SACRAMENTO — Democrat Xavier Becerra holds a major advantage over Republican Steve Hilton as the race for California governor heads toward the November election, a new poll shows.
Among registered voters in the state, 52% supported Becerra in a head-to-head matchup against Hilton, who was backed by 31%, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll which was co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times. The remainder were undecided.
“It looks very much like a traditional, partisan-based general election, with most of the Democrats, over 80%, behind Becerra as the campaign starts,” said IGS Poll Director Mark DiCamillo. “Even though Hilton has over 80% of the Republicans, the Democrats outnumber Republicans by 20 points in the state, and that gives the Democratic candidates a huge advantage, which Becerra is clearly taking advantage of in this election.”
The survey of California voters was conducted before the primary, from May 19-24.
The poll found that Democratic and Republican voters were extremely loyal to their party’s candidate. Among Democrats, 82% said they would support Becerra in the general election, while 84% of Republicans said the same about Hilton.
Becerra also had an edge among voters registered as no party preference or registered with other parties — who make up almost a third of the state electorate. Among those voters, 43% backed Becerra, 28% supported Hilton and 29% were undecided, the poll showed.
Along age, gender, racial and geographic lines, voters preferred Becerra to Hilton nearly across the board. The only geographic region where voters preferred Hilton to Becerra are those in the North Coast/Sierra region, which makes up about 2% of the electorate, DiCamillo said.
More than a third of Republicans, 37%, said Trump’s endorsement made them more likely to support Hilton. But while it helped Hilton consolidate the Republican vote in the primary, helping him finish in second place, it will likely hurt him in the general election, DiCamillo said. Trump remains deeply unpopular in California; the poll released Thursday showed 69% of voters disapprove of the president’s performance while 29% approve.
“A majority of Californians have a very strong negative view of the president, so Hilton’s backing by the president will not be nearly as beneficial to him in the general as it was in the primary,” he said.
A former Biden Cabinet secretary, state attorney general and longtime congressman from Los Angeles, Becerra had been wallowing in the low single-digits in public opinion polls less than three months ago. His fortunes changed when former Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the Democratic front-runners, dropped out of the governor’s race after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies.
Democratic voters and interest groups quickly coalesced behind Becerra, who was seen as a steady candidate with a long resume in California politics and a record of fighting the Trump administration. In two months, he went from polling at 5% in a March IGS poll to 25% in a late May poll and finishing first in the unofficial primary vote count.
With 91% of ballots tallied as of Wednesday afternoon, Becerra led with 27.9% of the vote compared to 25% for Hilton, according to the Associated Press, which declared Becerra and Hilton the two winners. Billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmentalist Tom Steyer was in third place with 22.5% — knocking the Democrat out of contention for the November election.
DiCamillo said Swalwell’s dropping out of the race “really gave Becerra an opening and he capitalized on it.”
The poll also showed that in the end, “Becerra was the only one of the major candidates who ended the primary race with a favorable image among the overall electorate, even in the face of all the negative ads that Steyer was running” against him, DiCamillo said.
Just before the primary election, 44% of likely primary voters surveyed had a favorable view of Becerra compared to 38% who viewed him unfavorably.
Hilton and Steyer were upside down — 31% had a favorable opinion of Hilton compared to 38% unfavorable, and 39% had a favorable view of Steyer while 43% saw him unfavorably.
Though Steyer had aggressively courted progressive voters and secured the backing of left-wing individuals and groups like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-San Jose) and Our Revolution, a group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the final IGS poll before the election showed more progressive voters ended up backing Becerra.
Among those who self-identified as progressive, 39% said they would support Becerra while 29% preferred Steyer, according to the late May survey.
“It’s really one of the factors that was responsible for Steyer’s campaign not being successful,” DiCamillo said. Progressive voters were “a target audience for Steyer, but Becerra was able to have an advantage there.”
The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish among 8,578 registered California voters. The survey has a margin of error of 2% in either direction.
Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, clinched one of the top spots in California’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, earning him the right to challenge veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra in the November election to determine the state’s next governor.
The contest offers voters two starkly different politicians. Hilton was endorsed by President Trump and has wooed his MAGA supporters, blaming Democratic policies for California’s homelessness crisis, high cost of living and other entrenched ills. Becerra campaigned as a battle-tested warrior against the Republican president and a champion of affordable healthcare. He could make history as the state’s first elected Latino governor.
Hilton’s victory was declared by the Associated Press on Tuesday, days after Becerra secured one of the top spots and a week after the June 2 election. Under California’s primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation. According to the latest vote count, which is ongoing, Becerra has a slight edge over Hilton.
California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, center, flanked by lieutenant governor candidate Gloria Romero, left, and California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin, right, hold a press conference to discuss election and voting reforms at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk headquarters on Tuesday in Norwalk.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Democrat Tom Steyer finished in third place. The hedge fund founder and environmental activist spent $216 million of his own money on his campaign, and now joins the legion of other high-profile, self-funding candidates rejected by California voters.
Becerra heads into the Nov. 3 election with a distinct advantage — Democratic voters in California outnumber Republicans by an almost 2-to-1 margin, a telltale reason why no GOP candidate has won a statewide race since 2006.
The contrast between Becerra and Hilton, both on policy and political personas, couldn’t be more pronounced.
A British immigrant and former political advisor to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Hilton, 56, embraces traditional conservative ideals that have echoed across the country since the days of President Reagan — cutting taxes, weeding out government fraud and waste and promising to unbridle entrepreneurs and homebuilders from stifling state regulation.
But he’s also ventured into MAGA territory, declining to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and promising to extradite California doctors who provide abortion pills to other states for prosecution.
Becerra, 68, came up in Los Angeles politics in the 1980s and has long supported policies to expand protections and resources for immigrants with or without legal status. Married to Harvard-educated OB-GYN Carolina Reyes, Becerra has also staunchly opposed abortion restrictions throughout his career.
In Congress and other positions, Becerra earned a reputation as a cerebral, analytical politician who would fully commit to his positions after taking time to mull them through.
A straight-laced family man with a Catholic upbringing, Becerra was more reserved during the debates — a quiet confidence that drew some voters to support him. He also faced criticism from his rivals for failing to offer detailed housing and healthcare policies.
Hilton, who cuts an unmistakable image with his bald crown and clipped English accent, proved himself as a polished communicator during the debates, skills honed by his years as a Fox News analyst.
Television hosts must translate complex issues into easily digestible sound bites, said Republican strategist Matt Klink. “Most voters want a CliffsNotes version of the issues,” Klink said.
Republican strategist Kevin Spillane credits Hilton’s TV show, “The Next Revolution,” which ran for six years, with boosting his profile, calling Fox News the most important media vehicle within the conservative and Republican framework.
Hilton “understands how politics and how communications work,” Spillane said.
He often appeared relaxed during the gubernatorial debates, at points even complimenting or joking with his rivals as they parried on stage.
At a CBS debate earlier this year, Becerra referred to President Trump, who endorsed Hilton, as the Republican candidate’s “daddy.” Hilton responded with a quip that quickly deflated the attack.
“It would be rather amazing,” said Hilton, at the possibility of being Trump’s son. “My daddy was the goalie for the Hungarian national ice hockey team.”
In an interview last week, before the election, Hilton said he enjoyed the debates. “In a weird way, I was sad when we had the last one,” he said. “I’m looking forward to debating whoever it is.”
As a former political advisor to Britain’s Conservative Party, Hilton helped usher in a green, socially liberal strain of conservatism.
He also infuriated colleagues in the coalition government, the British press reported, proposing a stream of unconventional ideas: scrapping maternity leave, abolishing job centers, even buying cloud-bursting technology so Britain would have more sunshine. In 2012, he moved full time to the Bay Area.
Hilton, who founded a nonprofit on California policies, was known for his frequent visits in the last couple of years to the state Capitol for discussions with legislators.
By contrast, Hilton presented himself as the “more cosmopolitan” candidate who “can talk to the hedge fund manager or the small-business owner or the Sacramento lobbyist,” said Klink said.
“Hilton was more energized at the end, when it mattered,” said Spillane, contrasting the two Republicans.
Past Republican candidates, including businessman John Cox in 2018 and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman in 2010, have self-financed their campaigns with their vast fortunes.
By contrast, Hilton spent just a few million dollars on media advertising, he said in an interview last week.
He said he ignored advice from consultants who told him to do a launch announcement and then unleash a wave of ads in the last month of the campaign.
“I just said, ‘I want to do it the old-fashioned way,’ and that’s what we’ve been doing,” said Hilton in the interview before the election. “We’ve been to nearly every single county…. stepped it up with our town halls.”
Nina Royal, 83, who lives in Los Angeles and is a community advocate for her Tujunga neighborhood, voted for Hilton, saying that he understands California’s problems.
“He’s a realist,” said Royal. “He has a clear view of what needs to be done.”
Times staff writer Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.
As President Trump pushed unfounded allegations that California’s elections are rigged, the security of the ballot box became a major flash point in the state’s 2026 race for governor on Tuesday.
Republican Steve Hilton called for major reforms to how Californians cast ballots and how their votes are tallied, while sidestepping questions about the president’s claims that the state’s elections officials “were cheating.” Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the integrity of the state’s elections and argued that proposed restrictions would disenfranchise many voters.
The men appeared less than 20 miles apart in Southern California one week after a contentious primary election that prompted Trump to repeatedly make unfounded claims about the integrity of California’s slow vote-counting process, allegations triggered as Democrat Nithya Raman was about to overtake Republican Spencer Pratt for second place in the race for Los Angeles mayor.
Hilton, whose endorsement from Trump pushed him to the front of the GOP gubernatorial field, said he has not seen any evidence of impropriety in this month’s election results.
“We’re very, very focused on making sure that everything’s OK,” Hilton told reporters in Norwalk. “We’ve got teams standing by, we’ve got lawyers standing by, very focused on that. We don’t want to let anyone down, we don’t want to let anything slip away, and we’ve seen nothing.”
The two men emerged from a crowded field of candidates in the most unpredictable governor’s race in more than a quarter of a century. While Becerra on Friday nabbed a spot in the June 2 primary and will advance to the November general election, Hilton has not officially been declared a victor by the Associated Press, as of Tuesday afternoon.
Hilton, however, appears on the cusp of clinching the second spot on the ballot. Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer is in third place in the current ballot tally, and the odds of him overtaking Hilton appear increasingly unlikely.
“I’m very pleased to say that we remain confident that I will make it into the top two and that California will have a real choice for change in November,” Hilton said at a news conference outside the Los Angeles County elections headquarters. “We’re not popping the champagne yet, but we’re very confident.”
Hilton called for electoral reform, including supporting a voter identification requirement that will appear on the November ballot, ending mail ballots being sent to every registered voter, no longer counting ballots that are received after election day — all of which are being pushed by Trump — and increasing resources at county vote counting centers.
“Voter ID [is] not the only thing, but it’s the biggest, quickest, simplest thing we can do to restore faith in the system and to have these elections completed quickly in a way that inspires confidence, and that’s why I hope that Xavier Becerra will join me in campaigning for it, so we can have a united front,” the former Fox News commentator and British political strategist told reporters.
Hilton did not directly address Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud in California. However, he noted that Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, has the full resources of the Department of Justice and has found no proof of wrongdoing.
Essayli said Monday on NewsNation that his office is investigating voter fraud but doesn’t have a case. However, the voter rolls need to be audited, Essayli told host Chris Cuomo.
“That, to me, is the best way to alleviate most of people’s suspicion. We have a system that breeds skepticism and distrust,” Essayli said. “We should have a little transparency and confidence in our system.”
Becerra, a longtime elected official and a former Biden administration Cabinet secretary, questioned whether Hilton could be trusted to protect the state against Trump’s fraud claims.
“That’s who’s endorsing Steve Hilton,” Becerra told reporters at a South Los Angeles food hall, referring to Trump. “That’s who Steve Hilton is aligning himself with.”
Becerra, who was met with cheers of “Si se puede!” from diners, criticized the proposed voter ID ballot measure, arguing that it would create hurdles for many Californians to participate in the democratic electoral process. Led by Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio from San Diego and others, the measure would require elections officials to verify that voters are U.S. citizens to be eligible to cast ballots.
“I’m against voter suppression. I’m against anything that would try to limit a Californian’s right to vote,” said Becerra, who formerly served as California’s attorney general.
Told by reporters that Hilton wanted Becerra to campaign for the ballot initiative, Becerra responded, “Come join me here, where the real people are,” gesturing toward the packed food hall.
Becerra acknowledged his concern over the lengthy time that it takes to count votes in California. He suggested one issue is a lack of workers and equipment at county vote-counting centers.
Another problem is that the “votes get backlogged” because so many people wait until the end of the election to cast ballots, he said, likening last-minute voters to shoppers who go to Costco at the end of the day.
“If you wait till 7:00 p.m. when they’re getting ready to close, you’re probably gonna find more people there,” Becerra said.
The attacks on the elections process by Trump and his supporters appear to have a major effect on people’s confidence in the system. For years, Trump has made baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, which led his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were scheduled to certify the election results. Additionally, Trump’s allegations about California’s elections, as well as an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling about ballot tallying, could have a significant effect on the midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress for the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
A poll released Friday by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley found that 41% of California voters were “not confident” that this year’s elections would be free of federal interference. Although 48% had confidence that there would be no meddling, the concerns expressed were still significant, said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the institute.
Among Democratic registered voters, 79% said they trusted elections officials to provide an accurate vote count. Among Republicans, 55% said they were not confident that would occur, the survey found.
Despite an uptick in his performance, hopes for third-place finisher Tom Steyer are fading along with the number of uncounted ballots, suggesting Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton will face off in November.
Given the overwhelming Democratic advantage — both attitudinally and in registration — the outcome of the governor’s race might seem preordained. But it’s voters who decide elections, not know-it-all columnists.
Barabak: So Anita, now that the election is over how are you feeling? Relieved? Giddy? Depressed?
Chabria: Tired, with five months to go. And while it’s true neither of us can see into the future, it’s not too much of a long shot to predict that in a state where registered Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, the next governor will likely be blue.
So while the primary was bruising and confusing, the general election will be much more predictable — it’s Becerra’s to lose, and he’d have to try really hard to do that.
But here’s what I’ll be looking for in the lead up to November: How far will Hilton go to capitalize on this moment for personal gain? There are plenty of real issues to be discussed where the Republican-Democrat divide could offer worthy debate. What should we do about gas prices? What is the right balance between environmental regulation and building housing?
That is bad for our state and bad for democracy, and it’s troubling that we will likely be subjected to these lies — and that California could be used to further erode voting rights nationally — for the entire summer leading up to the midterms.
What will you be keeping an eye on?
Barabak: How Becerra spends the next five months.
One presumes he’s smart enough not to take anything for granted. Meaning he won’t spend the time between now and Nov. 3 at some swank beach resort, sipping one of those colorful cocktails with a little paper parasol while musing over his inaugural address.
So it will be interesting to see how Becerra campaigns and whether he uses the next several months to build a mandate and also to prepare California voters for the rough road ahead.
Becerra is smart enough, one would think, not to run as Mr. Sky Is Falling and tell voters, “Boy, oh, boy things are really gonna suck going forward.” But the next governor is going to face some really tough challenges, including a structural budget deficit that’s probably going to require both painful cuts and unpopular tax hikes.
On top of that, there are the inevitable disasters, be they earthquake, fire or flood, the latter quite possibly exacerbated this winter by what may be an epic El Niño. There’s also the continued challenge of dealing with a president who treats California the way a dog regards a fire hydrant.
All of it makes you wonder why anyone would want the job — though Steyer panted after it enough to burn through more than $215 million of his fortune in a bonfire of vanity.
Universal healthcare and standing our climate ground in the face of federal rollbacks were two of Steyer’s big talking points, along with standing up to corporate influence. Becerra now inherits those thorny problems if he wants to form a more cohesive Democratic base.
Becerra hasn’t yet offered up his vision of the Golden State, as you point out. As much as it may benefit Hilton to focus on Trump in coming months, the same could be true for Becerra.
Why get into messy policy when you can run on opposing MAGA in a very blue state? I fear the next few months will be more about Trump than California.
Barabak: That’s a charitable way to look at $teyer’s campaign.
Sure, he had plenty of ideas, though I think the promise of delivering universal healthcare — a political nonstarter — was cheap pandering, not visionary leadership.
There’s no shortage of people with good ideas. The only reason anyone paid attention to Steyer, who’s never served in any elected office, was the obscene amount of money he spent on his luxury-class ego trip. So it pleases me voters didn’t reward his arrogance or buy his billionaire-turned-populist, “Amazing Grace” spiel. (“I once was blind, but now I see.”)
And I’m be gladder still that voters showed — once again — the governor’s office is not for sale.
I do agree, however, that Becerra should to more than just cry MAGA! MAGA! MAGA! for the next five months, as if that incantation is magic and will solve all our problems. That applies, by the way, to Democratic candidates everywhere.
All of that said, we should note the governor’s race has yet to be officially decided and Steyer still has at least a theoretical possibility of slipping into the top two.
Chabria: First, we’ll have to agree to disagree. California is on a healthcare cliff and even middle-class Americans (not just Californians) can’t afford either insurance or care.
Single-payer may be a dream, but it’s my dream — for my kids, for my community and for my state, because healthcare shouldn’t be just for the rich and that is increasingly the direction we are going. So any politician, Steyer included, who fights for inclusion rather than accepting exclusion will get my consideration.
And let’s be real — self-funded or corporate-funded — our elections are, to their detriment, too much about money. My outrage is for the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which unleashed the current no-limits mess and created a system in which it requires hundreds of millions from somewhere, anywhere to run for our highest offices.
But back to ballots: Slow is not fraud. Slow is not bad if it’s accurate. Slow allows for greater voter participation by allowing mail-in ballots, and carefully checking all ballots for problems. Slow takes into account the federal mangling of the post office that has, yes, slowed down our mail.
And, slow happens because most of our county elections offices are understaffed and budget-starved. If you want fast, you’ve got to pay for it.
So keep your britches on people and don’t buy Trump’s (or Hilton’s) manufactured hype. Every system can be improved, but there’s far worse problems than slow.
What’s your take on the ballot controversy?
Barabak: Here’s one where we agree.
California goes out of its way to make it easy to vote, which, I believe, is a very good thing. Kim Alexander of the non-partisan California Voter Foundation, who’s spent decades on the matter, has suggested ways we can have both wide access and a faster count, starting with better funding of the state’s over-extended county election offices.
This prolonged count is something Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-run Legislature could have anticipated. Shame on them for not doing more to address it.
I, too, yearn for that perfect candidate who is firm but flexible, old but youthful in his or her thinking, masculine but also feminine, brilliant but not too smart and larger than life but also totally relatable.
When Nithya Raman stepped up to a podium on the night of L.A.’s mayoral primary election, she thanked her supporters for standing up to the “powerful interests” who spent millions of dollars trying to “preserve this city’s broken and unjust status quo.”
“At a time when so many people have written Los Angeles off or have lost hope in the future of this incredible city,” the democratic socialist L.A. mayoral hopeful said, “you are proof that Angelenos are hungry for change.”
But as election results rolled in, the movement for change was underwhelming, or at least divided. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass was in the lead, advancing to the November runoff. That left Raman locked in a battle for a second spot with Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.
Bass is one of several high-profile establishment Democrats to emerge on top. In California’s gubernatorial race, centrist Xavier Becerra, a veteran of the Biden Cabinet, advanced to the runoff after being challenged from the left by billionaire green activist Tom Steyer and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter. Steyer is now behind Steve Hilton, a Republican, and battling to make the runoff.
Still reeling from the rise of Donald Trump, Democrats in California and beyond are struggling to figure out the future direction of the party.
Some progressives, inspired by Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral victory, saw 2026 as an opportunity to move the city further left. But the results have been mixed in key races, with veteran Democrats like Bass and Becerra eking out leads even as polls show dissatisfaction with status quo politics in California.
“This was supposed to be a change revolution, but voters clearly said no to the revolution,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College. “Voters want change,” she noted, “but it doesn’t appear right now that there has been an appetite for a major shift in the ideology of the city or the state.”
Xavier Becerra speaks during an election night event in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Becerra emerged as the Democratic favorite late in the election and won support from many establishment party leaders. Pundits said after a wild primary that included the implosion of Democratic U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign amid sex assault allegations, Becerra emerged as a “safe” choice.
Some opponents attacked his moderate views and his willingness to accept campaign donations from big oil companies like Chevron. But that did not stop his rise.
Bass was also beset with challenges, being an incumbent in a city beset with problems.
For her, election night marked a “victory with an asterisk,” Sadhwani said, noting that Bass is first incumbent L.A. mayor in more than two decades to face a runoff. “It would be wrong for Karen Bass to think that this victory … is a ringing endorsement of the work she is currently doing.”
The results underscore Bass’ unpopularity as an incumbent, garnering just 35% of the vote so far. If Raman can catch up and eventually surpass Pratt in the vote count, she could pose a considerable challenge to Bass as more young voters come to the polls in November.
Mike Bonin, a former L.A. City Council member who leads the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., said if Bass exceeded expectations it was because they were very low.
“Coming in first in a runoff isn’t a huge victory for an incumbent mayor,” he said. “Two-thirds of the city did not vote for her. That’s not a position of strength.”
James Adams, a political science professor at UC Davis, said that Becerra and Bass coming through indicates the centrist Democratic candidates were in a stronger short-term position than their rivals. But problems loom ahead, he said, as the longtime Democratic establishment that’s been governing California for the last 15 years failed to make notable progress in solving problems with affordable housing, homelessness, public transportation and education.
“I think the Democrats’ prospects are very bright in 2026 given the California Republicans’ dysfunctionality and a complete backlash against Donald Trump,” Adams said. “But I have much bigger concerns about the California Democrats long term, because it seems to me they’re setting a record for most consecutive years of failing to fix the state’s problems while getting reelected anyway.”
Democrats in California, he said, were suffering from being in power too long.
“Whenever one party gets into a long-term, dominant position, usually because the other party is just in the midst of self-destructing … the whole thing ends in tears, because the party that is in a dominant position, they don’t have to be that good.”
As the vote count continues in the mayor’s race, democratic socialists in Los Angeles already have some wins down-ballot.
“We are gaining momentum,” said Leslie Chang, a co-chair of the 5,000-member L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, a decentralized anti-capitalist group that advocates for rental protections and defunding the police. Over the last six years, Angelenos have elected four DSA-backed City Council members and a DSA-recommended city controller.
The DSA did not officially endorse Raman, because she entered the race after the group had issued endorsements and another DSA candidate was also running for mayor. However, three of the six DSA-backed candidates for citywide office were projected to win outright.
DSA Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez were reelected by such large margins they avoided runoffs. In the city attorney’s race, DSA-endorsed Marissa Roy was in the lead and the mainstream Democratic incumbent became the first city attorney ousted in a primary in nearly a century. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, a progressive anti-establishment candidate who is not a DSA member but an ally of the group, led by nearly 20 percentage points.
When Chang knocked on doors, she said, some voters asked: “Well, what’s the difference between Nithya and Karen Bass?”
A few voters told her that after reviewing Bass’ and Raman’s websites, they found their platforms similar. Chang was surprised. She thought Raman articulated a clear and novel strategy for how to get L.A. out of the housing crisis, but she said some on the left took issue with her working with housing developers to reduce red tape.
Neel Sannappa, chair of the California Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, said Raman was stymied by getting into the race late and having only a few months to campaign. It also didn’t help that a more left-wing challenger, Rae Huang, already had some momentum — not enough to win, but enough to split the left.
“Nithya does represent something real and growing in Los Angeles,” Sannappa said. “There is a hunger for more progressive, left-leaning candidates that want to make sure that we’re investing in people and not so much investing in just police … and being able to build things that are new and innovative.”
Supporters watch election results come in on their phones during Nithya Raman’s election night party at Boomtown Brewery on Tuesday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Some have criticized Raman’s coalition-building, noting she was not endorsed by her fellow DSA-backed City Council members. Others said the MIT and Harvard graduate, who has been a councilmember for six years, performed tepidly in a May televised debate and suffered from Pratt’s attempts to tie her to the establishment.
“If you’re a part of the institution, which she is,” Sadhwani said, “then you can’t exactly claim that you’re going to bring massive change.”
Sadhwani said that California’s left, in contrast to New York’s, appears to have a charisma deficit. While Pratt and Hilton had an advantage with their television backgrounds, they also spoke “in plain terms about the real problems that the state faces.”
Part of Bass’ success can also be attributed to assembling a coalition that included the L.A. County Federation of Labor, the L.A. police officers union, the L.A. County Democratic Party and immigrant rights groups.
In the mayoral race, Sadhwani said, “the dominant political coalition still has power, money, the organization.”
“If you can garner the support of the unions, then having a broader message, maybe it’s less important,” she said. “You don’t have to work quite so hard, because the unions have the base machine.”
People attend Mayor Bass’ election party for the California 2026 primaries at the LINE Hotel on Tuesday.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
Yusef Robb, a longtime Democratic strategist who is an advisor to Bass, attributed the mayor’s lead to her campaign’s success in building a broad coalition and communicating across the political spectrum. Most voters, he said, tend to think less about ideology — and whether a Democrat was mainstream or DSA-supported — than candidates’ positions on bread and butter issues.
“Mayor’s races are first and foremost about what people see outside of their front doors, when they walk their kids to school, when they drive to work,” he said. “At the end of the day, the voters look at the field and say, ‘OK, who do I trust to keep my kids from having to skip around a tent on the way to school?’ ‘Who can I trust to hire more officers?’ … and ‘Who can I trust to fight back against ICE in court through executive action and even in the streets?’ And that’s Karen Bass.”
For Democrats in this robustly blue state, part of the challenge in figuring a path forward is that every candidate — even those already in power — pitches themselves as a bona fide progressive against the status quo.
“We have led a grassroots campaign because we want to bring change to our city,” Bass said on election night. “And that’s what we’ve been doing, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Raman also tried to tout herself as a change candidate. Articulating her platform in broad strokes rather than bread-and-butter detail, Raman said she wanted L.A. to be a place “where government actually functions and delivers every day on this city’s beautiful bighearted values, where we stand up against ICE, where we show up for our gay and trans siblings.”
But as she talked of neighborhoods “full of trees and shade … and people and good food,” she seemed low-key and equivocal. Her message was a far cry from the pressing one U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put forward in his presidential campaigns, highlighting the millions of Americans working for “starvation wages” and a young single mother in Nevada struggling on $10.45 an hour.
Ultimately, the fight between Bass and Raman, as a struggle between mainstream and progressive Democrats, is complicated by the fact that Bass came up through the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, founding the grassroots Community Coalition in South L.A. in the 1990s.
Campaign worker Khai Dombroe prepares balloons before Nithya Raman’s election night party.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
And even though Raman is a DSA member, she has tacked to the center during the campaign, distancing herself from past calls to defund the police by saying she did not want the LAPD to lose more officers.
While Raman and Bass have much in common, the most significant difference between them is on homelessness, Sannappa said. Even though Bass comes from a political tradition of not wanting to criminalize the unhoused, he said, she understood her voters include people wanting to move homeless people off the streets.
“Brass tacks is that we need people that are going to be willing to fight for mental health services,” Sannappa said.
“I think Nithya more so represents the direction where the Democratic Party is going to have to go.”
As L.A. becomes less affordable and homeownership becomes out of reach for many Angelenos, young renters have become a rising political constituency — a shift that many say will likely propel the city leftward.
Bonin said he expected the next new rising Democratic coalition in L.A. to be a labor-renter coalition. He cited Councilmember Soto-Martinez, a renter and union organizer, as probably the best avatar of that.
But as the middle-class splinters along generational lines, other political experts warn that many ordinary Angelenos feel increasingly shut out of L.A. politics.
“Once upon a time the Democratic Party was the party of the working class, and today it has become the party of the educated elites,” Sadhwani said. “Perhaps one of the gifts that Donald Trump has given to Democrats is to force them to contend with the everyday issues of voters, which they seem to have distanced themselves from.”
As many Angelenos feel worse off now than four years ago, Chang said Bass was not directly responsible for every problem. Still, she said, she could have done more to move the city in the right direction.
Delaying the wage boost tied to the 2028 Olympics, she said, was a move that failed working people at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet.
“My fear, of course, is people pivot away from corporate Democrats and they choose the MAGA Republican, because that is the most visible fight,” Chang said. “Or because they think, ‘Oh, well, a democratic socialist running on the Democratic Party line, this is just more of the same status quo.’ ”
June 6 (UPI) — Democrat Xavier Becerra is advancing to the November election in the California governor’s race, while Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Tom Steyer battle for the second spot.
California’s primary is nonpartisan, so the top two finishers advance, regardless of party.
If elected, Becerra, 68, would be California’s first Latino governor since 1875. The state’s population is about 41% Latino.
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on Earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Becerra said in a statement. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down.”
Becerra was the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary under President Joe Biden and is a former California attorney general.
No Republican has won statewide office since 2006. Hilton has also been endorsed by President Donald Trump, who is unpopular in the state. California Gov. Gavin Newsom can’t run for re-election because of term limits.
The vote count has taken several days because California has mail-in voting. It’s not unusual for California’s elections to take a long time to count. Trump-endorsed Hilton led early, but it’s likely that’s because Republicans voted early, while Democrats waited because they had many more contenders from which to choose, The New York Times reported.
Hilton, 56, is a British-born former Fox News host who once worked for Prime Minister David Cameron. Steyer, 68, is a New York-born billionaire philanthropist and climate activist who ran for president in 2020.
On Friday, the Department of Justice sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot counting in Los Angeles after Trump claimed that the count was being rigged by Democrats.
The Los Angeles County registrar-recorder said in a statement Friday: “Our office was notified late yesterday that the U.S. attorney’s office would send an assistant U.S. attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities.”
“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” spokesperson Mike Sanchez said in an email to CNN.
Sanchez noted that ballot processing is open to the public.
California law gives election officials 30 days to complete the counting and certification process, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a statement.
“Our commitment is immediate: in California, every ballot is counted properly and every ballot is accounted for,” Weber said.
President Donald Trump discusses renovations to the Lincoln Reflecting Pool and makes an announcement on coal in the Oval Office at the White House on Thursday. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI | License Photo
Veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra won one of the top two spots in California’s primary election for governor, according to the Associated Press, a finish that puts him in a prime position to win in November and make history as California’s first elected Latino governor.
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Xavier Becerra said in a statement Friday. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”
Former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, remains in a close second and appears on the cusp of securing the right to face off with Becerra in the November general election.
Tom Steyer, a hedge fund manager turned climate change activist, may be destined to finish in third place — which would be a disappointing end to a campaign that saturated California’s television screens, social media scrolls and mailboxes thanks to the progressive Democrat spending $216 million of his own wealth.
Becerra’s victory was declared by the Associated Press on Friday evening, three days after the June 2 election — an indication of the competitive race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom and California’s lengthy process of counting ballots. Still, Becerra and Hilton were within a percentage point of each other, though that could change as the vote tally continues. While his fate is not sealed, Steyer faces long odds to finish in the top two.
Under California’s primary system, only the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation.
Becerra would enter the general election campaign with a significant edge over Hilton since Democratic voters in California outnumber Republicans by almost a 2-to-1 margin, a telltale reason why no GOP candidate has won a statewide race since 2006.
President Trump’s endorsement of Hilton helped consolidate support from Republican voters, which was pivotal to his success in the primary, but would likely hurt him in a face-off against Becerra. Nearly two-thirds of voters in the state want a governor who will fight Trump’s policies, according to the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
Becerra could make history by becoming the first Latino to be elected governor — and the first to lead the state in more than 150 years. The last time a Latino held the office was in 1875, when then-Lt. Gov. Romualdo Pacheco was elevated to fill a vacancy and served for 10 months.
“California has made history. Xavier Becerra’s advancement to the general election is a defining moment both for the state, and for the millions of Latino families who have been instrumental in shaping the state’s future. … As home to the nation’s largest Latino population, California will once again demonstrate the decisive power of Latino voters,” said Voto Latino Executive Director Beatriz Lopez.
Though Latinos make up about 40% of the state’s population and are California’s largest ethnic group, they historically have lower turnout in elections and are underrepresented in government. Though Becerra often cites his upbringing as a child of working-class Mexican immigrants, he will still need to demonstrate he can deliver for those communities, said Christian Arana, vice president of civic power and policy at the California-based Latino Community Foundation.
“There’s a lot of excitement about the representation side,” Arana said. “You can have Latino representation, but whether or not that will actually lead to tangible outcomes for Latino communities, that’s what people want to know.”
Once stuck in the single-digits in public opinion polls with a handful of other Democratic candidates, Becerra rose quickly and unexpectedly following the political demise of former Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Becerra’s rise began days after Swalwell dropped out in April following allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies. Becerra quickly consolidated support from elected officials including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and influential groups like Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the California Medical Assn.
But both supporters and critics of Becerra struggle to explain exactly how or why he became the main beneficiary of Swalwell’s downfall.
Becerra’s campaign credits the timing of a major television and digital advertising push. The political ads began running just before the allegations against Swalwell came out and depicted Becerra as a calm, experienced leader with a record pushing back against Trump and support from Young Democrat groups.
Steyer’s campaign hired an intelligence firm to look into the online surge favoring Becerra and found thousands of bot accounts had amplified Becerra on various social media platforms. Becerra’s campaign denied any involvement and dismissed the influence of the fake accounts.
Political experts describe it as the stars aligning for the longtime Democratic politician. In the aftermath of the scandal, voters were apparently drawn to Becerra’s long resume and calm, thoughtful demeanor.
“He just never overreacted. Even when attacked [during debates], he was calm,” said Fernando Guerra, professor of Chicano Studies at Loyola Marymount University. That “gave the sense of being a moderate, while he’s really a liberal, so he was able to appeal not only to Latinos, but to liberals and to moderates.”
After Swalwell’s campaign crumbled, members of the political brain trust — many with ties to Newsom — that had been advising the former congressman began working for Becerra, including digital strategist Alf LaMont and veteran consultants Courtni Pugh and Lindsey Cobia.
“There was nothing going for him for a long, long time,” said Jason McDaniel, associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “I do think it was just people looking for someone who had a lot of experience who could win.”
Becerra’s first election victory was to the state Assembly in 1990. He served one term before successfully running for a Los Angeles congressional seat, which he held for 24 years.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Becerra as state attorney general in 2017, a post he used to challenge Trump administration policies in the courts more than a 100 times — with great success. Becerra helped craft the Affordable Care Act in Congress and defended it as attorney general, and Joe Biden nominated him to serve as Health and Human Services secretary.
The 68-year-old veteran elected official has faced criticism on the campaign trail for his record leading the massive federal agency, particularly over a New York Times investigation that found thousands of unaccompanied migrant children ended up working in dangerous jobs after they were released to sponsors.
Some former Biden administration officials, many of them anonymous, have also criticized Becerra’s leadership of the agency.
Still, Becerra’s supporters said the candidate’s experience, particularly when it comes to fighting the Trump administration, qualifies him for California’s top job.
“He’s had some very important positions in government,” labor leader Dolores Huerta said at Becerra’s election night party in downtown Los Angeles. “He is qualified. He doesn’t have to go into a learning mode.”
“He’s a legal scholar,” said David Dixon, a political science professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills and brother to a longtime Becerra aide. “When our Constitution is threatened, we need people like him to be in positions of power to reclaim things we are losing now.”
Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Dakota Smith and Andrew Khouri contributed to this report.
1 of 2 | Former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra speaks during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on former President Joe Biden’s proposed budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services for fiscal year 2025 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 14, 2024. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
June 4 (UPI) — Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra are leading a crowded field in California’s primary for governor on Thursday with millions of ballots left to count.
The two candidates that receive the most votes will advance to the November election, regardless of party. Democrat Tom Steyer has the third most votes so far.
Sixty-one candidates qualified to appear on the primary ballot to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Polls closed on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. PDT. It is common for California to take days if not weeks to tally enough votes to declare a winner.
Despite millions of votes still being counted, President Donald Trump has alleged that Democrats have cheated in California’s primaries.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” Trump posted on social media. “Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY?”
Trump also declared Hilton the winner of the primary, even though not enough votes have been counted to make that determination.
“Congratulations to Steve Hilton on coming in first, last night, in the California Vote for Governor,” Trump wrote.
Hilton, a former Fox News host, is the top overall vote-getter as of Thursday morning.
Becerra is the former Biden administration U.S. human services and health secretary. Steyer, a billionaire, is a philanthropist and climate activist.
As election officials continued tallying ballots Wednesday, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra continued to lead in the unsettled race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, with billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer hoping for a surge in late-arriving votes to push him into one of the top-two spots to advance to the November general election.
Hilton, a British immigrant and former Fox News commentator, told reporters outside the state Capitol in Sacramento Wednesday morning that he was “very encouraged” by the latest results, though he stopped short of declaring victory.
“It does look as if change is coming to California, and that is good news for everyone, every small business, every working family, everyone who wants to see our state set back on track,” he said.
Becerra and Steyer did not hold public events as of Wednesday afternoon.
Election data analyst Paul Mitchell said it would be nearly mathematically impossible for Steyer to close the gap.
“As we start to get more data, the runway is going to get shorter and shorter,” he said.
He said Steyer, to finish in the top two in the primary, would have to get about 30% of the remaining uncounted votes while Becerra would need to be limited to 15%. The self-funded billionaire has “a very high hill to overcome, and the challenge gets steeper and steeper as we get more data from the counties,” Mitchell said.
“Here in Hollywood’s hometown, we love a good underdog story,” Becerra told cheering supporters at his election night party at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles.
Becerra spoke about his Mexican immigrant parents and becoming the first in his family to attend college. Though a longtime California politician, Becerra said that his campaign for governor was outspent and that he faced calls to drop out of the race.
“The underdog stayed in the fight,” he said. “Like my parents, I never gave up. … Never stopped believing in the beacon-light goodness of California and thankfully, neither did you.”
His campaign manager, Heather Hargreaves, wrote in a letter to supporters Wednesday that “we’re going to give democracy time to work. County election officials are still counting ballots and don’t expect to know how many people voted in total until” Thursday, when officials are required to report the estimated number ballots left to process.
Billionaires “do everything they can to hoard their wealth and avoid paying taxes, and we see corporations continue to rig the system for themselves — raising your prices to juice their profits. Screw that,” Steyer said at his election watch party at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.
Other candidates in the race included Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrats including former Rep. Katie Porter, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
Villaraigosa, Mahan and Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.
California’s 2026 race for governor started slow but ended with a flourish, including the demise of a scandal-ridden Democratic favorite, the anointing of a Republican by Trump and Becerra’s unexpected rise from the depths of the candidate field.
Unlike gubernatorial elections in the last quarter of a century, this year’s race lacked a clear crowd-pleasing front-runner able to win over voters, such as movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jerry Brown, a sage of the California electorate and scion of a storied political family. But it unfolded at a time when the state’s residents are overwhelmed by high housing costs, steep gas prices and overall unaffordability that threatens the “California dream” that once drew millions of people to the state.
“Normal people are not living and breathing politics on a daily basis,” said Tim Rosales, a strategist who ran Republican John Cox’s unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign. In today’s information-saturated environment, Rosales said, the race and its roster of “extremely milquetoast candidates” didn’t break through until the Swalwell scandal grabbed voters’ attention.
The 2026 gubernatorial primary has been one of the most unpredictable and expensive in decades and a race that was shaped early on by a number of heavyweight Democrats staying on the sidelines.
Though supporters urged them to run, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta passed on the race. It was in a state of limbo for months last year as Harris, one of the state’s most high-profile politicians, weighed whether to jump in.
“I don’t ever recall a playing field that looks like this one. Usually there’s a clear front-runner,” said veteran Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “It’s easy to say that it reflects a lack of talent [but] that’s absolutely not true. Almost any of the candidates running could make a good governor.”
Still, candidates struggled for months to break through to voters.
In February, polls showed the crowded field of Democrats splitting liberal voters and opening a statistical possibility that the party would be boxed out of November under California’s open, top-two primary, which places all candidates on the same ballot. Only the first- and second-place finishers in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.
Just when Swalwell appeared on the cusp of becoming the Democratic front-runner the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN published allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and acted inappropriately with other women. Swalwell suspended his campaign.
It was Becerra who benefited the most. In less than two months, he vaulted from polling in the low single digits to the top of the field of candidates, according to surveys conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that were co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
“Becerra caught lightning in a bottle,” Rosales said. “It could have easily gone to any of the other candidates,” but many had baggage. Videos of Porter losing her temper hurt her image, the source of Steyer’s wealth and his unbridled campaign spending weighed on voters’ minds, and Villaraigosa and Mahan were “more centrist than what most Democrats wanted, and so Xavier Becerra was really the safe choice,” Rosales said.
Before Democratic voters began to narrow down their choices, Trump endorsed Hilton in early April. It helped the former Fox News host break away from Bianco, his main GOP rival.
In the days before the primary election, the race solidified into a three-way contest involving Becerra, Steyer and Hilton.
Steyer stepped up his fight in the remaining days, seeking to squeeze into one of the top two spots by battering Becerra in ads and at campaign rallies as a politician propped up by corporate special interests.
“We cannot afford to have a governor who’s been bought off by Big Oil. Period,” he said at a Sunday rally in Los Angeles.
Corporations, along with labor unions and interest groups including the California Assn. of Realtors, had spent more than $18.7 million to boost Becerra, according to the election spending tracker California Target Book. Many of the same groups also gave money to a committee intended to attack Steyer.
As the election neared, Becerra sharpened his attacks against Steyer, calling the billionaire a “liar” and accusing him of trying to buy the election.
“We are not going to let a billionaire or Trump’s handpicked candidate take over this state,” he said during a Sunday rally in Long Beach.
If Becerra faces off with Hilton in November he’ll have a distinct advantage. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1 in left-leaning California.
Winning the general election would make the 68-year-old Becerra the first elected Latino governor of California. At roughly 40% of the state’s population, Latinos are California’s largest ethnic group but have not been represented in the governor’s mansion since 1875, when then-Lt. Gov. Romualdo Pacheco was elevated to fill a 10-month vacancy.
Times staff writers Iris Kwok, Susanne Rust, Andrew Khouri and Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.
The outcome of the hotly contested race for California governor remained uncertain Tuesday night, but Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra held leads in the large field running to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Hilton, a former conservative commentator, and Becerra, a longtime elected official who served in the Biden administration, were roughly tied in early returns, with Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer in a distant third. Only two of the candidates will advance to the November general election.
In Tuesday night remarks, Becerra cited his upbringing as the child of hardworking immigrant parents. When it came to his run for governor, he said, he was counted out, was outspent by competitors and faced calls to drop out to clear a path for a Democrat to rise to the top of a crowded field.
In the end, Becerra appears to have been that Democrat.
“Like my parents, I never gave up … and thankfully neither did you,” he told supporters Tuesday evening at the Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles. “While I take nothing for granted [and] there are lots of ballots left to be counted, it appears that we are on track to advance to November.”
Hilton, a former Fox News commentator who was endorsed by President Trump, took the stage at his party in Huntington Beach just after 10 p.m. as results showed him leading the race. “This is the first stage, but the fight really starts tomorrow,” he told supporters.
Hilton spoke of himself and Spencer Pratt, who had a strong showing in the Los Angeles mayoral race, as “a couple of outsiders who’ve never run for office before” who had taken on a broken system.
Steyer remained hopeful Tuesday night, urging supporters to be patient as the statewide vote is counted. He called out corporations, including Chevron, PG&E and the insurance industry, for rigging the system and making the state unaffordable for working people.
“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate,” he said.
Other candidates in the race included Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrats including former Rep. Katie Porter, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
Villaraigosa, Mahan and Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.
Sonia Molina of Hancock Park said she came to Becerra’s election night party to support the Democrat, whom she has known since college. The local dentist described him as an honest, hardworking person who understands the importance of healthcare policy. Still, she was initially surprised at his rise in the polls.
“He’s very low-key and not very pompous — a lot of people [didn’t] really know him,” Molina said. “But I’m glad people are actually paying attention.”
Supporters of Hilton were gathered at the Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, where cheers erupted in the ballroom with each wave of incoming results.
“He’s a true conservative,” said Hilton supporter John Merguerian, 52, of Glendale, who works as a security guard. “This is a chance for real change. We have the highest gas prices in the nation. We have the highest sales tax. One-party rule has done all this.”
California’s 2026 race for governor started slow but entered its next phase with a flourish, including the demise of a scandal-plagued Democratic favorite, the anointing of a Republican by Trump and Becerra’s unexpected rise from the depths of the crowded field of candidates.
Unlike gubernatorial elections in the last quarter century, this year’s race lacked a clear crowd-pleasing front-runner able to win over voters like Hollywood movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jerry Brown, a sage of the California electorate and scion of a storied political family. But it unfolded at a crucial time as the state’s residents are overwhelmed by high housing costs, steep gas prices and overall unaffordability that threatens the “California dream” that once drew millions of people to the state.
Many voters appeared exhausted by Trump’s policies that disproportionately affected California, such as immigration raids, and the costly special election in the fall to redraw the state’s congressional districts. They did not tune in to the gubernatorial contest until weeks before Tuesday’s primary.
A fundamental question in recent days was whether the state’s 23.2 million registered voters, who all received mail-in ballots, were waiting to vote or if they would skip the election because of malaise. Low early Democratic voter turnout alarmed party leaders, but it increased in the lead-up to the primary.
Tuesday’s initial results are the culmination of one of the most unpredictable and expensive gubernatorial primaries in decades and a race that was shaped just as much by who opted not to run as by the candidates who did.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris signaled interest in the seat shortly after her bruising 2024 loss to Trump. The race was in effect in limbo as Harris, one of the state’s most high-profile politicians, weighed whether to enter.
She ultimately decided against it, as did Sen. Alex Padilla. If they had run, political strategists said, either would have been favorites to win, with high name recognition and previous experience running for statewide offices.
Others bowed out too, including Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and billionaire developer Rick Caruso. Candidates who had initially declared for the seat — former state Senate leader Toni Atkins, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and billionaire Stephen Cloobeck among them — dropped out or pivoted to other races.
“I don’t ever recall a playing field that looks like this one. Usually there’s a clear front-runner,” said veteran Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “It’s easy to say that it reflects a lack of talent [but] that’s absolutely not true. Almost any of the candidates running could make a good governor.”
Still, candidates struggled for months to break through to voters.
In February, polls showed the crowded field of Democrats splitting liberal voters and opening a statistical possibility that the party would be boxed out of November under California’s open, top-two primary, which places all candidates on the same ballot. Only the first- and second-place finishers in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.
Republicans Hilton and Bianco led many polls, prompting Democratic officials and allies to urge their party’s low-polling candidates to drop out of the race.
“Normal people are not living and breathing politics on a daily basis,” said Tim Rosales, a strategist who ran Republican John Cox’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. In today’s information-saturated environment, Rosales said, the race and its roster of “extremely milquetoast candidates” didn’t break through to voters until scandal erupted.
Just when former Rep. Eric Swalwell appeared on the cusp of becoming the Democratic front-runner — rising in polls and gaining support from influential labor unions — the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN published allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and acted inappropriately with other women.
Swalwell, a top Trump critic in Congress, vehemently denied the allegations as “flat false” and vowed to fight them, but the damage was done. His campaign staff and supporters abandoned him and some donors sought refunds. Two days after the allegations were published, Swalwell suspended his campaign.
In the vacuum created by Swalwell’s collapse, his Democratic rivals frenetically cast about for momentum. Porter saw a new bump in fundraising. Silicon Valley executives poured new millions behind Mahan. Former state Controller Betty Yee — who languished at the bottom of the polls — held on for a few more weeks before calling it quits.
It was Becerra who benefited most, though his critics and supporters alike have a hard time explaining exactly how or why. In less than two months, he vaulted from polling in the low single digits to the top of the field of candidates, according to surveys conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that were co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
“Becerra caught lightning in a bottle,” Rosales said. “It could have easily gone to any of the other candidates,” but many had baggage. Videos of Porter losing her temper hurt her image, the source of Steyer’s wealth and his unbridled campaign spending weighed on voters’ minds, and Villaraigosa and Mahan were “more centrist than what most Democrats wanted, and so Xavier Becerra was really the safe choice,” Rosales said.
Before Democratic voters began to narrow down their choices, Trump endorsed Hilton in early April. It helped the former Fox News host break away from Bianco but diminished the chances of a Republican primary sweep.
In the days before the primary election, the race solidified into a three-way contest involving Becerra, Steyer and Hilton. Now fearing a scenario with two Democrats on the November ballot, Hilton called on Republicans to unite behind him and ramped up pressure on Bianco to drop out of the race, warning that having Becerra and Steyer on the November ballot would “be a disaster for California.”
“There’s one person who can stop this doomsday scenario, and that is my friend Chad Bianco,” Hilton said in an Instagram video Friday. “Chad, the best time to have dropped out would have been a couple of weeks ago, but the second best time is right now.”
Steyer stepped up his fight in the remaining days, seeking to squeeze into one of the top two spots by relentlessly battering Becerra in ads and at campaign rallies as a politician propped up by corporate special interests.
“We cannot afford to have a governor who’s been bought off by Big Oil. Period,” he said at a Sunday rally in Los Angeles.
Corporations, along with labor unions and interest groups including the California Assn. of Realtors, had spent more than $18.7 million to boost Becerra, according to the election spending tracker California Target Book. Many of the same groups also gave money to a committee intended to attack Steyer.
As the election neared, Becerra sharpened his own attacks against Steyer, calling the billionaire a “liar” and accusing him of trying to buy the election.
“We are not going to let a billionaire or Trump’s handpicked candidate take over this state,” he said during a Sunday rally in Long Beach.
Steyer’s wealth has been a central theme of the race. He has so far dropped more than $216 million into his campaign, shattering records set by other wealthy self-funded candidates before him and prompting attacks from critics who accuse him of trying to buy an election.
“Everybody assumes money is the most important thing, that you can quote-unquote ‘buy an election’ with all that money,” said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “You still have to have a candidate who is able to be well-liked, and policy stances that are aligned with where voters are in general.”
Times staff writers Susanne Rust, Andrew Khouri and Christopher Goffard contributes to this report.
If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s that the gubernatorial primary is an unexpectedly close race among a trio unlikely leaders: MAGA Republican Steve Hilton, and Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer.
Though Trump endorsed Hilton, a former Fox News host, a Hilton loss may be just what Trump wants — more fuel to fire up his MAGA base with false claims of rigged elections.
“Whether Hilton finishes first, second, or third, Trump will declare with zero evidence that there is voter fraud.,” Matt Barreto told me. He’s a professor of political science at UCLA and a founder of its Voting Rights Project, meant to promote free and fair elections.
And since California will probably take days or weeks to count all the ballots, a tight race will be fertile ground for those fraudulent fraud claims. President Trump has already started, clearly planning to use our primary to further his push to assert federal control of state-run elections.
California is not, of course, dishonest in its voting, and Trump has whined about elections for so long that this rhetoric might elicit little more than a shrug from most. But California elections matter at this pivotal moment only months before the midterms. Fraud claims here will further erode trust in our electoral system and could provide Trump with ammunition for interference across the country.
Voter fraud claims may also test a new California law meant to protect real election integrity and trust — a law (Senate Bill 73, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last week) that has received little notice but one that could provide a model of protection for the rest of the U.S. It stops law enforcement agents, including federal agents, from “providing unauthorized access, disruption, modification, or seizure of voter rolls, voter lists, or certified voting technology,” without a court order.
Call it the Sheriff Chad Bianco Act.
Bianco, another MAGA gubernatorial hopeful, seized hundreds of thousands of ballots from a recent election, claiming he was investigating the kind of wrongdoing Trump constantly alleges without proof. State Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), a former federal prosecutor, said the warrant Bianco obtained from a friendly judge was “woefully deficient.”
So Umberg helped pass the measure to “protect the integrity of California elections” from “rogue law enforcement officials,” he said.
And he’s not just talking about Bianco.
“I am worried about interference in the election by federal authorities,” Umberg said. “I believe Donald Trump when he says, ‘I’m going to interfere in the election.’”
Umberg is so concerned that he has two other bills in the works he hopes will be law by November. One would stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from being present at polling places. The other would make it illegal for anyone running for a third term as president to appear on the California ballot.
The buildup of fraud claims around California elections and the pushback from legislators like Umberg is a background battle that hasn’t received much attention, but one that is real and consequential.
Trump, through demands for voter rolls by the U.S. Department of Justice, the promotion of the SAVE Act, vague threats of ICE or other federal agents at polls, and the placement of election deniers in key federal rolls has gutted safeguards for voting on the national level.
States have been slow to meet the threat, largely waiting for November to see how it plays out. California, to it’s credit, isn’t so complacent.
The strange circumstances of this particular California election may be a test for both sides. Barreto, the UCLA voting expert, said he thinks “Hilton has the highest probability of finishing first on Tuesday with Becerra close by in second, and Steyer in third.”
But that could — and probably would — change as more ballots are counted.
By Thursday, Barreto said, it’s probable (far from certain) that Becerra is in the lead and Hilton is second.
“There will definitely be millions more ballots counted on Wednesday and Thursday and they will be disproportionately Democratic and contribute to both Becerra and Steyer numbers,” he said.
Maybe pushing Steyer into second? Again, a long shot. But possible.
Democrats have been holding on to their ballots until the last minute this year, with a huge number waiting until just the last few days to vote. It’s possible (though unlikely) that by sheer numbers, Democratic voters will propel both Steyer and Becerra toward November.
We do know that Republicans, despite their smaller numbers, have been voting, and trusting the postal service with their ballots this time around at a fairly high rate. That’s despite Trump’s claims that mail-in voting is inherently fraudulent.
So at the same time that we are expecting a big influx of Democratic ballots in coming days, Republicans may be closer to their voting peak, meaning Hilton’s numbers could top out on election night.
If Hilton doesn’t make the top three, after having been in the lead during in-person voting, MAGA will most certainly lose its collective mind.
And Trump will have something just as good as a Republican governor in the Golden State — “proof” we cheated.
Xavier Becerra’s campaign for California governor appeared doomed just two months ago. Every major opinion poll showed the longtime Democratic politician mired near the bottom of the pack, overshadowed by his flashier or wealthier rivals.
Now Becerra tops them all, according to the most recent opinion polls, emerging as a surprise front-runner in a race that has confounded voters and political experts alike.
Both his loyal supporters and well-financed critics have a hard time explaining Becerra’s rapid ascent, with theories ranging from outright luck to a nefarious social media push. Others credit Becerra’s mild temperament, describing him as a steady figure — the Goldilocks candidate in a field of competitors who weren’t just right.
Becerra, when assessing his sudden rise, believes voters wanted experience, not “glitz and sizzle.”
“Folks put their faith in someone who’s done that kind of work and achieved results, someone who’s taken on real crises and been able to pull us out of them,” Becerra said in an interview Friday after a union rally in the Inland Empire. “Now it’s time to get things done. I think they’re looking for someone who could actually do that.”
Becerra’s team also points to the fortuitous timing of their seven-figure political ad campaign that launched shortly before explosive allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against the then-leading Democrat in the race, former Rep. Eric Swalwell. After Swalwell suspended his campaign on April 12, Becerra’s ascent began.
Becerra is backed by 25% of likely California voters, followed by Republican Steve Hilton at 21% and environmental activist Tom Steyer, a fellow Democrat, at 19%, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. Two months ago, before Swalwell dropped out of the race, support for Becerra registered at just 5%.
“It’s almost too good to be true,” said Carrie Webster, a Becerra supporter and Long Beach hairdresser who interviews political candidates on social media using the name “Crowd Source Carrie.”
“He shot through the roof, but it feels like it’s all organic,” said Webster, 49, who said she isn’t paid for her political work.
A Sacramento resident, Becerra, 68, served one term in the state Legislature, more than two decades as a Los Angeles congressman and then as California attorney general, and most recently worked as the secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration.
His only previous statewide race was his 2018 bid for attorney general. In that contest, which he won handily, he had the major advantage of incumbency after being appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to fill the vacancy caused by then-Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris’ election to the U.S. Senate.
Running for governor has proved to be much more daunting. His top Democratic challengers not only include Steyer, a free-spending billionaire, but also former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, current San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
In early March, the chair of the California Democratic Party, Rusty Hicks, urged stuggling candidates to drop out of the race. He feared the crowded field of candidates would splinter the party’s voters and lead to a Republican being elected as the next governor of California.
Under the state’s top-two primary system, only the first- and second-place finishers in the primary advance to the November election, regardless of party. While Hicks did not mention Becerra by name, he was certainly among the struggling candidates at the time.
Until now, Becerra’s splashiest moment was in late March, when he launched a public pressure campaign to boycott a gubernatorial debate hosted by USC after he and other candidates of color were excluded from lineup. University officials based the invites on opinion polls and a controversial campaign fundraising formula. The debate was canceled less than 24 hours before it was scheduled to take place.
Then came the allegations against Swalwell, which prompted nationwide interest in the otherwise sleepy California governor’s race. Political data strategist Paul Mitchell compared the moment to a dramatic scene midway into a “Real Housewives” season.
“Finally, somebody flipped a table, threw wine on somebody else, and all the voters started paying attention,” he said.
Alf LaMont worked for Swalwell’s team as a digital communications expert until his firm quit on April 10 following news reports about the allegations against the East Bay Democratic congressman.
LaMont said he was “doomscrolling” that same night when he saw an “organic, random” push for Becerra on Threads and other social media sites. LaMont said he immediately called Becerra’s campaign team and signed up to work for him.
Webster, the Long Beach content creator, also noticed the online buzz about Becerra.
“People were saying, ‘Let’s print out yard signs, T-shirts,’” Webster said. “Or someone would say, ‘I’m going to start Gen X for Becerra,’ or ‘I’m going to start Millennials for Becerra.’”
The push was so noticeable that Steyer’s campaign hired an intelligence agency with ties to a major Israeli firm to study the trend.
The agency’s report found about 3,000 fake accounts that amplified Becerra across social media platforms X, Facebook and Instagram while also criticizing Steyer, according to Steyer’s team. In all, the fake accounts generated 1.3 million views and 42,000 engagements, the report stated.
Steyer spokesperson Kevin Liao alleged a coordinated network from Becerra’s team or his supporters. Becerra’s campaign denied any role and dismissed the influence of the fake accounts.
Earlier opinion polls also offer a possible explanation for Becerra’s rise.
Even as he remained stuck behind other candidates in support among voters, Becerra’s favorability ratings versus his unfavorability ratings were better than rivals, including Porter and Villaraigosa.
Swalwell also had high favorability ratings, and when he dropped out, Becerra was “seen as the least objectionable of the candidates that were remaining,” Mitchell said.
The UC Berkeley Institute poll released Thursday shows more likely voters viewed Becerra favorably (44%) than unfavorably (38%). By contrast, 39% of voters viewed Steyer favorably and 43% unfavorably.
Becerra’s campaign credits part of his April surge to good fortune. His team unleashed a large advertising buy — a major chunk of his remaining campaign funds — placing spots on cable TV and online beginning in late March.
The timing was opportune given the chaos caused by Swalwell.
Becerra’s ads depicted him as calm and experienced. One showed him speaking to a diverse group of young people about his record of challenging President Trump, suing his administration more than 100 times when he served as attorney general, and his plan to bring down the cost of living for “the next generation.”
At the same time, LaMont’s team — which also is behind Gov. Gavin Newsom’s political communications — created a more “earthy” and “grassroots” look to Becerra’s campaign ads and messaging. Words like “Tio” and “carne asada” emphasized the candidate’s Latino heritage.
Polls done in the wake of Swalwell’s exit showed Becerra gaining ground.
Special interest groups, including California Medical Assn., which had supported Swalwell, switched to Becerra. A well-financed, independent political committee campaigning against Steyer — an effort intended to benefit Swalwell — also moved over to Becerra. Major corporations, including Chevron, Meta and McDonald’s, lined up next.
Becerra appeared unprepared for the speed at which voters and others gravitated toward him. He stammered through hastily filmed videos asking for small-dollar donations as his campaign sought to convert the new interest around him into donors.
He appeared stiff during his first post-Swalwell debate appearance; he mistakenly referred to Trump’s “war in Iraq” instead of Iran during his first answer and fended off the first of many attacks to come during an April 22 debate. During a sit-down interview with a KTLA-TV reporter in Los Angeles in early May, Becerra went immediately on the defensive — questioning whether it was a “gotcha piece.”
Still, people flocked to town halls, including one in Oxnard in May, where he leaned into his “bad dad joke” persona. He greeted the large crowd with his corny, familiar line, “Did you think you were coming to a Bad Bunny concert?”
Oxnard audience member Rose Castren, 68, told The Times she liked Becerra’s “calm and reassuring” style. The retired nurse watched the CNN debate in early May, where the candidates piled on Becerra to try to undercut his momentum.
“The other candidates seemed to be coming unglued,” she said. “And he didn’t.”
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
With former Biden Cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra surging in recent polls, the two candidates battling to win the second spot in this week’s primary and advance to the November election highlighted the strategic reasons why they believe voters ought to support them.
Republican Steve Hilton — a former conservative commentator who rocketed past his main GOP rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, after President Trump endorsed him in April — urged voters to back him to avoid the possibility of two Democrats facing off in November.
“I want us to fight like we are third. We aren’t going to let this slip away,” Hilton told a few hundred people at the Santa Monica Hilton Hotel & Suites on Sunday morning.
Steve Hilton surged ahead of his GOP rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, after receiving an endorsement from the president.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
The former British political strategist once led the polls, but has slipped slightly behind Becerra. Not too far behind Hilton is billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate change activist Tom Steyer, a Democrat.
During his hour and a half appearance, Hilton veered between his oft-repeated criticisms about 16 years of Democrat-led rule in California to jabs at the top Democrats in the race.
Steyer’s nonstop advertising blitz is “one reason alone to defeat him,” while Becerra is the “living embodiment of more of the same.”
“Our secret weapon? The Democrat candidates,” Hilton said to chuckles.
Asked why voters shouldn’t back Bianco, Hilton said it was simple math. Only the first- and second-place finishers in the June 2 primary will advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.
“Every vote for Chad Bianco is a vote for two Democrats in the top two,” he said.
If a GOP gubernatorial candidate fails to make the November ballot, it would depress the Republican vote, harming the party’s down-ballot candidates, as well as handicap a Republican-led ballot initiative that would require voters to show government-issued ID to cast ballots.
California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer takes a picture with a volunteer during a Get Out the Vote rally at Los Angeles Trade Technical College on Sunday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Steyer, who has spent a record-breaking $216 million of his wealth on his gubernatorial bid, argued that he is the only candidate in the race who is not beholden to special interests. He hammered Becerra for the support he has received from corporations including Meta, Airbnb, Uber and Chevron. Steyer argued that Becerra, if elected governor, would be more responsive to special interests than financially strapped Californians.
“We’ve seen it in this race. Chevron cuts you a check and you look the other way when they hike prices at the pump. Meta gives you money and your AI plan starts sounding like ChatGPT,” Steyer, sporting a ball cap labeling himself a “class traitor,” told more than 500 supporters at a community college near downtown Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. “That’s the story of Xavier Becerra.”
Corporations, along with labor unions and interest groups including the California Assn. of Realtors, have spent more than $18.7 million to boost Becerra as of Sunday, according to the election spending tracker California Target Book.
“These companies may be selfish, but they’re not stupid. They don’t give hundreds of thousands of dollars to get someone elected unless they know he’s going to be on their side,” Steyer said.
Though Steyer earned his fortune in part through past investments in private prisons, fossil fuels and private equity, his supporters described him as a reformed billionaire who stepped away from those industries more than a decade ago.
Francesca Fiorentini, a comedian and podcaster, compared Steyer to Charles Dickens’ fictional miser Ebenezer Scrooge.
“At the end of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ nobody turns to Ebenezer and is like, ‘No, I’m not gonna accept your gifts.’ No, they welcome him. They might clown him a little bit, but we need to welcome someone like Tom Steyer,” Fiorentini said. “Tom Steyer is actually listening, he actually cares, he’s actually changing his belief system and he’s acting accordingly.”
Though he mainly went after Becerra, Steyer also made sure to criticize Hilton.
“You are not voting for who’s on the ballot, you’re voting for the California that comes after,” Steyer said. “The California that Steve Hilton is running on sounds exactly like what Trump wants: higher prices, lower wages, and less freedom.”
His campaign underscored his attacks against Becerra by having a handful of supporters dressed as zombies speak outside of Becerra’s Sunday evening rally in Long Beach. Waving signs naming businesses that have supported Becerra, they wore lanyards describing “Big Oil,” “Big Tech” and other corporate sectors as Becerra’s “bestie.”
At a raucous rally, elected officials, labor leaders and reproductive rights advocates were among the speakers who introduced Becerra, who attacked Steyer and Hilton, though not by name.
“We are not going to let a billionaire or Trump’s handpicked candidate take over this state,” he told more than 1,000 people at the city’s convention center. “We are not going to let them gut Medicaid while Californians work hard to build a future. We are not going to let them buy an election…. Not here, not in this state, not on our watch.”
Becerra seemed in awe as he stood in front of the packed room.
“Look around this room. One of our opponents has a billion dollars in a checkbook,” he said. “We have something better… We don’t have the money, but we have the movement. We don’t have the money, but we’ve got the momentum. And in this state, if you’ve got the momentum, you run across the finish line, and you win, baby, you win.”
Becerra also released a new video that ostensibly attacks Hilton as “Trump’s favorite” — a thinly veiled effort to prop up Hilton among Republicans to ensure he finished ahead of Steyer in the primary. Given that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by almost 2 to 1, Becerra would much rather face Hilton than Steyer in the general election.
Newsom’s campaign employed this strategy to boost GOP businessman John Cox in the 2018 gubernatorial election, as did then-Rep. Adam Schiff against Republican Steve Garvey in Schiff’s successful 2024 U.S. Senate race.
Billionaire Tom Steyer has argued that he is the only candidate not beholden to special interests.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Steyer launched an ad this weekend titled “Risky” that implies Becerra could face criminal charges related to the acts of two former advisors who have plead guilty to federal charges related to stealing campaign funds from a dormant Becerra campaign account.
Becerra’s campaign called the ad defamatory in a cease and desist letter sent to the Steyer campaign on Saturday.
Becerra, Hilton and Steyer, the front-runners in the race, barnstormed the state in the final days before the June 2 primary. They devoted much of their attention to voters in Southern California, which is home to many of the state’s 23.2 million registered voters. Lower-polling candidates also stumped in the Southland — San José Mayor Matt Mahan greeted diners at Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles, and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter kicked off a union canvassing event in Orange on Saturday.
Unlike recent contests to lead the nation’s most populous state, this year’s gubernatorial contest failed to energize the electorate. Despite a crowded field of candidates with notable resumes, as well as record-breaking spending by Steyer and independent-expenditure committees. Californians only recently tuned in.
Political experts of both parties believe voters malaise was due to fatigue about the nation’s political polarization, as well as Trump administration policies such as federal tariffs that drove up prices everywhere and some that disproportionately affected California, such as immigration raids. Southern Californians were also reeling from the devastating wildfires in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena and last year’s special election to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries.
Earlier this year, Democratic leaders worried that their voters would splinter among their candidates, creating a scenario where two Republicans advanced to the general election. They controversially urged their party’s candidates to assess their viability, effectively urging several low-polling candidates to drop out of the race.
Democratic turnout also prompted concerns. As of May 22, mail ballots returned by Democrats were 9.2% lower compared with the 2022 gubernatorial primary, while ballots returned by Republicans were 11.6% higher, according to Political Data Intelligence. But the return rates are shifting — as of Friday, Democrats were 7% behind their 2022 return rate, while Republicans were 6.8% higher.
The most recent polls suggest that the prospect of two Republicans advancing to the general election is nonexistent, and there is now a slim chance that two Democrats win the top two spots in the June 2 primary.
Politics is about persuasion and emotion, not rocket telemetry, so it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.
“You look at Xavier and he seems to be perceived as a thoughtful, credible, trustworthy choice. That’s what I hear when I talk to regular people who aren’t political insiders,” said Darry Sragow, a Democrat strategist who’s spent decades running California campaigns. “So you see the people who want to take him out going after one of the words I just used here, which is ‘trustworthy’ and, to some extent, ‘credible.’”
A recent Steyer mail piece — which, naturally, features a grim-faced portrait of Becerra — accuses him of “mismanagement,” “scandal” and “incompetence,” and cites a 2024 quote from Susan Rice, a former Biden domestic policy advisor, describing the ex-Cabinet member as an “idiot.” (Apparently “bitch-a—,” another Rice epithet from the same Axios news report, was deemed unsuitable.)
The mail piece also quotes Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokesperson in the Biden administration, saying Becerra “was not effective in government,” though several people who worked in the White House could not think of any occasion, or any reason, Hinojosa would have meaningfully interacted with Becerra.
Pretty weak sauce. But at least Hinojosa, who delivered her gibe on one of CNN’s talking-head shows, was willing to publicly attach herself to the criticism.
Six former Biden administration officials were quoted by Politico “reacting with a mix of incredulity, mockery and resignation” to Becerra’s sudden ascendance in the governor’s race. Critics also unloaded to NBC News and other outlets. All of them spoke anonymously.
Therefore, it’s impossible to discern their motivations. Jealousy? Ego? An attempt to stay politically relevant?
Or maybe Becerra was, indeed, a feckless, flailing and thoroughly awful Cabinet member, deserving of scorn and shame.
Ron Klain, who was Biden’s chief of staff during the first two years of his presidency, doesn’t believe so.
“I think he did an excellent job as HHS secretary and I think the record shows that,” Klain said, citing, among other accomplishments, Becerra’s work helping negotiate a drop in the price of prescription drugs and expanding healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
On COVID-19, Becerra “wasn’t confirmed until several months into the Biden administration. Dr. [Anthony] Fauci had been on the job and was quite a well-known figure to Americans. So, of course, he became more the face of the COVID response.”
“On immigration,” Klain went on. “Xavier’s part was small and discreet. He wasn’t the secretary of Homeland Security. He didn’t run the border. He oversaw an office called the Office of Refugee Resettlement” responsible for processing children who crossed the border alone. “I was in meetings where he was a passionate and forceful advocate for these minors,” Klain said.
Still, there are legitimate questions, notwithstanding Becerra’s deflections — Trump! MAGA! Trump! — about his handling of the migrant children, some of whom died, suffered horrible abuse or were catastrophically injured, according to revelatory reporting by the New York Times. It’s worth noting, however, that Becerra inherited a plan to deal with unaccompanied minors that was drafted and phased in by Rice and her Domestic Policy Council.
There is an unhappy history between the two; apparently Becerra was not alone in drawing Rice’s ire. In 2022, an article in the American Prospect accused her of creating an “abusive and dehumanizing workplace,” in which Rice routinely berated others, including the Health and Human Services secretary.
On social media, Rice has made no secret of her continued contempt for Becerra, a display that carries no small whiff of ax-grinding and score-settling. She highlighted the refusal of Biden’s Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, to endorse Becerra in the governor’s race, though it would be surprising if Mayorkas, Biden, Kamala Harris or any high-level Democrat picked a favorite in such a fiercely contested primary.
Becerra “had big things to do and he got them done,” said Neera Tanden, who succeeded Rice as head of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council and has vigorously defended Becerra against attacks on social media.
“I am not on or coordinating with the Becerra campaign,” Tanden said. “I just know these attacks are ridiculous.”
If Becerra makes it past Tuesday’s primary to the November runoff, his career merits careful scrutiny — and not just those years spent in the Biden Cabinet. Many voters are still getting to know Becerra, who is the likeliest candidate to be California’s next governor. Anonymous quotes, drive-by commentary and incendiary mailers may be standard campaign fare. But voters deserve better.
That means there’s no chance of a Republican sweep in this blue state, and suddenly, what has up until now been a pretty dry governor’s primary race has turned into one that has a slim-but-genuine chance at a surprise ending — two Democrats on the November ticket.
“It’s a low probability,” political data guru Paul Mitchell told me, “But there’s always a chance.”
Those of you who have hung on to your ballots like winning lottery tickets, and those who plan on voting in person, will largely decide what happens next: An Xavier Becerra-Steve Hilton top two is a virtual election for Becerra since there just aren’t enough Republican voters in the state to carry a general election. A Becerra-Steyer face-off would force both candidates to define a vision of California beyond generic liberal ideas.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing California have that Dem-on-Dem showdown so that voters of all parties (or none) have the chance to pin these would-be leaders down on the details of their policies. So far, this election has been light on the specifics, but the state faces real problems — from a failing healthcare system to gas prices that literally mystify even lawmakers.
Everything changes when a candidate becomes a winner, so maybe it would be good for democracy to have an old-fashioned war of ideas in this moment when the future of California holds so many unknowns.
Is Steyer just a billionaire dilettante trying to buy an office? Is Becerra beholden to the many corporate interests who have funded his campaign? Those are just the top-line questions many voters still have.
“There’s lots of shades of blue,” pointed out Chad Peace of the Independent Voter Project, on a press call to support open primaries. “When we only look at things as, ‘Oh, there’s red and there’s blue,’ we forget that.”
But voters remain nervous, and the ballot is still packed — along with the top three, former Rep. Katie Porter and San José Mayor Matt Mahan are still campaigning, though with falling support.
Voters, Mitchell said, “are really thinking about the implications” of their vote, and perhaps don’t want to throw it away on a candidate they perceive as having no chance. That’s why the new polls showing Steyer as a contender have the potential of stirring up momentum, especially for voters who originally saw themselves filling in the bubble for one of those candidates on the decline.
Recent polls have put Steyer in a near-dead-heat with Republican front-runner Hilton, both hovering slightly above or below 20%. Becerra, the former California attorney general and a former Biden Cabinet secretary, leads them both by a few points, especially among Latino voters. As my colleague Gustavo Arellano has pointed out, Becerra would be the state’s second Latino governor, after Romualdo Pacheco, who held the office for 10 months in 1875.
“A Dem-Dem race, maybe we’ll get more people involved, because it’s going to be a harder fight, you know?” Diane McClure told me. She’s a board member of the California Nurses Assn., which endorsed Steyer early — in large part because he supports a plan for single-payer health insurance, which that union has long fought for.
McClure, of course, would love to see Steyer take the top spot in that easy-win scenario against Hilton, though that seems doubtful. But a Steyer-Becerra race?
“Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe it’ll wake some people up,” she said.
For his part, Steyer is staying the course. At a Sacramento stop Friday, he bounded around chatting with about four dozen mostly union supporters, wearing trademark Nikes, this time a vintage pair with a tartan plaid swoop.
“Four days,” Steyer said when he finally took the microphone. “I really need you to stand with me. But let me say this: you stand with me, I stand with you.”
Unlike his debate performances, Steyer is passionate, and, though it seems unlikely based on his television appearances, has an amiable charisma dotted with a fair amount of light profanity.
“Make a decent living, buy a house, have a great education for your kids, and retire,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to build here. We can easily do that. When people say that’s not possible, bull—, that’s bull—.”
It was enough to sway Ricky Carter, one of the few non-union members in the room, who was invited because his wife, Barbara, was on a prayer chain with another invitee. An older Black man originally from South Los Angeles, Carter represents a demographic where Steyer has growing popularity.
“I believe him. He got it right in here,” he said, pounding a fist over his heart. “It ain’t about no color, creed and race. … It’s about the people.”
Indeed, elections are about the people, though it doesn’t always feel like it. But suddenly, this one does.
The top candidates for California governor crisscrossed the state Friday, all venturing to friendly political territory to woo voters and undermine their rivals as the June 2 primary election fast approaches.
The top Republican in the race, former Fox News host Steve Hilton, spent the day railing against transgender athletes before a high school track event in the Central Valley, an event sure to appeal to his base of President Trump supporters.
The front-running Democrats, former Biden administration Cabinet member Xavier Becerra and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, rallied one of their party’s most influential constituencies: union members.
While both stuck with mostly an upbeat message and reiterated promises to lift up Californians struggling to make ends meet, Steyer afterward accused Becerra of being “a corporate Democrat who’s taking money from all these big corporations” who “doesn’t want to change things.”
Steyer’s had good reason to go after Becerra.
A new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times showed Becerra leading the race with 25% support from likely voters, followed by Hilton at 21% and Steyer within striking distance at 19%. The two candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary will advance to the November general election, leaving the third-place finisher on the sideline.
Though he told reporters Friday morning that “I don’t pay attention to polls,” Steyer was energetic at a Northern California campaign event, where he held a private meeting with leaders of a union representing long-term caregivers. In brief remarks at the offices of SEIU Local 2015, Steyer described the race as a choice between a billionaire champion of working people and the corporate-backed Becerra.
“Does California work for Californians or does California work for corporations? The corporations think it works for them. They want it to continue to work for them and they’re putting up tens of millions of dollars to make sure they continue to make record profits,” he told dozens of home-care workers, teachers, construction workers and nurses at the West Sacramento gathering.
Groups including PG&E, the California Assn. of Realtors and the California Chamber of Commerce have spent more than $34 million opposing Steyer’s candidacy. The former hedge fund manager has pledged to lower energy bills by breaking up large electric utility monopolies.
As a billionaire who has so far poured $216 million of his own money into his gubernatorial campaign, Steyer has faced skepticism from some left-wing and working-class voters. But he is endorsed by progressives, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-San Jose), and unions including the California Nurses Assn. and both major teachers unions.
“I voted for Tom. I was looking for a change,” said Alvenia Scott, a union board member who works as an in-home caregiver to her disabled sister.
“He really has some good ideas,” she said, adding that she had more qualms about Steyer’s lack of government experience than his wealth. “He made his way in life, more power to him.”
Hundreds of miles south in the Inland Empire, Becerra pledged to be on the side of unions if he is elected governor and urged voters to turn in their ballots in what has so far been a remarkably low-turnout election.
“I am with you. When I become governor and I sit behind that desk, you’ll have a union man sitting at that desk,” Becerra told about 500 people at the United Food and Commercial Workers hall in Bloomington.
He asked the crowd if they had cast their ballots and noted that not everyone raised their hand.
“Less than one in five Californians have actually cast their vote so far. We got to get that number way, way up,” he said, arguing that the election is about “sending a message all across the country that California will be counted, that California cannot be neglected, and that California will not take a knee to anyone in Washington, D.C.”
Only 12% of the state’s registered voters have cast ballots as of Thursday evening, according to the election tracking firm Political Data Inc.
Community college counselor Diego Rodriguez, 32, said he decided to vote for Becerra in recent weeks after seeing the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary’s momentum in the race and researching his record.
“Also just his story. As someone who works in higher education, and seeing how Xavier, being first-generation, has benefited from higher education, and how he advocates for higher education,” the Rialto resident said. “Additionally, today, him being here at a labor union and advocating for the working class and labor, I think, is very important.”
“I think that people became aware of him more because of that,” Rodriguez said. “There was a lot of conversation online regarding that, but I think it allowed the spotlight to be brought onto him and it made people aware of his record.”
At a campaign stop in Clovis in the central part of the state, Hilton marveled that his campaign had spent only about $2 million in campaign advertising but was still polling above Steyer, according to the latest Berkeley IGS survey.
“We’re feeling confident,” said Hilton, standing in a suburban stretch of the city. Still, he warned that voters need to get out to support him and avoid a “complete disaster for California” of two Democrats advancing to the November election.
Hilton, who was endorsed by Trump in April, joined other politicians and leaders in Clovis in opposing trans athletes from competing at the 2026 CIF State Track & Field Championships.
The group met near where the championship events were scheduled to take place this weekend.
Asked why he was focusing on sports and gender in the final days of the race, Hilton said it’s “one of the main issues” that come up at town halls. If elected, he said he would seek to overturn the state’s 13-year-old law that allows students to participate in school activities and use facilities such as bathrooms based on their gender identity.
Hilton argues the law violates the state Constitution and will “suspend” it while he initiates legal proceedings to overturn it.
He also praised Spencer Pratt, a Republican and former reality TV star who is running for Los Angeles mayor, saying his candidacy has brought “excitement and energy” to the state’s primary election.
“For a long time in California, there’s been this sense that it’s all inevitable — there’s nothing you can do, Democrats run this place, just the way it is,” Hilton said. “I think that that’s changing. I think there’s this sense that something’s happening.”
On the cusp of California’s gubernatorial June 2 primary, voters are closely divided among three candidates vying to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom at a perilous moment in the state and nation’s history, according to a poll released Thursday.
Among likely California voters, 25% support Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden Cabinet secretary, according to the survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and British political strategist, has the backing of 21%, while 19% backed billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental activist Tom Steyer, a Democrat.
California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra takes a selfie at an event while campaigning on May 26, 2026 in San Francisco, California. Becerra is the former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services and is running as a democratic candidate for governor. California’s statewide election is on June 2.
(Benjamin Fanjoy / Getty Images)
The survey provided the clearest indication yet that the three have separated themselves from the rest of the field. Support increased for Becerra, Hilton and Steyer since the last Berkeley IGS poll in March. Becerra leapfrogged everyone. In early March he wallowed near the bottom of the pack at just 5% support among likely voters, and now is the front-runner.
The other candidates floundered. Support for Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, dropped 5% and he now finds himself in a distant fourth place. Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine dropped by almost half to 7%. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — all Democrats — remained mired in the single digits.
Poll director Mark DiCamillo cautioned that it remains unclear which candidates will finish in first and second place in the June 2 primary, a pivotal question since only the top two finishers will advance to the November general election regardless of party affiliation. The low voter turnout thus far makes predicting the outcome especially difficult.
Although every registered voter in California was sent a mail-in ballot, many have not returned them or dropped them off at voting locations — a telltale sign of the uncertain nature of this year’s governor’s race. The survey, which included all 61 of the gubernatorial candidates on the ballot, found that Democratic turnout thus far is noticeably lower compared with past primary elections, DiCamillo said.
Steve Hilton, Republican gubernatorial candidate for California, arrives for a news conference at the San Jose Diridon Station in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, May 26, 2026. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is announcing his intention to halt future taxpayer-funded payments for California’s High-Speed Rail project, if elected in November.
(Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We’re assuming that … the Democrats will in fact turn out in the final week after we had concluded our poll and begin to make up ground on what looks like an early lead for Hilton, and those voters favor Becerra,” DiCamillo said.
The survey, conducted between May 19 and 24, found that likely Democratic voters favored Becerra over Steyer by 11 percentage points. Voters registered as “no party preference” were evenly divided between Becerra, Steyer and Hilton. Among likely Republican voters, Hilton led Bianco by almost 2 to 1.
Becerra also had a notable edge over Steyer among women and Latino voters, while Steyer had an advantage among Black voters. Hilton was favored over the two Democrats among self-identified libertarians and among voters in Orange County, the Central Valley and northern coast and Sierra region.
The poll found that 7% of voters remained undecided.
For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy has consistently lacked a front-runner despite a plethora of candidates.
Two of California’s best-known Democrats, former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, both toyed with a run for governor before deciding not to run, which contributed to the sluggishness of the race. The 2026 campaign for governor also languished in the shadow of the mayhem stirred up by President Trump, including his immigration raids throughout Southern California, and the devastation wrought by the 2025 Pacific Palisades and Altadena wildfires.
But a whirlwind of recent developments has drawn attention to the race.
Tom Steyer, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for California, during a campaign event in Santa Rosa, California, US, on Wednesday, May 27, 2026. California is holding its primary election on June 2. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Additionally, record-breaking amounts of money have flowed into the race. Steyer has smashed state self-funding records by contributing $212 million to his campaign as of Tuesday, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Nearly $85 million has been donated to independent expenditure committees by corporations, labor unions, tech titans, Native American tribes and other special interests, most of which will have policy interests that will be in front of the next governor.
Although the 2026 California governor’s race lacks the allure of recent contests that featured candidates such as global movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, political scion Jerry Brown and former San Francisco mayor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom, it is unfolding at a crucial time for Californians.
The state’s most vulnerable residents are facing severe reductions to medical care because of looming federal healthcare funding cuts, and California’s budget, already volatile because of its reliance on the state’s wealthiest residents, may grow more unpredictable. California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices increased even more because of the U.S.-Iran war, adding to the state’s entrenched affordability crisis, which has driven many residents out of the state.
The cost of living, homelessness and public safety were among the top concerns expressed by voters, according to the poll. Protecting voting rights was also supported by most voters, though their underlying concerns could be starkly different based on their political views.
Democrats have been focused on the disenfranchisement of voters, a fear that has heightened in the aftermath of a recent Supreme Court decision that gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act that forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress. Republicans echo President Trump’s claims of elections being rigged.
Los Angeles, CA – MAY 06, 2026: Chad Bianco is interviewed after the California Gubernatorial debate at Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 in Los Angeles, CA.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Voters split largely along party lines about issues such as Trump’s policies about climate change, immigration and taxes.
Voters’ uncertainty in the governor’s race is partly driven by California’s unique, voter-approved “jungle” primary system, in which the two candidates who win the most votes in the June 2 primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party affiliation.
Although the state’s voters are largely registered Democrats, the party’s leaders feared earlier this year that they would splinter among the multiple Democrats on the ballot, leading to Hilton and Bianco advancing to the November general election and ensuring that a Republican would be elected governor. Bianco had the backing of 11% in the new Berkeley survey.
The Republicans were once roughly tied in polls, until Trump endorsed Hilton in April. More than one-third of likely Republican voters said Trump’s endorsement of Hilton made them more likely to support him. Among voters who identified with the “Make America Great Again” movement, nearly two-thirds supported Hilton while less than 3 in 10 backed Bianco.
Though Bianco’s followers seem to be more passionate, “Hilton has got the much broader base of support, and then he got Trump’s endorsement,” DiCamillo said.
He added that Hilton’s rise is unusual in California, where statewide candidates typically spend enormous sums of money to raise their visibility among the state’s 23.1 million registered voters.
“What’s interesting about Hilton is that he hasn’t really done much of his campaigning in the traditional way. He hasn’t run huge amounts of television advertising, you don’t see his name out there in the traditional media, other than in free media,” DiCamillo said. “You can see that in the data, because almost a third of voters still have no opinion of Hilton … about what it was back in March, which is startling for a candidate who is among the leaders.”
Democrats’ fear of being locked out of the November general election led party leaders and allies to effectively urge low-polling candidates to drop out of the race in remarkable public statements in March.
The tables have since turned — the prospect of two Republicans winning the top spots in the June primary appear nonexistent, while polling shows a small possibility of two Democrats advancing to the general election.
“I’m not saying it’s likely, but it’s possible that two Democrats could emerge, and that would have huge implications on turnout in the [November] election,” DiCamillo said, pointing to California congressional races that could shape control of the U.S. House of Representatives. “If you don’t have a Republican at the top of the ticket, it would be dismal for the Republicans’ chances.”
The poll of 8,578 registered California voters was conducted online in English and Spanish and has a margin of error of about 2 percentage points in either direction.
Corporations, labor unions, tech titans, Native American tribes and other special interests have donated a record-shattering $79.6 million to independent committees focused on swaying the volatile California governor’s race ahead of the June 2 primary.
Many of the largest backers to these committees will have significant business interests in front of the state’s next governor and state agencies, with hopes of either strengthening a candidate aligned with their political priorities or undercutting those who oppose them.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen IEs [or independent expenditures] have this kind of an impact on a governor’s race,” said veteran GOP strategist Martin Wilson, who has worked on every California gubernatorial contest since 1978 and worked on an outside effort backing San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s 2026 bid for governor. “It’s totally unprecedented.”
Election laws bar independent expenditure committees from communicating or coordinating with campaigns, allowing candidates to emphasize that they have no control over the money that pours into these outside groups. The wall between the two has long been viewed as performative and penetrable.
The greatest amount of outside spending has been directed at attacking billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental warrior Tom Steyer, a leading Democrat in the race.
Nearly $32.3 million had been donated to opposing his candidacy as of Monday, according to the California Target Book, a nonpartisan political almanac, which tracks independent expenditure committees. Among the major donors are utility giant PG&E, a political action committee sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Assn. of Realtors’ independent expenditure committee, which combined have utility, business, property tax and building issues affected by lawmakers and regulators in the state capital.
Independent expenditures supporting Steyer’s bid for governor have been minimal compared with the record-breaking $212 million Steyer has donated to his own campaign as of Monday, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Still, more than $1.4 million of outside money has been spent supporting his bid, largely by the California Nurses Assn., which shares his goal of creating single-payer healthcare.
Expenditure committees linked to Uber, the California Medical Assn., the kidney dialysis company DaVita and the California Dental Assn. contributed nearly $7.3 million to independent efforts backing former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) before he dropped out of the gubernatorial race in April because of sexual assault and misconduct allegations.
Several of those donors then coalesced behind former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra, who was struggling to connect with California voters before he surged to become a front-runner, recent opininon polls show. More than $13 million has been contributed to outside groups backing the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary.
The outside money has led to flashpoints in the race. Steyer points to corporations backing Becerra, such as a $500,000 Chevron donation to a group supporting him that was reported to state election officials on Thursday.
“The Becerra campaign was running out of gas until the latest half-million dollar influx from Chevron,” said Steyer spokesman Anthony York.
The message echoes a Steyer theme on the campaign trail — that candidates ought to be judged by who is supporting them and who is opposing them.
Becerra accused Steyer of misleading voters because the $500,000 from Chevron went to an independent expenditure committee supporting him that he has no control over. However, Becerra did receive a direct $39,200 contribution from the oil company to his campaign committee in June 2025.
“For him to say that I took the [$500,000] … that’s just an outright lie,” he said in a television interview this weekend. “It pains me to see that candidates for office believe that they have to descend to telling lies in order to gain favor with voters. If that’s what you do as a candidate, what will you do when you’re in the office?”
Steyer’s campaign, which used the Memorial Day weekend to attack Becerra with billboards highlighting high gas prices in Los Angeles and Fresno, said it was disingenuous for Becerra to feign ignorance of how the political system works.
“Chevron is charging Californians record gas prices on one hand and turning right around to spend $500,000 to elect Xavier Becerra with the other,” said Steyer spokesperson Danni Wang. “Now Becerra is playing semantic gymnastics trying to pretend voters are too stupid to understand how dark money in politics works. Californians aren’t buying it.”
Becerra’s campaign argued that such comments are the height of hypocrisy coming from a billionaire whose campaign is funded by his profits from a hedge fund that made investments that are opposed by many voters. Becerra said he continually took on oil companies when he served as California’s attorney general.
“Tom Steyer made his billions off fossil fuels and private prisons, then decided that qualified him to run California,” said Becerra spokesman Jonathan Underland. “He’s now attacking the only candidate in this race who actually held Big Oil’s feet to the fire and beat [President] Trump 100 times as [state attorney general]. The irony would be funny if Tom’s checkbook weren’t so thick.”
Mahan, a moderate Democrat, has benefited from $21.7 million in spending by outside groups backing him, while $570,000 has been spent by independent committees opposing him, according to the Target Book. The donors who supported his bid are a who’s who of Silicon Valley, including venture capitalists Michael Moritz and L. John Doerr, Stripe Chief Executive Patrick Collinson and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla. Other notable donors include billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, who unsuccessfully ran for Los Angeles mayor in 2022, as well as Griff Harsh V, the son of billionaire Meg Whitman, the unsuccessful 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee turned Democrat who once led EBay.
Despite that generous support, Mahan remains mired in the single digits in the polls. On Wednesday, billionaire Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings received a refund of $1 million he had donated to one of the independent expenditure committees supporting Mahan’s bid.
Hastings said he had not requested the money to be returned to him.
“I’m voting for Matt Mahan. I didn’t ask for any refund and they shouldn’t have done it,” he posted on X on Saturday. “Go Matt.”
Matt Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Back to Basics committee backing Mahan, said that he believes Mahan’s standing in the race is a reflection of a number of factors — an underwhelming contest as well as Mahan’s January entry into it and the fact that he was not well known statewide.
“He got in a little bit late and it was a big climb … with an apathetic electorate,” Rodriguez said. “Politics is all about money and timing — both the amount of time and being there at the right time.”
Mahan’s priorities, such as housing and homelessness improvements he oversaw in San José, had an impact on the campaign, the Democratic strategist said.
“Democrats have to perform, and if we are going to perform, we have to have results,” he said.
The only other candidate who saw seven figures in independent expenditure spending was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator who has been endorsed by Trump and is the leading GOP candidate in the race. More than $1.8 million has been spent opposing Hilton and $13,750 was spent supporting him.
SEIU California donated $250,000 to opposing gubernatorial candidates. Oscar Lopez, the union’s political director, said it has opposed Hilton, Mahan and Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
“Each of these candidates represents a serious threat to the wages, rights and dignity of California’s working people,” Lopez said.
Hilton said the spending against him represents Democratic recognition of him as a threat.
“They know that they’re vulnerable. The Democratic machine understands they’ve got weak candidates and a terrible record,” he said in an interview. “They see me as outsider and change agent. The only argument they have — if you can call it an argument — is to endlessly repeat the words Trump and MAGA.”
Outside spending has grown exponentially after a voter-approved 2000 California ballot measure limited how much donors can contribute directly to candidates. For the current election, it’s $78,400 for the primary and the general election in the governor’s race.
But donors can contribute unlimited amounts to outside groups, which are formally called independent expenditure committees. Though such donations were already legal in California, they greatly increased in the state and across the nation after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that said limits on independent political spending by corporations, unions and other entities violated 1st Amendment free speech protections.
“It has been a steady increase in the amount of money going to outside groups,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UCLA.
In California, independent expenditure groups set a record in 2010 when they spent about $25 million supporting then-gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. Largely union money, it was spent in the summer after the primary and was viewed as critical to stalling self-funding Republican billionaire Meg Whitman’s campaign. Brown ultimately won the race by 13 percentage points.
In the 2018 gubernatorial primary, records were once again broken by more than $26 million of outside spending, with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa being the biggest beneficiary. Charter school backers spent nearly $16 million on unsuccessful efforts to boost his campaign.
In addition to an enormous financial advantage over campaign committees, outside groups have the ability to trumpet highly provocative adversarial attacks without the candidate they support being blamed for the often controversial messaging.
“IEs are as free to go as negative as they want without that negativity boomeranging back to hurt the candidate,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego.
While communication between candidate campaigns and independent committees is forbidden, these rules are commonly circumvented using legal but obvious methods. One called “red boxing,” which Becerra employed earlier this year, literally puts messages inside red-lined boxes on candidate websites that their campaign strategists would like to see outside groups highlight.
“There are technical rules that prevent certain types of communication, but it’s easy enough to communicate in public and be on the same page on messaging,” Hasen said.
Among the major donors in the 2026 campaign are the California Chamber of Commerce, PG&E, the California Assn. of Realtors, the Laborers Pacific Southwest Regional Organizing Coalition PAC, the Pechanga Band of Indians, the California Nurses Assn., and corporations and leaders or founders of companies such as Meta, Google and Uber.
Californians for the People, an outside committee that has spent nearly $32.3 million opposing Steyer, is the most well-funded independent expenditure committee this year. Among it’s largest donors is JOBSPAC, a group sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce, that has donated nearly $11.8 million to the effort.
“CalChamber is participating in an independent expenditure campaign because voters deserve to know more about Mr. Steyer,” said John Myers, a spokesman for the chamber. “His policy promises will cost billions, driving investment out of California and worsening the state’s affordability crisis.”
The Pechanga Band of Indians has spent $1.5 million on pro-Becerra efforts.
“Secretary Becerra has stood with Indian Country for decades and understands Tribal sovereignty,” said Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro. “When tribal healthcare was on the line, he was there. This experience comes from a lifetime of public service, not a checkbook.”
WASHINGTON — A political influencer has filed a complaint against Tom Steyer’s campaign for governor, saying the committee failed to notify her of disclosure requirements, as required by law, when she was paid to meet with Steyer in March and later produced social media content from the meeting.
What’s more, she said the Steyer campaign falsely accused her of posting paid content in support of Steyer’s chief Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, and failing to disclose it in a complaint filed by the billionaire’s campaign this week.
Maggie Reed, who regularly posts satirical takes on politics to roughly half a million followers on Instagram and TiKTok under the username mermaidmamamaggie, said she was actually paid by Steyer’s campaign and signed an agreement that barred her from disclosing the payment.
She posted, and later deleted, a video from her meeting with Steyer in March.
“In plain terms: the Committee paid for political content, structured it to look like an ordinary creator’s organic opinion, and used a non-disclosure agreement to keep the public from learning the truth,” says the complaint, filed Thursday with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.
Steyer’s campaign disclosed in a campaign filing that it had paid the agency that represents Reed $5,000 for digital advertising, but didn’t indicate that the payment was connected to Reed’s meeting with Steyer or her production of content.
The Steyer campaign said that while it did pay to meet with Reed, it left the decision of whether to create content entirely up to her.
Since then, Reed has produced several videos expressing support for Becerra, the former California congressman and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, but she said that she was not paid to produce those videos and that they reflected her genuine support for Becerra’s campaign.
Becerra has been the top Democrat in recent polling in the race, maintaining a narrow edge over Steyer and a firm grip on one of the top two spots in the June 2 primary that would send him to the general election in November.
Reed’s complaint is the latest volley in a back and forth involving the use of paid influencers in the gubernatorial race.
Two influencers who support Becerra — but were not paid by his campaign — filed a complaint last week saying that a number of influencers had created paid content in support of Steyer, but failed to disclose so in their posts.
Steyer’s campaign then filed a complaint earlier this week in which it leveled accusations against Reed and another influencer named Jay Gonzalez, who is now a paid staffer on the Becerra campaign. The complaint alleges that Gonzalez made several pro-Becerra posts after joining the campaign and belatedly amended them to include disclosure that they were sponsored.
The Becerra campaign has maintained that it does not otherwise pay influencers to produce content on its behalf.
Steyer’s complaint included screenshots of an email sent to Reed’s talent agency by a gubernatorial campaign gauging her interest in producing paid content.
While the screenshots produced in Steyer’s complaint did not disclose who had sent the inquiry, Reed said in her complaint that the request had come from a staffer for the gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor and California State Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa.
Disclosure of paid political content by social media creators is required in California thanks to a law passed in 2023.
Influencers themselves are required to disclose that a post they created was sponsored, but campaigns are required to notify them of the requirement.
Violation of the law doesn’t trigger civil, criminal or administrative penalties, but the FPPC has the right to take violators to court and request that a judge force compliance with the law.
The agreement Reed signed with Steyer’s campaign, which was attached to her complaint, indicated that she needed to follow all applicable state, federal and local laws, but made no specific mention of her requirement to disclose that content she produced was sponsored.
The agreement did specify that Steyer’s campaign might need to disclose the payment.
Former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra remains the top Democrat in the California governor’s race despite being targeted by a barrage of negative political ads and enduring sharp attacks from his rival candidates during recent debates, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the state Democratic Party.
Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democrat who is shattering self-funding records for statewide office, has been flooding the television airwaves, internet and social media with ads ripping Becerra’s long record in public office, as well as for accepting campaign donations from oil giant Chevron. But, thus far, that has not been enough for Steyer to overtake Becerra.
The survey found that 21% of likely voters backed Becerra, who also served in Congress and as California’s attorney general, while 15% backed Steyer. Among the other top Democrats: Former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter received 7%; San José Mayor Matt Mahan came in at 4%; and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa registered at 1%.
Becerra on Tuesday said he believes he has climbed in the polls because voters are now paying attention to the race.
“They’re really looking closely at who’s out there, and I think I’ve been one of the beneficiaries of folks looking for a place that they can feel comfortable, where they can trust,” Becerra told reporters after a campaign event in South Los Angeles. “I think more and more as people look at the candidates, they’re going to start to crystallize behind somebody who won’t need training wheels, as I say, when they get into the governor’s office and can hit the ground running, day one.”
He said he thinks Steyer’s attacks aren’t working because Californians are skeptical of the billionaire.
“He’s spending like no one before, and he’s hitting like no one before, and so far, it hasn’t made a difference,” Becerra said. “We continue to surge, even after weeks of his barrage of lies and attacks…. California voters are not anxious to have someone who wants to buy the office.”
Leading all candidates in the race was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, who was supported by 22% of likely voters. His top GOP challenger, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, was backed by 10%, the poll showed.
While Hilton and Becerra right now appear to be the likeliest candidates to finish in the top two in California’s June 2 primary, which is required to advance to the November general election, there still remains plenty of time for political fortunes and voter support to rise or fall. Ballots were mailed to the state’s 23.1 million registered voters and early voting sites opened earlier this month, but most Californians have not sent them in thus far.
For Becerra, the strong poll results indicate an astounding turnaround for a campaign that appeared all but dead just weeks ago. In early April, the California Democratic Party tracking poll showed Becerra with support from just 4% of likely voters. That changed after then-Northern California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had been the front-running Democrat in the race, withdrew from the campaign and resigned from Congress after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct.
The California Democratic Party launched a series of tracking polls in March after leaders and allies grew increasingly concerned that Republicans would win the top two spots in the primary, shutting the party out of the November general election. This prospect, while statistically possible given the crowded field of candidates running for governor, has grown increasingly less likely as California voters finally focused on the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Under California’s top-two primary system, only the candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their political party or affiliation.
The poll of 1,200 likely voters took place between May 14 and 16 and has a margin of error of 2.83% in either direction.
SAN FRANCISCO — As Californians cast ballots in the most unsettled governor’s race in recent history, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat surging in the polls, once again took most of the heat during a contentious debate among the top candidates for California governor.
Becerra’s rapid rise as the top Democrat in the race was greeted on stage by a fusillade of political attacks from rival Democrats and Republicans, notably regarding his former campaign manager’s guilty plea to federal corruption charges hours before the clash.
Then came accusations that he wavered on support for single-payer healthcare, and failed to stem healthcare and unemployment fraud while serving as California’s attorney general.
“This is what happens when you take the lead in the polls and you’re ahead of everyone else. They all come at you,” Becerra said. “I get it. So they have to try to beat you down. This is a great Trump tactic that’s used. I didn’t expect it to come from fellow Democrats.”
“With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Becerra later said.
The face-off took place at a critical moment before the June 2 primary. Republican voters appear to be consolidating behind Hilton, who was endorsed by President Trump, while Becerra and billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer are favored most by Democrats.
From left, Katie Porter, Chad Bianco, Antonio Villaraigosa and Xavier Becerra at Thursday’s debate.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Pool via Associated Press)
Up for grabs
As ballots land in mailboxes, California voters are finally tuning in to the race to lead the nation’s most populous state and fourth-largest economy in the world. Thursday’s 90-minute CBS debate may have been the final opportunity for candidates to directly address large numbers of voters.
Until now, scandal drew the most attention to the contest, as former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), once an establishment favorite and nominal front-runner, dropped out in April amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct
Five Democrats — Becerra, Steyer, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — and two Republicans — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former conservative commentator Steve Hilton — clashed about affordability, housing, public safety, climate, education and healthcare. State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, a Democrat, failed to reach the polling threshold to qualify for the debate.
CBS News Bay Area reporter Ryan Yamamoto, CBS News Los Angeles reporter Tom Wait, and San Francisco Examiner Editor-in-Chief Schuyler Hudak Prionas moderated the face-off in front of nearly 200 people at the historic Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco’s Financial District, with sweeping views of the city.
The opulent Beaux-Arts venue contrasted with the tense confrontations among the candidates that underscored Becerra’s swift rise among Democrats in the field after Swalwell dropped out of the race. Even before the face-off, his Democratic rivals began ramping up their focus on Becerra.
Becerra under attack
The candidate faced a barrage of attacks over a string of unfavorable publicity this week, including a widely circulated exchange with a KTLA reporter in which the Democratic candidate asked, “This is a profile piece, this is not a gotcha piece, right?”
Although Becerra has not been accused of wrongdoing, that did not temper criticism from his political rivals during Thursday’s debate. They questioned his judgment and said Becerra should have noticed where his money was going.
Hilton said Becerra should be preparing his own criminal defense, rather than running for governor. Porter warned that damning evidence against Becerra could come out later — which, if he finishes as the top Democrat in the primary election, could undercut his campaign and lead to a Republican being elected California’s next governor.
Becerra defended himself, pointing out that federal prosecutors never accused him of being involved and stated that none of the candidates for governor were implicated in scandal.
Democrats also painted Becerra as a leader who allowed fraud and mismanagement to fester under his watch.
“He wasn’t minding the shop” as state attorney general, Mahan said, pointing to fraudulent unemployment and hospice claims early in the COVID-19 pandemic. “I mean, the Biden administration had to sideline him during COVID. This is not good leadership.”
Matt Mahan, left, is polling in the single digits and made a last-ditch effort to leave an imprint during Thursday’s debate.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Godofredo A. Vásquez/pool Ap Via Ap)
Major focus on kitchen table issues, a critical concern among voters
Affordability was a major theme in the debate, which included an introductory video of a single mother struggling to fill her gas tank and buy groceries.
Steyer said he would reduce costs by taking on special interests and bringing about structural change and breaking up monopolies.
“I am the person who will tax the billionaires like me, and the big corporations so we can afford to make the changes” to pay for healthcare and great education, he said.
Mahan said the answer was to “put more money in people’s pockets by bringing down costs,” and that that would not occur under either Steyer or Hilton.
“Tom Steyer’s structural change sounds to me more like socialism. His plans literally would double the size of state government,” Mahan said. “That’s not going to drive affordability. Steve Hilton is touting his Donald Trump endorsements. You’ve got tariffs and wars driving up costs.”
Hilton returned fire: “I love the way Matt talks about how he’s going to lower costs when his city was recently rated the most expensive, the least affordable for housing, in the world.”
Daylight between Republicans about climate change
The Republican candidates avoided attacking each other during the debates, offering compliments instead. But the two split when asked about whether climate change was having a real-world impact.
Bianco said California is destroying itself with its environmental policies.
“Of course we can say that temperatures are increasing,” he said, but he also said he was not “naive” enough to think that humans can affect or control the climate, which has been changing since he was a child, and that California has to stop all the environmental regulations that are “activist related” and destroying the state’s economy.
Tom Steyer spoke Thursday of affordability, a hot-button issue: “I am the person who will tax the billionaires like me.”
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Pool via Associated Press)
Hilton said he believes in climate change but that California needs to have “common sense” on the issue rather than ideological responses. He said it is “of course” right to want clean water and air but that policies in California are not working — as has been made clear by the recent “mega-fires” in the state.
The Democrats on stage were closely aligned on the need to respond to the climate crisis and ensure that environmental protections are not dismantled by the Trump administration.
Last-ditch efforts by struggling candidates
Candidates in the crowded field who have struggled to break through — centrist Democrats Mahan and Villaraigosa, who have languished in the single digits in the polls — made a last-ditch effort to leave an imprint during Thursday’s gathering.
Mahan went after nearly every candidate on the stage in the opening moments of the debate.
“The change we need is rooted in accountability for results,” Mahan said. “It’s not the change billionaire Tom Steyer’s offering, which is higher taxes and bigger government. It’s not the change Fox News talking head Steve Hilton’s offering — fear, division and more Donald Trump. And let’s be honest, Xavier Becerra is not offering change; he’s the embodiment of the status quo.”
Villaraigosa leaned heavily into his experiences leading Los Angeles and in the state Assembly to argue that he was most qualified to lead the state while castigating his fellow Democrats’ policies.
“This is a state with big challenges, the challenge of affordability, the challenge of healthcare, homelessness, and dirty streets and crime-filled streets,” Villaraigosa said. “The fact is, I’m the only candidate on this stage who, in addition to hitting Donald Trump, which I do, have challenged us, challenged this party, and said, ‘Hold it, a lot of the problems that we face have come from Sacramento policies.’ We need someone with the courage to take on Donald Trump, but also take on our friends when they’re wrong. I’ve had a record of doing that.”
Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Nixon from San Francisco.
SACRAMENTO — Dana Williamson, one of the political heavyweights at the center of a financial scandal involving gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, looked shell-shocked Thursday morning in a federal courtroom in downtown Sacramento, as most folks do when bad choices collide with the hard realities of the justice system.
A thousand-yard stare in her eyes, Williamson responded “guilty” three times in a voice that required a microphone to be heard as the judge walked her through a plea deal reached days before with the U.S. Department of Justice. She likely won’t be sentenced until fall (possibly close to the general election) but will — again, just a likely here — at best face home confinement and at worst upward of three years in prison.
It was her savvy and ability to deliver whatever was needed through her deep connections and knowledge of the complicated structures — official and cultural — that govern the California halls of power that make her predicament all the more confounding. Especially because, far from stealing money for self-enrichment, she actually paid money to be part of this scheme.
That alone, to me, raises questions.
Though Williamson’s guilty plea may seem like an ending to the saga, it shouldn’t be, because there’s still a lot lurking in the dark corners of this deal.
If Becerra makes it past the primary, which seems (I’ll use that word again) likely, voters have a right to know.
Here’s the simple backstory, according to court documents. Becerra’s close aide, Sean McCluskie, took a pay cut to remain with his boss when he moved to Washington to become President Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services.
Strapped for cash, McCluskie asked Williamson to receive money from Becerra’s dormant campaign account — which Becerra was legally not allowed to manage while holding federal office — and pass it through a bunch of other accounts before giving it to McCluskie’s wife as payment for a nonexistent job.
Williamson’s attorney, McGregor Scott, said Thursday that Williamson received $7,500 each month from the Becerra account and added $2,500 from her own funds before sending it on to ultimately reach McCluskie — for a total of $10,000 a month.
McCluskie was “living on a government salary,” Scott said Thursday after court. “Wife is home with the kids. They didn’t have enough money, and that’s where this all originated. [Williamson] was simply trying to help a friend in a pinch as best she could.”
Scott, a former Bush and Trump United States attorney, managed to get Williamson’s original 23-count indictment knocked down to the Becerra account issue, along with lying to the FBI and filing a false tax return.
Becerra, who is a slim-margin front-runner for governor, was the victim in this case — or more precisely, his state campaign bank account was, according to court documents.
There has never been any indication that Becerra was investigated as a participant, and he has forcefully denied wrongdoing, calling it a “gut punch” that his advisers allegedly betrayed him.
That, of course, hasn’t stopped the other candidates from using the case against him.
“My opponents have spent millions spreading lies to purposefully mislead voters,” he wrote Thursday on social media. “Today confirms what I have said from day one: I did nothing wrong. Case closed.”
Meanwhile, Scott, the attorney, also said Thursday that Williamson assumed, based on her conversations with McCluskie, that McCluskie had spoken to Becerra about the concept of the money transfer. Text messages in court records show a brief and ambiguous exchange between McCluskie and Williamson that backs that up.
Scott said that Williamson never spoke directly with Becerra about the scheme.
That leaves the distinct possibility that Williamson believed Becerra knew what was happening — but never asked him. Dumb? Maybe. But Williamson isn’t usually dumb.
“The understanding that McCluskie conveyed to my client was it was OK to proceed,” Scott said.
Becerra has repeatedly said he believed the $10,000 a month was a legitimate fee being paid to manage the funds in the dormant account while he could not — though that is an amount above what is usual for such work, as my colleague Dakota Smith has reported.
Becerra has also repeatedly used some variation of the “case closed” line, seemingly hoping to move past this scandal without further answers.
But at the very least, it deserves some kind of mea culpa from Becerra or lessons learned, a more robust conversation than the brush-off it’s been getting. Because either McCluskie is one heck of a con man who rolled both Becerra and Williamson, making both believe what was happening was kosher with entirely different tales, or someone isn’t being entirely honest.
Did Becerra never question why an account with almost no activity was costing so much to manage? Did he never wonder what Williamson was doing to earn all that money? Should he, with his decades of legal and political experience, have seen red flags, even with a trusted adviser? Or is Williamson, facing sentencing, just trying to paint herself in a sympathetic light?
“I’m not trying to paint my client as a victim,” McGregor said. “She’s accepted responsibility today for what she did by pleading guilty. She’s now a felon. So you know, we’re not trying to do anything to dance away from that.”
Williamson may be done dancing, but the music’s still playing, and the fancy footwork of politics continues.
