Winners and losers of the CBS California gubernatorial debate
For the sixth and final time before votes are counted, the leading contenders for California governor gathered Thursday night for a televised debate, this one a 90-minute session in San Francisco.
Times columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria absorbed the rhetorical blows, followed the heated back-and-forths and took in each and every one of the candidates’ myriad policy prescriptions. Here’s their assessment:
Arellano: Near the end of the debate, co-moderator and San Francisco Examiner editor-in-chief Schuyler Hudak Prionas groaned as candidates talked over each other while trying to answer a question that was supposed to elicit a yes or no response.
That’s pretty much how California voters have reacted to this primary.
In an era where politics are far too often about choosing the least worst option, voters in this election are left with the political version of the Angels baseball team.
No candidate has polled higher than 20-some percent — a testament to how many are in the running, but also an indication that none of them has truly captured the zeitgeist of today’s California.
This year’s debates have done little to catapult anyone to the top, and tonight was more of the same. I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for, and no one inspired me to side with them. No one offered a clear vision of how they would pull Californians out of a spiritual malaise that has so many of us leaving the state, or thinking about leaving.
Instead, what I heard too many of the candidates evoke was the glories of the past — their past.
Antonio Villaraigosa’s closing remarks made a mantra out of “Dream with me,” a slogan he used back when he was L.A. mayor — that was 13 years ago.
Xavier Becerra bragged about how he stood up to President Trump as California attorney general — that was five years ago.
Katie Porter pulled out a white notebook with something written on it and directly challenged Becerra to answer a question — a callback to her time as a congressmember grilling people on Capitol Hill with a whiteboard and a marker, which she first made famous seven years ago.
The two Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, spoke of a halcyon California destroyed by feckless Democrats and vowed a return to those days.
The only candidates who didn’t live in the past were San José Mayor Matt Mahan and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer — but they seemed particularly out of their league, with Steyer too often looking down at notes instead of speaking off the cuff with his well-rehearsed populist pluck.
The word “nostalgia” first emerged to describe what doctors back then considered a malady, thinking it unwise to long for the past. It’s a concept historically antithetical to California, long boosted as the land of today and tomorrow by everyone from the Mission fathers to orange barons, developers to politicians. Indeed, nostalgia has sometimes been a dangerous factor in California politics, unleashing the Spanish fantasy heritage movement, Prop. 13, Prop. 187 and all sorts of other nonsense.
The two candidates who advance to the general election would be wise to offer Californians a hope for the future that doesn’t call back to our yesterdays. For now, the only real winners are the political consultants, and the only real losers are Californians, because we still don’t know for sure that any of the candidates can make things better.
All we can expect is that they’ll turn things for the worse.
Barabak: A popular expression — which Steyer mentioned — defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
By that measure, was the audience for Thursday night’s throwdown insane? Masochistic? Or a group of high-minded, dutiful, quite-conscientious California voters?
The leading gubernatorial candidates have been at this so long that they’re like actors in a stage troupe, delivering well-rehearsed lines, or an old band getting together to play their greatest hits, though far less melodious.
Among those reprising familiar roles were Steyer as the boastful billionaire; Bianco as the angry white avenger; Hilton as the chipper doomsayer; Mahan as the kid brother insinuating his way into the conversation; Porter as the left-wing tribune promising a progressive Valhalla; and Villaraigosa as the old political war horse.
Once more, Becerra was the focal point of attacks, befitting his newfound status as the candidate to beat. “This is what happens when you take the lead in polls,” he rightly noted.
And so rivals again assailed Becerra’s performance as state attorney general and Health and Human Services secretary in the Biden administration. They accused of him being a shill for Big Oil. They tried, implying guilt-through-association, to rope Becerra into the scandal involving his former aides who embezzled from a dormant campaign account.
(Becerra, crisper and more lively than he’s previously been, noted that prosecutors in the case have described him as a victim and not a perpetrator or co-conspirator.)
It’s hard to see all the jostling and thrown elbows making a huge difference. The promises made and attacks scattered like buckshot on the San Francisco soundstage all seem much less important than the numbers that show up in opinion polls between now and Election Day.
Many Democrats, spooked by the prospect of their party being frozen out in June’s top-two primary, have been clinging to their ballots, intending to vote at the last moment for whichever Democrat appears likeliest to finish first.
In that way, the race seems to be shaping up as less a competition than a self-fulfilling prophecy. And Thursday night’s performance, while not wholly irrelevant, was just another television rerun broadcast to a less-than-mass audience.
Chabria: Here’s what I’ll say about Thursday night: It was a debate. The old-school kind where everybody is mostly well-behaved and polite, and the audience scrolls on their phones to stay awake.
The candidates themselves seemed low-energy, even with their jabs — which were largely directed at Becerra, as Mark said.
But no sparks also means we have more clarity. Barring an Eric Swalwell-style blow-up, the top three — Becerra, Steyer and Hilton — are really the only true contenders.
But I’ll give a shout-out to Porter, who had her best performance to date with answers that were clear and laid out policy with detail. Still, I fear it’s too little, too late.
Becerra, on the other hand, seemed subdued to the point of flat (sorry, Mark, he came off crisp like a week-old apple to me) often relying on the line that he sued Trump more than a hundred times as attorney general of California during Trump’s first term. I’m not sure that’s inspiring, though it did lead to some court victories.
Granted, Becerra has had a hard week, with a gaffe with a reporter that went viral and a plea deal by a former aide in that case of money misappropriated from his dormant campaign account. It’s not clear yet if voters care about either of those glitches — but if they stick in people’s minds, that could open a path for Steyer to scrape up the small margin he needs to get through the primary.
But Thursday night also did little to help Steyer’s cause — or hurt it. He made some clear, forceful points that positioned him as the changemaker progressive, especially around his policies on moving away from fossil fuels. He also had some convoluted answers that didn’t land. He didn’t give undecided voters much to work with.
I’ll end with one answer from Hilton that women should pay attention to: He said that if elected, he would allow California abortion providers to be extradited to states such as Louisiana to face criminal charges for mailing abortion medications.
Women across the U.S. now must rely on states such as California for any access to abortion care. Hilton’s position is not just bad for California but presents a risk to women everywhere.
For me, that answer should disqualify him for the highest office in our pro-choice state.
