Willie Brown Throws His Ex Under the Bus, Predicts Gavin Newsom Would Beat ‘Recent Loser’ Kamala Harris in 2028 Showdown

LEFT: Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown (AP Photo/ Eric Risberg) RIGHT: Kamala Harris (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, threw his ex-girlfriend Kamala Harris under the bus while discussing a prospective Democratic presidential primary showdown between Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

In an interview with ABC News’ Juhi Doshi, Brown said that Newsom would be the more “viable” candidate “because he would not be the most recent loser.”

“When you embrace somebody for the job, you really want to embrace a winner, and Newsom would be what you would have to say at the moment is a winner,” said Brown, who professed to be “surprised” Harris had not run to succeed Newsom.

“I would have advised her to be elected governor, so that she would be in the same identical position, if not better than for electability nationally than Newsom. …. If she was in the category of being on January 8, 2027, the governor of California, the dialogue would be about her candidacy, not about anybody else’s,” he continued.

Brown said the opposite during an interview with CNN’s Elex Michaelson last year, though.

“She may not want to run for governor of the state of California. That may not be where she should be going. I think it’s going to be difficult for her to win that job,” argued Brown at the time.

“He [Brown] talked about her [Harris’s] strengths in the legal world, but not as an executive, which to me was pretty stunning because this is a guy who knows her very well. He’s a legend in Democratic politics, right? He’s been a mentor to Kamala. And he actually cares about the future of California authentically, and he in effect said she should try something different,” noted Michaelson.

Democratic strategist Garry South told The Wall Street Journal last week that Newsom and Harris have “been kind of like two cats, circling each other in an alley for years, politically speaking” for a piece about the possibility of them running against each other.

The pair have already traded blows with one another over Newsom’s reaction to Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket in 2024.

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