According to The Washington Post, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom is coming to Alabama and other heavily Republican States:

Newsom forms new group to fight ‘rising authoritarianism’ in red states

The California governor, who is widely viewed as a potential future Democratic White House contender, plans to travel to “states where freedom is most under attack.”

By Maeve Reston

March 30, 2023 at 4:06 p.m. EDT

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is launching a new political organization that will take the Democrat to red states across the country as he pushes back against restrictive abortion laws, loosened gun regulations, curriculum restrictions and other initiatives Republican elected officials are spearheading.

Newsom, who is widely viewed as a potential future Democratic White House contender, plans to travel to “states where freedom is most under attack,” he says in a video, to meet with like-minded activists, students, candidates and elected officials who he said are often fighting a lonely battle in places Democrats don’t typically visit. He is setting out on his first trip this weekend to Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama to meet with local activists with his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and his children in tow.

Newsom is also framing the effort as a new bulwark against attempts to erode LGBTQ protections and an unrelenting drive within some sectors of the GOP to reshape academic curriculum and ban certain books in schools. He is seeding the group, which will be called the Campaign for Democracy, and organized as a nonprofit, with $10 million from his campaign war chest, and he plans to use the fund to help aligned ideological groups and candidates.

The California governor’s push stems from his frustration that GOP leaders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — amplified by conservative media outlets — are dominating the national conversation with their moves on education, abortion, guns and immigration while Democrats have failed to offer a compelling alternative narrative.

That imbalance, he argues, has placed the “entire rights agenda” of the past half-century at risk. During the 2022 midterms, Newsom took initial steps in striking back, erecting billboards, for example, in seven red states that have limited or banned abortion, encouraging out-of-state women to come to California for their reproductive care.

Newsom said in an interview Thursday that he has been “ringing this bell of alarm around issues of rights regressions,” but felt growing anxiety during the midterms that “the momentum on the other side is only continuing; it’s getting stronger; it’s becoming much larger and more scaled.”

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The group’s mission is to serve as a state-by-state organizing campaign that Newsom said is aimed at confronting what he views as “rising authoritarianism.” It would invest in Democrats from the “top of the ticket down to even the most local races.” But it will also undoubtedly help Newsom raise his national profile and expand his already sizable list of small-dollar donors, which he expanded during a Republican-led recall against him in 2021.

“This is about fundamental freedoms and liberties that are under assault,” he said. “I want to broaden the narrative, broaden the focus, highlight some of the successes, and I want to fundraise for these folks.”

Newsom is meeting in Alabama with Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, to discuss Stevenson’s work fighting inequities in Alabama’s criminal justice system and how that kind of work can be replicated in other parts of the country."