While Washington Democrats are in disarray, the party’s top presidential contenders in governors’ mansions across the country are playing a more careful game: talking tough while making budget concessions and addressing illegal immigration — issues American voters clearly backed in November and continue to support now.
Democratic Govs. J.B. Pritzker (Ill.), Josh Shapiro (Pa.), Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.), and Gavin Newsom (Calif.) are all considered potential presidential nominees, and all have spent years as the champions of activists far to the left of the country’s national electorate.
They spent years greedily drinking from the resistance’s cup when it was all the rage, and the excesses of the past eight years have stained their teeth.
Pritzker struck an angry tone in his state of the state speech last week,
comparing Trump’s return to office to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Look just behind all that noise, however, and it becomes clear that the governor is working to establish his moderate bona fides in advance of any moves toward national politics.
Republicans have been quick to point out that the budget he’s proposing is the largest in Prairie State history,
but it also freezes state hiring, cuts $629 million in benefits for adult illegal immigrants, and slashes a Chicago migrant “welcoming center” budget by $100 million.
Over in Pennsylvania, where Republicans control the state Senate and Democrats hold a one-seat majority in the House, Shapiro has walked a careful line. While
Philadelphia Democrats and activists have worked to resist the president’s popular deportation policies, the governor struck a different tone when U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi paused funds to the city. “I don’t want people who are breaking the law in our communities, who are wreaking havoc on our communities, or claiming lives in our communities to be here,” Shapiro said.
And while he’s
battled the administration’s grant freezes in court, just two weeks into Elon Musk’s popular cost-cutting programs, Shapiro announced the first-ever audit of Keystone State buildings and properties “to save the commonwealth tens of millions of dollars over the next several years.”
Up in Michigan, even left-wing champion and seed-banning COVID cop Whitmer is singing
a new song, touting her ability to work with the president she once battled so publicly. Whitmer isn’t simply responding to national trends: January marked the first month of her two-term governorship in which she’s had to work with a Republican chamber in the state legislature.
The change is evident. Last week, Whitmer
infuriated left-wing activist groups by signing bipartisan legislation cutting sick-leave regulations on businesses and paring minimum-wage increases for workers in high-tip industries, like restaurants and bars.
Out west, king Democrat Gavin Newsom moved ahead of his Democratic colleagues. Even before last November’s election, he had already vetoed bills that would have weakened parental rights over allegedly trans kids, used tax dollars to help illegal aliens buy homes, placed warning labels on gas stoves, established in-person voting in prisons, allowed illegal immigrant students to hold campus jobs, allocated $5 million for condoms in high schools, launched a state racial reparations study, and permitted lawmakers to use campaign donations for therapy and antidepressants.
Newsom has also moved to address the Golden State’s ballooning street camps for drug addicts, the mentally ill, and criminals. Earlier this month, he promised to veto a bill blocking state prisons from cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, even while allocating $25 million to help illegal immigrants with their legal defenses against deportation.
These would-be presidents have a tricky line to walk. They spent years greedily drinking from the resistance’s cup when it was all the rage, and the excesses of the past eight years have stained their teeth. As they prepare for the future, they’re gambling that America’s political memory is short. Recent history is on their side, but it still may be too little too late.
The New York Times: On immigration, top Democrats see room for compromise
Blaze News: Connecticut rebels against DOGE, votes to fund radical abortion, LGBTQ agenda in defiance of Trump
Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter
Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford’s newsletter.
Opinion & analysis, Politics
