The California Democratic primary for governor, lacking both predictability and high-caliber candidates, has seen stunning falls from grace and resurrections as it comes to a close on Tuesday.
Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), the frontrunner out of the gate, slipped and never recovered when two videos went viral this fall. One showed her berating a staffer and another her walking out of a televised interview.
By early spring, Democrats started to worry that their abundance of mediocre candidates threatened the unthinkable: a Republican in the governor’s mansion. With a split field and California’s jungle primary system, the two Republicans in the race could take the top two spots and lock Democrats out of the general election.
That fear started to fade as Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) gained momentum and President Donald Trump, bafflingly, endorsed a David Cameron staffer-turned-former Fox News Host Steve Hilton, shifting most Republican voters to the British political commentator’s camp at Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s expense. Hilton, the inspiration for the indelible and eccentric Stewart Pearson in political satire The Thick of It, has largely tried to avoid mentioning his endorser.
Then the checkerboard was upended in April, when multiple women accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct ranging from sending graphic unsolicited photos to rape. The news ended his campaign and political career, as he dropped out of the race and resigned his House seat.
Democratic voters, once merely disenchanted and now horrified, cast about among some two dozen candidates for a Swalwell replacement, leading to a surprising surge for Biden Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who was previously mired in the single digits. A luckily timed, seven digit ad buy in the wake of Swalwell’s collapse helped rocket him to the front of the pack.
In most recent polling, Becerra has a small lead. If he holds on to his momentum, the real drama could come in the second chance finish, where billionaire and former presidential candidate Tom Steyer is polling neck-and-neck with Hilton. If Hilton wins, Becerra is virtually guaranteed the governorship.
In a sign of how bizarrely the race played out, California voters are reportedly hanging on to their mail-in ballots for longer than usual, presumably to see if any more eleventh hour surprises reshuffle the field.
Ultimately, the primary was remarkable for who wasn’t in it more than who was. All the California heavyweights that would have waltzed into the mansion — including former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) — passed on running to replace the term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). The California kingmakers — Harris and Padilla again, Newsom, Nancy Pelosi — all stayed out of the race, leaving the candidates to scrabble and claw into the 20 percent range.
The race exposed the thinness of the California bench, as the old guard retires or looks to national races. California governor should be a plum (if difficult) job; Newsom has used his perch to do battle with Trump and rode the subsequent attention to an early spot among the 2028 presidential frontrunners.
