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Progressive Candidates Balk At Supporting Jeffries For Speaker; Can Texas Dems Win Governor's Race For First Time Since 1990?; California Gov. Gavin Newsom Stumps In South Carolina. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired September 07, 2026 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: -- 2018 and a bigger margin for Democrats than what may come after November.
[12:30:05]
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN HOST: I want to ask also about what the candidates are saying. Are they being asked, like, do you support Jeffries or not? This is a question that will decide my vote.
SARAH FERRIS, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes. So for example, one of the members, the potentially incoming members I talked to, Dr. Adam Hamawy, I did ask him, are you planning to support Mr. Jeffries? Have you had these conversations? And he said he's not willing to say that at this moment. And he says, like, he does not think that the Democratic Party is, he said, people are electing people like me because they don't think the Democratic leadership is meeting the moment. They don't see themselves reflected in the leadership in terms of the priorities that you outlined.
CORNISH: Yes.
FERRIS: Particularly the Israel issue is really resonating. Dr. Hamawy was a surgeon in Gaza. I think that's -- it's very clear that many of these people, their backgrounds themselves are going to really determine some of the huge issues. There's another, one of the big insurgent candidates she defeated, a sitting congressman. This is Darializa Avila Chevalier.
CORNISH: Yes.
FERRIS: And she told me as well that she has had a, "Positive conversation with Mr. Jeffries." This is a new development. We haven't heard her speak in that way before. But she also said she's not willing to commit. And I said, what's going into your mind when you're thinking about this? And she said, this is going to be a really important conversation.
I need to talk to my -- if she's elected, talk to her constituents. And she said, this is going to be the very first vote that I have as a member of Congress. It's really important. CORNISH: I don't think I got a full appreciation of this until I read your story. And the first flag up for me that was like, oh, OK, this is the thing, is when he met with Jared Kushner. And the blowback online was unreal and overwhelming. I mean, people were just like, why are you meeting with this guy? This is bad. Whether you were James Carville or whatever the little baby progressive version is of James Carville, people were upset.
BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE PRODUCER: A hundred percent. And their defense here, both -- on both sides, is that they have an existing relationship. This White House --
CORNISH: You mean on the White House as well? Yes.
KLEIN: The White House as well as Jeffries. They -- this White House understands that they're going to have to work with Jeffries. There are a number of must pass bills. They're going to have to work together with some cooperation to raise the debt ceiling among right wings --
CORNISH: But they've alluded in the past to not having any relationship with him. So was this trying to defrost or was this -- or was Kushner the best person to offer the olive branch?
KLEIN: It was a strategic communications misstep saying that this meeting even happened.
CORNISH: OK.
KLEIN: For both sides.
CORNISH: OK. Hold on, stay with us, guys. I want to talk about this next. The Texas governor's race, the Democrats win there. They're probably going to have data centers to thank. That's because anger over A.I. could carry Gina Hinojosa to an upset win. So we're going to hear from her next.
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[12:37:14]
CORNISH: Now, Texas hasn't elected a Democratic governor since Ann Richards. It's way back in 1990, but Gina Hinojosa thinks she can ride mounting frustration with President Trump and anger over data centers into the governor's mansion. So Dana interviewed her yesterday on State of the Union and asked about whether the President's new ad and his new ad spending in Texas to help Paxton's Senate bid could also hurt her gubernatorial hopes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GINA HINOJOSA (D), TEXAS GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: No, actually not at all. If you look at the polling, President Trump is underwater, Greg Abbott is underwater, and people are tired of this politics as usual. People want change in Texas. They're galvanizing, organizing. We're building real momentum in this race. So I welcome the attention on Texas. Texas is battleground in 2026. If you don't believe it, look at what Republicans are doing, but that's what I hear every day on the campaign trail.
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Governor Abbott, your opponent, changed his position on data centers and on flop cameras over the past few weeks. Public opinion has shifted. You made it a centerpiece of your campaign. He has now placed a temporary pause on new data center approvals and ordered an audit. You say there needs to be a moratorium until regulations are in place, but proponents of data centers point to a boom in construction jobs. Is it worth potentially losing some jobs to stop data centers?
HINOJOSA: I think that is a false choice. I think we can have good jobs and we can protect our communities as well so that people understand Texas is the wild west of data centers right now. We have hundreds that have descended upon us with the richest tax breaks in the country given to data centers by Greg Abbott. And people are angry because they're not protected when it comes to their water, their electricity. I was sitting in a living room filled with really MAGA supporters this last week in Red Oak outside of Dallas, this small rural community where they have seven data centers coming in, and there's just no rules. These are massive, hyper-scale data centers in communities that just don't have the infrastructure.
And people just want a seat at the table to decide if and how these data centers come into their communities. They deserve that. We need to pass laws to protect the people of Texas. What Abbott is doing is just trying to protect his own re-election chances, but people see right through it and it's not working.
BASH: How is it a false choice between construction jobs and data centers?
HINOJOSA: Right. Well, to give you some examples, in Texas, for instance, there is no requirement that the people of a community, the residences, be prioritized when it comes to water consumption. And in many places in Texas, we're suffering from drought, so people are really concerned. We can have laws in place that say Texans residences, citizens, get priority over water. We can have laws in place that say we won't subsidize the electricity. We can have laws in place that say local communities can decide if and how these data centers come into their communities. We do this with every other industry.
[12:40:30]
We have laws, common sense laws, that protect people and we build jobs. Listen, Texans are pro-business people, but we're talking about these hyper-scale data centers that have hyper-scale impacts on our communities and we just need to get this under control.
BASH: I want to play a part of a very personal ad you just released.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HINOJOSA: Twenty-three years ago, my husband and I were overjoyed, expecting our first. Until an unimaginable diagnosis. The doctor said, I need you to understand she's not going to live. But I didn't understand, but I was making that choice. I chose her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: You said your baby was born shortly after her due date. She did not survive. First of all, I'm sorry about that loss. I do want to ask about, since this is a campaign ad, the politics of this, since you're telling the story and you say you chose her, and that is striking language because it's the kind of language the self-described pro-life movement would use. It seems intentional.
HINOJOSA: The point of that ad is to say who I am. What is my motivator? What gives me strength in what is a heavy lift in this election cycle to run for governor in Texas? And so it was important to me to share that story with voters. I believe in a woman's right to choose. I have a voting record that shows that that's where I stand. But I think that people need to understand these choices that we make in our lives make us who we are, and they are crossroads that kind of determine the future of our lives. That was my crossroads. That was my choice. And it was important to me to share so people understand what motivates me.
BASH: And abortion is banned in Texas with very limited medical exceptions. If elected governor, how would you change abortion laws?
HINOJOSA: It's going to take more than one election to change these very extreme abortion bans in Texas. I think where we can start, I think where there is bipartisan support, is to do away with the 99 years imprisonment that doctors face when they choose to terminate a pregnancy with a mother to save her life.
And right now, doctors can be second guessed by political boards and they face 99 years in prison. And so they're afraid to touch women. And women are having to wait till they're at death's door. And too many women are dying in Texas because of it. I think there's bipartisan support to start there to do away with these criminal penalties for doctors.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[12:43:18]
CORNISH: All right, up next, we're less than two months to the midterms, but some top Democrats might already be looking 16 months ahead to 2028's first primary. We're going to tell you who next.
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CORNISH: Outgoing California Governor Gavin Newsom spent his weekend in the newly minted first democratic presidential primary state of South Carolina. The case he made to voters that he knows how to fight Republicans and win and has some important friends.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): The polls showed only 47 percent of Californians supported mid-decade redistricting as a response to Texas. But I'm sitting here reflecting on what was going on and we will lose this place. I really believe it unless we do things differently.
But I call Obama because I'm like, OK, come on. You know, we go, hi, Michelle. I'm like, oh, geez. And I was like, it's like a coin toss. Please. And I'm sitting there and I wish I could tell you exactly what he said. I didn't even have, he knew why I was calling and he just said, I mean, let's just say green light.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: OK. Isaac Dovere travel with Newsom over the weekend and asked him why visit South Carolina. Now here's a sample.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: I love going where no one else is going. I mean, I don't know how you can live in this moment, you know, through all the rights regression that we've been talking about, particularly in our party and not reconnect with the South. So combination of those two factors and the fact that there's a familiarity here because I was here for Harris, I was here for Biden. And, yes, fourth, obviously it's an early calendar state, but you know, my state of mind was here before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: OK. Nothing says I may be running than going to South Carolina and dropping Obama's name as the baby and Michelle's name as though you're friends. But can you talk about what he's doing down here? Because I guess he is first out of the gate and South Carolina is going to be first. So why isn't it more crowded?
DOVERE: Well, he's not the only potential 2028 candidate who's gone to South Carolina. Pete Buttigieg was there a couple of weeks ago. Mark Kelly has been there.
CORNISH: Oh, yes, yes.
DOVERE: But I was there on the ground with him Thursday and Friday as he went around to places that very specifically were not the major media markets, the big democratic centers.
CORNISH: Like where?
DOVERE: Well, he didn't go to Columbia. He didn't go to Charleston and then go to Greenville. He was in places like Jasper County, Aiken County, places where there are just not a lot of Democrats and all undemocratic energy, but he was getting crowds of at least a hundred people at each event. So much so that a bunch of these events, they had to put out more chairs and were there.
[12:50:13] One of the events was quite hot because the air conditioning couldn't keep up with the people that were -- that had showed up. And he made not really a case for himself. He just talked about why Democrats should feel resilient in this moment and the need to have a different kind of Democratic approach. And it was extremely well received.
CORNISH: Can you help me process those? So when you mention these counties, just because I covered the South for a long time, are these more white rural counties? Are these black? Like, who am I talking about here?
DOVERE: Well, he was -- it -- he was going -- what he was getting mostly, as I get into the story that's up on our site, he was getting crowds that were mostly white retirees. And I asked him about this because even one of the places we went to in Aiken was at the African American Cultural Center.
And I said, even at this event, there are not a lot of black people that have showed up. And some of the people that I had spoken to said to me, there was one man who said that he, a black man, who said to me that he had just said to his wife at the event, I'm looking around and wondering where are our people?
And when I pressed Newsom about this, when we were speaking backstage after the event, he said, look, I think that it's because it's during the day, a lot of people are working. But this is a really important question for Gavin Newsom. Can he get black support? Can he get black support specifically in South Carolina? Because that is the first primary state. The electorate in the primary is majority black.
CORNISH: That's a question for all of them, right?
DOVERE: For sure.
CORNISH: That's why Buttigieg was there. That's why Bernie Sanders didn't, yes.
DOVERE: And it was driving the Newsom decision to go again now. It's his fourth trip in about a year and a half there. So it is very much on his mind. And they're looking at it. What does it mean if Kamala Harris runs? What does it mean if Jon Ossoff runs? How does he compare on that?
CORNISH: Yes.
DOVERE: And as you played in that clip, he is not being very subtle about that this is very much on his mind.
CORNISH: To your point, Buttigieg has been there before. I think over the weekend he was in Ohio, Ro Khanna, New Hampshire, holding out for New Hampshire even though back of the line, Mark Kelly, also New Hampshire. And meanwhile, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, he was on a hike on the Appalachian Trail. So he's not exempt. OK. We don't need any Washington jokes for this, OK? We have photographic proof that is actually G-rated of a couple hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I'm saying all these names because these are all the names that people are going to hear over the next couple of weeks. And someone will go, he's running. And then everyone will laugh. And I'm saying he because there's like no ladies on the list. What's the deal?
KLEIN: Yes, there was actually a really interesting passage in your piece where there had been a car accident. So Newsom was about an hour late. And so the state party chair is trying to like vamp for time. And she asks the crowd who should be running. And they list Ossoff, Buttigieg, Mark Kelly, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear. These are all moderate candidates. They're all white men. There was no mention of AOC. No mention of --
DOVERE: It did. Somebody shouted AOC later on.
KLEIN: OK. OK.
CORNISH: Did a woman get in there? What happened? What else happened at this event? Sara, I'm sorry. We're just going off. What do you see as people are starting to -- yes, sorry, as people are starting to be serious in visiting these places?
SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: Well, I'm always looking at what's the media angle. It's one thing to visit. It's another to post these glowing pictures of yourself visiting and making it known nationally that you're going out on the trail because you're trying to rally support. You're trying.
This is a huge thing that people forget. Data matters a lot with elections. So you want to start to collect emails of supporters, and that's what doing this media tour does.
CORNISH: Oh, right.
FISCHER: You use that e-mail address database to then be able to target ads later. It's not something you can just decide later. In fact, even if you decide you don't want to run for president, you kind of have to start doing the media gathering now to prepare yourself in case you do run. And so I think that's why you're starting to see a lot of these people also, by the way, launch podcasts, launch Substacks, go on other people's podcasts. It's not just on the left.
Ted Cruz has long had a podcast, and he's starting to do a lot more media as he considers a possible run. And so I think leading up to 2028, you're going to have this huge, wide swath of people who are doing things that make it look like they might because they have to. And that will probably narrow itself down to people who actually do.
FERRIS: And I think what's really interesting is that what you hear from these folks, as you mentioned, talking about what Democrats need to do, big picture, appealing broadly to the party. We're not seeing how they want to shape the agenda. When that will happen is after everyone figures out exactly who do Democrats want to elect in November.
I think we're seeing Democrats overall be very careful. We talked about the Medicare for all issue. We've talked about a lot of the other, you know, contentious issues like Israel. Depending on which candidates win in November, if El-Sayed can pull out a win in Michigan, every single Democrat running in 2028 is going to sound a lot more like him.
CORNISH: Yes.
FERRIS: And I know that if he does not win, we are going to see all the names that you mentioned, all of these more moderate folks.
CORNISH: Yes.
FERRIS: They are absolutely going to be the names that we keep hearing.
CORNISH: We will, especially if he does not do well with black voters in that state, which is something people are talking about now, right? It's not just about white rural voters. And I'm going to be interested to see if some of the issues that are affecting black communities, specifically disenfranchisement, will finally be talked about, right? Because it's forcing these candidates to be in that state and find a way to have the conversation.
[12:55:19]
You guys, it's awesome for you to be here on Labor Day. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.
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