california

The first rule of a primary election is: Don’t make too much of the results.

The intrepid folks who bother to cast a ballot in these first-round races are largely a group of engaged voters, and drawing conclusions from such a narrow minority is a losing game.

So however the final June results tally out, the lessons learned won’t easily translate to the larger electorate that will almost surely show up in November. But if this election doesn’t tell us much about what fall voters will do, it does tell us something about the Democratic Party that dominates this state: It’s chaotic, to put it gently. And no, that’s not entirely the fault of the “jungle” primary.

Traditional rules seem to have broken down (not a bad thing) and new ones haven’t yet emerged. The old guard has lost control, and maybe vision, and the result is more candidates willing to sidestep seniority and a wait-your-turn mentality to try their luck — especially younger progressives.

Sometimes that chutzpah works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s a mirror of the national trend of Democratic infighting and a glimpse into just how fragmented the party has become as it tries to figure out who it stands for and who it supports before the 2028 presidential election.

“I feel like I’m definitely running against major institutional forces, but that’s how it is,” state Sen. Scott Wiener told me recently. “At times we see sort of a little bit of a fortress mentality, and other perspectives are not welcome, and younger folks, newer voices are not welcome, and and that’s a dynamic that plays out in a lot of different places.”

Wiener, who could be considered king of the line-jumpers, just took the top spot in the San Francisco-centered race to represent the 11th Congressional District, the seat held by Nancy Pelosi since 1987, when Wiener was 17.

By most accounts, Pelosi and Wiener had a mostly cordial relationship until last year, when he entered the race before she announced her retirement. Though Wiener had been clear for years that he planned such a run when Pelosi stepped down, Pelosi is an icon in the city, beloved by constituents and uncontested as queen of the old guard.

Announcing his campaign before she officially made that decision — or had the chance to choose her successor — sent shock waves through the political firmament. When Pelosi endorsed Supervisor Connie Chan in May, it was seen by many as a sign of her displeasure. Chan, who had struggled to gain traction in the primary, came in second with the Pelosi boost and will face Wiener in November.

Across the state, there were other races with upstart contenders. In Southern California, Jake Levine, a progressive Democrat who served in the Obama White House, took on incumbent Brad Sherman. Sherman, who at 71 has served almost 30 years in Congress, resoundingly beat out Levine by more than 20 points.

In Sacramento, there is Mai Vang, a progressive City Council member, who is challenging Rep. Doris Matsui, another member of the old guard royalty. Vang is in a tie for second place with a Republican contender as remaining votes are counted.

And of course, there is the governor’s race itself, which included a field so determined and uncontrollable even before the fiasco of Eric Swalwell’s sexual misconduct scandal that the state Democratic Party started putting out its own polling in a seeming bid to convince some blue contenders to drop out. It didn’t work. Notably, progressive Katie Porter and moderate San José Mayor Matt Mahan stuck in until the bitter end. But old guard candidate Xavier Becerra came out on top.

If these races have a lesson, it’s that different Democratic voters want different things, but the party hasn’t figured out how to embrace that other than offering up the moderate middle ground.

“This is a big question to this Democratic establishment, about how big of a tent they want to build,” said Irene Kao of Courage California, a progressive advocacy organization.

She said that it “bodes well” that so many strong progressive challengers came out for the primary, because it allows a chance for candidates outside the party power structure to find an audience with voters, even if they are ultimately unsuccessful.

And where voters go, the party will eventually be forced to follow. That doesn’t necessarily mean a more progressive Democratic Party, but it likely means a more inclusive one if they want to lure the kind of low-information and low-propensity voters who make or break a general election.

“People are sick of the games, and sick of people trying to just maneuver things to get their own person in,” Wiener said. “People want to have choices.”

You can’t own the beach in California. Our shoreline is public — thanks to the Coastal Act and the Coastal Commission — even when everything around it gets expensive and complicated. You can live next to it, monetize it and build a personality around proximity to it, but the wet sand itself belongs to everyone.

Jackie Snow takes a selfie by the new public stairs at Escondido Beach, also known as Hidden Beach.

(Jackie Snow)

In 2024, my colleague Jaclyn Cosgrove walked 27.4 miles of Washington Boulevard in a single day, from Whittier to the ocean. I read it in awe of the shape of it. One street. One day. A city revealed in a straight line.

And then a thought occurred to me, I could do something like that. What if I walked the entire L.A. shoreline? What would happen if I went to the beach and just kept walking along the crest of its waves? Except the shore does not reward this approach. It closes. It opens. Erosion pushes you onto the road and lets you back when it feels like it.

I set out to walk the 75 miles along the Los Angeles coastline anyway. I started at the mouth of the San Gabriel River and worked north toward the Ventura County line, taking 10 trips from the end of November to the second week of January, mostly waiting on tides and weather to cooperate.

Being a surfer helped. I already knew that wet sand means public access in California, that satellite view tells you things the default map doesn’t, and that tides can make or break an outing. For someone wanting to do a similar journey, the California Coastal Trail website is a valuable resource. You can walk long stretches and return back, but I went point to point, which means figuring out how to get back to your car. I usually Ubered, although public transit exists on some stretches. The slickest option is going with a friend who has a car: leave their car at the end, drive yours to the start, and walk. Their car is waiting at the finish to bring you both back to yours. Beyond that, bring more water than you think you need to especially as most stretches have no fountains, no services and no shade. Pack snacks that will sustain you throughout the journey, wear a hat and put on sunscreen, then reapply it. Even on gray, marine-layer days, you’re exposed for hours with nothing overhead.

If you’re inspired by this mega-trek but want to instead do a micro version, I suggest the 5.7 miles from Malibu Pier to Escondido Beach. You can park at one end and take a picturesque bus back where a tasty lunch at the pier’s Malibu Farm awaits at the finish. One last tip I picked up: be nice. People sometimes will give you water, or offer help, wanting to see you get to your destination too.

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1. A red-tailed hawk perched on a coastal access sign along the boardwalk in Long Beach. 2. A bench off the Long Beach boardwalk, near the start of the 75-mile walk. 3. Birdhouses located near the Long Beach boardwalk. (Jackie Snow)

Alamitos Beach to Port of Long Beach: 4.9 miles

I start at the mouth of the San Gabriel River at Alamitos Park at about 10 a.m. on a busy Sunday at the end of November, walking with a friend. The first stretch is a flat, easy boardwalk. We stop at the Long Beach Museum of Art, which sits on the bluffs overlooking the water, and grab lunch at Claire’s, the museum’s outdoor cafe. From there, we walk toward the mouth of the Los Angeles River, passing through the marina, where boats sit quietly and a pirate ship is inexplicably for sale. We don’t make it up the man-made pier to the Queen Mary. Instead, we turn around just short of it, one river book-ending the other.

Looking back toward the marina near the mouth of the Los Angeles River, one river bookending the other.

(Jackie Snow)

Cabrillo Beach to Portuguese Bend Beach Club: 8.7 miles

I park at Cabrillo Beach, along the Port of Los Angeles, around 6:30 a.m. People are already playing ping-pong. Someone is dancing alone on the sand.

I start along the Cabrillo Beach Walking Path, which you enter at the south end of the beach where the sand ends and the bluffs start. In what feels like two seconds, I’m up on the cliffs, which quits partway and dumps me onto the residential streets of Coastal San Pedro, a neighborhood that looks quintessentially California. The houses are probably a few million dollars each, but they’re tidy bungalows, not the kind of aggressive beachfront wealth that makes you feel like you’ve wandered somewhere you’re not supposed to be.

I pass through Point Fermin Park, home to a lighthouse perched above the water. Down below, the beaches are rocky and loud. The waves are being sucked forcefully back out between the rocks, a sound that feels more industrial than oceanic. There’s more neighborhood walking on West Paseo Del Mar, interrupted by a Little Free Library stop where I add a few books to my bag. I hit the San Pedro hike trails, and the coastline turns dramatic, and suddenly I can’t step two feet off the path without risking a fall, but it’s breathtaking in its beauty.

Cabrillo Beach at the Port of Los Angeles, where the second walk began.

(Jackie Snow)

I hit another closed section, this one bordering Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. Not wanting to end up on a Secret Service list that bars me from flying, I find another way around, on a surprising trail that curves between holes that’s part of the Ocean Trails Reserve. I climb down to the beach and start picking my way along the rocks toward the Portuguese Bend Beach Club, moving slowly and trying not to break my neck. You can definitely skip this part.

A security guard named Gilbert Blair waves me over and explains to me what I already know: I’m allowed to walk on the wet sand, but everything else is private. When I tell him what I’m doing, he starts offering advice, pointing out places on my Google map he thinks are closed because of last year’s heavy rains. This area is some of the shiftiest parts of all of California, with landslides going back all through the geographical record. In 2024, areas were moving 9 to 12 inches a week, although it has slowed down to 1 to 2 inches a week. He tells me the unstable land actually created a new beach, which the coast almost never does. People came from all over to see it, he says, gesturing toward a new form of sand that locals have called “unreal.”

Blair is nice, but not nice enough to wave me off the wet sand and through Portuguese Bend’s private roads so I can call an Uber. I have to backtrack, spending more time than I’d like carefully navigating the rocks. I briefly consider stopping at the nearby Trump National Golf Club to eat and use the bathroom, but I’m hot, sweaty and not in the mood to test my welcome.

The trail descending toward the rocky beaches below Point Fermin, where waves get sucked back out between the rocks with a sound more industrial than oceanic.

(Jackie Snow)

Terranea Beach to Palos Verdes Estates Shoreline Preserve: 5.4 miles

Based on Blair’s advice, I skip a section that isn’t open to the public and probably not safe. I drive Palos Verdes Drive South, a rutted, uneven road that skirts the area and feels vaguely off-roading. I park at Terranea Resort, which charges a fee, but there is also nearby free public parking. I pick the walk back up at the charming tucked-away Terranea Beach. As I head north, the trail climbs. I can see stretches of shoreline closed off, tantalizingly visible with no way to reach them.

I stop at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, a modest but free museum perched above the water. Several people are gathered outside with binoculars, scanning the horizon. They tell me humpbacks were spotted farther out earlier, feeding. It’s easier to see them on the far side of Catalina, they explain, but they still watch from here, every day, sunrise to sunset, December through May. This is the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project, run by the American Cetacean Society. Volunteers have been coming here for 43 years, counting whales as they migrate past the point.

The Point Vicente lighthouse, perched above the water where Gray Whale Census volunteers keep watch.

(Jackie Snow)

Volunteers with the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project scanning the horizon. They’ve been counting whales here for 43 years.

(Jackie Snow)

After I peel myself away from looking for whales, the tides won’t allow me to climb down to Honeymoon Cove. I stay on the cliffs and admire the impressive houses around me. I continue until I round the Palos Verdes Estates cliffs, on Paseo del Mar, and see the long, flat stretch of built-up beaches unfurling ahead, South Bay-style, Malibu faint in the distance.

I’ve only done about 15 miles of my walk and suddenly I see how much more there is to go. I’m hot. I’m tired. I packed bad snacks. The sheer expanse of it, frankly, stresses me out. I had planned to make it to Rat Beach in Palos Verdes Estates, but I call it early.

The small coves that punctuate the Palos Verdes coastline, visible from the cliffs above.

(Jackie Snow)

Palos Verdes Estates Shoreline Preserve to El Porto Beach: 7.9 miles

I start back at Palos Verdes Estates cliffs. A couple of turns in, I come across my first real surf spot of the walk. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a surf break from this high up. The waves look less like waves and more like pulses of energy moving under the skin of the ocean.

When I finally hit Rat Beach and see how flat the coastline stretches ahead, I feel like dropping to my knees and kissing the ground. After days of cliffs and detours, the openness feels generous.

Hermosa Beach is busy with volleyball nets in use at a level that suggests Olympic aspirations. Forty minutes later, I stop at Ercole’s in Manhattan Beach two blocks off the boardwalk and demolish one of its famed burgers. Instead of stopping where I planned, I keep going and end at my familiar surf spot El Porto.

Surfers walking out to the break at El Porto.

(Jackie Snow)

El Porto Beach to Ballona Creek Jetty: 4.8 miles

I’m back at El Porto Beach, this time walking a paved boardwalk through a thick, foggy marine layer with my husband and a friend who’s in town visiting.

Suddenly, my friend realizes he’s dropped his wallet somewhere north of El Segundo. Cue a round of retraced steps and mild panic. An angel named Dr. Gaz finds it, looks up my friend, and bikes it over so we don’t have to retrace any further. The wallet is returned. Our trio survives. We keep walking, stopping at Ballona Creek Jetty.

A dog and his man relaxing on the beach in Marina Del Rey.

(Jackie Snow)

Marina Del Rey to Will Rogers Beach: 7.4 miles

In this classic boardwalk stretch, we eye the muscle men of Muscle Beach, pause for a quiet break at Small World Books in Venice and walk next to skateboarders (including one dressed as a Santa) in Santa Monica, before ending at Will Rogers State Beach.

The rocks and tide pools just past Malibu Lagoon, where the king tide pulled the water back farther than usual.

(Jackie Snow)

Will Rogers Beach to Malibu Pier: 7.7 miles

I do this stretch with my husband on New Year’s Day, parking at Will Rogers Beach Lot Three and timing it to a king tide. The highs are higher, but the lows are lower too, which is the part we’re interested in.

Even with the king tide low, the beach opens up and pinches closed without warning, and we move between wet sand, rocks we feel like traversing, and the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway when we don’t.

Soon enough, we hit the section of burned-out houses that still haunt the beach nearly a year later. I think I can still smell the smoke. It’s the quietest stretch of the whole walk, and the only place the emptiness feels like loss instead of calm.

The Malibu coastline near Escondido Beach.

(Jackie Snow)

When we finally reach the Malibu Pier, it feels like stepping back into civilization. People are on the beach. Nobu is packed. We eat at Malibu Farm and sit indoors, grateful for chairs, shade and food that isn’t trail mix.

Afterward, we take the bus back to the car from a stop near the Pier on the PCH, which turns out to be one of the most beautiful bus rides in existence, with the coastline framed perfectly by wide windows.

Malibu Pier to Escondido Beach: 5.7 miles

We come back the next day for another king tide, despite rain in the forecast. I start on the other side of Malibu Lagoon State Beach, which looks like nothing else on this walk. It’s swampy and green and quietly buzzing, reminding me of Florida, my home turf. Birders are out, rain jackets zipped, binoculars already up.

There are still rocks and little rivers to navigate, but the tide is so low it’s exposing tide pools I didn’t know existed up here. The sand is packed and forgiving, and we cover distance quickly until the rain really starts coming down.

We exit using the new stairs at Escondido Beach, also known as Hidden Beach, which were installed in 2023 after a multidecade battle over access. I take them slowly as I celebrate a mostly triumphant walk.

The Malibu coastline just south of Point Dume.

(Jackie Snow)

Escondido Beach to Zuma Beach: 6.7 miles

I head back to Escondido Beach, a few days later at low tide, though the tide is already coming in. That turns out to be a mistake. My second mistake is coming alone. As I scramble over rocks helpfully labeled with a sign warning not to climb on them, it’s dangerous, I notice my phone has no service. I decide the safest option is to soak my hiking boots instead along the incoming tide.

With my shoes sloshing and Google Maps satellite view looking deeply uncommitted to the stretch just south of Point Dume, I try to exit. Nope. Gated community. Not ready to give up, I keep going.

The surfer south of Point Dume whose companions offered to unlock the gate.

(Jackie Snow)

I spot a woman surfing and stop to take a photo. Her non-surfing companions start chatting with me. When they hear what I’m doing and where I’m trying to go, they offer to unlock the gate. It’s a genuinely kind gesture. But since I’m doing this for you, reader, I ask if there’s an exit farther along. They say there are stairs up ahead, probably reachable. I tell them, in the nicest way possible, that I hope I don’t see them again, and keep going.

My shoes are now collecting water on every step, the bottoms of my pants are wet, and everything underfoot is baseball-sized rocks, which I think is the worst possible rock size for walking. I round the curve. I spot the stairs.

If I had turned off satellite view, the stairs would have been obvious. So much for trying to read the coastline.

I climb out and walk to the tip of Point Dume and look south. I can see the South Bay, where I called it early weeks ago, hot and tired and hating my snacks. I’m still hot. I’m still tired. My snacks are still crummy. But standing here, salty and damp, I realize I don’t want this to walk to end.

The view from the cliffs near Point Dume.

(Jackie Snow)

Zuma Beach to county line: 5.3 miles

Today I timed the hike with a tide going out and my husband joins me so I don’t have a repeat from last time. We park along the PCH at Zuma. The first stretch we go by “Hannah Montana’s View,” a very persistent Google map label. It’s calm until a curve, where a gaggle of adolescent boys, shirtless and shoeless, are trying but failing to climb over the mussel-covered rocks ahead of us. For the second time on this walk, I have to turn around and back-track to the last exit, maybe a quarter mile back.

Luckily, the sighting of a Little Free Library makes the detour feel less like a failure and more like a reward. We cut through a small gated community that turns out to have a door for exactly this purpose, a quiet acknowledgment that people do, in fact, want to walk through here. There is so much rock walking. So much. Eventually we reach Leo Carrillo State Beach, where Los Angeles actually ends and Ventura County begins. Despite the name, County Line Beach is another mile or so away.

Gated Lechuza Point neighborhood has a beach access road that lets walkers get to the shore.

(Jackie Snow)

I watch people walk across the county border without noticing it at all, no fanfare, no announcement, no sense that anything has changed. They keep going. I stop. They are not done walking, but I am.

I haven’t seen every inch of the Los Angeles County coastline. I double-checked my walking distance and I’m still not at 75 miles, more like 65. The number I found online is probably not entirely accurate (the coastline is constantly changing). Maybe it’s closer to 70. But I have seen whale-watch perches, burned-out Malibu lots, crowded boardwalks and magnificent waves. The coastline is both fragile and welcoming — and walkable — if you’re willing to chase the tides.

The votes are still being tallied but the result of Tuesday’s top-two primary election in California seems pretty clear.

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.

Two of that breed, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria, can’t see into the future. But they can try to make sense of what just passed, starting with a primary season that was a strange mix of ennui and white knuckles.

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?

But my fear is, with little chance of winning, Hilton will instead focus on boosting his MAGA credentials.

In the past week, we’ve seen him dive headfirst into voter-fraud conspiracies, following the lead of President Trump. Hilton’s campaign is providing Trump with the biggest platform for this false propaganda of rigged elections that California has ever endured.

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.

Finally, there’s the unknowable but certain catastrophes the next governor will face.

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.

Chabria: Steyer was bashed for being a self-funded billionaire, but what his support showed is that there is a significant contingent of voters who are tired of the status quo and want a governor with bold ideas.

California definitely faces many problems, but we are also historically a state that pushes forward on hard issues.

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.

What do you think about California’s prolonged, much-derided long ballot count? Is the criticism warranted?

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.

Chabria: Any final thoughts?

Barabak: Just this. I’ve read the many plaintive pieces written about this boring, wholly-unworthy-of-the-Great-Golden-State field of gubernatorial candidates.

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.

Maybe in 2030.

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.’ ”

A federal judge sided with California and other Democratic states on Friday in a preliminary injunction that blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to condition food benefits on compliance with the president’s policies on gender and immigration.

Twenty states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in March against the Trump administration in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, arguing that the “unlawful” and “unconstitutional” funding requirements are vague and designed to force policies on states.

Billions in federal funding are ultimately at stake, including money for school lunch programs that provide meals to 30 million children nationwide and food stamps that support about 40 million Americans living in low-income households.

“As the Trump Administration tries to use essential programs and billions in funding as leverage to advance their hateful, discriminatory agenda, California continues to fight to uphold the law and ensure that our communities can continue to access the funding they need to thrive,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta in a statement.

The policy shift from the United States Department of Agriculture marks another effort by the president to force left-leaning states to submit to his positions on hot-button political and cultural issues to receive government funding. California’s current budget relies on $174.5 billion in federal dollars, or roughly one-third of the overall state budget funds.

Last year, the Trump administration canceled a sexual education grant to California after the state declined to remove gender identity from sexual education curriculum. The administration is also restricting federal funds in an attempt to force states to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

The funding conditions from the USDA relate to gender ideology, women and girls’ sports and immigration, according to the lawsuit.

States argue that the conditions do not explain what activities are prohibited for entities that receive grants. The USDA did not cite any law allowing the organization to impose anti-discrimination policies that go beyond federal law, the suit states.

The states that joined the lawsuit contend that they are left with the “unlawful” choice of adhering to the conditions or risk losing up to $74 billion in collective federal assistance from the USDA.

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun approved a preliminary injunction Friday and is expected to issue a memorandum later explaining the decision, according to the Associated Press.

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.

The state of California is leading an effort to prepare a possible lawsuit that could thwart Paramount Skydance Corp.’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a potential obstacle for the $111 billion deal.

The lawsuit, which could be filed as early as this month, would likely involve multiple states, according to a source familiar with the deliberations who was not authorized to comment publicly.

The litigation would seek to challenge the proposed merger on antitrust grounds, arguing it would thwart competition, lower wages and lead to widespread job losses.

“The Paramount acquisition of Warner Brothers remains an active investigation, and we do not have any updates to share at this time,” said California Atty. General Rob Bonta’s office in a statement.

In a statement, Paramount said it “will continue to fight against any attempt to derail a deal that plainly benefits consumers, creators and the industry as whole.”

“Opposing this deal means opposing expanded consumer choice, new opportunities for creators and workers, and greater competition throughout the creative ecosystem — the opposite of what antitrust law is meant to achieve,” the company added.

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders in April approved the sale of the company to Paramount after Netflix dropped out of the auction.

Under Paramount Chairman David Ellison’s proposal, Warner investors would receive $31 a share, nearly four times the price of the company’s stock in April 2025. He also said he will keep both studios’ release schedules of 15 movies a year for a total of 30 films a year.

Nonetheless, Ellison and his team have vowed to make $6 billion in cuts following the merger, which requires regulatory approval. The combined company would have to contend with $79 billion in deal debt.

The prospect of substantial job cuts during a period of downsizing in Hollywood has ignited widespread opposition to the sale.

Thousands of people who work in the TV and film industry, including actor Joaquin Phoenix and director-writer-producer JJ Abrams signed an open letter opposing Paramount’s planned acquisition of WBD, saying it would lead to fewer production jobs and fewer choices for consumers. Others have also raised concerns about the impact it could have on content.

“The consequences would be felt nationwide, from destroying CNN the way that Ellisons have devastated CBS to entertainment industry job losses and consumers losing access to independent voices and a competitive market,” said Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, one of the groups that organized the open letter. “State attorneys general have both the authority and the responsibility to act when a transaction of this scale directly threatens the public’s interest, and I hope states across the country will join any effort to challenge this deal,” Eisen said in a statement.

The potential lawsuit, first reported by Bloomberg and Reuters, is being considered by other states, including New York and Colorado.

“Paramount and Warner Bros. haven’t cleared regulatory scrutiny,” Bonta told The Times in March. “My office has an open investigation into [the deal] and we intend to be vigorous in our review.”

Despite the potential obstacle, Raymond James equity analysts said in a note on Thursday that they “still believe the deal is likely to close.”

Last month, Paramount hired antitrust attorney Jeffrey Kessler to defend its planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Kessler recently led a case for state attorney generals against concert promoter and ticketing firm Live Nation, resulting in a win for states, including California.

“We also think there are win/win solutions to be had particularly in California given exodus of production from CA in recent years and efforts to bring production back to Hollywood,” the analyst said in their note.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli on Friday morning said his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway,” in coordination with the FBI in Los Angeles.

Essayli’s remarks, posted to X, seemed to be in response to President Trump alleging in his own social media post late Wednesday that Democrats in California were “cheating” in the state’s primary election, and that there was an investigation underway in Essayli’s office.

Essayli’s office also confirmed that one of its prosecutors — Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Renner — was at a Los Angeles County ballot processing center Friday “to observe the vote counting process.”

A spokesperson for Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, described the visit as in line with other routine observations of the counting process, which is open to public observation by appointment.

Democratic officials firmly rejected Trump’s claims of cheating, which they had warned he would make in advance of the election given his long record of objecting to and claiming fraud in elections he and his party lose.

Trump provided no evidence for his claims, other than to complain about California taking a long time to count ballots and criticizing its mail ballot system, suggesting it was a source of fraud. California officials have acknowledged the process takes longer than they would like, but said that is a result of a careful, accurate count of millions of ballots, many of which were mailed on election day.

“Taking the time to do this work correctly protects voters’ rights and ensures the integrity of our elections,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said Thursday. “California has built a strong system that expands access, empowers voters, and ensures more Californians can fully participate in our democracy.”

According to Weber’s office, about 5.6 million ballots had been processed in the state as of Thursday evening, while an estimated 3.6 million additional cast ballots remained.

Steve Hilton, a Republican who was leading in the gubernatorial race, said Friday that he expected to make it to November’s head-to-head race between the top two primary finishers — despite Trump insinuating Democrats were rigging the vote to exclude him. But Hilton also lambasted the state for counting so slowly, and said Gov. Gavin Newsom should deploy state resources to help ensure results are verified by next Thursday.

“This shambles is absolutely shameful for our state,” Hilton said, of the slow results.

Newsom’s office dismissed Hilton’s comments as uninformed. “It’s concerning that a candidate for Governor doesn’t know the Governor has nothing to do with counting ballots,” said Brandon Richards, Newsom’s deputy director for rapid response.

Essayli — a Trump loyalist the administration has kept in charge of one of the country’s largest federal prosecutor’s offices through a legal loophole, and despite his failing to be confirmed by the Senate — said he would not comment “on any specific investigation.” But he added that protecting California’s elections is “a top priority” for his office, and that “California’s election system has serious structural vulnerabilities.”

He said California’s mail ballot system, which a vast majority of voters rely on in the state, and its voter ID requirements — he said there were none, but California does have measures to ensure voters are who they say they are, including signature verification — create “conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding public confidence.”

“We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent,” Essayli said.

He also noted that his office is working with Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, to “conduct a comprehensive audit of California’s voter rolls.”

The Justice Department sued the state for its voter rolls, in a lawsuit that was thrown out by a federal judge who called the demand “unprecedented and illegal” and accused the federal government of trying to “abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots.”

The Justice Department appealed the ruling, and the case is now before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The state has stonewalled every effort to verify that only eligible U.S. citizens are registered to vote,” Essayli wrote. “My office will not look the other way. We will investigate and prosecute. Every legal vote deserves to be counted. Every illegal vote cancels one out.”

Essayli’s office did not provide any additional information about Renner’s presence at the county balloting center, or about its fraud investigations. Essayli also provided no evidence of widespread fraud or acts by Democrats in the state to rig or steal the election, as Trump continued to claim Thursday.

Essayli did, however, point to a case in which a woman recently pleaded guilty to paying homeless people on Skid Row to help get initiatives on the California ballot. “Yes. There is evidence of election fraud in California. Here’s a case we charged just last month. More investigations are underway,” Essayli wrote.

Election experts say there are certainly examples of fraud in voting, but they are isolated and rare, and there is no evidence that fraud is widespread or exists in volumes large enough to sway elections. They note Trump has tried to argue such fraud in the past — including in disputing his 2020 loss to Joe Biden — but has never been able to prove it.

Michael Sanchez, Logan’s spokesperson, said Logan’s office was notified by Essayli’s office late Thursday that an assistant U.S. attorney would be visiting the ballot processing center to observe.

“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez said election officials “routinely host observers representing a wide range of interests, including members of the public, candidates, political parties, advocacy organizations, and government agencies.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has also been involved in monitoring ballot processing in the state, including during last year’s vote on Proposition 50.

On Friday, Bonta acknowledged Renner’s presence at the L.A. County facility, and said his office also had a presence at the facility, was “monitoring the situation closely, and stands ready to protect voters and ensure California’s election laws are followed.”

Other Democrats in the state have also defended the state’s election process and blasted Trump for calling it into question.

“Let’s be honest about what this is: A blatant attempt to cast doubt in our election results, and a phony pretext for Trump to act illegally in the midterms,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote on X. “California has safe and secure elections. And it takes time for every vote to count. It’s called democracy, Donald.”

The November runoff for state schools superintendent will pit two school board presidents — one a union-friendly liberal and the other a Trump-aligned conservative — against each other.

Republican, Sonja Shaw finished in first place in this week’s primary with 24.5% of votes counted through June 4. Democrat Richard Barrera had19.3%.

Shaw’s margin seems comfortable even with more ballots to be counted, with Barrera firmly in the runoff. The third-leading vote-getter, Wendy Castaneda Leal, was about 10 percentage points behind him.

The race creates a clear contrast between candidates and their vision for California’s schools.

While Shaw, 43, has not typically spoken to Trump’s immigration policies in relation to schooling, she is in accord with the Trump administration education agenda, including banning trans-athletes from women’s and girls’ sports and notifying parents when a child expresses gender-identity issues at school.

Under Shaw’s leadership, the school board in Chino Valley Unified, located in San Bernardino County, also approved a policy that permits parents to challenge books in school libraries.

Barrera, 59, is the board president of San Diego Unified, the second-largest school system in the state. He is a former union official who has developed strong bonds with the teachers union during his long board tenure.

That history helped him win the endorsement of the California Teachers Assn., which poured about $5 million into an independent campaign on his behalf.

Barrera acknowledges that this support made the difference in his leap ahead of other strong Democratic candidates.

Shaw has framed her campaign as a populist effort against a failed and self-interested status quo establishment.

“I didn’t get into this race because I was a politician,” Shaw said in a statement. “I got into it because I was a mom who saw too many families being ignored, too many classrooms falling behind, and too many elected officials unwilling to stand up for our kids.”

Barrera said he is ready to focus on the job of helping students learn more effectively.

“We see examples of schools that are delivering,” Barrera said. “The answers are all around us. The challenge for us as a state is to learn from educators in the local community about what is beating the odds and then take those practices to scale.”

Barrera speaks of an “assault” by the Trump administration on immigrant families: “I’m going to stand up to that assault.”

Barrera, who is a senior adviser to outgoing state Superintendent Tony Thurmond, praises the record of his boss.

Shaw, in contrast, once threw Thurmond out of her local school board meeting.

Lance Christensen, a conservative education analyst who ran unsuccessfully for the office four years ago against Thurmond, is ready for a spirited campaign that “is about to go nuclear.”

“Sonja Shaw pulled out an impressive primary win as an unabashed parental rights advocate while successfully running her local school district,” Christensen said.

“Should Shaw weather the political maelstrom that is about to hit her with tens of millions of dollars from the entrenched left,” he added, “she will have a bigger bully pulpit to shame the people in power who have made California’s education system the laughing-stock of the nation.”

Veteran Democratic political consultant Larry Levine predicted that, in November, Democrats will consolidate around Barrera just like Republicans did around Shaw in the primary — likely leading to a different order of finish in November.

“She consolidated the Republican vote and the Democrats spread like butter on warm bread,” Levine said. “It will be a far different story in the general. CTA will step up with the money to make sure their candidate wins.”

One of the trailing Democrats — former state Legislative leader Anthony Rendon —has already endorsed Barrera.

Rendon said that Barrera “is qualified, shares my values, and has spent his career fighting for public education. He is the candidate who will stand up to and defeat the dangerous, extremist ideology of Sonja Shaw.”

The state superintendent has limited authority over school districts, which are locally managed. The officeholder instead manages the California Department of Education. This agency guides local school districts and also provides partial oversight. The state superintendent also typically takes advantage of the bully pulpit on education issues.

The office has an uncertain future because Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing a proposal to reimagine the office and redistribute some of its duties.

After the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral primary, developer Rick Caruso looked to have a surprising, and sizable, lead over then-U.S. Rep. Karen Bass.

The morning after the polls closed, Caruso was ahead by 5 percentage points — 42% to Bass’ 37% — and the former Republican called the early results “a victory story.”

But that lead did not last as the vote count continued. By the time all votes were tabulated two weeks after election day, Bass had come out on top, with 43% of the vote compared with Caruso’s 36%.

Welcome to the postelection vote-count slog in California, where tight races are often impossible to call even when the initial results seem clear-cut.

The California governor’s race still has not been called even though Republican Steve Hilton has been the top voter-getter and Democrat Xavier Becerra has been in second place since election night. The same is true in the battle over who will face Bass in the mayoral election: reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, who is now in second place, or L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is in third place.

At this point in the vote tally, “everybody has an opinion and very few facts” about what the results will be, said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist.

“Nobody in politics wants to be patient,” Murphy said, adding that California has “adopted a system that’s slow and deliberate.”

It’s not just the L.A. mayor’s race where mail-in ballots have swung election outcomes. Other contests, including those for highly competitive Orange County congressional districts and L.A. City Council seats, have come down to extremely narrow margins that have shifted long after election day.

On election night in November 2024, just over 1,000 votes separated Democrat Dave Min and Republican Scott Baugh in their bid for the 47th Congressional District, with Baugh enjoying a slight lead.

But, ultimately, as more ballots were counted, Min pulled ahead. He ended up winning by about 10,000 votes.

Similarly, in the race between Democrat Derek Tran and then-incumbent Michelle Steel to represent Congressional District 45, it took until Nov. 27 to determine that Tran had won the contest by just over 650 votes.

In 2022, the race between then-incumbent Gil Cedillo and community activist Eunisses Hernandez for L.A. City Council was similarly unsettled. On election day, Cedillo had a comfortable lead with 56% of the vote. But two weeks later, Hernandez ended up in the lead with 54% of the vote to Cedillo’s 46%.

Experts say confirming the final spot in the mayor’s race could still take several more days, depending on how close the contest becomes and how many ballots still need to be counted. Only an estimated 62% of ballots from the city of Los Angeles had been counted as of Thursday morning.

“Of the 40% remaining, or outstanding, there could still be a chance that there would be a significant return of more left-leaning votes, which would certainly benefit Raman,” said Pete Peterson, dean of the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.

Late results tend to favor Democrats — as seen in the 2022 Bass-Caruso contest — as Democrats tend to be more likely to vote by mail, a system that accepts ballots up to seven days after election day as long as they are postmarked by that Tuesday. And this year, Democratic voters held on to their ballots longer amid an unsettled governor’s race, which could further boost that phenomenon.

“The major difference between ’26 and ‘22, you had two candidates versus three,” Peterson said. “Mathematically, it’s a different situation.”

Three experts The Times interviewed said Raman still had a chance to pass Pratt, but it seemed more likely at this point that Pratt would survive and challenge Bass in November.

The remaining ballots to count, even if they are overwhelmingly left-leaning, will probably be split between Raman and Bass, which means Raman needs to outperform not just Pratt but Bass to make such a comeback possible, Peterson said.

He called her chances of ousting Pratt “dastardly remote … but it’s not impossible.”

In L.A. County, the registrar of voters reported late Wednesday that officials estimate they still have about 713,000 ballots to process and count, which primarily includes vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by election day but not yet received, as well as ballots returned to drop boxes and vote centers on election day. The registrar only made countywide estimations, which includes a much larger pool than L.A. city voters who will decide the mayor’s race.

Kamy Akhavan, the managing director at the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, said there’s a theory circulating among pundits that ballots submitted later are going to break more progressive, meaning they’ll be more friendly to Raman.

“Whether there is enough of them to tilt the outcome in favor of Raman taking a second place position, right now, it seems unlikely,” he said.

Pratt is pulling from the same electorate in Los Angeles that voted for President Trump and could snag a few more voters who are angry about the state of the city. But his lead very well could shrink a bit as more Democrats’ ballots are counted, Murphy said.

“Nithya, she’ll probably go up because there’s going to be a fair amount of Democratic votes and she’ll get her chunk, but will she catch Pratt? You can extrapolate it either way,” Murphy said.

A similar left-leaning shift also occurred as more ballots were counted in November 2022 when Bass and Caruso faced off in the general election. Results on election night wavered between the two candidates, but by the following morning Caruso had a thin lead with 51.25% of the counted votes. Bass sat at 48.75%.

Caruso remained in the lead — though it continued to shrink — as the week dragged on, but by Saturday, Bass had pulled ahead with 50.78% of the counted vote. Caruso had fallen to 49.22%.

Her momentum continued to grow as more ballots were processed. Eight days after polls closed the following week, the Associated Press called the race for Bass. At that point, she led Caruso by six points with 53% of the vote.

The final tally would have her winning almost 55% of the vote.

California officials have worked to dispel rumors and falsehoods about slow election results — explaining that it’s part of the process to accurately count and confirm ballots, especially those mailed in — though there has been a growing push to expedite results to build voter trust.

The process has been particularly slow in L.A. County, though experts say that is mostly a result of the county’s massive voter base. Mail-in ballots are also heavily scrutinized with workers verifying signatures and giving voters a chance to remedy the situation if their signature doesn’t match, a process that takes time.

“They’re using that level of care because they’re supposed to — that’s their protocol — and also because it could make a big difference,” Akhavan said. “We’ve seen some elections in Southern California decided by single digits. And that just means this is going to take time. That can be very frustrating, even annoying, to Angelenos.”

Well, that didn’t take long.

A day after California’s primary election, President Trump took to social media with baseless claims of election fraud — predictable, but also dangerous.

“Look what’s happening in California, the Dumocrats, right before our very eyes, are stealing the Vote,” Trump wrote in one post.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote in another, apparently enamored of his latest juvenile slur.

Never mind that his candidate, Steve Hilton, is in the lead — for now anyway.

California has once again become the main dish on Trump’s buffet of bull-hockey as he continues to undermine democracy and consolidate authoritarian power, using this disingenuous and patently untrue narrative that American elections are rigged by shadowy Democratic forces working in collusion with illegal immigrants.

That last part is called the Great Replacement Theory, the idea that “elites” are replacing white people — and white voters — with Black and brown immigrants in a bid to destroy white culture. It’s at the heart of Trump’s voter fraud allegations.

The twist this time is that Hilton, the man who wants to represent all Californians, seems to be jumping on the election fraud conspiracy train with the president. I get it, there’s the MAGA base to feed, and it’s a base that feasts on outrage and fakery. Serving up resentment glazed with lies and propaganda has been the MAGA playbook for years under Trump, a strategy that no one can deny has been heartbreakingly effective.

But Hilton is a smart man and must certainly know that voter fraud is rare, to the point of being inconsequential to election outcomes. Hilton by his own admission understands voting patterns, and that in this cycle, Republicans have voted early and often by mail, despite Trump’s claims that all vote-by-mail should be suspect. So Hilton understands that early votes have skewed his way, and that later vote tallies will likely favor Democrats.

And Hilton is definitely intelligent enough to expect that in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly three to one, he will not keep the top spot in this primary, and a slim chance remains that he will not make it into the top two. That’s just simple math.

So if Hilton truly seeks to represent this state as its top elected executive, now is the time to renounce election fraud myths and stand up to Trump’s lies. If Hilton can’t say that he believes our recent election was free and fair, then he has no business being our governor.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the path he’s taking, even as it seems increasingly likely that he will advance to the general election.

This week, speaking with far-right podcaster and former Turning Point USA creative director Benny Johnson (who was allegedly duped into working for a Russian influence operation), Hilton said that while “so far we’re not seeing any signs” of cheating, “we’re going to be all over it. We’re not going to let them do that.”

Hilton was responding to a question from Johnson on whether Hilton will sue over “cheating.”

On a post-election appearance with Laura Ingraham, the conservative Fox News host who has repeatedly promoted the Great Replacement Theory, Hilton delved into more conspiracy.

“Just to really underline the point that you made about the corruption,” he told Ingraham an anecdote about supposed fraud in a previous election cycle when a “whistleblower” at the post office told him that they were instructed that a handwritten postmark was acceptable when sorting ballots to deliver to the county registrar.

“It’s just unbelievable, and of course, that’s why so many people don’t believe the results, but it just undermines confidence,” he told Ingraham, certainly knowing that the post office forwarding a ballot on to a county registrar in no way means it will be certified or counted. Would we really want the USPS deciding which ballots to deliver? Disingenuous on Hilton’s part at best.

“The whole thing is a joke,” Hilton went on to say of California elections, which of course, is absurd.

Thursday, when I asked Hilton’s team to speak with him about his views on voter fraud, they sent back a response that focused on the slowness of the California vote count; voter rolls Hilton has described as “wildly inaccurate,” which is a wildly inaccurate claim; and two instances of actual fraud with voter registration — not examples of votes that were counted.

To be sure, all those items are important. Any malfeasance should be punished, and the system should always strive to improve.

But how hard is it to simply be against fraud, while accurately acknowledging that it is rare and our current system provides accurate results?

I am against voter registration fraud. I am against vote fraud. I am absolutely pro-democracy, including policies such as mail-in voting that increase participation.

I do not believe that there is widespread fraud in the California primary, or in American elections in general, because the evidence does not support that conspiracy. I do not believe that Democrats are running a decades-long, nationwide conspiracy to replace white voters with votes from Black and brown undocumented immigrants, because that is both false and racist.

Pretty basic stuff, and statements in line with the values and common sense of the majority of Californians Hilton says he will represent.

If Hilton can’t come out and clearly say that Trump is wrong — about fraud and about the Great Replacement Theory — can he really be trusted to represent the values of the Golden State?

More than a day after polls closed, voters still hadn’t learned which two candidates would run off in the November general election for dozens of races.

Many significant races are still too close to call. In the race for governor, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra held leads, with Democrat Tom Steyer and Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco trailing. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San José Mayor Matt Mahan and former Rep. Katie Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data. Races can be called within minutes of polls closing on election night. However, if a race has tight margins or an high expected volume of mail-in ballots, it can take longer to call.

In some cases, such as for L.A. mayor and state treasurer, the tight race is between second and third place.

In California’s primary, the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of candidate pool size, party preference, or whether one candidate receives a majority of votes. Locally and in nonpartisan races, however, a candidate can avoid the November election if they win with a majority.

Statewide

State Senate

State Assembly

Congress

Almost half of California’s 52 U.S. House of Representatives seats had known finalists on election night. But in tight races such as the Republican vs. Republican competition in the 40th District and the Democrats’ challenging of Republican Rep. David Valadao in a redrawn 22nd District, the top two vote-getters weren’t yet known.

Local

In Los Angeles County, there were still 27 races with uncertain results. The Times considers uncertain races those where no candidate has a majority or where the vote share for the top two is between 55% and 40%. The Associated Press does not call winners for most local races, such as city councils, city officers and ballot measures. If no candidate wins with a majority, the top two will face off in November. That could be the case for the sheriff and L.A. City Council’s 3rd District.

The L.A. County registrar will continue to count and confirm mailed-in, provisional and conditional ballots until June 26. Updates to the results charts below are expected approximately once a day in the early evening.

Close city races

Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The secretary of state will certify results in early July.

I was alone in the forest in my favorite place for the first time in years, so I did the only logical next right thing. I lay down.

There I was, sprawled next to Millard Canyon Falls, listening as the water roaring down the cliff and cool air whooshed past my face. I gained a new perspective when I gazed at an upside-down waterfall. What’s the point of hiking if we don’t play around?

In today’s edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I provide you with three great hikes where rivers and waterfalls are still flowing. It’s essential information as we head into summer and temperatures start to rise.

If you were to force me to choose my favorite hike, I would stubbornly refuse to pick just one, but my list would include these three.

That’s why I really want to urge you, my dear Wild reader, to treat these places with the reverence they deserve. That includes:

• Refreshing your memory on the seven “Leave No Trace” principles.
• Packing a small trash bag in which you can store empty food wrappers, toilet paper and garbage you spot along the way.
• Observing wildlife from a distance, including California newts, which you shouldn’t pick up because it’s rude and, more important, because they can secrete a neurotoxin through their skin that can be lethal to humans.
• Remember to practice good hiking etiquette.

OK, let’s talk about where your next favorite hike will be!

Millard Canyon Falls in Angeles National Forest.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

1. Millard Canyon Falls

Distance: 3.3 to 4.3 miles (see below)
Elevation gained: About 900 to 1,100 feet
Difficulty: Moderate
Dogs allowed? Yes
Accessible alternative: Paved segment of Gabrielino Trail from Windsor Boulevard

This 3.3- to 4.3-mile hike to Millard Canyon Falls will take you through lush hillsides and beneath the shade of coast live oaks and bigleaf maples as you walk alongside, and sometimes through, Millard Creek. Your journey ends at Millard Canyon Falls, a gorgeous 50(ish)-foot waterfall that gushes past massive boulders perched at the top of the cascade.

This hike is usually much shorter (about 1.5 miles), but a road closure in place since the Eaton fire lengthened it. I will explain more about the closure later. It is important to note, though, that Chaney Trail is the name of the roadway and an actual trail, both of which you’ll take on this hike.

To begin your hike, you can either parallel park near Nuccio’s Nurseries, taking care to obey all parking signage, or if those spots are all taken, park nearby and order a rideshare to drop you at the trailhead. I had cell reception with Verizon here, so it should be possible to order a ride back to your vehicle.

Millard Creek in Angeles National Forest.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

From here, you have two options for reaching the Millard Canyon Falls trailhead.

1. Follow Chaney Trail road for about 1.66 miles to the Millard Canyon Falls trailhead. This route will be exposed, so you’ll need to start early if you choose this option.

2. Walk about half a third of a mile north from Nuccio’s, and then, near a bend in the road, you’ll take the Chaney Trail, a winding dirt path that I was delighted to find is in great shape. (Shout out to Restoration Legacy Crew, a volunteer trail maintenance group, for its amazing work in the Millard Canyon area!)

That trail is a bit overgrown in a few spots, so you’ll want to wear pants (or take the road). Additionally, make sure to lightly stomp before heading into overgrown areas, as this helps alert any snakes snoozing in the shade of your presence.

The view from the ground looking up at Millard Canyon Falls.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

You’ll take Chaney Trail for about half a mile, pausing to catch your breath and take in the increasingly great views of the San Gabriel Valley. You will next cross over Mt. Lowe Motorway to take the Sunset Ridge Trail down. (See map for greater detail.)

You will boogie down a few switchbacks for 0.7 miles, enjoying shade provided by bay laurels and sumac trees, listening to the sweet songs of canyon wrens and spotted towhees. (That’s who was singing to me, anyway!)

You will reach the Millard Canyon campground, which is closed for overnight camping but does feature a few nice picnic tables shaded by massive coast live oaks. With the creek flowing nearby, I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped and had a little snack here.

Millard Campground in Angeles National Forest. It is closed because of damage from the Eaton fire.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

That said, you have finally made it to the Millard Canyon Falls trailhead! Just northwest of the campground, you’ll find a little arrow pointing you northward onto the trail. From here, you will gain minimal elevation, and can actually just frolic. It is about half a mile to the waterfall.

As I mentioned, this trail is usually shorter and easier to access, as there’s a large parking lot near the trailhead and more parking along the roadway.

The roadway Chaney Trail was slated to reopen at the end of April. I frequently checked Los Angeles County Public Works’ road closure website, as I had planned to write about Millard Canyon once the road reopened. But when I checked the website, I saw that the reopening had been moved to the end of August. Huh?

I asked the public information officers at county Public Works about it and was told: “We are currently coordinating with our on-call emergency contractor to complete guardrail repairs on Chaney Trail, just north of the gate. Construction is anticipated to begin in July and be completed by the end of August, weather and field conditions permitting.”

Clockwise from top left: prickly phlox, golden yarrow, cliff aster and a type of larkspur. Center: A little bird on a dried out plant.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I passed a shiny new guardrail just north of the gate when I was hiking there earlier this week. I asked the agency whether there was some other guard rail missing. No, my friends. “The community raised concerns about the roadway narrowing included in this project, and we will be reconstructing the guardrail to address those concerns,” a spokesperson told me via email.

And now ends the saga of the Chaney Trail guardrail.

As for Millard Canyon, I will admit, it quite possibly is my favorite frontcountry natural areas. I was reminded of this fact when I visited this week. Although the road closure adds some steep mileage to reach the canyon, it’s worth it to me. I will be back. I hope to see you there!

The Fish Canyon Narrows near Castaic.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

2. Fish Canyon to Fish Canyon Narrows

Distance: About 5.5 miles
Elevation gained: About 400 feet
Difficulty: Moderate
Dogs allowed? Yes
Accessible alternative: San Francisquito Creek Trail

To reach the Fish Canyon Narrows, you will take the Fish Canyon Trail (called Forest Route 6N32 or the Warm Springs Fish Canyon Truck Trail on some maps) on a 5.5(ish)-mile out-and-back journey. You will ascend into narrowing walls of sandstone, granite and conglomerate. A healthy stream flows throughout the canyon, giving you ample opportunity to cool off or have a picnic in a naturally occurring sound bath (which, when you’re lucky, will include a tree frog).

A quick note: This is the most rugged (read: least curated) of the three adventures mentioned in this list. There is no trail signage, and you’re in a less popular corner of Angeles National Forest. You might be entirely alone, especially if you hike this on a weekday. You should plan accordingly. Or skip it if I’ve already freaked you out. (I do this out of love!)

To begin, you’ll park on the road’s shoulder, and head east through a gate. Follow the roadway north and then south as it curves toward a dirt path. Follow the exposed dirt path northeast. You’ll trudge through multiple water crossings and be blessed with the occasional shade of sycamore trees.

The narrows are often cooler than the rest of the area. The first portion of this hike has little to no shade, so make sure to wear plenty of sun protection.

And if you leave the trail but aren’t ready to go home, head over to the swim beach at Castaic Lake. And if you’re not tired, there’s always the Cali Splash Park, a massive inflatable floating park. That’s a full day of adventure!

A hiker lies near the creek along the Icehouse Canyon Trail.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

3. Icehouse Canyon Trail to Icehouse Saddle

Distance: Around 7 miles
Elevation gained: 2,600 feet
Difficulty: Challenging
Dogs allowed? Yes
Accessible alternative: West Fork National Scenic Bikeway

Icehouse Canyon Trail to Icehouse Saddle is a 7(ish)-mile trek that runs mostly parallel to the gorgeous and crystal clear Icehouse Creek, which often features several short waterfalls as the water rockets down the mountainside.

As they trek through the canyon shaded by bigleaf maple, California incense-cedar and bigcone Douglas-fir, hikers might spot wildflowers including orange-yellow western wallflowers, light purple Grinnell’s Beardtongue and red western columbine.

Icehouse Canyon is popular on weekends and is best visited on a weekday if you can swing it. You’ll need either a $5 Adventure Pass, an annual America the Beautiful pass or other federal public lands pass to park.

To begin your hike, you’ll park at or near the trailhead — in the parking lot if it’s your lucky day. Otherwise, you’ll park along the roadside, taking good care to read signage and not block anyone’s driveway. Once while walking to the trailhead, I was greeted by a local dog whose collar informed me that he was allowed to meander about and knew how to get back home. I love small mountain towns.

After you park — and remember to display your pass, as forest service workers do ticket vehicles without them — you’ll head east to the trailhead.

A visitor cools down in the creek at Icehouse Canyon.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Immediately upon entering the canyon, you’ll be greeted with stunning beauty. Try not to become too distracted by the pools of water surrounded by large boulders. (No one will know if you skip the hike and just take a dip.)

About a mile into your hike, you’ll come to a crossroad where the Chapman Trail and Icehouse Canyon Trail intersect. Continue east on the Icehouse Canyon Trail. A mile farther, you’ll start the switchback portion of the trail, where you’ll gain about 1,200 feet in 1.5 miles. It’s a beautiful suffer fest.

Icehouse Saddle will offer you incredible views of the San Gabriel Mountains and Mojave Desert. You’ll likely meet other hikers here who are planning to continue their journeys to one of several peaks reachable from the saddle, including to popular spots like Cucamonga and Ontario peaks.

Hikers meander past boulders and large pine trees.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

It can be quite windy at Icehouse Saddle, so if you’re planning to have your lunch here (which I’ve done many times), consider packing a windbreaker.

The Times has been writing about hiking in Icehouse Canyon for more than 100 years, as city dwellers have long been drawn to its beauty. A July 1926 article about Icehouse Canyon started with a headline declaring, “Here’s a nice cool trip” in all caps.

“It is a trip which one will want to take more than once when its lure has gotten into the blood,” an unnamed Times journalist wrote.

May we all be so lucky to return again and again.

3 things to do

Docent Susan Hopkins leads a Pride Month hike during a previous year’s celebrations.

(L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation)

1. Celebrate Pride across L.A. County
The L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation will host several events celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride throughout June. Almost 60 county parks are hosting events, including from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Dalton Park in Azusa; from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Dr. Richard H. Rioux Park in Stevenson Ranch; and from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park in La Crescenta. For a list of all events, visit parks.lacounty.gov.

2. Walk for peace in L.A.
Los Angeles meditation nonprofit InsightLA will lead a free 12-mile Walk for Peace from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The walk will start at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and end with community picnic at Tongva Park in Santa Monica. Register at insightla.org.

3. Repair trails in remote forest near L.A.
The Lowelifes Respectable Citizens’ Club, a volunteer trail maintenance group, needs volunteers on Saturday and Sunday to help restore an overgrown segment of the Gabrielino Trail in Angeles National Forest. Volunteers will either ride gravel bikes down a 5.5-mile dirt road or hike in. Previous trail work experience not required. Register by emailing trailwork@lowelifesrcc.org.

The must-read

The aedes aegypti mosquito, called the “yellow fever mosquito,” is well-known for spreading nasty illnesses like its namesake and dengue fever.

(Sameer Neamah Mahdi / Associated Press)

Here’s a sentence I didn’t expect to write this year (or ever): Google would like to release up to 64 million sterilized male mosquitoes in California and Florida to help combat mosquito-borne illnesses such dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever. “Google says it can harness technology to optimize a concept that’s been around for decades, but hasn’t worked at a large enough scale with mosquitoes to rein in disease,” Times staff writer Lila Seidman reported. The project is called Debug —although Google could have gone with WiFly.

I’ll see myself out.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

You’re sitting there thinking about your weekend, wondering, “Is there anywhere I could go dressed as a shark?” Why, yes, there is! The Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and Cosplay for Science will co-host the Science Entertainment Aquarium Convention from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the aquarium (3720 Stephen M. White Drive in San Pedro). SeaCon 2026 will feature a beach cleanup, a fictional marine biology panel and a cosplay contest, along with much more. Learn more at the aquarium’s Instagram page. Have a jaw-some time!

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

To the surprise of few, President Trump has once again claimed without evidence that Democrats are somehow cheating to win California’s primary elections — writing on social media late Wednesday that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are investigating the matter.

“The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS,” Trump posted to his social media platform Truth Social.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles,” he wrote in a second post. “Why the vote counting DELAY???”

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles — run by Trump loyalist First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — declined to comment Thursday morning on Trump’s claims of an investigation.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office responded directly to Trump late Wednesday with its own social media post, writing, “Trump is lying about California again — time to take the phone away from grandpa and put him to sleep.”

On Thursday morning, Newsom’s office wrote that there “is a lot of misinformation floating around about California’s election — including from the President,” and recommended people watch a CNN video about California’s election process. It concluded that delays in vote counting in the state are essentially a result of state leaders deciding that providing voters with “last minute options” for casting ballots is more important than a quick count.

“And yes, for the record: we wish the votes were counted faster, too,” Newsom’s office wrote — a nod to the fact that the issue isn’t new.

In an email, Brandon Richards, Newsom’s deputy director for rapid response, said Trump’s claims are part of “a tinfoil hat level conspiracy theory that has been debunked repeatedly.”

The president’s claims of cheating were predicted before the election by both elections experts and Democratic leaders in California, who dismissed them in advance as more baseless bluster from a president beset by low approval ratings.

A worker puts ballots in a counting machine at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Wednesdayin City of Industry.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Those same experts and Democratic leaders acknowledge that California’s system for counting votes takes a long time and should be quickened, but stress that is not because of anything nefarious. Rather, it is because California allows voters to cast ballots by mail up until election day — and then has to count those ballots, which can number in the millions and are subject to manual signature verification.

Trump has long dismissed such explanations. An election denier since he first entered politics more than a decade ago, Trump has pushed skepticism about elections he and his party lose time and again since — most notably when he claimed, again without evidence, that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was stolen.

Trump even challenged Biden’s victory in court, but his claims were rejected completely because neither he nor his attorneys could produce any evidence substantiating them.

He has combined his tactic of targeting undocumented immigrants for political gain with his skepticism of election integrity by claiming, again without evidence, that such immigrants somehow vote in large numbers, particularly in big blue states such as California, despite experts saying there is no evidence of that.

He has alleged that mail ballots — such as those used by the majority of California voters — are a particularly rich source of voter fraud, despite again having no basis for the claim and it being disputed by experts.

A consistent feature of his election fraud claims is that they arise and target races only when Republicans lose or lose ground.

And, he has tried to use the power of his administration to make sweeping changes to election laws to bar mail ballots and require strict voter ID and proof of citizenship measures, despite the control of elections and their rules being constitutionally given to the states.

Those efforts have prompted a wave of litigation between the Trump administration and California and other blue states, with multiple cases pending in the courts over voter ID, proof of citizenship, mail balloting and the role that the U.S. Postal Service may be allowed to play in processing such ballots.

Trump’s latest remarks came as additional vote counting on Wednesday narrowed the advantage of Republican Steve Hilton over his Democratic challengers in the California governor’s race and closed the gap in the L.A. mayoral race between the MAGA-aligned candidate Spencer Pratt, currently running second, and City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running third.

The trend was anticipated. Elections experts warned before vote counting began of the potential for a “red mirage,” wherein earlier voting among Republicans and late voting among Democrats — many of whom were unsure of whom to vote for in the two high-profile races — would create an early illusion of Republican victories despite large volumes of liberal votes from major population centers still to be counted.

It is a trend that has played out repeatedly in past elections, and one that does not come as a surprise to careful elections watchers.

Elections officials in California knew such claims were going to be made, as they’ve been made in the past. Some local elections officials made a point of preparing their staffs for baseless claims of election fraud in advance of this year’s primaries. State officials made repeated efforts to explain the reasons why California elections take time, precisely to undercut claims amid counting that the delays were the result of fraud.

But those claims have come regardless, and not just from Trump.

Above an X post Wednesday suggesting Pratt was losing ground to Raman as more counts came in, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote, “California keeps dumping votes. Odds are shifting because the vote dumps always seem to go one way. Count until you get the result you want?”

Above another X post Wednesday noting that the California count would take time, Katie Miller, a former Trump administration official and conservative podcaster married to Trump’s top advisor Stephen Miller, wrote, “The Democrats are about to steal the LA mayoral race once again using mail-in voting.”

Both of the posts that DeSantis and Miller were responding to were from Polymarket, a prediction market where people can bet on the outcomes of political races, pop culture events and a slew of other subjects.

Such emerging financial markets, which process billions of dollars in bets, are causing rising concerns about political meddling for profit — including by campaign staffers and other individuals with insider knowledge of polling and other campaign information, or by politicians and their operatives, whose public remarks about politics can swing those markets.

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.

WASHINGTON — As Californians cast their ballots in the state’s closely watched gubernatorial primary Tuesday, a very different race was playing out in Iowa — one that holds clues about the mood of Republican voters heading into November.

President Trump’s endorsed candidate in Iowa’s high-stakes governor’s race, Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, lost his bid for the party’s nomination, a rare defeat for a Trump-backed candidate.

The outcome exposed fractures among Republican voters, though their choice of Zach Lahn, who ran on an “Iowa First” and Make America Healthy Again platform, didn’t amount to a rebuke of Trump’s politics, said Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa.

The primary race was “emblematic of the seismic plates that make up the Republican Party in Iowa,” Centers said — the successful MAGA-style message, from Lahn; a more traditional conservative platform, from Feenstra; and a conservative Christian approach, from candidate Adam Steen.

“It’s a bit of a look-ahead in terms of how the Republican Party is going to be shaped in what will be a post-Trump era,” Centers said. “Those plates are moving, and last night in Iowa, we had an earthquake.”

Results from Iowa, California and other late-stage primaries portend contentious fall campaigns, with control of the House and Senate hanging in the balance.

“You’re seeing Republican primary voters rebel against politicians, whether it’s Dusty Johnson in South Dakota or Chip Roy in Texas,” said Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist and chief communications officer at Targeted Victory. “There’s clearly a backlash against sitting politicians, and Republican primary voters are looking for outsiders.”

That pro-outsider outlook has been promoted by Trump himself in some races, as he has used his endorsement to boost primary challengers to victory over Republican incumbents — notably in Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky. In Tuesday’s primaries, however — held in six states — none of the races involved Republican veterans whom Trump wanted to see ousted.

Outside of such races, Trump — who last week said, “I don’t care about the midterms” — has taken a more laissez-faire approach. In Iowa, he did not endorse Feenstra until Friday, a last-minute boost that didn’t help the congressman over the finish line.

Lahn, in a victory speech Tuesday night, acknowledged the upset he had pulled off.

“Nobody thought this could be done,” Lahn said. “We were outspent, opposed by the establishment, told to wait our turn.”

Lahn will face Iowa state auditor Rob Sand, who ran uncontested for the Democratic nomination. The seat is being vacated by Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who is not seeking reelection.

Iowa Republicans will now ramp up efforts to retain both the governor’s office and the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Joni Ernst, as Democrats target both offices for flipping.

The race to replace Ernst is now on between Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has been in Congress since 2021 and has Trump’s support, and Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek, a former Paralympian who was backed by a leadership PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Economic issues, particularly in the agricultural sector, where farmers have been squeezed by Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran, could dominate the races. Centers said both parties are acutely aware of the economic factors — and aware that Democrats’ chances in Iowa could be slightly better than “a hope and a prayer,” though the state’s voter-registration edge remains solidly red.

“I don’t think many Republicans in Iowa are bashful about acknowledging the environment we’ll face in November,” Centers said. “It’s going to be a hard-fought race.”

Other Tuesday takeaways

Elsewhere on Tuesday, voters chose candidates in races for U.S. Senate, House and governor’s seats, setting up some lively November match-ups.

In New Jersey, the state’s 7th Congressional District will be a closely watched contest — largely because of the recent absence of Republican Rep. Tom Kean, who has not been publicly seen for months as he deals with an undisclosed medical issue.

His absence has provided an opening to Democrats, who have ramped up attention on the seat as they attempt to flip as many House seats as possible. Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, won the Democratic nomination Tuesday.

Kean, who has support from Trump, ran unopposed. In a statement Tuesday evening, he laid out plans to reveal his medical condition when he returns to in-person work, which he said would be “within a matter of weeks.”

The race could become key to Democrats’ attempt to win control of the House in November.

“We’re ready for this fight. Bring it on,” Bennett wrote Wednesday on X.

In Montana, the race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, being vacated by Republican Sen. Steve Daines, was also set to get interesting.

Trump-backed Republican Kurt Alme, a former U.S. attorney, and Democrat Alani Bankhead, an Air Force veteran, won primaries Tuesday — but former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar has launched an independent bid for the seat. Bodnar said Tuesday that he had delivered enough petition signatures to the secretary of state to get on the November ballot.

And in New Mexico, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland secured the Democratic nomination for governor, advancing in her bid to make history as the first Native American governor in the United States. She will face Republican Gregg Hull, a former local mayor, in November.

What’s next

Next week brings Maine’s Senate primaries, following a Democratic race that has taken several twists and turns. Democrats have held hopes of unseating Sen. Susan Collins, the veteran Republican lawmaker, as part of their long-shot attempt to flip the Senate along with the House.

But leading Democratic candidate Graham Platner has been dogged by controversies. The primary vote will be held just more than a week after a New York Times report that he had sent sexual messages to several women outside his marriage. This week, Gov. Janet Mills, who had opposed Platner but suspended her campaign at the end of April, said, “I am still on the ballot.”

Also to watch: Next week’s outcomes in South Carolina’s crowded gubernatorial field; the June 16 Georgia Senate runoff to determine which Republican will face Democratic Sen. Jon Osoff; and the June 16 Democratic primary for Senate in Oklahoma.

Times staff writer Michael Wilner,in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: The U.S. is investigating two more Mexican governors for connections to cartels
The deep dive:Can we speed up California’s vote count already?
The L.A. Times Special:More middle-class Californians cancel health coverage after losing federal aid

More to come,
Justine McDaniel and Michael Wilner
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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.

Once mired near the bottom of a crowded pack of Democrats in opinion polls, Becerra, a former Biden administration cabinet member, rocketed ahead of his rival candidates after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race in April amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. The scandal triggered an upswing of voter interest in California’s once sluggish governor’s race and in Becerra, who seized the moment.

“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.”

Steyer, who spent more than $216 million of his wealth on the race, has not conceded defeat.

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.

The billionaire former hedge fund owner campaigned against the corporate and special interests that have a powerful presence in Sacramento and often spend heavily in elections, including this year against Steyer.

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.

June 3 (UPI) — A 15-hour standoff at a California bank ended with the suspect shot dead and all hostages freed, police said Wednesday.

The man had barricaded himself inside the Chase Bank building on Chester Avenue and 17th Street in Bakersfield at about 1 p.m. PDT Tuesday. Police were sent to the downtown bank for a bomb threat, and when they arrived they found a man was inside the bank with several hostages, though some were able to escape.

Buildings in the area were evacuated, and police responded with SWAT teams, hostage negotiators and a bomb squad.

Twice on Tuesday evening, hostage negotiators convinced the suspect to release a hostage.

But around 4:20 a.m. Wednesday, the situation “concluded following an officer-involved shooting” by FBI personnel, the Bakersfield Police Department said in a press release. It also said the department was not involved in the use of force.

The FBI Sacramento office said earlier that it was sending help to the scene.

The number of people taken hostage wasn’t immediately clear, but those who remained in the building were unharmed.

“We are aware of the ongoing situation occurring at the building where our branch is located on the ground floor,” a Chase Bank spokesperson told CBS News in a statement. “The branch is currently empty, and we are working with authorities.”

The area around the building was still closed Wednesday morning. Police told the public to avoid the area and allow for extra travel time.

After all the buildup, fear and uncertainty, the most wide-open and unpredictable California gubernatorial primary in decades appears to have ended in the most consistent and predictable of ways.

California has never elected a female governor. That won’t change in November.

Voters have never much cared for rich people trying to buy the state’s highest elected office. They still don’t.

The California electorate has typically favored experience over youth, and favored bland and boring over razzle and dazzle. It continues to do so.

And for all the speculation about one political party or the other being shut out in Tuesday’s primary, the November runoff may very well turn out to be a thoroughly conventional Democrat vs. Republican matchup.

Here are five takeaways from a gubernatorial contest that was sedentary and sleepy until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

Flashback!

Three months ago, Xavier Becerra seemed so irrelevant he — along with a clutch of other weak-polling candidates — was conspicuously excluded from a scheduled debate at USC. Today, the Democrat has seemingly punched his ticket to November.

The obvious parallel is with another massive underdog, Gray Davis, who also came from far behind to win the last time a gubernatorial primary held this level of uncertainty and suspense. That was back in 1998.

Like Davis, Becerra has a political persona that could be marketed as a sleep aid. No one will ever mistake either of them for, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Becerra’s even-keeled demeanor seemed the perfect prescription following the overnight implosion of Eric Swalwell’s scandal-scarred campaign while presenting a welcome contrast with the endless Sturm und Drang emanating from Washington, D.C.

Despite California’s star-struck reputation (perpetuated mainly by outsiders), the state has elected far more governors like Davis and Becerra than Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan. In fact, other than Schwarzenegger, who prevailed in an unprecedented recall campaign, every candidate following Reagan has successfully run for statewide office at least once before being chosen governor.

Becerra was elected attorney general before heading to Washington to join the Biden administration; his candidacy offered worn-out voters a safe harbor amid the Trumpian tempest.

Cha-ching!

There are things money can’t buy which, Tom $teyer — er, Steyer — is just the latest to discover.

The hedge fund billionaire turned Democratic activist sank more than $215 million — a record — into his gubernatorial bid, after spending nearly $350 million in a failed 2020 try for president.

With roughly 60% of the vote counted, he was running an unimpressive third and hoping a lopsided surge of still-to-be-counted ballots will push him into the top two.

Half a billion dollars, which makes for a pretty pricey, “Meh.”

California has a long record of rejecting money-bag candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate — a pattern stretching back more than half a century. Given that hostile history, Steyer would enter the runoff as a distinct underdog, notwithstanding the many added millions he is poised to spend.

“These filthy rich people who don’t have to deal with the kind of financial struggles that people have in connection with their daliy lives just don’t feel relatable,” said Garry South, who ran Davis’ successful 1998 campaign against the free-spending Steyer of his day, former airline executive Al Checchi.

Given the relentlessly negative campaign Steyer has waged, besieged voters could count on many more ugly months of brutality on the airwaves, on computer screens and in their mailboxes.

The only happy ones would be TV station managers and political consultants cashing Steyer’s super-sized checks.

A self-fulfilling prophecy

It was never likely. But the mere prospect of Democrats being shut out of the November runoff was enough to guarantee such a scenario would not happen in this reliably blue state.

With a large pack of Democrats running and just two serious Republican contenders, Democratic partisans feared their fractured vote would let the GOP nab both spots in Tuesday’s top-two primary.

Much of the freak-out was fed by polls supposedly showing Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco atop the field. But no candidate ever had much more than a paltry 20% support; for all the heavy breathing, the race was always pretty much a multi-candidate tie.

Fearing the worst, however, voters who normally couldn’t tell a “jungle primary” from a jungle gym began thinking a lot like gimlet-eyed political strategists. Democrats, in particular, held onto their ballots much longer than usual, waiting to see which candidate appeared strongest at the end.

“The decision matrix on this was not just the political insiders, but all the normies who heard there might be two Republicans,” said Paul Mitchell, a Sacramento political data expert who developed a popular online tool handicapping various election scenarios. “They’re talking to friends and families. It was kind of crazy.”

In the end, the race among Democrats became less a contest than a self-fulfilling prophecy. Becerra was seen as the candidate with the best chance of advancing to November, so many voters flocked his way — ensuring he would advance to November.

Now he waits to see whether his opponent will be Hilton or Steyer.

Sacramento still a boy’s club

More than 30 states have elected female governors. A few have done so multiple times. But come January, California — which perceives itself as oh-so-cutting edge on oh-so-many things — will install the 41st in the state’s unbroken line of male governors.

Things might have been different had Kamala Harris jumped into the contest. The former vice president, U.S senator and California attorney general would have been a prohibitive favorite to end that gendered streak. When she opted not to run, there were still a handful of female contenders. But Toni Atkins and Betty Yee eventually fell by the wayside, leaving just Katie Porter.

The former Orange County congresswoman and whiteboard wizard was making her second try for statewide office after a failed 2024 bid for U.S. Senate. Given her wide name recognition and national fundraising base, Porter started as one of the front-runners for governor. But a needlessly combustible TV interview and a leaked video that showed her profanely snapping at one of her aides played into persistent questions about Porter’s temper and temperament.

Unfair? Perhaps.

“There’s expectations that are put on a woman” that are different from those male candidates face, said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC. Toughness in a man can be seen as abrasive or off-putting in a women. Acting with authority can come across — at least to some observers — as overbearing.

“A woman’s version of a leader still has to be at least somewhat feminine,” Romero said. “That’s what our society expects. So you have to be tough, but do it with a smile.”

Clearly, there’s a double standard. There’s also apparently a different standard for the office of governor. California, after all, became the first state in history to send two women to serve at the same time in the U.S. Senate and is home to the first female House speaker, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi.

But in Sacramento, within the governor’s suite, California’s highest glass ceiling remains firmly intact.

Youth won’t be served

Last fall, over a plate of enchiladas in downtown San José, Mayor Matt Mahan emphatically ruled out a run for governor.

“I have a wonderful marriage,” Mahan said at the time. “I have two wonderful kids. I loved working in the private sector. I’ve got a lot of great friends … I genuinely want to make our city better, and I love the job.”

He should have stuck to those words.

Instead, Mahan and his wealthy Silicon Valley backers talked themselves into a rushed and premature campaign that was never remotely competitive. Investors might have thought they were getting in on the ground floor of the next Amazon. Instead, Mahan’s candidacy was more like Pets.com, a famous e-commerce flop that came to embody the heedless froth of the dot.com bubble.

But it would be equally premature to write Mahan off.

Decades ago, another youthful big-city mayor ran an ill-considered campaign for governor, finishing a distant fourth and failing to muster even double-digit support. That, however, didn’t hurt Pete Wilson’s political career. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate en route to two terms as California governor.

At 43, Mahan has plenty of highway ahead and a good deal of political potential. His time may yet come.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

The shooting ends a 12-hour standoff in the city of Bakersfield between suspect and law enforcement.

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in the United States have fatally shot a man allegedly holding hostages inside of a building in California.

The shooting ended a 12-hour standoff at an office in Bakersfield that houses a bank branch and school district office.

In a statement, the Bakersfield police said the suspect was killed in “an officer-involved shooting involving Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel”.

It added that “all hostages were located unharmed and received medical evaluation and treatment at the scene”.

Police had originally been called following a bomb threat at the location. Police said the man barricaded himself inside with several people, two of whom were released Tuesday after negotiations with authorities.

Authorities established a wide perimeter around the building, evacuating the nearby City Hall and the police headquarters.

Bakersfield police sergeant Eric Celedon told reporters on Tuesday the department had “every single resource at our disposal out here to bring this to the safest resolution possible”.

Police on Wednesday said the investigation was ongoing and that “significant” law enforcement would remain in the area.

The identity of the suspect was not immediately released and a motive was unclear.

The Times’ results pages reveal how Californians voted for governor, U.S. House seats and in local city, school board and ballot measure races.

Every registered voter in the state receives a ballot by mail. Polls close at 8 p.m. on June 2, and mailed ballots need to be postmarked on or before that day. Winners may not be known on election night due to the high volume of mail-in ballots arriving after election day.

The vote counts on these pages update periodically as results are reported by the Associated Press and the L.A. County registrar. On election day, those results include in-person voting as well as any mail-in ballots already received. In the days and weeks following, votes will be reported approximately once a day, as they are processed by county registrars. Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials. The AP projects the winner for all statewide and federal races using vote returns and other data. A race may be called before all expected votes are in. Results can change as more ballots are counted.

These pages will update until the secretary of state certifies results on July 10.

The most important thing political junkies might need this week is patience.

With so many key races expected to be tight, officials are warning it could takes days — perhaps even more than a week — to know the outcome of Tuesday’s primary election.

Here are some important things to watch as the results roll in:

From left; Steve Hilton at the California Republican Convention in San Diego; Tom Steyer campaigning in downtown Santa Ana; and Xavier Becerra in San Diego.

(Los Angeles Times)

1. The fight for the second top spot

Most polls and pundits say Democrat Xavier Becerra is likely to be the top voter-getter in the primary to replace Gavin Newsom as California governor.

Until recently, it was assumed that Republican Fox News host Steve Hilton would also advance, especially after he was endorsed by President Trump.

But a new poll suggested Hilton was in a tight race for second place with Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer, who is spending heavily from his own fortune. If he is successful, California could see a competitive Democrat-versus-Democrat general election come November.

Under California’s election rules, the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of party preference.

Hilton is urging Republicans to unite around him to avoid being shut out. His main GOP opponent is Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

A few months ago, Hilton and Bianco led some polls amid a crowded Democratic field, prompting fears that Democrats might be locked out of November’s general election. But those concerns have subsided somewhat with Becerra’s rise in the polls.

More to read:

Left to right: Karen Bass on Friday, April 8, 2022; Spencer Pratt on April 16, 2025; Nithya Raman on March 3, 2026.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times; Jordan Strauss / Invision/AP; Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

2. Is the mayor’s race really a tossup?

It’s rare for the Los Angeles mayor’s race to become a national story. But that has happened this year thanks to a showdown few would have predicted.

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt is a big reason for all the attention, running from the right in a very liberal city. Embattled Mayor Karen Bass is the incumbent, with City Councilwoman Nithya Raman running from the left.

A UC Berkeley-L.A. Times poll released last week found a close race with Bass at 26%, Raman at 25% and Pratt at 22% among likely voters. Other polls have shown Pratt doing better.

Pratt had overshadowed his opponents when it came to social media (and old media) attention. But is that enough to get him into the runoff? Bass has big labor on her side, and we’ll see whether that helps her get out the vote. But Bass is also unpopular, according to polls. Does that give Raman an opening among Democrats who are looking for an alternative?

More to read:

Dan Egelhoff plays with his dog at a “Barbecue, Beer and Ballots” event at Rep. Ken Calvert’s office.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

3. The fallout from California redistricting

When it comes to congressional elections, this should be a good night for Democrats, by design. That’s because California voters last year approved Proposition 50, which redrew congressional districts to favor Democrats.

It was part of a national battle by both red and blue states designed to help their respective parties secure control of Congress. The new California maps give Democrats an advantage in some areas, but it’s still unclear how sweeping the victories will be. There are some notable intra-party battles in “safe” districts as well.

The Times’ data and graphics team has identified a few races to watch:

• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) lost his seat in redistricting and is now challenging incumbent Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) in the 40th District.
• In San Francisco, several factions of the Democratic Party are vying to replace former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 11th District.
• California’s 48th Congressional District in San Diego and Riverside counties has traditionally been red. But the sudden retirement of longtime Republican incumbent Darrell Issa and redistricting puts it in play.
• Veteran Rep. Brad Sherman is facing a strong challenge from fellow Democrat Jake Levine in the 32nd District.

More reading:

Want more information about the ballot-counting process? Times reporter Grace Toohey breaks it down, including how to track your mail-in ballot, how races get called and why it takes so long.