On a sweltering summer afternoon inside the oldest Black church in rural Laurens County, S.C., the pews were packed to welcome Gov. Gavin Newsom.
It is unusual for a California governor to spend time in the conservative South, especially one who rose to power by championing same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization and electric cars. But here he stood, thousands of miles from home, bowing his head for an opening prayer as light filtered through stained-glass windows in the sanctuary.
“Rejoice in hope,” Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, said later as he began to address about 300 people in the brick church.
Officially, Mr. Newsom toured small towns in South Carolina this week on a mission to embolden Democrats in the heavily Republican state. But it was obvious that Mr. Newsom was also laying groundwork that could prove beneficial if he runs for president in 2028.
Many Democrats nationwide are still trying to figure out Mr. Newsom. Some viewed him skeptically a few months ago when he challenged Democratic orthodoxy in podcast conversations with conservatives.
There have also been questions about how well Mr. Newsom’s coastal California image would play in other states. He owns boutique wineries in the Napa Valley, and he became known for dining at the French Laundry, an exclusive restaurant, when he attended a party there during the Covid-19 pandemic. Satirists and late-night comedians have made his slicked-back hair a defining characteristic.
But in South Carolina this week, Democratic voters mostly saw him as one of the few party leaders who have effectively jousted with President Trump.
“We need the charisma right now, and the backbone — and he’s proven that,” said Camille Lewis, 56, a professor who crowded into a refurbished empty storefront in downtown Pickens, S.C., to hear Mr. Newsom speak.
Most Democrats, she said, are “too wimpy.”
After devastating presidential and congressional losses last year, and the enactment last week of a sweeping bill to carry out President Trump’s domestic agenda, Democrats are searching hard for a leader who can invigorate the party.
Mr. Newsom is one of several high-profile Democrats this year visiting South Carolina, a state that turned the tide for Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the presidential primaries in 2020.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland spoke at the state’s Democratic Party convention in May. Later this month, Representative Ro Khanna of California is scheduled to hold two town halls in the state, and Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky is meeting with South Carolina labor leaders.
Mr. Newsom arrived this week amid a bitter dispute with the president over the immigration raids that have swept through Southern California in the last month. Many of the voters who attended his events said that they had been drawn to see him after admiring his combative approach to Mr. Trump.
The Republican president, who has long called the governor “Newscum,” blamed him for everything from the California wildfires to undocumented immigration this year.
Mr. Newsom, who greeted the president on the tarmac in Los Angeles after the devastating wildfires in January, said this week that he was done trying to make nice with Mr. Trump.
“I’m on the other side of this now,” he said. “I can’t take it anymore.”
Since the president federalized National Guard troops last month in response to protests over immigration raids in Southern California, the governor has unleashed a torrent of attacks on Mr. Trump in every venue possible. Snarky blasts on social media. A formal televised speech. Lawsuits.
Wayne Wicker, 77, a retired pastor who waited in line to shake hands with Mr. Newsom at the church in Laurens, said he had seen a video clip of the governor clapping back at the president and decided he had “the right gumption.”
And at a community center in Seneca, Mr. Newsom drew rousing applause when he declared California “the most un-Trump state in America” and boasted that he had already sued the Trump administration 26 times.
Mr. Newsom spent time this week talking about how the Medicaid cuts in the bill that Mr. Trump signed last week would harm people in rural America. He focused much of his message on energizing voters to help Democrats win control of the House next year.
He did not say he was running for president.
Representative James Clyburn, South Carolina’s most influential elected Democrat, appeared with Mr. Newsom at an event on Tuesday night in the town of Camden. Hours later, the representative said on CNN that Mr. Newsom would be a “viable candidate” if he were to run for president.
Mr. Clyburn has not endorsed a candidate in a race that has not even begun. But in an interview, he said that voters in his state appreciated the way Mr. Newsom had taken on the president.
“The people who showed up at these events are people who are afraid of where Trump has taken the country,” Mr. Clyburn said. He added that many Democrats were frustrated because they felt there hadn’t been “a big enough fight taking place on their behalf.”
Mr. Newsom’s feud with the White House, of course, has also made the California governor an easy target for Republicans who see him and his state as everything that’s wrong with Democratic leadership. The South Carolina Republican Party described Mr. Newsom’s visit as “the Crazy California Tour” in a series of social media posts this week.
In Seneca, a town of 9,000 residents on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, protesters waved Trump flags and held homemade signs criticizing California for its large homeless population, $5-per-gallon gas, abortion rights and sanctuary cities.
“I wish Gavin Newsom would first make California great again and then consider running for president,” said Jane Chaney, 73.
At a sports bar in Seneca, Kim McAlister, a retired postal clerk, was enjoying beers with her friends after they had just won the weekly game of pub trivia. She took particular issue with California’s support for undocumented immigrants.
“I really don’t agree with what he’s saying about the immigrants coming in, that they should be able to live wherever they want to live,” Ms. McAlister said. “They need to get those people off of our borders. They need to get them out of our states.”
Democrats have been running anti-Trump campaigns since 2016, the year Mr. Trump won his first presidential race. Their challenge now, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at University of California San Diego, is to find a message that defines the party as something more than being anti-Trump.
Mr. Newsom seemed to be on that course earlier this year — until the National Guard dispute and the immigration raids in Los Angeles.
“I think Gavin Newsom may have a lot of ideas for doing that, but right now, his national profile is simply being anti-Trump,” Mr. Kousser said.
Mr. Newsom’s course is far from linear, however.
After two days of firing up Democrats in South Carolina, he headed to Tennessee for visits he did not publicize. He sat down for an interview over beers with The Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site.
He also recorded a podcast with Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL who regularly discusses military issues and has a large conservative following.
“Well that was an interesting breakfast …,” Mr. Ryan said Thursday on X, posting a selfie of himself with Mr. Newsom at a restaurant.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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