california governor

A federal investigation into former Rep. Eric Swalwell appeared to gain steam this week after agents seized his electronic devices and raided his Washington home over the weekend, even briefly holding the former lawmaker at San Francisco International Airport, a person familiar with the inquiry told The Times.

Swalwell dropped out of the California governor’s race and resigned from Congress in April after allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and acted inappropriately with other young women, which he denied at the time. Before dropping out of the race, polls indicated that Swalwell was the front-runner.

The source said Swalwell was held on Saturday at SFO and released the same day he was detained for search purposes. Federal prosecutors are using civil rights law to pursue a probe of his conduct as a member of Congress. Authorities in New York and Los Angeles County are conducting separate investigations.

His home was searched on Sunday by federal agents, the source added, based on a search warrant in connection with a civil rights investigation concerning the sexual assault allegations.

Swalwell has denied any wrongdoing, but the accusations upended the California governor’s race and shook Capitol Hill, where both parties reckoned with a culture of secrecy and silence around sexual impropriety.

Another accuser, Lonna Drewes, said at a news conference that she was drugged and raped by the one-time politician in 2018 in Beverly Hills. Drewes said she met Swalwell three times as she was growing her fashion software company and toying with the idea of a political career.

On the third occasion, Drewes said she believes that Swalwell drugged her glass of wine. She said they were supposed to go to a political event and stopped by his hotel room to retrieve some paperwork.

She said she found herself incapacitated despite having had only one drink.

“He raped me and he choked me and while he was choking me I lost consciousness and I thought I died,” she said. “I did not consent to any sexual activity.”

Sara Azari, an attorney for Swalwell, denied Drewes’ characterization of the incident at the time. “Two adults consenting, which is our position, is not against the law,” she said.

The former staffer for Swalwell told the San Francisco Chronicle that Swalwell began sending her nude pictures on Snapchat and messages after she was hired by his office in 2019. She was 21 at the time.

In September of that year, she said she had drinks with the congressman, blacked out and woke up naked in Swalwell’s hotel bed, according to the Chronicle.

In 2024, when she no longer worked for Swalwell, she said she attended a charity event honoring the congressman and met him for drinks afterward. She was intoxicated but recalled Swalwell forcing himself upon her, and pushing him away and saying, “No,” according to the Chronicle.

Azari said in April that he denied all allegations of sexual misconduct and assault and would pursue “every legal remedy” against those making the claims.

“These accusations are false, fabricated and deeply offensive — a calculated and transparent political hit job designed to destroy the reputation of a man who has spent twenty years in public service,” Azari said.

Winton reported from Los Angeles, Smith from Sacramento and Wilner from Washington.

SACRAMENTO — As the campaign for California governor heads into the general election, Democrat Xavier Becerra maintains a strong lead over Republican Steve Hilton, according to a new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Buoyed by the state’s liberal voting base, Becerra had support from 55% of likely voters surveyed — compared with Hilton’s 37%. The remaining 7% were undecided.

Like in a previous IGS poll conducted in late May, support for each candidate falls overwhelmingly along partisan lines: 88% of Democrats prefer Becerra and 91% of Republicans plan to back Hilton. No-party-preference voters also lean heavily toward Becerra, a former Biden administration Cabinet member, 58% to Hilton’s 30%.

The two will face off in the Nov. 3 general election to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is barred from running again and considering a 2028 bid for president. Becerra, whose resume includes stints as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and state attorney general, is heavily favored to win the seat over Hilton, a former Fox News host who advised a prime minister in his native Britain.

“After the unsettled and chaotic primary, this is shaping up to be a fairly standard California general election, where Democrats enjoy a comfortable edge statewide,” said Eric Schickler, a political science professor and IGS co-director. “Hilton would need to make major inroads among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups to make this a highly competitive race.”

According to the poll, majorities of voters across age, gender and racial categories prefer Becerra — with particularly strong support among women, younger voters and Black Californians.

Becerra emerged from the primary ahead of more progressive opponents, including billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, and quickly earned the backing of their onetime supporters, said IGS Poll Director Mark DiCamillo.

“These are people who say, ‘I identify as a progressive.’ ‘I identify as a democratic socialist.’ They’re overwhelmingly for Becerra, and it’s mainly because they really don’t think very much of the Republicans as a party. It’s not so much about Hilton himself,” DiCamillo said.

Regionally, the poll found voters in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, along with the Bay Area and Central Coast, prefer Becerra. Hilton leads in the state’s more sparsely populated and conservative-leaning areas, including the Central Valley and North Coast/Sierra region.

Politically purple Orange County and the economically stressed Inland Empire are more closely divided but lean toward Hilton.

When asked why they support each candidate, voters largely cited conventional partisan issues.

More than half of Hilton backers, 55%, pointed to his support for traditionally Republican policies such as cutting taxes and reducing government regulation. It was followed by 28% who said they prefer Hilton because he is not part of California’s political establishment.

Hilton’s platform includes making Californians’ first $150,000 in annual earnings tax-free, slashing government regulations and ramping up oil production in hopes of achieving $3-per-gallon gas prices.

“Those are the benefits, but the underlying mission that I’ve set [for] myself as the next governor is to transform our business climate to make California competitive again, so that we do get the investment and the job creation and start to turn things around. I think it’s an absolute crisis that we’re in if we don’t change direction,” Hilton said Tuesday during a political conference in Sacramento.

Becerra supporters were evenly divided over their top reasons for supporting him; 38% cited his support for Democratic policies such as expanding healthcare and protecting LGBTQ+ rights, while another 38% expect him to aggressively fight the Trump administration.

The poll suggests that, in California, President Trump factors more heavily into Democratic voters’ political decisions than Republicans’.

“One of the reasons Becerra is doing so well is because of his opposition to Trump,” DiCamillo said. “For Hilton supporters, not so much. His endorsement by the president is only cited by 4% as a reason why they’re supporting Hilton.”

The former Health secretary has an extensive plan to lower healthcare costs and frequently touts the more than 120 lawsuits he filed as California attorney general against the first Trump administration. At the Tuesday political event hosted by Politico, Becerra said, “California will become the backstop for healthcare” after Trump signed a tax bill with steep cuts to Medicaid.

To prevent an estimated 2 million people from losing their health insurance because of the cuts and rising premiums, Becerra pitched a deal directly to insurance companies: “I will ensure people stay covered. You ensure that you help me reduce the cost. I ensure that you get paid.”

Thirteen percent said they’re supporting Becerra because he is a Democrat and 7% said the same about Hilton’s Republican affiliation.

Just 4% of Latino respondents and 1% of the total sample of likely voters said they would vote for Becerra because he is a Latino candidate and a child of immigrants.

Each candidate saw a small bump in support since the May poll, which asked registered voters just before the primary election to pick between them in a then-hypothetical matchup. In that survey, 52% chose Becerra and 31% supported Hilton.

Just under half of voters, 49%, have a favorable opinion of Becerra while 43% have an unfavorable view. Hilton’s favorability rating is underwater, with 39% of likely voters viewing him favorably and 50% unfavorably.

The numbers present a challenge for Hilton, who is trying to overcome the state’s pronounced Democratic tilt by appealing to independent voters frustrated with issues such as homelessness and California’s high cost of living.

“That might, for him, be the swing block,” DiCamillo said. “But among no-party-preference voters, his image rating is negative, 59% to 31%, whereas Becerra’s image rating is pretty much the same as it is statewide, which is positive.”

The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish from Aug. 3 to 9. Responses for the governor’s race poll came from a weighted sample of 2,310 respondents considered likely voters in the November election, out of a larger group of 4,207 registered voters throughout California. It has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points in either direction.

Sacramento — The two candidates for California governor came to Sacramento on Tuesday offering policy agendas that were both sweeping and vague on details, with both warning of the dangers posed by their rival’s political party.

Democrat Xavier Becerra vowed to lower healthcare costs for Californians and teased two new policies on energy and artificial intelligence. Republican Steve Hilton pledged to slash gas prices and utility bills to help remedy his dystopian view of California under Democratic rule.

The two candidates will face off in the Nov. 3 election to succeed outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, and took time to deliver their campaign messages at an afternoon political forum in the state capital.

Hilton pointed to the size of the state budget, the homelessness crisis, high taxes, the cost of living, the unemployment rate and the business climate to argue that 15 years of Democratic control has proved disastrous in California.

“It’s just a complete failure on every front, and it seems to have been immune to any kind of challenge because it’s very powerful. The machine is very powerful, funded by government unions, and you’ve got this alliance of the government unions and nonprofits, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of this,” he told hundreds of people at a convention center in Sacramento.

Becerra defended California’s Democratic leadership, which controls the state Legislature, the governor’s office and every other statewide political office, as a staunch bulwark against the ruthless agenda of the Trump administration and Republican-led Congress.

“We’re a state. We’re a family. You don’t blame just one parent when things go awry with one of the children,” he said in reference to more than a decade of Democratic governance in California. “We’re all in this together. We all have to work together. I could say that one of the members of the American family in Washington, D.C., has created more chaos than any Democrat in the state of California.”

After a chaotic and competitive June primary, Tuesday marked one of the few times the two men have addressed the same audience. They appeared at a forum hosted by the news organization Politico and sponsored by Airbnb, AT&T, energy company California Resources Corp., Google and the Western States Petroleum Assn.

In a state with a pronounced Democratic tilt, Becerra, a former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, is the front-runner in the race. Nearly 45% of the state’s voters are registered Democrats, while 25% are Republicans, according to a May report by the secretary of state’s office. Becerra has raised millions of dollars more than Hilton and benefited from well-funded independent groups that spent millions supporting his campaign.

Becerra repeatedly said he would not promise anything he could not deliver, saying that voters “want to see actual outcomes.”

“That’s also why I think you can’t do pie in the sky, inflated promises, because people want to see you deliver, and you can talk a great game, but unless you can deliver, people are going to crucify you,” he said.

He said he could not promise to build 3 million new housing units, as Newsom did eight years ago as a candidate for governor.

“That’s an inflated promise. But I will tell you, we will build, and I will tell you, there will be more Californians who own a home,” Becerra said.

Later, he told reporters he was not specifically referring to the figure Newsom had promised. “I could have said 2 million. I could have said 5 million. What I was saying is, it’s gonna be something that’s realistic,” he said.

Becerra was willing to make some big promises on healthcare.

“Am I going to promise you that I can drop the price of prescription drugs? Yes, because I did it before, and I know I can do it again. Am I telling you that I can keep Californians insured for healthcare, even though the guy in the White House stripped a trillion dollars out of the healthcare system? Yes, because I know how much money is in the healthcare system,” he said.

Pressed for specifics on how he would prevent people from losing their health insurance, Becerra hinted that the solution could be within the healthcare industry itself.

“There’s money in them there hills,” he said. “Healthcare is more expensive in California than anywhere else in the country, and healthcare is more expensive in the U.S. than it is anywhere else in the world. There is money that’s being spent that does nothing to dispense healthcare to you, and we’ve got to stop that game.”

Hilton acknowledged the long odds he faces in the November general election.

“I know I’m probably the only person in this room that actually thinks I can win this election,” he said.

Since the June primary, Hilton has been a constant presence on the campaign trail, crisscrossing the state, holding town halls and news conferences, making speeches and giving media interviews. Becerra has been far less visibly active.

Hilton argued that California is at a crossroads, pointing to residents and businesses moving out of the state.

“I’m here to say we can turn them around,” he said. “It’s an absolute crisis that we’re in if we don’t change direction.”

Hilton has vowed to cut gas prices to $3 per gallon, reduce utility bills, eliminate income taxes for Californians making under $150,000, increase the supply of starter homes and overhaul the business climate, particularly in the entertainment and agricultural industries. Just how Hilton would deliver on his agenda, given that Democrats control the California Legislature, remains unclear.

While he did not make any formal policy announcements at the summit, Becerra said there is “a lot of room to expand” on regulations and protections on AI, and he signaled support for a government-purchased stake in AI companies. “We can make it so they can prosper, but we prosper with them,” he said.

Hilton, who has released several AI-generated campaign ads, criticized Sam Altman of OpenAI and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei for doing little to earn the public’s trust on the fast-emerging technology. He also said there is space to both regulate and give AI more freedom.

“I think we’re in danger of both over- and under-regulating at the same time. I think we’re under-regulating some of the harms, for example, in relation to children and in relation to the creative community and their output, but we’re in danger of over-regulating some of the potential benefits,” including in the medical field, he said.

When asked whether the state’s voters are “stupid” for continuing to vote for Democrats, Hilton replied that they are not, but rather had not been offered a clear, positive alternative.

“There is a sense of inevitability about it, and I think that’s infected perhaps a lot of the political discourse in California,” he said. The notion that “it’s California. Democrats are always going to be in charge. What can you do?”

He said he believes he has a shot in the November election because he has a positive message, similar to that which helped propel the right-leaning Tories to a 14-year reign in the United Kingdom when he was a senior advisor to then-Prime Minister David Cameron.

Hilton labeled Becerra “unqualified” and didn’t discuss his endorsement by President Trump, which propelled his advancement to the general election.

“We’ve got everything going for us in California. We’ve got incredible assets and resources. We’ve got natural beauty, the best weather, great universities, amazing people, the incredible innovation ecosystem, the kind of startup hustle rebel spirit,” he said. “We just need, I think, a proactive, pro-business governor [who] recognizes that we’ve just ended up …, often with good intentions, frankly, in a situation where we’ve just got this massive, bloated bureaucratic government that’s stifling the spirit of California.”