NewsNation’s Leland Vittert expected there’d be plenty of interest in California’s gubernatorial race — even before the race got upended when frontrunner Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) dropped out following sexual misconduct allegations.
The host of “On Balance,” a marquee program on the Nexstar-owned news network, is traveling on Tuesday to San Francisco, where he’ll anchor his 9 p.m. show from sister station KRON ahead of the Wednesday 10 p.m. gubernatorial primary debate. Anchors from KTLA (Los Angeles) and KTXL (Sacramento) — both also owned by Nexstar — will moderate the candidate face-off, which will be carried on the company’s California stations and aired nationally on NewsNation.
Vittert plans to talk to voters ahead of the debate on issues ranging from the city’s crime rates to the state’s gas prices, eager to identify why Republicans like Steve Hilton have surged in polls in recent weeks.
“California is going to tell us a lot about where the country is nationally, and specifically where the Democratic Party is nationally,” Vittert told TheWrap. “California is the perfect petri dish, if you will, for Democratic policies.”
The debate arrives as the host — who joined the network in 2021 after more than a decade at Fox News — is extending his relationship with the cable network. Vittert has renewed his contract with NewsNation, TheWrap has learned, rebuffing CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss’ reported interest in him joining her revamped news organization.
Vittert and Weiss have been friendly over the years; he promoted his memoir on living with autism, “Born Lucky,” on her “Honestly” podcast last year. But Vittert believes NewsNation’s transition to a 24/7 news operation and its investment in him cements it as “a national player in the cable news world,” one he wants to help grow.
He said he was excited about the reach parent company Nexstar has through its more than 200 local stations, and he believes the network could play host to more debates as the midterms approach.
“These people who are going to be our elected representatives need to come before the people, answer tough questions, not just go on the podcast of their respective sides,” he said. “What’s made our show and by extension NewsNation so successful is, there really are voters in the middle who want to hear both sides aggressively questioned, fairly but aggressively.”
That’s not to say there hasn’t been criticism over his approach. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) said in a February X post her contentious interview with Vittert over the government files related to Jeffrey Epstein, in which he probed her demand that President Donald Trump should be “held accountable” in the fallout, represented how “systems fail survivors and shield the rich and powerful from accountability.”
Vittert told TheWrap that he wanted to respect his audience’s intelligence and would not allow guests to share their perspective unchallenged regardless of the topic.
“People, especially elected officials, need to be questioned fairly and aggressively, because there’s an awful lot of people who expect to be able to come on with their talking points and just lay those out,” he said. “I don’t think my show is a safe space for either side.”
His show averages 188,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen data — a fraction of cable competitors such as Fox News’ “Hannity” and MS NOW’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” though still up 100% in the timeslot from March 2025.
“I want to prove them right, so that’s a big part of this, and prove that that confidence is well placed,” Vittert said
TheWrap caught up with Vittert ahead of the debate to discuss the California gubernatorial race and why he stayed at the network.
This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.
I know you’ll be anchoring your show atop San Francisco’s KRON station on Wednesday ahead of this California gubernatorial debate. What are you looking out for in the city? What are you watching for?
It’s fascinating what’s happening right now. Obviously, the California governor’s race is always important, but now all of a sudden, you have Swalwell who dropped out in a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic. [Swalwell has denied sexual assault allegations.]
The top two contenders are Republicans. It kind of shows you where the Democratic Party is right now, in Tom Steyer spending tens of millions of his own money trying to cement some kind of momentum or create some kind of momentum. Very difficult to do. Just ask Michael Bloomberg and others who’ve tried to just basically buy momentum or buy buzz. Hard to do.
I think the story in California is going to tell us a lot about where the country is nationally, and specifically where the Democratic Party is nationally. In so many ways, California is the perfect petri dish, if you will, for Democratic policies. Democratic policies in California have been enacted in their purest form possible because of the Democratic supermajorities. So this is California’s chance to say, “We like the direction this is going in, we like these progressive policies, they’re creating all the things that we see, or, “We don’t.” California is going to tell us a lot about where the country is nationally.
How have NewsNation viewers responded to coverage about the race? Why is the network carrying it nationally?
There’s an enormous amount of national interest in California and in the debate for very good reason. One of the great parts of Nexstar is you have this enormous, deep local reach, which allows us to host these kinds of debates, and then we are the only network that is then able to say, “We can carry this nationally.” When we do stories on NewsNation about what’s happening in California, be it crime, be it the homelessness problem, and tens of billions spent by Gavin Newsom that only made the problem worse. Be it that there’s $7 gas in California and literally across the street in Arizona, it’s $4 a gallon.
Moving towards progressive tax policies that are pushing people out of California, the large amount of capital flying out of California — all of those stories that we do, in going on the culture issues as well, they rate really well nationally because people are really interested in it. It talks to a distilled version of a lot of the debates we are having nationally, is what’s happening in California.
How do you think it sets the stage for the larger midterms in 2028, particularly with some projections that Democrats could take the House and potentially the Senate, especially if the leading candidates in California are Republicans?
Well, that’s what’s fascinating. You’ve got a jungle primary — I think California is the only one who does it this way, that the top two go on in one of the most heavily, traditionally Democratic states. Democrats are not able to either be No. 1 No. 2 in their own state governor’s race in a state where the Democratic machine has been deeply, deeply entrenched in money and politics in California for decades. I think that says a lot about the functionality of the Democratic Party right now. Does that seem likely? Probably not. We still have a while until the election.
More importantly, I think we still have a debate to have, and debates change lots of things, and to see these candidates interact with each other and to be questioned is going to tell us an awful lot. Do I think, if you end up with two Republicans in the California general, that tells us a lot about the general? I would be careful to extrapolate out, just because I think what I said earlier, California is such a microcosm.
California is such a distilled version of progressive policies. The people in California have lived in the progressive utopia, or as close as we can get in America right now. If they say, “We like this. We want more of it.” The answer is, Tom Steyer would say, go to the left of Gavin Newsom, well, that tells us a lot. If, on the other hand, they reject that, I think that tells us a lot as well.
I also understand you’ve renewed your deal with NewsNation. Status reported last month that Bari Weiss was interested in you for CBS News, and I know that you’ve been friendly with her. Did you meet with her? Why did you ultimately decide to stay at NewsNation?
I’m old-fashioned: I like to dance with the girl I brought, I think what NewsNation has been able to do in five years since I signed on and gone from four hours of programming today when I got here to now being 24/7 to now hosting debates to now being part of the anchors’ lunch for State of the Union. We are every bit a national player in the cable news world. That is an enormous testament to what this company has done and what Nexstar has built, and how much Nexstar has invested in us and in me, and the confidence [NewsNation and Nexstar executives] Michael Corn, Cherie Grzech, Sean Compton, Perry Sook have all shown in me. So I want to prove them right, so that’s a big part of this, and prove that that confidence is well placed. I’m not dodging your question.
Bari and I have been friendly for a while. She was a big supporter of “Born Lucky,” … and obviously I think a return to journalism and moving any news organization to that North Star is something to really be applauded.
Did you meet with her?
I don’t usually make my calendar a matter of public record. I think what they’re doing at CBS is really important, and it’s really hard. Launching a cable news network is really hard. We’ve done it for the past five years. Turning one around, which is what she’s trying to do, is extraordinarily difficult. I have the utmost respect for her. She’s a remarkable, remarkable talent in so many various ways, what she’s created [with] the Free Press, what she’s doing on CBS.
But I think the most important to me was to prove the people that took a chance on me after I left Fox, obviously, rather unceremoniously. [Vittert has said he was “invited not to return to Fox” after his aggressive questioning of Trump’s 2020 election claims.]
So the fact that NewsNation took a chance on me back then and invested in me in the way they have, and now we’re getting to do things like the California Governor’s debate and obviously a lot more going into the 2028 cycle and we have the reach that we do. All of that only makes me want to prove Sean and Cherie and Perry and Michael right, that they’ve invested in me.
I know Nexstar has been working through getting its acquisition of Tegna through the courts and the legal process. How do you think about that when it comes to NewsNation’s reach across local markets?
I think about 9 to 10 p.m. every night.
