Two years from now, American voters might face a nightmare scenario. When we take our ballots on November 7, 2028, in front of us, it is a very real possibility they will read “Newsom (D)” and “Vance (R).”
While neither politician has explicitly acknowledged plans to run for president, the signs are there. Both Vice President JD Vance and California Governor Gavin Newsom have signaled that they are ready to run for president when the opportunity arises. Newsom has already visited early primary states like South Carolina and Georgia under the guise of supporting the party, a classic way to build a national donor network without a formal tag. Vance has garnered support from President Donald Trump himself, and would be following in the tradition of vice presidents seeking the presidency after the end of their term. That opportunity will come in 2028. The public has also indicated that they are already expecting these two candidates, with early polls showing both are frontrunners: Vance dominates the Republican polls, and Newsom is relatively even with former VP Kamala Harris.
While they may find themselves on opposite sides of the ballot in 2028, Newsom and Vance are arguably similar politicians. They both landed on the political stage as people who earnestly put themselves on the line for their values—and they both wound up compromising their integrity for political power. They are, effectively, grifters.
In 2016, Vance published his best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” a reflection on his life growing up in rural America. The book penetrated liberal America by humanizing the lives and conditions of the working-class right. When it was first published, Vance made a name for himself as the “never-Trump guy,” calling Trump “reprehensible” and an “idiot” in now-deleted tweets. Ostensibly to curry favor amongst his book’s target liberal demographic, he published an op-ed in The New York Times, usually regarded as a left-leaning publication, calling Trump “unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom came to prominence as the mayor of San Francisco, where he gained national recognition after violating state law by passing a city ordinance allowing same-sex marriage in 2004. He furthered his progressive profile by enacting universal healthcare for San Francisco residents and building thousands of low-cost homes for homeless and low-income families in the city. But these policies seemed incongruent with his consistent alignment with the ‘establishment’ and corporate presence in California. Newsom instituted his signature “Care Not Cash Program,” which gutted the existing direct-cash payment program for the homeless population and replaced it with social services (consequently leading to lawsuits from them), and vetoed a bill to protect rent-controlled tenants. In other words, he curried the support of the left with his high-profile liberal message, but was still comfortable disregarding the political will of his left-wing base with policies progressive voters opposed.
Had Newsom and Vance remained where they were, significant in national politics but removed from the limelight, we may not have a problem. But when people with a knack for grifting develop ambitions for higher office, their moral inconsistencies become pertinent.
The MAGA movement has continued to prove its staying power, maintaining support even after the events of January 6 and Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. Soon after, Vance converted to Catholicism and became a Trumpian loyalist, successfully winning a Senate seat in Ohio. He channeled his ostensible devotion to Trump for a place on the 2024 ticket— and ultimately, the office of Vice President of the United States, with the man he once privately called “America’s Hitler.”
While Vance’s grifting shift has arguably been more extreme, Newsom’s is equally troubling. In recent years, in an apparent effort to become appealing to a broader coalition of voters, Newsom has shifted further and further right. His podcast has brought on various right-wing figures, such as Steve Bannon or Charlie Kirk. He recently vetoed a California bill requiring 12-month hormone therapy coverage for transgender patients. He has shifted from a climate activist to an oil apologist, courting Big Oil at the expense of climate-friendly energy. He went from defending immigration to avoiding the issue, even refusing to discuss the illegal deportation of citizens during a press conference. He went from building houses for the homeless to destroying their encampments, launching a program that aims to tear down every homeless camp in the state.
This is the tale of two grifters: Never-Trump Author JD Vance became Forever-Trump Vice President Vance. Leftist Mayor Gavin Newsom became Grifting Quasi-Conservative Governor Newsom. The grifter gives up his beliefs in search of power, comfortably peddling a narrative he knows is wrong if it will get him where he wants to go. The grifter is the archetypal amoral actor.
In the colloquial sense, the term “grifter” describes someone who “engages in petty swindling,” like a man in a dark alley selling fake watches. However, when I describe Vance and Newsom as grifters, I do not mean they are engaging in a minor swindle for a quick buck. Instead, they are performing a large-scale grift: not for money, but for power. A political grifter is one who knowingly and dishonestly reshapes or feigns their political beliefs for potential political gain. Rather than selling a fake watch for money, a political grifter sells a fake version of themselves in exchange for power.
When we look at the state of politics today, it is easy to be disillusioned by the sheer quantity of these political grifters. Trump himself may be the most famous political grifter of all, switching his positions so frequently that it is impossible to know where he stands on any issue. He was a registered Democrat in the 2000s before running for president. He promised no wars in his 2024 campaign, and started one this March. His grifting has opened the door for many more grifters to follow.
While this phenomenon is not “new” (Ronald Reagan famously underwent a similar “transformation”), the degree to which it controls American politics is. Before Trump, there was a seeming abundance of well-intentioned and committed political leaders. We had a president who campaigned on hope. We had Bernie Sanders, who was arrested at civil rights protests, and Elizabeth Warren, who has spent her entire career fighting economic equality. We had elections that were more meaningful than the “lesser of two evils.” We forget that 2016 was the first time in American history that around 20 percent of Americans disapproved of both presidential candidates. Before, it was rare for that number to crack double digits.
2028 is our chance to escape the grifting doom-loop we have found ourselves stuck in. But to do so, we must aggressively reject the likes of JD Vance and Gavin Newsom. This shift needs to happen on both sides of the aisle. It is not easy. We have seen genuine people lose out to grifters time and time again—Nikki Haley and Sherrod Brown, to name a few. Despite how one feels about Haley, Brown, Sanders, or Warren, none of them have abandoned their beliefs for political gain. The Trump era can be seen as the grifting era of American politics. And if we do not reject this in 2028, we may be stuck in it forever. We must show our representatives that they cannot deceive us, and that, above all, we value honesty, courage, and righteousness in our government. A Vance-Newsom election would be a signal to the world, and to all the would-be grifters of American politics, that there is no consequence to grifting the American public. We would become fatally overwhelmed by the dishonest and the self-interested.