JUNEAU, Alaska — A candidate with the same name as Alaska’s incumbent U.S. senator has advanced to the general election in what will be one of the most closely watched races in the country this fall.
Dan J. Sullivan, who goes by Dan Sullivan, was among the top four finishers after the Aug. 18 primary and on Tuesday moved on to the November matchup, which is a ranked choice contest. The incumbent, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola also have advanced.
The challenger Sullivan, a retired teacher from the island community of Petersburg, sued for a spot on the ballot and succeeded after a judge invalidated a decision by a top state elections official who said he had filed his candidacy with an intent to confuse voters. The allegation was driven by claims raised by the senator and his GOP allies. The state Supreme Court ultimately ordered Dan J. Sullivan eligible for the ballot.
While the challenger sought to appear on the ballot as Republican Dan J. Sullivan, the Division of Elections listed him as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. The senator was listed as Dan S. Sullivan, Republican and incumbent.
A call seeking comment from the challenger was not immediately returned Tuesday, and emails to campaign staff for the senator also were not immediately returned.
President Trump endorsed Sen. Sullivan for reelection and called the other Sullivan’s candidacy an attempt to trick voters. Dan J. Sullivan criticized the incumbent for embracing Trump’s endorsement and said the president was “more interested in raising tariffs on our allies than in lowering the cost of groceries, housing and energy.”
It was too early to determine who would fill the fourth and final slot in the Senate general election race.
The Senate race was one of three major contests on Alaska’s primary ballot, which also featured races for the state’s lone U.S. House seat and governor.
In the congressional race, Republican Rep. Nick Begich, seeking a second term, advanced earlier to the general election along with independent Bill Hill. The other two spots remained too early to call.
Democrats Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Tom Begich, former state lawmakers, advanced on election night in the race for governor, topping a field of mostly Republican candidates all vying to succeed Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Tom Begich is Nick Begich’s uncle. Republican Bernadette Wilson also advanced on Tuesday, with the fourth spot remaining too early to call.
The state accepts absentee and overseas ballots up to 10 days after the primary as long as they were postmarked by election day.
The incumbent Sullivan and Peltola are the leading candidates in the Senate race, after raising the most money and having statewide name recognition. It’s one of a handful of Senate races around the country considered competitive and pivotal for both parties’ hopes of controlling the chamber.
Dan J. Sullivan’s presence on the general election ballot adds a twist to the race because of Alaska’s ranked choice voting system. Under it, candidates who finish third or fourth in the general election can play a crucial role in deciding the eventual winner if their supporters rank other choices beyond them.
As a teenager before he was even allowed to vote, Charlie Comfort organized for then-Sen. Barack Obama in his hometown of Oskaloosa, Iowa.
Now he’s a Republican.
Meet Charlie. He lives in Waterloo.
He’s 23 and this will be his third presidential caucus.
Charlie’s first foray into politics was during the 2008 campaign. He met Obama at the Smokey Row Coffeehouse, one of the most popular stops for candidates in Oskaloosa, on the Fourth of July in 2007.
Obama campaign volunteers. (Handout)
It was Malia Obama’s 9th birthday, and the shop’s staff put the candidate’s daughter’s name up on the marquee inside.
After Obama spoke, Charlie ran home excited and ready to help.
He wasn’t old enough to vote but dedicated hours to organizing his neighbors, teachers and anyone else who would listen. The Obama campaign said Charlie, a high school student, made more phone calls than any other volunteer in town.
His hard work — at age 15 — earned him a prime spot next to the candidate in this group photo.
They clearly illustrated the divided nature of the state: Martha Comfort backed Hillary Clinton, Keith Comfort preferred John Edwards and their son was traveling all over the region to put up Obama lawn signs instead of finishing his homework.
Here they are, eight years ago.
Martha Comfort, a legal assistant in town, was working as a Clinton precinct captain. Keith Comfort, a banker, was a little more passive about his support for Edwards, who would ultimately come in second in the caucuses (and later drop out of the race).
Here’s a semi-awkward clip where I tried to get them to pretend they were in a caucus.
His interest in education policy had an unintended consequence — he didn’t like that Obama, for whom he’d worked so hard to get to the White House, had not revamped the No Child Left Behind Act as promised. He found himself intrigued by the Republican candidates coming to town in the hopes of winning the Iowa caucuses and challenging Obama in 2012.
In the 2012 Iowa caucuses, he was a Newt Gingrich precinct captain.
But he changed his mind on the way in, and his first caucus vote ultimately went to ex-Sen. Rick Santorum. “I appreciate he spent so much time in Iowa,” Charlie says now.
Once Mitt Romney won the nomination, Charlie set out to help the GOP in the swing state.
That fall, he appeared in a piece by “PBS NewsHour.” (About four minutes into the piece, interviewed at the Smokey Row coffee shop, of course.)
Fast forward four years, and he’s got a tough choice to make.
Charlie has moved from Oskaloosa to Waterloo and is working in marketing. He spent his weekend “chasing the candidates around” because he was undecided as the long campaign for the caucuses comes to a close.
Like most Iowans interested in this quirky process, he’s met many of the hopefuls as they make their way across the state. He even introduced former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at an event at Smokey Row in October. But that didn’t really help him make up his mind.
“I am disappointed by all the anger, rhetoric and hatred that has been spewed by the party this year,” he says. “I am disappointed that the candidates who would support more moderate values have balked on that to try and get more of a conservative base turning out and I don’t think the Republican platform has been expressed as well as it could.”
Martha and Keith Comfort are still Democrats.
But they also are still split on their preferred candidate.
Keith Comfort gave his first-ever political donation, to Sen. Bernie Sanders. Martha Comfort isn’t working on Clinton’s behalf this time, but she’s still in her corner — probably.
“Now I’m on the fence and I may lean towards Bernie,” she says. “I like what he stands for and I look at Hillary and she really does have the experience but she does have some baggage. But I guess everybody does.”
Then again … “I’m leaning to Hillary because she’s realistic about what she’s promising. She knows what takes place in the office of the president and the process to get things through Congress.”
She says she’ll be resolute in her choice before walking into her neighborhood caucus meeting Monday night: “Nobody is going to persuade me there, even if my husband is across the room.”
As for Charlie, he’s made up his mind.
Iowa caucusgoer Charlie Comfort and presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina
Charlie Comfort and Carly Fiorina. (Courtesy of Charlie Comfort)
He didn’t even need the whole weekend.
“This is who I plan to caucus for,” Charlie said Saturday via Facebook Messenger.
It wasn’t intended to have dramatic effect, but the photo didn’t come through for several minutes.
But there he is, smiling next to former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, considered a long shot in Iowa and nationally.
“She seems genuine, authentic. She has a business background and has experience with policymakers, whether it be domestically or foreign. Ultimately, I think she is in it for the right reasons — to help fix America,” he said.
“I am very impressed with her secretary-to-CEO story. Only in America.”
California voters are more inclined to back progressives running for office than mainstream Democrats, a new poll found, though a marked generational divide separates those who favor each camp.
Registered Democratic voters over 65 were overwhelmingly more inclined to support a candidate identified as a mainstream Democrat, whereas more voters under 40 favored those more aligned with the party’s left wing, including democratic socialists.
The results, from a new poll conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times, illustrate the highly visible midterm-season debates unfolding within the Democratic Party over age, ideology and the party’s future.
“There’s particular frustration among the younger voting population,” said IGS poll director Mark DiCamillo. “Their views of mainstream Democrats are not that positive, and that’s a long-term problem, I think, for the Democratic Party.”
The poll asked voters about how they perceived candidates described as a progressive, democratic socialist, mainstream Democrat, Republican and MAGA supporter. Voters were asked whether each label made them more inclined or less inclined to back a given candidate, or if they believed there was not much difference or had no opinion.
Among all California voters, a candidate described as “progressive” drew the broadest support — besting both mainstream Democrats and Republicans, as well as democratic socialists and members of President Trump’s MAGA movement. At 40%, support for progressive candidates registered just two percentage points above support for democratic socialists and within the poll’s margin of error, though fewer people felt negatively toward progressives than democratic socialists.
Among registered Democrats, the survey found 60% said they would be inclined to support a candidate identified as progressive; 58% felt the same when asked about a democratic socialist and 48% about a mainstream party member.
The polling offers a glimpse into how California voters feel about democratic socialism, the brand of liberal politics popularized by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).
The views among all California voters were split, with 38% saying they would be more inclined to support a candidate labeled as a democratic socialist and 38% saying they would be less inclined. That makes the concept both more polarizing and more popular than the idea of a mainstream Democrat.
“To us, it’s honestly an incredibly good thing to hear that by and large, California voters see democratic socialism as a preferable option,” said Misha Kesselman, who leads membership coordination at the California Democratic Socialists of America.
“Being only two percent behind a progressive Democrat is the perfect place for us to be and for our organization to organize from,” Kesselman added. “I don’t see this as our ceiling; this is a great floor for us to start running from.”
Notably, more voters, 36%, said they were less inclined to support a mainstream Democrat than those who said they’d be more inclined, 29%. Twenty-seven percent showed indifference, however, possibly demonstrating that most voters would be fine supporting them in a general election, said Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University of Southern California.
The results could reflect a shift in labeling as much as in politics, Grose said, noting that most California Democrats now refer to themselves as progressive, a term that was not as popular 20 years ago, regardless of policy differences.
“Progressive Democrat in California has really in some ways become a mainstream Democrat, and then ‘mainstream’ is often associated with Washington,” Grose said, referring to the more moderate party establishment.
As the two parties compete for control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, the rise of democratic socialist ideas within the Democratic party has set off a debate among left-leaning leaders and voters about how best to counter Trump’s cultural dominance, appeal to disillusioned voters and create a winning presidential strategy for 2028.
The split does not fully fall along generational lines, but it often overlaps with the growing push by some younger candidates to oust veteran lawmakers, a debate over experience and seniority versus fresh blood.
Republicans have used the phenomenon as a key line of attack, as Trump and others have labeled Democrats as communists and extremists. In recent weeks, Trump argued that Democrats want to “destroy the traditional American way of life.”
“Sadly, young people have not been taught the truth about socialism and communism. It’s a dangerous road, and this is one of our efforts to make sure people know that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Saturday on Fox News, after launching a website last week dedicated to the idea that socialism and communism have failed.
Meanwhile, many establishment Democrats fear that a far-left candidate would be unable to win a general presidential election and worry a swing in that direction could jeopardize the party’s chances in 2028. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he does not support the Democratic Socialists of America agenda, further underscoring internal divisions.
Democratic socialism generally centers on an anti-capitalist agenda, including higher taxes for the wealthy and universal healthcare. Many progressive candidates support policy ideas backed by socialists but do not identify themselves as such.
A handful of high-profile progressive primary wins against Democrats backed by the establishment has supercharged the conversation in recent weeks, including this month in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated a moderate opponent.
But progressives have lost elsewhere, including in Wisconsin, where democratic socialist Francesca Hong last week was defeated in the gubernatorial primary by David Crowley, the more moderate Milwaukee County executive.
California was not host to that type of showdown this year, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, though progressive by national standards, was viewed by many left-leaning voters as a safer or more moderate primary choice. He faces Republican Steve Hilton in November.
In Los Angeles, however, the mayor’s race between incumbent Democrat Karen Bass and democratic socialist Nithya Raman is set to draw national attention. A handful of progressive candidates also advanced in House races, including Randy Villegas, who is challenging Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford); Mai Vang, challenging Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento); and Angela Gonzales-Torres, challenging Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles). Vang identifies as a democratic socialist.
The new polling also showed a generational divide among Republican voters: A higher share of older voters than younger said they would be more inclined to back a MAGA supporter, though all ages favored the Republican category over MAGA.
Seventy percent of GOP voters said a Republican label would make them more inclined to support a candidate, and 46% said the same of a MAGA label. Sixteen percent said they would be less inclined to vote for a candidate with a MAGA label and 29% said it didn’t make much difference.
Among California voters who eschew both the Democratic and Republican parties, either registered as no party preference or with other parties, a progressive candidate drew the most favorable reaction, but they also showed more support for a democratic socialist than a mainstream Democrat.
Those voters were not positively inclined toward right-leaning candidates, with 15% responding favorably to Republicans and 7% to MAGA.
Whether voters’ shifting preferences for the progressive or democratic socialist labels translate into any different policy action from those who are elected is an open question, Grose said.
“The labels are changing things… but it’s not clear yet if it’s changing the actual ideology of voters and elected officials,” Grose said. “What the elected officials do in office who are Democrats, that remains to be seen.”
The Berkeley IGS/Times poll findings are based on an online survey in English and Spanish of 4,207 California registered voters from Aug. 3-9. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of about 2.5 percentage points in either direction in the likely voter sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.
In early results from the special election runoff to complete the congressional term of disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, state Sen. Aisha Wahab was in the lead late Tuesday by a narrow margin.
Wahab (D-Hayward) is competing against Melissa Hernandez, president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board and the former mayor of Dublin.
According to Associated Press results, Wahab had 51.0% of the vote to Hernandez’s 49.0% as of 10:11 p.m. with 62% of votes counted.
Swalwell’s District 14 seat has been vacant since he resigned in April amid sexual assault allegations, which he has repeatedly denied.
Wahab and Hernandez were the finalists in the June 16 special primary, in which the top two finishers regardless of party affiliation advanced to Tuesday’s special election.
The two also will compete, once again, in the fall in a slightly redrawn district for a full term that begins in January 2027.
Both versions of the district are contained entirely within Alameda County in the East Bay. The current district includes Hayward, Livermore, Pleasanton and Union City, as well as parts of San Leandro, Fremont and Dublin.
The two candidates are both Democrats, but Wahab leans more progressive, while Hernandez is generally considered the more moderate candidate.
Earlier this summer, Wahab initially emerged as the clear front-runner. She placed first in both the June 16 special primary for the partial-term seat and the June 2 primary for the full-term seat — leading Hernandez by more than 20 percentage points in both races.
But the race became much more competitive after the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee funneled millions into campaign materials designed to defeat Wahab, who has publicly criticized Israel’s military actions in Gaza and called the humanitarian crisis there a genocide. Hernandez has said she supports Israel’s right to defend itself, but neither candidate has made the conflict a core part of their campaign.
United Democracy Project, a super political action committee backed by AIPAC, spent $1.2 million on the race in August in support of Hernandez and in opposition to Wahab, according to Federal Election Commission records. Another group, Bold America, which has received funding from United Democracy Project, has recently spent about $1.7 million supporting Hernandez.
In total, around $3.7 million in outside funding has been spent to promote Hernandez’s campaign since mid-July, compared to around $400,000 spent in support of Wahab’s campaign during the same time frame.
Over the course of the campaign, Hernandez has more than doubled Wahab’s fundraising and spending. However, both candidates ended July with roughly even amounts of cash in the bank.
Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.
The next Los Angeles City Councilmember to represent the West San Fernando Valley will either be a former small business owner backed by the Police Protective League or a career public-sector staffer who has racked up a long list of endorsements from unions and Democratic lawmakers.
Tim Gaspar, 44, founded an eponymous insurance agency in the Valley, which he sold in 2021and is now campaigning full time to win the Third District council seat, according to campaign spokesperson Haley Townes. He was the top vote-getter in the June 2 primary, garnering 46.1% of the vote.
Barri Worth Girvan, 43, was a close second with 42.5% of the vote. She is the director of community affairs for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath and previously held staff positions with former L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Democratic state senator Bob Hertzberg.
The winner of the Nov. 3 runoff will replace termed-out council member Bob Blumenfield, who recently endorsed Gaspar, as did Christopher Celona, the third-place finisher in the primary.
“We feel like those are the endorsements that resonate with voters here,” Gaspar told a group of voters at a recent campaign event.
L.A. City Council Candidate Tim Gaspar speaks with Dr. Lawrence Kaplan during a Kids on the Spectrum Bowling League event at Lucky Strike Bowling Alley this month.
(Arwen Clemans/Los Angeles Times)
In an interview, Gaspar said the City Council could benefit from his business experience to counter members whose backgrounds are mostly in public policy or community organizing.
“They’re missing the business perspective,” he said. “Sometimes you need to do things that might be unpopular if it’s going to be something that benefits the greater good. A healthy economy is the tide that raises all ships.”
L.A. City Council Barri Worth Girvan chats wth LAPD Capt. Rudy Lopez while greeting voters during a recent neighborhood National Night Out event in Canoga Park’s Lanark Park.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Worth Girvan, by contrast, says her years of experience in the public sector will ensure that she can best navigate City Hall to advocate for the district’s interests.
“Delivering core city services is my bread and butter,” she said in an interview. “If your trash isn’t picked up, if your trees aren’t trimmed, if your street lights aren’t working, if you pick up the phone to call 911 and nobody responds, then not only is your neighborhood not safe, but your city is not working for you.”
Gaspar has a huge lead in fund-raising, reporting more than $180,000 in donations to his runoff campaign through June 30, compared with about $31,000 for Worth Girvan.
In addition, companies and special interests including Airbnb, Uber, the California Apartment Association, the L.A. Police Protective League and IBEW Local 18 spent $1.39 million through independent expenditure committees in the primary race.
Airbnb spokeswoman Nicolette Velasquez said the candidates it backs, including Gaspar, are in favor of expanding short-term rental policies to allow homeowners to supplement their income by renting out their homes. Hotel companies and the unions representing hotel workers oppose such expanding the short-term rental market out of existing housing stock.
Worth Girvan asserts that her second-place finish in June was effectively “a virtual tie” given all the money companies and others spent to back Gaspar.
“We were massively outspent with that kind of money, but the voters clearly spoke, and we’re expecting an even broader electorate in the general,” she said.
Tim Gaspar outside the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley.
(Arwen Clemans/Los Angeles Times)
Gaspar’s contributors in the runoff include billionaire developer Rick Caruso and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Worth Girvan has picked up donations from state Assemblyman Mark Gonzalez (D-Boyle Heights), former Democratic state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and former Los Angeles City Council member David Ryu,according to her filing.
She also touts endorsements from a long list of Democratic lawmakers, including state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and Rep. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood)., and has strong backing from labor including the local chapters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Service Employees International Union and the including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
“Barri was a clear choice for us,” said Devin Osiri, Chief of Staff at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “Our unions have actually worked with her at all three levels of government. Her reputation, her professional resume from the Valley and her personal story are just more reflective of the LA Federation of Labor.”
The two candidates differ on housing policy.
Barri Worth Girvan meets voters at the National Night Out event in Canoga Park’s Lanark Park.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Worth Girvan said she supports more housing development, particularly near transit lines, saying the West Valley “needs to do our part” to scale up construction and bring housing prices down.
Gaspar said District 3 is already doing its part to bring in new housing development in areas like Warner Center, and remains skeptical of increasing density in single-family home neighborhoods.
He opposes rent control and some of the city’s current tenant protections, and said at the campaign event that he has a “zero tolerance policy” for homeless encampments.
Both candidates say public safety is their top priority, and they support expanding the Los Angeles Police Department.
Tired of budget stalemates, deficits and continuous acrimony in the state Capitol, California voters in 2010 started taking action to temper political gridlock and loosen the grip of entrenched special interests.
They approved statewide ballot measures to create an independent congressional redistricting commission, taking that power away from self-interested Sacramento lawmakers, as well as a new “top-two” primary system intended to stifle the power of the major political parties and provide more representative, less hyperpartisan candidates with a greater chance of victory.
Now, in an era of even more bitter divisions in the state and nation, those reforms face severe threats.
Last month, supporters of a proposal to repeal the state’s current primary system, in which the two candidates in state and congressional elections who receive the most votes move on to the general election regardless of party affiliation, received permission to gather voter signatures to place the measure on the 2028 ballot.
In November, Californians voted to temporarily scrap the congressional districts that were crafted by a voter-approved independent commission and instead replace them by ones approved by Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento. The move, aimed at giving Democrats an edge in the November midterm election, was in response to President Trump urging GOP state leaders, notably in Texas, to alter their districts to boost Republican numbers in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 election.
“In the olden times, California liked to see itself as the epicenter of good-government reform,” said Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
But the sense of optimism when voters approved these reforms has faded, she said, because of the divisiveness cultivated by Trump but also because of polarization that predates him.
“There’s no world in which you can look at California or any other state in 2026 and say it looks like 2010,” Levinson said. “We, the public, speak to each other in different ways. Politicians talk to each other in different ways. … It feels to me like we talk a lot more about triage than we do about building a shining city on a hill. It’s a different universe.”
But others question the effectiveness of the California’s good-government reforms and merits of the self-glorification that followed.
“It’s not clear that any of these reforms helped elect more moderates or limit polarization,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UCLA. “Reformers may have over-promised in the early 2010s what election reform could actually do to improve the lives of Californians. And Californians did not fully appreciate the unintended consequences of reforms enacted with even the best of intentions.”
The efforts to claw back the 2010 reforms occurs at a time of declining trust in institutions and during a fragile moment in the nation’s democracy. Trump continues to push debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged, as well as other voting misconduct conspiracies that often focus on California.
In a prime-time speech last month, the president again raised concerns about the length of time it took California elections officials to count ballots in the June 2 primary.
“It took a month to count the votes,” he said. “I wonder what they were doing.”
Lauded by civic groups, the good-government reforms were championed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and funded by major GOP donor Charles Munger Jr.
Both of the state’s major political parties as well as prominent politicians and several labor unions opposed the efforts when they were placed on the 2010 ballot.
Jessica Millan Patterson, a former state GOP chairwoman, is among those who believe the temporary pause in independent redistricting that voters approved in November will not be temporary. And she said the top-two primary is a failed experiment.
“Speaking as a Republican, I just don’t feel that it has served us well at all,” she said. “Not only has it locked us out of many general election ballots, but it has also not moderated Sacramento at all.”
California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks, who supported the suspension of independent redistricting, agreed with Millan Patterson about the top-two primary.
“The current top-two system has failed to deliver on what its supporters promised,” he said. “It’s well past time to review, revise and maybe even repeal it.”
Hicks expressed fears earlier this year that the top-two primary would result in two Republican gubernatorial candidates advancing to the November ballot in a strongly Democratic state because of a sprawling and splintered Democratic field.
Hicks’ rare public move urging low-polling Democratic candidates, which included every minority candidate of color in the race, to consider their viability sparked widespread controversy during the primary.
Ultimately, the June primary resulted in the same outcome Californians have seen since the top-two primary was approved — a gubernatorial general election contest between a Democrat and a Republican. Xavier Becerra, a former Biden Cabinet member, and Steve Hilton, a GOP strategist and television commentator, will face off in November.
Still, a bipartisan coalition is striving to rescind the top-two primary system, which has created many noteworthy intraparty races, such as U.S. Senate contests between Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange in 2016, and incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein and state Sen. Kevin de León of Los Angeles in 2018, all Democrats.
In Congress, independent redistricting and the top-two primary created a brutal 2012 contest between veteran Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman in the San Fernando Valley. Four years later, veteran Bay Area Rep. Mike Honda was toppled by fellow Democrat Ro Khanna, now viewed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
This year, a combination of the redrawing of the state’s congressional districts and the top-two primary means Republican Rep. Ken Calvert of Corona is battling with Republican Rep. Young Kim of Anaheim Hills.
On July 14, Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced that the proposal by veteran Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio — also backed by Republicans such as former state GOP Chair Ron Nehring — has 180 days to gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters to qualify the effort for the November 2028 ballot. If approved by voters, the top-two primary would be repealed and the system would revert to its prior version, insuring every qualified political party could have a candidate advance in the primary to the general election.
Maviglio argued that the top-two primary has failed to deliver on its promises to reduce partisanship and budget deficits in Sacramento.
“It’s gotten worse, not better,” he said. “I find it’s hard to make that argument if you look at what’s coming out of the Legislature the last 10 years.”
Supporters of the top-two primary repudiated these arguments and vowed to challenge the title of the proposed 2028 ballot measure about the state’s primary, arguing it would disenfranchise 5.4 million Californians who are not registered with either major political party.
“Voters passed Proposition 14 [which created the top-two primary] to take control away from party insiders and put it in the hands of the people,” said Cara McCormick, campaign manager of More Choice California, a group opposing the top-two primary being rescinded. “This initiative does the opposite. It takes away the rights of millions of California voters and gives them back to political parties. The least voters deserve is a ballot title that says so.”
Abel Maldonado, who served as lieutenant governor under Schwarzenegger and backed both 2010 reforms, staunchly supported the top-two primary as a response to a historic state government shutdown because of the failure of lawmakers to approve a balanced budget.
“Some of us thought that a complete open primary top two would create a system [that elects] people who were open-minded, pragmatic and had common sense,” he said. “It has happened in some races, but in other areas it has not.”
Maldonado said that he disagrees with returning to the prior system, in which political parties could opt to allow only voters affiliated with them to cast ballots in their primaries. But he said the current system ought to be tweaked, allowing voters to cast ballots for a candidate of any political party in a primary, with a candidate from each party moving onto the general election.
Schwarzenegger did not respond to a request for comment. But his prior comments, as well his efforts to end gerrymandering across the nation since leaving office, have made clear that his views have not changed.
“Of course the politicians want to undo reform that is good for the people and not for the politicians,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement earlier this year after the “Undo the Top Two” ballot measure was proposed. “They will always choose to move the goal posts instead of performing better.”
After California Democrats sought to redraw the state’s congressional districts last year, Schwarzenegger posted a picture of himself on X working out wearing a T-shirt that said “Terminate Gerrymandering,” a reference to one of his hit films.
Munger said he hoped groups he worked with to pass these reforms such as Common Cause and the California League of Women Voters would stay “true to their principles” and defend them when they “are under assault.”
“It was disappointing they stayed on the sidelines during last year’s fight over independent redistricting, and they should not do so going forward,” said Munger, who spent more than $30 million opposing the November ballot measure to suspend independent redistricting. “In order for the citizens to trust their government, they must have confidence that our elections are fair and free.”
Maldonado, who lauded the work of California’s independent redistricting commission, said he believes California Democrats will make the temporary pause of independent drawing of district boundaries permanent.
“We as Republicans have zero say in redistricting, and as much as I like to say this is what I like to have, the Democrats control supermajorities in both houses, and they get to choose whatever the hell they want,” he said. “The only way they’ll return it is by an initiative process with the will of the voters.”
He said he supports a national effort to create independent redistricting in every state, but believes it has no chance of passage.
“That would be great. It would be a step in the right direction. I think voters would have more confidence in politicians,” Maldonado said. “But, I mean, in this polarized era, this notion — think about it. The fox is building the henhouse for the chickens.”
It took decades for John Chiang to hustle into the top ranks of California politics, and he relished all the schmoozing along the way.
On Lunar New Year, Chiang turned up at a firecracker party in Westminster. Weeks later, he woke early for a cattlemen’s breakfast in Sacramento. When the Fresno Rotary Club sought a luncheon speaker, Chiang made time.
His nonstop networking has paid dividends. He won five elections in a rout, most recently in 2014 for state treasurer.
Yet to many Californians, Chiang is just a vaguely familiar name, often mispronounced. (It’s Chung, not Chang.) It shows up on ballots, somewhere near the middle.
But now that he’s running for governor, Chiang is competing on a much bigger stage. Voters pay close attention to the top of the ticket, appraising character and personality.
For the first time in his career, the way that Chiang’s reserved, low-key demeanor comes off on television will matter — all the more so in a race against fellow Democrats Antonio Villaraigosa and Gavin Newsom, two of the state’s most charismatic politicians.
A strait-laced finance man, Chiang, 55, dismissed the former mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco as “stylish” — more showhorse than workhorse.
Chiang, who lives in a condo around the corner from a South Bay mall, wears baggy suits from Nordstrom Rack. He called himself “Torrance stylish,” then burst out laughing.
“I’m quite OK with being a season behind,” he said.
At a time of constant drama in the Trump White House, Chiang hopes that Californians will turn to a more ordinary style of leadership, as they did when they elected Gray Davis governor a generation ago.
His manner can come off as unpolished. Chiang, unlike his nimble opponents, can get mired in explaining the likes of “surplus money investment pools” — not surprising for a onetime high school mathlete who majored in finance and won election to California’s Board of Equalization on his way up to state controller and treasurer.
“He’s sort of an accidental politician,” said Michael Genest, who was state finance director under Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Chiang has already banked nearly $9 million for the governor’s race, ensuring he’ll have plenty to spend on ads before the June 2018 primary.
For now, he is playing up his defiant streak. In 2008, when he was controller, he refused to obey Schwarzenegger’s order to cut the pay of state workers to minimum wage until lawmakers passed a budget.
State Treasurer John Chiang, holding the microphone, flaunts his off-key singing at a karaoke stop in Santa Ana with a group of young Democrats on June 23. (Video by Michael Finnegan / Los Angeles Times)
“I was the last person standing, and I said, ‘Gov. Schwarzenegger, you don’t do that to 200,000 good people,’ ” Chiang told union leaders at a labor gathering last month in Orange County.
In 2011, Chiang enraged legislators by docking their pay during another budget impasse, saying they’d breached a law that punishes them for late spending plans. He boasts that friends in the Legislature stopped talking to him.
“It made me the most unpopular person in Sacramento,” Chiang told a crowd in Anaheim.
Critics see a pattern of crass opportunism. “It’s all about what’s best for himself and what will generate headlines — not what’s best for the state,” said Matt David, a Republican strategist who was deputy chief of staff to Schwarzenegger.
The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Chiang grew up with three younger siblings in Palos Heights, Ill. His father was a plastics engineer, his mother a full-time parent.
They were the first Asian family to move into the mainly white upscale Chicago suburb in the 1960s, when Chiang was just starting grade school. He recalls rampant bigotry — taunts, fights, vandalism and “ugly racial epithets.” It left him feeling isolated but taught him empathy.
“The hurt goes deep,” he said. “It makes me who I am.”
At home, Chiang’s parents spoke mostly English, but also Taiwanese Hokkien, Mandarin and Japanese. Every few years, the family would visit relatives in Taiwan, which was under Japanese occupation when Chiang’s parents were children.
Chiang remembers his mother cooking delicious Chinese food for his school lunches. But to fit in, he begged her to switch to American sandwiches, preferably on Wonder bread.
“I was petrified bringing lunch to school,” Chiang said. “Everybody had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
At 12 years old, he was captivated by the Watergate hearings. “All I knew is the president lied, and he had secret tapes, and it was like, ‘Oooooh, the president has secret tapes.’ ”
He was stunned by the prominence of a Japanese American, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, in the congressional investigation of President Nixon. It was a jarring counterpoint to the racism in his own neighborhood.
“You’re just trying to get dignity and respect, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh, how did that guy get to be a United States senator?’ ”
State Treasurer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Chiang attends the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum on June 1.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
Chiang graduated in 1984 from the University of South Florida in Tampa, then interned on Capitol Hill while earning a law degree at Georgetown University in Washington. He worked for one Democratic congressman from Illinois (Lane Evans) and two from California (Norman Mineta and Robert Matsui).
“I was always interested in public policy,” Chiang said. “I fell in love with it in Washington, D.C.”
In 1988, he moved to Los Angeles to work downtown at the Internal Revenue Service. He settled in Chatsworth. But the job — screening corporate pension plans — left him “emotionally barren,” Chiang said.
He quickly left the IRS to work on the campaign for Proposition 100, a measure to reward good drivers with lower car-insurance rates. Voters rejected it, but Chiang was hooked on campaign work.
For a decade, he bounced from one to the next: Gray Davis for controller, Kathleen Brown for treasurer, Mel Levine for U.S. Senate, Barbara Boxer for U.S. Senate, Don Perata for controller, Brown again — this time for governor.
Chiang was an all-purpose operative, raising money, writing speeches and rounding up political support. He also took staff jobs for Davis at the controller’s office and for Boxer at her Senate office in L.A.
“He’s incredibly competent, he’s very smart and he’s very likable — kind of rare in the business,” said Marc Litchman, who in the ’80s and ’90s raised money with Chiang for Westside and San Fernando Valley candidates.
“A lot of people fold under the pressure of all that rejection or people dodging you, and John, he took it in stride,” he said.
Chiang’s genuine fondness for political events — nights, weekends, no matter — was striking to Bob Blumenfield, a longtime friend now on the L.A. City Council.
“It’s almost frightening how much of his life he’s given to being everywhere,” Blumenfield said.
Following Chiang’s path was his more outgoing younger sister, Joyce. She, too, got a law degree at Georgetown University. After a stint at the congressional office of Democrat Howard Berman of the San Fernando Valley, she went to work as a lawyer at what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Chiang saw a future for his sister in elected office.
But one evening in January 1999, she vanished on her way home to the apartment that she shared with their brother Roger in Washington’s Dupont Circle. She was 28 years old. A few months later, her body washed up on the Potomac River. Police ultimately concluded the cause was homicide, but no killer was caught.
“She was the person I was closest to in the world, so her loss is devastating,” Chiang said, his voice cracking.
Trouble struck the family again in 2005, when Roger Chiang admitted to embezzling more than $360,000 from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, where he worked as outreach director. He served a year in prison.
State Treasurer John Chiang has described himself on the campaign trail as a “tough, strong fiscal watchdog.”
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
John Chiang, who has no children, is separated from his wife of 10 years. In his scant spare time, he likes to visit his six godchildren, play poker or watch sports or “Game of Thrones” with friends.
When he campaigns, Chiang describes himself as a “tough, strong fiscal watchdog.” He takes credit for uncovering $9.5 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in state and local government spending.
“It’s not just about the numbers, it’s about values — where you put the money,” Chiang told a dozen young Democrats eating taquitos and sipping margaritas at a karaoke stop in Santa Ana. “That’s why I’m tough with the buck — because it helps you reduce student debt.”
When the karaoke started, he stepped on stage and gamely launched into a rendition of the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” exposing his off-key singing. He tried to mute it by passing the microphone to others on stage.
Chiang likes to engage crowds by asking each person to share a dream before posing a question, a request that befuddles many.
“My dream is to eliminate German cockroaches,” one woman declared to a roar of laughter at a Disneyland pest-control conference where Chiang was the featured speaker.
Eventually, Chiang will market himself in 30-second television commercials to give Californians a better sense of who he is. For now, he’s mostly dashing from one event to another — an Israeli Consulate reception, an Encino Chamber of Commerce lunch, a gala for FilipinoAmerican lawyers. That approach got him this far, and he’s sticking to it.
About this story: This is one in a series of articles about the candidates vying to succeed Jerry Brown as governor of California in the 2018 election. Learn more about them at latimes.com/CA2018.
AUSTIN, Texas — Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination in 2028 will need to prove themselves early on in states where Black and Latino voters and union members are key supporters, under an election year calendar approved Saturday.
The primary lineup pushes Iowa from the traditional top spot and makes South Carolina the leadoff state, voting on Jan. 22, 2028, followed by Nevada on Feb. 1. New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia round out the early states, throughout February, according to the plan endorsed by the Democratic National Committee at its meeting in Texas.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin said that to win the general election, “you have to be battle-tested in a way that you already have campaigned in front of and for the support of various communities throughout the country.” That is why the calendar designed by the party matters, he said in an interview.
Some potential candidates in what is expected to be a large field have visited early-voting states such as South Carolina. Party leaders have said the order gives candidates the best shot at winning back the White House after President Trump’s final term.
“They have to show that they can go to the South and talk to Black voters and rural voters, as well as out west, talking ranching and mining issues, to a border state, to union members,” said party strategist Karen Finney, who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “Whoever survives will be battle-tested.”
Former presidential candidate Howard Dean, a onetime Vermont governor, recalled his tenure as national party chairman, when Democrats solidified Nevada and South Carolina as early states behind Iowa and New Hampshire. The latest change is even better, he said.
“These states look more like the country” as a whole, he said, “whereas Iowa and New Hampshire don’t.”
Rita Hart, chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, said bypassing her state in the early going would sideline important voter voices and give a political edge to Republicans, who are expected to keep Iowa atop their calendar.
Nonwhite voters claim top billing
As the first-in-the-South primary, South Carolina was more decisive than Iowa and New Hampshire for nominees Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. All three dominated among South Carolina’s large Black population, which can yield more than half the state’s Democratic primary electorate.
With Nevada and New Mexico following, that will require candidates to court more Latino voters early in the process.
Shifting from Iowa and New Hampshire does not mean little-known candidates cannot catch fire, as Pete Buttigieg did in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020, when he was a 37-year-old former mayor. They just will not be able to do it with an almost entirely white audience.
“If you can’t go to every part of this country and make your case, you should not be running for president,” Finney said.
Progressive vs. establishment dynamics
There is disagreement over how Democrats’ split between progressives and mainstream liberals may or may not surface in the nominating calendar.
“I think our primary voters up north are probably a little different than primary voters in South Carolina,” said Boyd Brown, a former DNC member from South Carolina. “It’s not the woke ideologies that we just can’t get away from” in other places, Brown said.
Nina Smith, a former Buttigieg advisor who works closely with progressive causes, disagreed. Smith said Black South Carolinians, especially, have gravitated to more moderate candidates — twice rejecting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in favor of Clinton and Biden.
But, she said, “Southern Black voters are more progressive than they’re given credit for” on policy but also “realists” about what is possible.
“Living through Jim Crow and other oppressive structures will force you to take that approach,” she said.
Smith said that with South Carolina leading off and many Southern states following on Super Tuesday soon after the early lineup concludes, progressives will have to take the time to listen and then tailor their messages.
“A lot of Black voters don’t necessarily see themselves in the ideas and arguments that progressives put forward,” she said.
Unions in the spotlight
Nevada has the service industry unions because of Las Vegas; Michigan has the auto industry and associated manufacturing support industries; Virginia is home to more federal workers than any other state.
“Labor is still so important,” Dean said.
Beyond seeking the backing of organized labor, the campaigns and the party will look to unions for help in spreading Democrats’ message to voters and getting people to the polls.
Scheduling efficiency
Campaigns struggle to balance many demands such as meeting voters in person, raising money and the logistics of travel. As a result, places such as Nevada have gotten short shrift in the past because candidates, most from the eastern part of the country, have concluded the investment of time is not worth it.
An expanded calendar offers more clustering opportunities.
A swing to the West could hit two early states — Nevada and New Mexico — and include a fundraising stop in California, full of Democratic donors. A South Carolina trip could mean fundraisers and public appearances in Atlanta along with Charlotte and Raleigh, both in North Carolina. Virginia offers proximity to donors and national TV studios in Washington; the same options are available by adding a New York City stop on the way to New Hampshire.
Bre Maxwell is a DNC member from South Carolina who said the state’s smaller size and lower media costs are a financial equalizer, allowing not only the best-funded candidates to have an impact.
“They can campaign from the top to the bottom in a day,” Maxwell said.
Keeping a focus on November
Of the six early states, all but South Carolina have been competitive in general elections.
That means that even before Super Tuesday, the Democratic candidates will have spent significant time and resources in states worth a combined 43 electoral college votes. That is not insignificant on the way to the 270 needed to win.
Television ads and news coverage can spill over, as well. Markets targeting parts of South Carolina also reach portions of North Carolina and Georgia.
After all, Brown said, the point is to put a Democrat in the White House.
“This is not a social or a debate club. It is a political party,” he said.
Catalini and Barrow write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. AP writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
* Current position: Full-time candidate for governor, on leave from managing his small software company.
* Education: Bachelor’s degrees in physics and history, Harvard University. Phi Beta Kappa. Recipient of a Churchill Science Fellowship to Cambridge University in England, where he studied quantum gravitation under Stephen Hawking.
* Career highlights: In the late 1980s, Unz took a leave of absence from Stanford University, where he was enrolled in a Ph.D. program in theoretical physics. He worked as an associate at a New York City mortgage finance company. In 1988, he founded Wall Street Analytics Inc., a financial services software company.
* Family: Unmarried
The Record
Ron Unz has no public record and brings an unusual, if not unique, background to his quest for California’s top public office. He has a strong record of academic and intellectual achievement. His IQ has been estimated at 214–what one expert calls “one in a million”–and as a teen-ager he won first place in the national Westinghouse talent search competition for a paper on black holes. He is a physicist as well as an expert on the Spartan naval empire.
After working for a New York City mortgage finance company, Unz founded his own small firm that sells specialized computer programs to Wall Street firms. The firm has become highly successful during the last six years and has made Unz a wealthy man.
Although he has no political experience, he says he has long had an interest in politics and has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative think tanks and causes.
Unz says his years in the business world have prepared him well to govern California. “In terms of the sectors of the American economy that create wealth, I have more experience than the other four candidates together, times a factor of a few,” he said.
The Speech: In His Own Words
I believe that the Republican Party stands for clear principles and firm ideas–smaller government, lower taxes, fewer regulations and traditional values–and that Pete Wilson stands for nothing except his political ambition.
Over the past three years, Pete Wilson and the Democrats have enacted the largest state tax increase in American history, deepening our recession and destroying jobs. Pete Wilson and the Democrats have led our Golden State to the brink of ruin. A choice between Pete Wilson and the Democrats means no choice at all for the people of California.
Unlike Pete Wilson, I have not abandoned the mainstream of the Republican Party . . . and its basic principles. . . . Under Ronald Reagan, these were the ideas which swept the nation and the world. I am the Republican candidate for governor.
Unlike Pete Wilson, my affiliation with the Republican Party is not hereditary: I come from a family of Democrats. But when that former Democrat Ronald Reagan transformed the Republican Party into the party of the ordinary working people of America, it became my party.
Unlike Pete Wilson, I didn’t attend an elite prep school, but received my education in the public schools of Los Angeles, back when they still provided an outstanding education for all of our children, rich and poor alike. It was this education which provided me with the tools of opportunity I needed to achieve economic success. But today, I am disgusted by the decay of our school system.
Unlike Pete Wilson, I don’t believe we should raise taxes again and again, until our entrepreneurs and small businesses are faced with some of the highest tax rates in America, driving our jobs and prosperity to other states. . . .
Unlike Pete Wilson, who has been on government and political payrolls for almost 30 years as a lifelong career politician, I come from the private business sector, the part of our economy which actually creates the wealth, provides the jobs and pays the taxes. I understand the value of money and the long hours required to earn it. I reject the waste that is routinely accepted by the special interest politicians who don’t understand what it’s like to earn a living in the real world.
Unlike Pete Wilson, who has little or no comprehension of the industries of tomorrow, I come from a scientific and technological background. I know that California’s future prosperity cannot be based merely upon jobs to build and maintain Pete Wilson’s endless array of future prisons.
I know that the high-technology industries of tomorrow such as computers, telecommunications, biotechnology and the entertainment industry can be the foundation of California’s prosperity. I see that the widespread adoption of telecommuting could make our freeway traffic jams a thing of the past. . . .
My grandparents came to California in the 1920s and 1930s as poor European immigrants, willing to work hard to provide a better life for their children.
I am a native-born Californian who remembers the hope and optimism and endless sense of possibility which the California Dream once meant to us. Our state has the finest climate, enormous natural beauty, and tremendous scientific and technological resources unequaled any place in the world.
The primary obstacle on our road to recovery is the deep failure of our own overgrown state government. Join with me in overcoming this one obstacle, and together we can restore the Golden State which we all remember.
SACRAMENTO — As the campaign for California governor heads into the general election, Democrat Xavier Becerra maintains a strong lead over Republican Steve Hilton, according to a new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
Buoyed by the state’s liberal voting base, Becerra had support from 55% of likely voters surveyed — compared with Hilton’s 37%. The remaining 7% were undecided.
Like in a previous IGS poll conducted in late May, support for each candidate falls overwhelmingly along partisan lines: 88% of Democrats prefer Becerra and 91% of Republicans plan to back Hilton. No-party-preference voters also lean heavily toward Becerra, a former Biden administration Cabinet member, 58% to Hilton’s 30%.
The two will face off in the Nov. 3 general election to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is barred from running again and considering a 2028 bid for president. Becerra, whose resume includes stints as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and state attorney general, is heavily favored to win the seat over Hilton, a former Fox News host who advised a prime minister in his native Britain.
“After the unsettled and chaotic primary, this is shaping up to be a fairly standard California general election, where Democrats enjoy a comfortable edge statewide,” said Eric Schickler, a political science professor and IGS co-director. “Hilton would need to make major inroads among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups to make this a highly competitive race.”
According to the poll, majorities of voters across age, gender and racial categories prefer Becerra — with particularly strong support among women, younger voters and Black Californians.
Becerra emerged from the primary ahead of more progressive opponents, including billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, and quickly earned the backing of their onetime supporters, said IGS Poll Director Mark DiCamillo.
“These are people who say, ‘I identify as a progressive.’ ‘I identify as a democratic socialist.’ They’re overwhelmingly for Becerra, and it’s mainly because they really don’t think very much of the Republicans as a party. It’s not so much about Hilton himself,” DiCamillo said.
Regionally, the poll found voters in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, along with the Bay Area and Central Coast, prefer Becerra. Hilton leads in the state’s more sparsely populated and conservative-leaning areas, including the Central Valley and North Coast/Sierra region.
Politically purple Orange County and the economically stressed Inland Empire are more closely divided but lean toward Hilton.
When asked why they support each candidate, voters largely cited conventional partisan issues.
More than half of Hilton backers, 55%, pointed to his support for traditionally Republican policies such as cutting taxes and reducing government regulation. It was followed by 28% who said they prefer Hilton because he is not part of California’s political establishment.
Hilton’s platform includes making Californians’ first $150,000 in annual earnings tax-free, slashing government regulations and ramping up oil production in hopes of achieving $3-per-gallon gas prices.
“Those are the benefits, but the underlying mission that I’ve set [for] myself as the next governor is to transform our business climate to make California competitive again, so that we do get the investment and the job creation and start to turn things around. I think it’s an absolute crisis that we’re in if we don’t change direction,” Hilton said Tuesday during a political conference in Sacramento.
Becerra supporters were evenly divided over their top reasons for supporting him; 38% cited his support for Democratic policies such as expanding healthcare and protecting LGBTQ+ rights, while another 38% expect him to aggressively fight the Trump administration.
The poll suggests that, in California, President Trump factors more heavily into Democratic voters’ political decisions than Republicans’.
“One of the reasons Becerra is doing so well is because of his opposition to Trump,” DiCamillo said. “For Hilton supporters, not so much. His endorsement by the president is only cited by 4% as a reason why they’re supporting Hilton.”
The former Health secretary has an extensive plan to lower healthcare costs and frequently touts the more than 120 lawsuits he filed as California attorney general against the first Trump administration. At the Tuesday political event hosted by Politico, Becerra said, “California will become the backstop for healthcare” after Trump signed a tax bill with steep cuts to Medicaid.
To prevent an estimated 2 million people from losing their health insurance because of the cuts and rising premiums, Becerra pitched a deal directly to insurance companies: “I will ensure people stay covered. You ensure that you help me reduce the cost. I ensure that you get paid.”
Thirteen percent said they’re supporting Becerra because he is a Democrat and 7% said the same about Hilton’s Republican affiliation.
Just 4% of Latino respondents and 1% of the total sample of likely voters said they would vote for Becerra because he is a Latino candidate and a child of immigrants.
Each candidate saw a small bump in support since the May poll, which asked registered voters just before the primary election to pick between them in a then-hypothetical matchup. In that survey, 52% chose Becerra and 31% supported Hilton.
Just under half of voters, 49%, have a favorable opinion of Becerra while 43% have an unfavorable view. Hilton’s favorability rating is underwater, with 39% of likely voters viewing him favorably and 50% unfavorably.
The numbers present a challenge for Hilton, who is trying to overcome the state’s pronounced Democratic tilt by appealing to independent voters frustrated with issues such as homelessness and California’s high cost of living.
“That might, for him, be the swing block,” DiCamillo said. “But among no-party-preference voters, his image rating is negative, 59% to 31%, whereas Becerra’s image rating is pretty much the same as it is statewide, which is positive.”
The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish from Aug. 3 to 9. Responses for the governor’s race poll came from a weighted sample of 2,310 respondents considered likely voters in the November election, out of a larger group of 4,207 registered voters throughout California. It has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points in either direction.
Sacramento — The two candidates for California governor came to Sacramento on Tuesday offering policy agendas that were both sweeping and vague on details, with both warning of the dangers posed by their rival’s political party.
Democrat Xavier Becerra vowed to lower healthcare costs for Californians and teased two new policies on energy and artificial intelligence. Republican Steve Hilton pledged to slash gas prices and utility bills to help remedy his dystopian view of California under Democratic rule.
The two candidates will face off in the Nov. 3 election to succeed outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, and took time to deliver their campaign messages at an afternoon political forum in the state capital.
Hilton pointed to the size of the state budget, the homelessness crisis, high taxes, the cost of living, the unemployment rate and the business climate to argue that 15 years of Democratic control has proved disastrous in California.
“It’s just a complete failure on every front, and it seems to have been immune to any kind of challenge because it’s very powerful. The machine is very powerful, funded by government unions, and you’ve got this alliance of the government unions and nonprofits, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of this,” he told hundreds of people at a convention center in Sacramento.
Becerra defended California’s Democratic leadership, which controls the state Legislature, the governor’s office and every other statewide political office, as a staunch bulwark against the ruthless agenda of the Trump administration and Republican-led Congress.
“We’re a state. We’re a family. You don’t blame just one parent when things go awry with one of the children,” he said in reference to more than a decade of Democratic governance in California. “We’re all in this together. We all have to work together. I could say that one of the members of the American family in Washington, D.C., has created more chaos than any Democrat in the state of California.”
After a chaotic and competitive June primary, Tuesday marked one of the few times the two men have addressed the same audience. They appeared at a forum hosted by the news organization Politico and sponsored by Airbnb, AT&T, energy company California Resources Corp., Google and the Western States Petroleum Assn.
In a state with a pronounced Democratic tilt, Becerra, a former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, is the front-runner in the race. Nearly 45% of the state’s voters are registered Democrats, while 25% are Republicans, according to a May report by the secretary of state’s office. Becerra has raised millions of dollars more than Hilton and benefited from well-funded independent groups that spent millions supporting his campaign.
Becerra repeatedly said he would not promise anything he could not deliver, saying that voters “want to see actual outcomes.”
“That’s also why I think you can’t do pie in the sky, inflated promises, because people want to see you deliver, and you can talk a great game, but unless you can deliver, people are going to crucify you,” he said.
He said he could not promise to build 3 million new housing units, as Newsom did eight years ago as a candidate for governor.
“That’s an inflated promise. But I will tell you, we will build, and I will tell you, there will be more Californians who own a home,” Becerra said.
Later, he told reporters he was not specifically referring to the figure Newsom had promised. “I could have said 2 million. I could have said 5 million. What I was saying is, it’s gonna be something that’s realistic,” he said.
Becerra was willing to make some big promises on healthcare.
“Am I going to promise you that I can drop the price of prescription drugs? Yes, because I did it before, and I know I can do it again. Am I telling you that I can keep Californians insured for healthcare, even though the guy in the White House stripped a trillion dollars out of the healthcare system? Yes, because I know how much money is in the healthcare system,” he said.
Pressed for specifics on how he would prevent people from losing their health insurance, Becerra hinted that the solution could be within the healthcare industry itself.
“There’s money in them there hills,” he said. “Healthcare is more expensive in California than anywhere else in the country, and healthcare is more expensive in the U.S. than it is anywhere else in the world. There is money that’s being spent that does nothing to dispense healthcare to you, and we’ve got to stop that game.”
Hilton acknowledged the long odds he faces in the November general election.
“I know I’m probably the only person in this room that actually thinks I can win this election,” he said.
Since the June primary, Hilton has been a constant presence on the campaign trail, crisscrossing the state, holding town halls and news conferences, making speeches and giving media interviews. Becerra has been far less visibly active.
Hilton argued that California is at a crossroads, pointing to residents and businesses moving out of the state.
“I’m here to say we can turn them around,” he said. “It’s an absolute crisis that we’re in if we don’t change direction.”
Hilton has vowed to cut gas prices to $3 per gallon, reduce utility bills, eliminate income taxes for Californians making under $150,000, increase the supply of starter homes and overhaul the business climate, particularly in the entertainment and agricultural industries. Just how Hilton would deliver on his agenda, given that Democrats control the California Legislature, remains unclear.
While he did not make any formal policy announcements at the summit, Becerra said there is “a lot of room to expand” on regulations and protections on AI, and he signaled support for a government-purchased stake in AI companies. “We can make it so they can prosper, but we prosper with them,” he said.
Hilton, who has released several AI-generated campaign ads, criticized Sam Altman of OpenAI and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei for doing little to earn the public’s trust on the fast-emerging technology. He also said there is space to both regulate and give AI more freedom.
“I think we’re in danger of both over- and under-regulating at the same time. I think we’re under-regulating some of the harms, for example, in relation to children and in relation to the creative community and their output, but we’re in danger of over-regulating some of the potential benefits,” including in the medical field, he said.
When asked whether the state’s voters are “stupid” for continuing to vote for Democrats, Hilton replied that they are not, but rather had not been offered a clear, positive alternative.
“There is a sense of inevitability about it, and I think that’s infected perhaps a lot of the political discourse in California,” he said. The notion that “it’s California. Democrats are always going to be in charge. What can you do?”
He said he believes he has a shot in the November election because he has a positive message, similar to that which helped propel the right-leaning Tories to a 14-year reign in the United Kingdom when he was a senior advisor to then-Prime Minister David Cameron.
Hilton labeled Becerra “unqualified” and didn’t discuss his endorsement by President Trump, which propelled his advancement to the general election.
“We’ve got everything going for us in California. We’ve got incredible assets and resources. We’ve got natural beauty, the best weather, great universities, amazing people, the incredible innovation ecosystem, the kind of startup hustle rebel spirit,” he said. “We just need, I think, a proactive, pro-business governor [who] recognizes that we’ve just ended up …, often with good intentions, frankly, in a situation where we’ve just got this massive, bloated bureaucratic government that’s stifling the spirit of California.”
A parody AI chatbot designed by California congressional candidate Scott Wiener’s campaign to mock the record of his opponent attracted the attention politicians crave and criticism most loathe.
The short-lived experiment stirred controversy over the use of artificial intelligence in campaigns ads and drew sharp criticism from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has endorsed Wiener’s opponent for the coveted San Francisco congressional seat. Wiener quickly pulled the plug.
Candidates on both sides of the aisle have been testing the waters by integrating generative AI into campaign ads. It comes as no surprise to political sociologist Mindy Romero, the director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, who said candidates have long used all tools at their disposal to reach voters, from the invention of the radio and TV to social media.
“Using AI is just part of the progression,” Romero said. Generative AI is particularly useful for political candidates since it allows them to subconsciously influence viewers by putting words in their opponents’ mouths, she said.
Even as political campaigns experiment with more outlandish applications of the technology, many have already been using AI in quieter ways, including to compose tailored mailings and participate in digital chat rooms, Romero said.
The ad also depicts a fake Xavier Becerra, his Democratic rival in the governor’s race, who is heard saying, “I believe all the things that Newsom believes.” The ad ends with Hilton facing off against a massive red-eyed robot meant to represent the “Democratic machine.” An AI disclaimer appears in the last five seconds of the two-minute and 29-second video.
“Campaigns have always adopted new technology, from television to the internet to social media,” Hilton campaign spokesperson Hector Barajas said in a statement. “Generative AI is the next step, and we believe it would be irresponsible not to use every lawful, ethical, and innovative tool to communicate with California voters.”
Spencer Pratt, who unsuccessfully ran for L.A. mayor, in May reposted on X a viral Batman-inspired AI-generated video that depicted Mayor Karen Bass as the Joker, the clownish supervillain. Charles Curran, the filmmaker who made the fan video in support of Pratt, appears to now be working with Hilton’s campaign in a more official capacity, with his X account tagged on several campaign social media posts.
“I view this as the evolution of political satire,” Curran said, referring to his AI videos, in an interview with the Washington Times. “Like Mark Twain. Like Tammany Hall.” Curran did not respond to interview requests.
“We’re on the bleeding edge right now,” said Sacramento political consultant Tim Rosales, who ran Republican John Cox’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign. He said he anticipates that campaigns will more fully understand and use AI to its full extent in the next two election cycles.
California campaigns have long been at the forefront of adopting new technologies. In the 1980s, the late political strategist Clint Reilly was among the first political consultants to use voter roll data to segment and target pivotal voters for turnout and persuasion.
Rosales said that because campaigns in California are more expensive and raise more money than those in other states, “You have a lot more tools in your tool box and more toys you can play with.”
Lynn Vavreck, a political science and communications studies professor at UCLA, said the persuasive effects of Hilton’s AI videos are likely “limited” as they are most likely being watched by supporters. The videos, she said, are more akin to “content creation” than to ads.
Romero said AI technology can be beneficial for campaigns, particularly those with limited funds, that may use it to create outreach lists, assist with analysis or generate creative and campaign materials.
But AI-generated video, images and audio are a “double-edged sword,” Romero said. While effective at drawing attention, they may have the unwanted effect of making viewers uncomfortable by blurring the lines of reality — even if the AI use is disclosed. As a result, political campaigns must make a “strategic calculation” when they opt to use them, she said.
Those perils surfaced last week when the campaign of Wiener (D-San Francisco), who is running for the congressional seat held by the outgoing Pelosi, unveiled an AI chatbot that could be accessed on the ConnieChan.ai website.
The site referred to itself as “Connie, the world’s first AI trained to say no to anything you ask.” The footer included a note that the site is not affiliated with or endorsed by Chan, is meant as parody, and is paid for by Wiener’s campaign.
“Bring me an idea and I’ll explain why it can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t happen,” the site said, followed by a box encouraging users to type in a query. The chatbot would then produce a snide response parodying Chan.
When The Times entered the word “housing” into the text box last week, its response came seconds later.
“I built my career opposing new housing in San Francisco,” the chatbot’s response read. “I aggressively defend the status quo, and I’m fine with exploding rents and mass displacement.” It then rattled off examples including Chan’s opposition to Wiener’s state law to streamline housing projects.
Wiener campaign spokesperson Joe Arellano said Wednesday that he came up with the idea of making a chatbot ad shortly after the June primary election, when he saw a video showing a group of people putting up parody tech and AI advertisements in the New York City subway.
“I thought, this is an opportunity to do this right in the heart of innovation here in San Francisco,” Arellano said. “San Francisco right now is having this moment around AI and the billboards. … The overall craze around the industry has become a cultural moment.”
The chatbot cost $5,000 to make, a sum that includes the cost to secure the domain, host the site and obtain the pro version of Anthropic’s Claude AI model, plus staff time, according to Arellano. The campaign spent an additional $20,000 to rent two billboards in San Francisco promoting the bot.
The idea was to highlight Chan’s “record of obstructing progress” through a “chatbot that essentially says no to any kind of policy that you’re proposing,” Arellano said.
Chan’s campaign and her allies saw it differently.
“[It’s] never a good idea for a man to put words in a woman’s mouth — especially when they are falsities fraught with racist and sexist undertones,” Ian Krager, a spokesperson for Chan’s campaign, said in a text message. The chatbot, Krager said, showed Wiener was “bought and paid for by Big AI.”
Chan’s campaign shared several screenshots of interactions with the chatbot with The Times, including one in which the chatbot was asked if it was “from China.” (Chan was born in Hong Kong.)
According to the campaign’s screenshot, the chatbot replied that its “origins are classified under about seventeen different committee review processes.”
Then, it pivoted: “But I’d love to help obstruct something *else* you’re curious about! Here are some of my favorite topics,” and spat out a menu of topics to choose from, which included “blocking housing” and “derailing public transit.”
Wiener’s campaign said the chatbot was created with “strict guardrails” and designed to ignore controversial and malicious prompts and pivot back to Chan’s policy record.
Pelosi, who has endorsed Chan in the race, released a statement Thursday criticizing Wiener’s campaign for the chatbot, calling its use of AI to “fabricate a woman’s voice for ridicule or attack” a “gross misuse of technology.”
At first, Wiener defended himself, writing on X Thursday evening that his rival’s campaign inundated the chatbot with “malicious questions” about her accent, race and citizenship that the chatbot refused. The next day, Wiener reversed course.
“[Our] use of an AI chatbot clearly missed the mark,” Wiener said in a statement Friday. “The conversation became about the tactic instead of the issues that actually matter to San Franciscans.”
Wiener’s campaign on Friday took the chatbot offline and announced plans to take down the billboards.
Romero said experts began to have widespread discussions about how AI could be used to sway voters and affect democracy in the lead-up to the 2024 election when a company sent deceptive phone messages that used AI to mimic President Biden’s voice and discourage people from voting.
Since then, there have been several efforts by California lawmakers to rein in AI-generated advertising.
Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2024 signed several AI-related bills. They include AB 2839, which banned the distribution of materially deceptive content that could harm a candidate’s reputation or electoral prospects, with exceptions for satire and parody, and AB 2355, which requires a committee that creates a political ad to disclose if it was generated or substantially altered by AI.
U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) have renewed an effort to update the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to clarify that existing bans on “fraudulent misrepresentation of campaign authority” and the “fraudulent solicitation of funds” also extend to AI-generated content.
“Fraudulent AI advertising has already proliferated in races across the country, and if Congress does not act, this runaway challenge will only get worse as AI becomes increasingly capable of blurring the lines between fact and fiction,” Schiff said in a statement.
Elena Kuhn, a spokesperson for Schiff, said the proposed legislation applies to material that attempts to “speak on behalf of other candidates,” meaning Hilton’s AI-generated cinematic clip of himself fighting a robot would be not be banned — contrary to the Republican candidate’s claims that it would be.
Progressive candidates for governor in Wisconsin and U.S. Senate in Minnesota are making their final pushes ahead of Tuesday’s election, increasing the pressure on a Democratic establishment that has spent the year on its heels.
The primaries come a week after Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s divisive and costly U.S. Senate primary. El-Sayed’s victory has energized the left while stoking fears among Democratic Party leaders that the shift to the left, particularly in battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin, will make it more difficult to win in November.
Wisconsin’s chaotic primary pits progressive against governor’s pick
In Wisconsin, democratic socialist Francesca Hong is trying to win a four-way Democratic primary for governor where her top opponent has been endorsed by popular Gov. Tony Evers, who isn’t seeking a third term.
Evers got behind Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley on July 18, the same day Crowley reentered the race after dropping out 10 days earlier. Crowley rejoined after the candidate he backed, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, ended her candidacy amid a campaign finance scandal.
Evers and Crowley were crisscrossing the state together in the last days before final ballots are cast Tuesday.
Evers and more establishment Democrats were hoping to finally coalesce around Crowley in the final days of the chaotic primary that saw two other candidates drop out, most notably former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes on July 29.
Barnes and Rodriguez, who were both seen as potential front-runners, remain on the ballot and absentee votes already cast for them can’t be undone.
Republicans are spending to influence the Democratic primary
Republicans are putting money behind Hong, thinking she will be the better matchup for Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in November. The Republican Governors Association has spent nearly $3.6 million through its Right Direction Wisconsin PAC on ads contrasting Hong with President Donald Trump and playing up her liberal policies.
Crowley and other Democrats argue the ads are meant to bolster Hong’s standing in the primary because Republicans see her as the easier opponent.
Evers projected confidence at a rally that attracted hundreds of people in Hong’s hometown of Madison on Sunday night, saying Crowley was the best chance Democrats had to defeat Tiffany.
“We’re going to win this thing,” Evers said, telling the Crowley supporters that Tiffany would be “the worst governor in the history of Wisconsin.”
“If Tom Tiffany wins in November that will be like electing Donald Trump as governor of the state of Wisconsin,” he said.
Crowley urged Democrats to come together after the primary to beat Tiffany.
“Our ultimate goal is to make sure we don’t have a MAGA extremist occupying the governor’s office,” Crowley said.
Tiffany, one of the most conservative members of Congress, is endorsed by Trump.
The president called Hong a communist in remarks on Wednesday, where he mentioned a 2020 social media post by Hong calling for Thanksgiving to be canceled. Asked about the post this week, Hong reversed herself and said that Thanksgiving was her favorite holiday.
Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 and 2024, and Republicans have held majorities in both chambers of the Legislature since 2011. Holding onto the governor’s office is key to Wisconsin Democrats’ effort to gain full control of state government for the first time in 16 years.
In the race to replace Tiffany, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s son-in-law Michael Alfonso is in a five-person Republican primary. Alfonso, who is trying to represent Duffy’s old congressional district, has Trump’s endorsement.
Minnesota primary comes in wake of immigration enforcement surge
In neighboring Minnesota, voters are choosing between moderate U.S. Rep. Angie Craig and progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary that’s playing out in the aftermath of Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement surge in the state.
The race has been shaped by the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, confrontations that were caught on camera and fueled a backlash to Trump’s immigration policies.
Both Craig and Flanagan spent the weekend traversing the Twin Cities metro area.
In a driveway in suburban Eagan on Sunday, Craig spoke to the angst among Democratic primary voters who feel that Washington isn’t working for them. Members of Congress need to stop trading stocks and becoming lobbyists when they leave office, she said, and the U.S. needs to restrict the flood of corporate campaign spending.
“But the only way we pass any of the progressive policies that all of us here support is by winning elections and taking damn majorities,” she said.
Unlike in Wisconsin, where the incumbent governor has endorsed a candidate in the race to succeed him, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has not gotten involved in the Senate primary. But his wife, Gwen Walz, has endorsed Craig and campaigned with her on Sunday.
Flanagan campaigned Saturday with U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, who helped her make the case that Washington needs a shake-up to root out the deep-pocketed forces propping up a broken status quo.
“It is big corporations, it’s special interests who are putting their thumb on the scale in our elections across the country,” Flanagan said. “And it’s not just Republicans. It’s Democrats, too.”
The race has been one of the most expensive Minnesota has seen, with millions of dollars backing both candidates, but disproportionately falling in Craig’s favor.
Whoever wins the primary will be the front-runner to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Tina Smith in November. Minnesota voters haven’t elected a Republican to a statewide office since 2006.
Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, is a top Republican candidate in the governor’s race. He’s endorsed by Trump, and he was a prominent promoter of falsehoods about election fraud. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is in a six-person primary on the Democratic side.
Democratic struggles also on display in other states’ primaries Tuesday
Two veteran Democratic incumbents in Connecticut face challenges from the left.
Moderate Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont is running for a third term but faces progressive state Rep. Josh Elliott. The Democratic nominee will face Republican state Sen. Ryan Fazio in November.
Longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. John Larson, 78, is running for a 15th term and his age and health have been major issues in the four-person race.
Former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin narrowly won the party’s endorsement at its state convention in May. Other candidates are Hartford Board of Education member Ruth Fortune and state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest.
In Vermont, two Democrats are running in for a chance to take on Republican Gov. Phil Scott.
Former child advocacy organization CEO Aly Richards boasts endorsements from former Democratic Govs. Howard Dean and Madeleine Kunin. She faces economist Amanda Janoo.
Stephen Cloobeck — a one-time California gubernatorial candidate ensconced in Democratic political circles — pleaded not guilty to witness tampering charges Friday related to a burglary case against his former paramour, OnlyFans model Adva Lavie.
Cloobeck, 64, was arrested in May and charged with three counts of attempting to dissuade a witness from testifying and one count of harassment for making annoying phone calls, according to a criminal complaint. Cloobeck allegedly contacted Lavie’s attorney, swore at him and threatened him, his property and members of his family, according to the complaint.
He entered a plea of not guilty Friday morning during a brief court appearance in Van Nuys. His next hearing date was set for October. David Chesnoff, who was part of the legal team that defended Robert Durst during his Los Angeles murder trial, appeared on Cloobeck’s behalf.
The defendant and his legal team declined to speak with a throng of reporters outside the courthouse. Cloobeck remains free on $300,000 bond.
Cloobeck got rich in the timeshare industry, eventually selling his Las Vegas-based Diamond Resorts company to a private equity firm for $2.2 billion. He immersed himself in Nevada Democratic politics, growing close with the late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, and later launched a long-shot bid for California governor.
He quickly faded in the crowded field, failing to garner above 1% in any poll, and then threw his support behind Democrat Eric Swalwell, who dropped out of the race in disgrace amid a torrent of sex assault and harassment allegations, which he denied.
According to prosecutors, Lavie posed as the girlfriend of numerous men between 2023 and 2025 before pilfering cash, gold and high-value items from homes in Westlake Village, West Hollywood, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. She has also pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors have yet to say exactly how Cloobeck allegedly threatened Lavie’s possible victims. Lavie’s attorney, Lou Shapiro, has declined to discuss the case with The Times.
Lavie was arrested again last week on a new theft charge out of Riverside County. Responding officers from the Beverly Hills Police Department noticed she was not wearing the ankle monitor she was required to keep on as a condition of her bail last week, leading L.A. County prosecutors to file a new misdemeanor count against her.
She is scheduled to appear in the Van Nuys Courthouse early Monday.
Esther Kim Varet has gotten a lot of questions recently from “depressed” liberals wondering whom they should vote for in November to represent them in the redrawn 40th Congressional District, which covers a large swath of inland Orange County and portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
The Democratic art gallery owner placed third in last month’s closely watched primary for the seat, behind Republican incumbent Reps. Ken Calvert of Corona and Young Kim of Anaheim Hills. Calvert and Kim were pushed into the same district by last year’s Proposition 50 and will be the only two candidates facing off for the seat in November.
Kim Varet said her supporters have “obviously put a lot of thought into” which of the incumbents to support, but they have had a hard time swallowing the idea of voting for either. So she tells them why, “if we’re playing a kind of longer game,” they should vote for Kim.
She says Calvert is favored to win, so supporting Kim will “force both sides to spend more on this race” and reduce Republican spending on other races where Democrats still have a shot at beating a GOP incumbent. She says Calvert is “much more senior” than Kim, so ousting him would be “more significant.” And Calvert, as chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, has funded Trump’s war in Iran and would be “morally the better target.”
In last month’s primary, Kim Varet and other Democratic candidates collectively won 42.9% of the district vote, compared with Calvert’s 34.9% and Kim’s 20.6%. If enough of those Democratic voters coalesced behind Kim, they could end Calvert’s 33-year run in Congress.
Whether they will, however, is unclear. Such “orphaned” voters — those left without a candidate of their party in a general election — are historically just as likely to abstain from voting or to vote based on far less strategic considerations. Californians created that dilemma more than a decade ago when they approved the top-two primary system that puts all candidates on the same ballot and only allows the top-two finishers to advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.
Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting expert who devised California’s new congressional map under Proposition 50, said the backers of California’s primary system sold it years ago as a moderating force, where those orphaned voters would be encouraged to select the least partisan general election candidate.
But in reality, Mitchell said, “it doesn’t work that way.”
Voter decisions
Mitchell said intraparty matchups in the past have shown 35% of orphaned voters or more simply abstain from voting in that race.
A recent analysis Mitchell conducted of races, including for seats in the state Legislature, showed such undervoting among orphaned voters in every intraparty race for a state Senate seat in 2024 — one clear example being the competitive and costly battle between two Democrats, Laura Richardson and Michelle Chambers, in South Los Angeles.
Many others vote based on “tertiary things,” he said, such as a candidate’s race or gender, or whether they seem local or a Washington insider.
“Traditionally, it isn’t so much about somebody being more moderate,” he said, in part because voters can’t always discern moderation among candidates of an opposing party. “Republicans might be able to tell the difference between a moderate Republican and a conservative Republican, but Democrats can’t tell the difference.”
Incumbency can also be a drag on a candidate if orphaned voters dislike their track record, even if their opponent is even further from those voters politically. As one example, Mitchell pointed to rural, more conservative parts of the state going for Kevin de León over Sen. Dianne Feinstein when he challenged her in 2018, despite his running to her left.
“You’re like, how in the hell did these rural counties vote for Kevin de León? And it was because there were a lot of Republicans who, if they were going to vote in the U.S. Senate race, just wanted to vote against Feinstein,” Mitchell said.
Katelyn Stauffer, an associate politics professor at University of Georgia who has studied voter behavior in top-two races in California, said people “like to make decisions that are easy,” and “for most people, the ultimate cue is, does this person share my party?”
When party doesn’t differentiate candidates, voters tend to rely on other “simple cues or heuristics,” Stauffer said.
For example, based on her research, she said, women regardless of party and Democrats regardless of gender are more likely to vote for a woman in such scenarios.
Candidate messaging
Candidates could consider moderating their message to attract orphaned voters, though that can be perilous.
In a statement to The Times, Calvert accused Kim of trying to woo orphaned voters with a more bipartisan message, as evidence she is untrustworthy.
“Young Kim has bragged to some voters that she’s a moderate who censured President Trump. She’s then claimed to others that she [is] a 100% Trump Republican. It’s obvious Young Kim will say anything to try and hold on to her job, which is why voters from every party just can’t trust her,” Calvert said.
He said he has “been a consistent conservative in Congress for many years and that’s not going to change.” He also claimed to be “one of the most effective members of Congress,” saying he has secured funding to reduce traffic congestion, fight fires and improve water infrastructure in his district — things “voters from all parties want.”
Chris Pack, a spokesman for Kim, denied that Kim is changing her tune depending on her audience, and dismissed Calvert’s claims of serving his constituents well, calling him a “do-nothing dinosaur” who has failed to improve his constituents’ lives for decades.
“The truth is he’s had more than enough time to deliver for the people of California, and he hasn’t,” Pack said.
Similar intraparty battles are playing out in other congressional races between Democrats.
In the 4th Congressional District, which stretches through the Napa and Sacramento valleys, Republican voters could help decide between incumbent Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) and his challenger from the left, venture capitalist Eric Jones.
Thompson — who has been in Congress since 1999 and sits on the powerful Ways and Means Committee — won 41% of the vote in the primary, while Jones won 22.2%. A slate of six Republican candidates collectively won 36.1%.
Jones, who backs progressive measures to expand Medicare and cut working-class taxes, said he hopes voters of all stripes look beyond political labels and see that he is the only candidate in the race who will take on big utilities, healthcare lobbyists and other big-business interests who fund Thompson’s campaigns.
“I want voters to realize that there’s a real choice in front of them,” he said.
Thompson said he is focused on doing his job, introducing himself to voters in the new parts of his district, reconfigured under Proposition 50, and “figuring out how I can work with them” to address their concerns. He said there is “a lot of commonality” among voters of all parties who want “good roads, clean air, water, strong [agriculture], safe communities,” and that he’s been endorsed by local Republicans and Democrats alike.
Thompson also rejected Jones’ criticism of his fundraising, saying he has “done a lot of good work that’s not necessarily in the interests” of those who have contributed to his campaign. He also said fundraising is necessary in a race against a wealthy opponent like Jones, who donated millions of dollars to his own campaign.
In the 7th Congressional District, Republican voters will help decide between incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) — who has been in Congress since replacing her late husband there in 2005 — and her challenger from the left, progressive Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang.
Vang won 31.2% of the primary vote. Matsui won 29.1%. Two Republican candidates together won 37%.
In a statement to The Times, Matsui said November’s general election “will be a significantly different race because there will be many more voters that didn’t vote in the primary,” and that she will “work harder to court voters by meeting them where they are and informing them how I’ve delivered on my promises,” including on healthcare, public safety and jobs.
Vang did not respond to a request for comment but has previously accused Matsui of not delivering on her promises for decades.
“After 20 years, families are living paycheck to paycheck, people of my generation are no closer to owning a home, and you still can’t afford a doctor visit,” Vang said last month.
Party involvement
Political parties have traditionally shunned meddling in races where they lack a candidate of their own, experts said. They sometimes endorse in races where two members of their own party are facing off against each other, but not always.
Nick Poche, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, said his organization is largely focused on three races in which Republicans are either looking to hold or win seats from Democrats: the 13th Congressional District, where Republican Kevin Lincoln is challenging Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced); the 22nd Congressional District, where Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) is trying to fend off Democrat Randy Villegas; and the 48th Congressional District, where Republican Jim Desmond is facing off against Democrat Marni von Wilpert for the seat of retiring Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall).
He called the Democrats in those races “radical socialists and emblematic of California’s far-left failures,” and said his party would be campaigning against them. But he declined to speak to the Calvert-Kim race, or the races in which two Democrats are facing off.
The California Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.
Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, said his party is focused on “fulfilling the promise of Proposition 50” to flip five seats to help his party win control of the House, and is also focused on three competitive races: those for Valadao’s and Issa’s seats, and one in the 6th Congressional District, where Democrat Richard Pan is taking on Republican-turned-independent Rep. Kevin Kiley of Rocklin.
Hicks said the party will not endorse Calvert or Kim, whom he called “two rotten choices,” but has endorsed incumbents Matsui and Thompson in their races against fellow Democrats because they have “been leading” on issues of affordability and access to healthcare and “are best positioned to be reelected.”
Jones scoffed at his party endorsing his opponent. “Are we really excited that the Democratic machine keeps trying to choose our electeds for us?” he said.
Come 2028, the Democratic presidential campaign promises to be a banger, with all sorts of intrigue and subplots layered within a wide-open fight for the nomination.
In the meantime, Democrats have seemingly resolved at least one 2028 fight, a fracas marked by snarking, backbiting and plenty of acrimony — all the things that make our politics such a grand and glorious endeavor.
We speak of the contest to determine which state will hold the first vote of the 2028 nominating process. And the winner is … South Carolina!
This was a blow to Nevada, the runner-up in the calendar sweepstakes, and not a very sporting one at that. The state Democratic Party issued a huffy news release, insisting Nevada will be the candidates’ first true test of 2028 — emphasis added — reprising the argument over which state offers the best starting path to reclaim the White House and, thus, deserves the coveted lead voting slot.
(California, a perennially frustrated onlooker, is not set to vote until March 7, several weeks into the balloting, which is supposed to start Jan. 22.)
Iowa went first, holding its quaint and quirky precinct caucuses — neighbors gathered in church halls, school libraries and the like as they worked through arcane rules involving “realignment” and “viability thresholds” — followed by New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.
The change set off a free-for-all this time around, as a dozen states bid for the chance to vote first.
(The two major political parties set the rules for choosing their presidential nominees, independent of one another. Republicans are expected to stick to the traditional lineup, starting with the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, followed by contests in Nevada and South Carolina.)
Last month, after nearly a year of consideration, the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted for six states to hold their contests in a window between late January and the end of February. They are, in order, South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia. The lineup will be presented to the full Democratic National Committee to be voted on and finalized later this month.
Doubtless, you — a normal person — have paid little or no attention to any of this. You’ve got more important things to do, like binge-watching “Widow’s Bay,” or not melting.
But party leaders and political insiders take the process extremely seriously. At stake: bragging rights, a modest economic boost and the chance for local analysts and office-holders to make frequent appearances as experts on the cable-TV chat shows.
The jostling grew particularly fierce between South Carolina and Nevada.
More than 50% of the Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina is Black. In Nevada, Latinos are a substantial and increasingly powerful voting bloc. So, naturally, the competition between the two states assumed fraught racial overtones, which is unfortunate but not surprising, given Democrats’ penchant for picking at sore spots and turning on each other at the slightest provocation.
It was also rather pointless. The order of the presidential calendar is consequential, but far from determinative.
Presidential campaigns have changed drastically in the 50 years since a little-known Jimmy Carter quietly burrowed into Iowa, spent months bunking in folks’ extra bedrooms, then burst to national fame by outperforming his more prominent rivals. Today, the race is a 24/7 affair, followed by voters in all 50 states.
Obviously, the voting has to begin somewhere and the competition between states is well and good. But the trash-talking and, especially, antagonism over race and ethnicity is gratuitous and needlessly divisive. Candidates will show they have the stuff to win the nomination, or not, by building their best case and pitching it to voters.
No matter if it’s a Black church in Las Vegas or a Latino neighborhood in North Charleston. Any location will do.
Trump-endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton formally launched his general election campaign Wednesday by pitching himself to California’s abundance of anti-Trump voters.
In a speech, Hilton said Democrats had “abandoned” working-class and Latino communities and crushed small businesses. He criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom for leading the state into decline, pointing to low literacy rates and slow responses to crises such as the Boyle Heights warehouse fire.
Hilton, a British-born conservative political commentator and former Fox News host, faces an uphill battle in California, a Democratic stronghold. In June, Hilton clinched second place in California’s gubernatorial primary behind veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra.
In an effort to persuade voters who are dissatisfied with the status quo, Hilton bought a full-page ad in the Wednesday editions of the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle.
The ad read, “Can you be anti-Trump and still vote for me?,” followed by a checklist readers could use to “test” if they shared common ground with Hilton.
“I can’t stand Trump, but I’m not happy with the way things have been run in California lately,” reads one line in the ad.
“I want to fight climate change, but $6.00 gas is crazy!” reads another.
At a news conference Wednesday, Hilton said the ad is aimed at voters who “know that we need change in California.”
Trump’s unpopularity in the state “doesn’t matter because we’re not talking about national policies here,” he said. “This is about what we can do in our state to make life better for Californians.”
Hilton then framed himself as a “pragmatic, problem-solving change-maker” focused on affordability, promising to lower gas prices, electricity costs and taxes and the cost of homes.
“We may not agree about national politics, but I think we can agree that we need change in California, and I’m going to bring that change,” he said.
The news conference, which marked the formal launch of Hilton’s general election campaign, took place at a Boyle Heights auto body shop across the street from the Lineage cold storage facility that was destroyed by a fire last month.
The location was chosen because it is a “symbol of Democrat failure,” Hilton said. The nauseating stench of rotting food filled the surrounding neighborhood. Swarms of flies buzzed about, occasionally landing on top of Hilton’s head.
Hilton said he’s not expecting Trump to campaign on his behalf in California. But, he added, “I’m proud to be endorsed by the president and I think it’s a very good thing to have a governor who has a good relationship with the federal administration.”
No Republican has been elected to a statewide office since 2006. A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California published earlier this month showed Becerra with support from 61% of likely voters, compared with 36% for Hilton.
Hilton insists his campaign is different from previous Republican bids.
“We’ve got to the point in California where people are looking for a positive alternative,” Hilton told The Times. “We’re going to be fighting very hard … already in the last year and a half I’ve fought a campaign like no one’s seen in California for 20 years. I’ve been to nearly every single county in our state.”
The tight timeline to replace former Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner has left Democratic hopefuls scrambling to woo his progressive base while trying to turn the focus from the disgraced oysterman to defeating Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November.
It’s a delicate balance for the candidates, who are vying to face Collins in a contest that could decide control of the Senate as Platner’s shadow hangs over the race. In their first debate Thursday night, one of the first questions candidates were asked was: What was Graham Platner’s best idea?
Moving past Platner is just one of the challenges facing Democrats. The never-before-used process to pick a new nominee means candidates have less than three weeks to pull off what typically takes campaigns months or years, from organizing volunteers to raising money and preparing for debates.
The whiplash many of the candidates are facing was on display Thursday.
Asked by debate moderators about President Trump’s decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this year, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows gave inaccurate information about Collins not pushing back against Trump, a Republican. When a moderator called her on it, Bellows said she was on vacation on the Kennebec River last week after previously focusing on her unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign and hadn’t expected to be running for the Senate.
“When I need to know the facts, I will. I’ll do my homework,” said Bellows, who lost to Collins in 2014.
The field of 12 candidates also includes former public health leader Nirav Shah and union-backed logger Troy Jackson, who campaigned alongside Platner in a failed bid for governor.
Platner’s exit means the clock is ticking
Platner quit the Senate race last week after he was accused of rape, which he denies, and his campaign quickly imploded as supporters revoked their endorsements and resources.
Democrats have until July 27 to choose a new nominee, according to state law. The Maine Democratic Party’s succession plan calls for a state party convention at which 601 delegates will meet on July 25 and vote for Platner’s replacement. The majority of the convention delegates will be selected this weekend from each of the state’s 16 counties.
Candidates hoping to replace Platner have been recruiting delegates who will vote for them at the convention. The candidates also must collect 500 voter signatures needed to qualify for the convention vote.
“I don’t think anyone’s happy that we’re in this situation,” said Dan Jenkins, a Maine Democrat who has applied to be a delegate. “We would have preferred that this had broken many, many months ago and then Graham had exited the race when there was a time for a democratic process. But it’s where we are.”
Some candidates might see a boost from prior campaigns
Jackson is among the handful of candidates pivoting to the Senate race after running for other political offices, likely giving them a leg up in not having to launch from scratch.
Our Revolution, a progressive organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont that had originally backed Platner, has thrown its support behind Jackson, the former Maine Senate president. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has not endorsed in the race.
Shah, former director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also unsuccessfully ran in this year’s Maine Democratic governor’s primary. He has been pitching Platner’s supporters that he’s also an outsider who can unify a fractured Democratic Party.
“You have an important place in this campaign, and we welcome your voices,” Shah said earlier this month speaking to Platner’s base.
Bellows also ran for governor. She’s hoping that her previous battles with Trump will bolster her argument that she’ll be an advocate for the working class.
Bellows previously attempted to run against Collins in 2014 as the Senate Democratic nominee and lost in a landslide. She later went on to win a seat as a state senator before becoming Maine’s secretary of state. She’s since downplayed her prior loss to Collins by pointing to the Democratic establishment’s unwillingness to take on the Republican in 2014.
Another candidate, Jordan Wood, initially announced his intent to run in the Maine Democratic Senate primary. He dropped out last fall to run in the state’s 2nd District but lost that race.
Candidates seize on recent ICE shooting
The fatal shooting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Maine this week has been top of mind among the potential Senate nominees.
The Embassy of Colombia has identified the man killed Monday in Biddeford, roughly 15 miles southwest of Portland, as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national. The Department of Homeland Security has since said an ICE officer fired his weapon when the man officers were pursuing attempted to flee the scene, threatening “public safety.”
Many have rushed to connect Collins to the embattled federal agency.
All the candidates who debated Thursday said they agreed with the call to “abolish ICE,” though Wood stopped short of saying the agency should be completely dissolved.
“I believe that when I say we have to abolish it, what I mean is that we need a new law enforcement agency that has the trust of the people,” Wood said.
Jackson disagreed, calling ICE a “rogue agency that goes around doing things that they’re being told to on high.”
Candidates asked about Platner’s best ideas
Platner attracted more than 150,000 votes during the June 9 primary, an eye-opening number that signaled a progressive base eager to support a candidate known for his promise to defend the working class and ability to rally large crowds.
With little more than a week until the state convention to find Platner’s replacement, it still remains unknown just who will be able to capture that same excitement seen among Platner’s base.
When pressed during Thursday’s debate about Platner’s best idea on the campaign trail, Jackson pointed to his commitment to “Medicare for All.” As a gubernatorial candidate, Jackson also voiced support for replacing job-based and individual private health insurance with a government-run plan that guarantees coverage for all with no premiums, no deductibles and only minimal copays for certain services.
Bellows said that she agreed with Platner’s description that democracy in the U.S. has been corrupted by those in power.
Shah said he would take up Platner’s commitment to “abolish ICE,” while Wood said he admired Platner’s decision to say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, something Israel denies.
“Graham got into this race saying, ‘this is genocide.’ And I learned that it is so important in these moments to draw those moral lines,” Wood said.
A Democratic candidate for Congress and her husband were arrested after a fight at their home, authorities said.
Stephanie Studebaker and her husband, Sam, were booked on domestic violence charges, police said. Studebaker, 45, a veterinarian and first-time political candidate, is running against Republican Rep. Michael R. Turner for the Dayton-area seat.
Studebaker’s campaign has suspended all activities “for the time being” due to personal issues, her website said.
PORTLAND, Maine — Graham Platner on Friday submitted his paperwork to formally withdraw from Maine’s U.S. Senate race, officially ending an upstart yet troubled campaign, the dissolution of which threatens Democrats’ pursuit of chamber control.
Platner’s paperwork was received by the Maine secretary of state’s office and reflected shortly thereafter in its online withdrawal list.
In a letter to the secretary of state’s office, which Platner also posted on social media, he wrote that the Mainers who had nominated him “voted for a new kind of politics” that is “representative of people down here in the real world — not billionaires, oligarchs, or the political establishment.”
It was the same outsider chord that had been a trademark of his tumultuous campaign, in which Platner drew backing from progressive leaders including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California. Both are among many who have since withdrawn their endorsements.
“I seek to further the movement we have built together and the future we believe in,” he went on, without elaborating.
Maine is considered a key state for control of the narrowly divided Senate, and Democrats were desperate for a candidate capable of defeating Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
The formal withdrawal comes two days after Platner said he would quit the race, facing an allegation of sexual assault that he has denied. Maine Democrats are seeking a new nominee, and several candidates have already begun jockeying for position.
State law includes a provision for Democrats to replace Platner before the general election, but the replacement must by named by July 27.
Just before Platner’s Wednesday announcement, more than 100 state Democratic Party committee members signed off on holding a nominating convention, in the event of his withdrawal, to choose the nominee. The state party has not publicly released details of when the convention will be held. Officials with the party did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Several Democrats have announced plans to run for the Senate nomination this week. They include three candidates who lost the June primary for governor — former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson.
Others who have announced runs include Maine Beer Co. co-founder Dan Kleban; former 2nd Congressional District candidates Jordan Wood and Paige Loud; and former Maine Senate candidates David Costello and Andrea LaFlamme. State Rep. Valli Geiger has also expressed interest in the post but has not formally announced.
Kinnard and Whittle write for the Associated Press.
SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. — U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens is spending the closing weeks of Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary making a simple case: she’s the candidate who wins.
Stevens flipped a Republican-held House seat in suburban Detroit in 2018 and hasn’t lost since, including surviving a bruising primary against a fellow Democratic incumbent after redistricting in 2022. She says it’s what sets her apart from her opponent in the Aug. 4 primary, progressive Abdul El-Sayed.
“It is not a hypothetical that I beat Republicans,” Stevens told The Associated Press after a campaign stop in West Michigan this week. “I win tough races. I have had Republicans throw everything at me and still managed to win.”
Holding Michigan’s Senate seat is essential to any Democratic path back to the Senate majority this fall. That imperative only grew this week after Democrats’ nominee in Maine, Graham Platner, said he planned to drop out after he was accused of sexual assault, threatening another seat the party had hoped to keep competitive. While no Republican has won a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan since 1994, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers came within 20,000 votes of doing so in 2024.
That calculation has led Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and influential Michigan Democrats, including former Sen. Debbie Stabenow, to rally behind Stevens, arguing she gives Democrats their strongest chance in November against Rogers, who is running again.
But if electability is the party establishment’s top priority, it’s an open question whether Democratic primary voters agree.
“Democratic leadership should think more in terms of what we want to accomplish, and less about, ‘We’ve got to make it appeal to everybody,’” said Dave Burdick, 71, of Douglas, Michigan. He’s backing El-Sayed, who has surged by arguing that Democrats don’t have to run to the middle to win.
El-Sayed has built his campaign around bold policy proposals, rejecting corporate PAC money and casting himself as an alternative to the status quo of the Democratic Party.
“People don’t want a moderate. They want somebody who’s going to come in and effect change,” Burdick added.
Stevens makes the case for retail politics
On a summer afternoon in South Haven, a community along Lake Michigan, Stevens walks into a pet supply store with the ease of a seasoned campaigner. Within minutes, she’s chatting with the owner about the area, greeting reporters by first name and striking up conversations with customers. She slips easily between small talk and campaign mode, asking about customers’ lives before mentioning legislation she’s championed and asking for their vote.
“I thought she was great fun,” said owner Roxanne Leder. “She was energetic and had a positive outlook.”
It’s the kind of campaigning Stevens’ allies say has defined her political career. They acknowledge she lacks the viral progressive moments that have fueled El-Sayed’s rise, but say she’s at her best in small rooms, union halls and local businesses — which they say is where elections are won.
Stevens has leaned into that contrast herself.
“Unlike my opponent, I’m not running at the first mic or camera I see,” Stevens said during a debate Tuesday. “We do not need a celebrity senator. We need a workhorse.”
It’s also a style familiar to Michigan Democrats. From former Gov. Jennifer Granholm to current-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, successful statewide candidates have often paired an upbeat, personable campaign style with a pragmatic message centered on economic issues.
But unlike Granholm or Whitmer, Stevens has yet to generate the kind of broad grassroots enthusiasm that defined their statewide campaigns. El-Sayed, meanwhile, has packed rallies with progressive supporters and high-profile endorsers.
Stevens has leaned more heavily on tens of millions of dollars in outside spending, which could become one of Stevens’ biggest liabilities in the primary. Outside groups have spent more than $30 million to boost her candidacy, dwarfing the spending behind El-Sayed. The largest spender, United Democracy Project, the super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has spent more than $13 million on Stevens’ behalf and reserved another $7 million before the primary.
For Burdick, the 71-year-old El-Sayed supporter, that spending is disqualifying. He said he would not vote for Stevens in the general election because of her support from AIPAC.
Leder, by contrast, said she expects to vote for Stevens in August because she’s far more familiar with the congresswoman than with El-Sayed. She said she still plans to do more research before making a final decision.
“I’m just a Democrat,” said Leder. “Please, please no Mike Rogers.”
Michigan has a populist streak
El-Sayed is running on Medicare for All, campaign finance reform, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and ending all U.S. weapons sales to Israel. He’s also a Muslim who has never held elected office.
To many Democratic leaders in Washington, that makes him a risky nominee in a battleground state often viewed as moderate and centered on manufacturing.
But Michigan has repeatedly rewarded candidates who cast themselves as outsiders challenging the political establishment. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the state’s Democratic presidential primary by running against party leaders. Donald Trump later built his own anti-establishment coalition, carrying Michigan in 2016 and again in 2024.
Burdick, a self-described “old white guy living in rural Michigan” who is a democratic socialist, said Trump and Sanders resonated with voters because they were upset.
“Well, you know what? They’re still mad,” he said. “They portray people like Abdul as unrealistic, but I think it’s unrealistic to think that we can continue the way that we’re heading.”
A two-person race changes the calculus
On Sunday, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign. It prompted establishment Democrats to jump off the sidelines and back Stevens, including Democratic group EMILY’s List and Attorney General Dana Nessel.
“Haley is wicked smart, has won multiple highly competitive races, and she connects with people on a level so sincere and genuine that everyone who meets her feels truly seen and heard,” Nessel said in a statement.
El-Sayed has also built support among labor groups that have played an influential role in Democratic politics, including an endorsement from the United Auto Workers.
Fems for Dems, an influential Democratic grassroots group in the state, is not endorsing in the primary. But its founder, Lori Goldman, told AP in an interview that she planned to vote for El-Sayed.
“I personally am not going to have business as usual when I go to the ballot box. I want to vote for people, candidates that are going to go there and fight on our behalf,” she said.
Goldman, who founded the group 10 years ago in the politically important Oakland County, acknowledges the changing dynamics of Democratic primaries.
“Who would the natural choice be 10 years ago? Haley Stevens, right? Because we just followed the party line,” she said.
“People are breaking away from the party line. People want change.”
WASHINGTON — The campaign of U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner was buckling in Maine on Tuesday after he was accused of rape, injecting uncertainty into a contest that is central to determining which party wins Senate control in November’s midterms.
The situation set off swift debate about how state Democrats would choose Platner’s replacement if he were to withdraw, and which Maine figures might be best positioned to play off the progressive messaging he used to win over voters.
With Maine viewed by Democrats as a key seat to win in their long-shot bid for a Senate majority, the decision would be high stakes, analysts said. In the meantime, with uncertainty clouding the race, the shake-up could put additional pressure on the party to win Senate races in states seen as more difficult to flip.
Platner has denied the rape allegation, which came in a Politico report Monday from a woman who said Platner forced her to have sex with him when he was intoxicated. Platner said Monday that he would “reflect” on his candidacy but has not withdrawn.
“The calculation that almost everyone on the Democratic side is making is that with Platner in it, it is an unwinnable race,” said John Cluverius, director of survey research for the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell, “and without Platner in it, they have a much better chance.”
An oyster farmer and Marine veteran, Platner had entered the race to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins as an outsider and was seen as riding an anti-establishment wave of support.
His candidacy highlighted the split within his party between progressives and establishment Democrats and represented a matchup between an older incumbent and a younger outsider candidate.
By Tuesday afternoon, Platner’s financial backing was disintegrating and prominent Democrats had withdrawn their support — including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a key endorser of Platner’s, who said Tuesday afternoon that he had told Platner to withdraw.
A spokesperson for Platner’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), who had been one of Platner’s most visible backers, quickly withdrew his endorsement Monday.
“I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible,” Khanna, who has been a prominent supporter of victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, wrote on X.
The California congressman had been among progressives, including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who previously stood by Platner. Khanna had rallied for Platner at a pre-primary event in June after a set of allegations about the candidate’s “unsettling” conduct from his exes reported by the New York Times and the revelation that he had sent sexually explicit messages to women outside his marriage.
Platner’s collapse comes after the fall of former California Rep. Eric Swalwell, whose ascendant campaign for governor was ended in April after he was accused of sexual assault.
As in Swalwell’s case, Platner’s support has unraveled quickly, leaving him with little path forward.
The Democrats’ formal Senate campaign arm and the Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both pulled investment from the race, their leaders said in statements. Swing Left, an organization working to flip seats for Democrats, removed Maine from its target Senate races for now.
“We continue to believe this seat is winnable if Platner is not on the ballot,” said Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French.
Understate law, Platner has until Monday to withdraw in order for the Maine Democratic Party to be able to nominate a replacement. The committee would have until July 27 to do so.
For Collins, facing a new candidate could make for a harder race than going up against Platner, analysts said.
The fifth-term senator has survived reelection repeatedly, including in 2020, when the state went blue in the presidential election, but drawn ire from some moderate and left-leaning voters who want her to push back more forcefully against President Trump.
Without Maine, Democrats would have to pick up an additional race in a state that went for Trump in 2024 in order to flip the four seats required to win a majority.
To get to four, the party needs to win some mix of Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Iowa and must also retain its seats in Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire.
That scenario could be within reach for Democrats but they face a steep climb, a New York Times/Siena poll released last week found.
“This does put enormous pressure on Democrats across the country with every viable race,” said David Niven, who teaches American politics at the University of Cincinnati. “The margin of error was already slim, and it’s approaching none.”
In Texas, a heated and expensive race has shaped up between Democrat James Talarico, a state representative who is facing Republican Ken Paxton, the state attorney general.
“I would suspect that Democrats are going to be relatively all-in on Texas simply because they can no longer rely on Maine in the way they thought they were going to be able to,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
The Politico report came after a string of other controversies for Platner, who had successfully batted them away ahead of the state’s June primary.
His quick rise in the campaign excited Democrats looking for younger, non-establishment leaders. His primary opponent, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign in late April, clearing his path.
He faced scrutiny over a tattoo on his chest that was widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he then said he had covered up, and a tranche of deleted Reddit posts that he said were “stupid” comments from a time when he had post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ahead of the primary, the report of his extramarital texts and theallegations by exes about volatile behavior revived questions about his candidacy; Platner described them as politically motivated and privately assured Democratic leaders that nothing else was coming.
The situation “reinforce[s] the need for more careful vetting [of] first-time outsider candidates,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine.
“Every political professional knows that the most important type of candidate research is not opposition research — it’s research on your own candidate,” Schnur said.
Progressive leaders on Monday sought to validate the success of Platner’s campaign in energizing Maine voters while disavowing Platner. They urged Democratic leaders to stick with a candidate who shares Platner’s working-class image if he withdraws — something Platner may hope to influence, the New York Times reported.
“To the Democratic establishment: this is not your opening,” Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive organization Our Revolution,said in a statement. “Whoever leads this movement forward must be someone who has actually lived the fight Graham Platner ran on.”
Some Democrats were already looking to the party’s gubernatorial primary candidates as possible replacements, including Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former state Sen. Troy Jackson and former state health official Nirav D. Shah.
The July deadlines would leave enough time before November for Democrats to persuade voters of a new candidate, said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, but how the party chose to select a replacement would probably be as important as whom it chose.
“Having a 100-person executive committee select it on their own would probably not sit well with Platner’s supporters,” Brewer said. “A caucus they could pull off; if they want to be as open and inclusive as possible, that’s probably their best option.”
McDaniel reported from Washington and Kwok from Los Angeles.
