP runner-up to Trump in polls — received’t want to drag his punches. He can blast away at Newsom, reminding viewers that the left coaster is a President Biden surrogate.
In the meantime, Newsom isn’t working for something — besides good positioning to maybe launch a presidential marketing campaign in 2028. He can swing freely at DeSantis.
I’ll be keen to listen to Newsom attempt to clarify why there at the moment are extra homeless folks in California than there have been when he took workplace in 2019, regardless of his having spent billions in a failed try to resolve the issue.
And it’ll be amusing — if agitating — to observe DeSantis attempt to reply for his crass, soulless stunt of flying determined immigrants to California and dumping them on church steps.
Voters can be winners by listening to unabridged arguments from each side.
Each politicians additionally can be winners by attracting large consideration and enhancing their photos amongst core occasion constituencies.
Not everybody agrees.
“If I have been Gavin Newsom, I might not even be speaking a few debate with DeSantis,” says longtime Democratic marketing consultant Darry Sragow, who publishes the California Goal Ebook, which chronicles state political races.
“He can get loads of consideration squaring off with DeSantis with out being in the identical studio. He can proceed to journey this nation far and large utilizing DeSantis as a foil.
“Sudden stuff can occur in a debate that may completely flip round a profession. One thing like a facial gesture or a watch. The dangers are too nice and there’s not ample upside.”
One place Newsom excels, nonetheless, is in face-to-face confrontations, as he did in a sit-down interview with Hannity in June. It was arguably Newsom’s greatest efficiency as governor. His solutions have been characteristically detailed however unusually crisp.
I recall one other California governor debating a nationwide politician 56 years in the past and rising the unanimous winner. That was Republican Ronald Reagan outperforming Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York over the divisive difficulty of the Vietnam Warfare.
“Kennedy, after the controversy, requested, ‘Who the f— received me into this?’” Reagan biographer Lou Cannon wrote in his e book “Governor Reagan, His Rise to Energy.”
Newsom isn’t any Reagan. However neither is DeSantis Kennedyesque. I wouldn’t fret about placing the Californian within the ring with the Floridian.
Each governors have agreed on a date, Nov. 8, and a purple state, Georgia, for the Fox debate web site. The principle hangup is over whether or not the controversy ought to be held in an empty TV studio or earlier than a stay viewers of rooters.
Newsom desires solely the 2 governors answering Hannity’s questions with out an viewers. DeSantis wishes a room stuffed with spectators, half chosen by him and half by Newsom.
Newsom shouldn’t quibble over particulars. Simply seize the chance to heroically enterprise into the lion’s den — Fox TV with a right-wing governor — and carry out earlier than tens of millions.
“It is a present from the political heavens for Newsom,” says former Republican operative Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC and UC Berkeley. “He will get a nationwide stage with nothing to lose and all the pieces to achieve. He will get credibility for 2028.
“For Newsom, it’s simply batting observe.”
Newsom and DeSantis have one factor in widespread. They’re former faculty baseball gamers. Of their debate, each are virtually assured house runs.
George Skelton is a Los Angeles Occasions columnist.
