gubernatorial

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.”

DAPHNE, Ala. — Former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has been arrested on drug possession charges in Alabama after police say they pulled him over for erratic driving and found marijuana and meth in his vehicle.

It’s the latest legal trouble for the ex-Tallahassee mayor, who narrowly lost to Republican Ron DeSantis for governor in 2018 and was once considered a rising star of the Democratic Party.

Gillum, 46, was arrested on July 2 in Daphne, about 11 miles east of Mobile on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. He is charged with marijuana possession and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, the Daphne Police Department said. Jail records show he was released on July 3.

Court records for Gillum’s case were not yet available, the Baldwin County Clerk of Court’s office said. Information on a lawyer who could speak on his behalf wasn’t immediately available.

A message seeking comment was left for the local district attorney’s office.

Gillum is a co-host of the politically themed Native Land Pod, which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding News and Information Podcast in 2025. A message seeking comment was left for the podcast’s production company.

In a news release, the Daphne Police Department said officers stopped Gillum’s vehicle around 10:45 p.m. and initiated a probable cause search after one of them noticed a glass pipe on the center console.

They found several rolled marijuana cigarettes and three packages of a substance that tested positive for methamphetamine, police said.

Gillum, who served as mayor of Florida’s capital from 2014 to 2018, came within less than a percentage point of being elected the state’s first Black governor, losing to DeSantis by fewer than 34,000 votes.

In 2020, Gillum was found in a Miami Beach hotel room with a man who had apparently overdosed on drugs. Police said Gillum himself was too inebriated to talk about what happened.

The man survived and no one was ever charged with a crime for the overdose, but Gillum withdrew from public life for months afterward while seeking treatment for alcohol abuse and depression. Months later, he told a TV interviewer that he had to come to grips with what he had done.

“So much of my recovery has been about trying to get over shame,” Gillum said on the Tamron Hall talk show in September 2020.

In 2022, Gillum was indicted on federal conspiracy and wire fraud charges for allegedly funneling tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations through third parties back to himself for personal use.

A 2023 trial ended in a hung jury on those charges and an acquittal on charges that Gillum lied to undercover FBI agents posing as developers who paid for a 2016 trip he took with his brother to New York, including hotel rooms, meals, a boat tour and a ticket to the hit Broadway show “Hamilton.”

June 19 (UPI) — Maine election officials announced the results of its ranked-choice primary runoffs Friday, confirming Democrat Hannah Pingree and Republican Bobby Charles as the candidates for the gubernatorial election in November.

Democrat Matt Dunlap, Maine’s state auditor and former secretary of state, advanced to the midterm elections, seeking the 2nd District seat held by Democrat Rep. Jared Golden. Republican and former Gov. Paul LePage will be his opponent.

The 2nd District congressional race has been targeted by the Republican Party as one it believes it could flip in November. President Donald Trump had a 10% edge in the district in the 2024 election.

Maine is one of two states in the United States to do ranked-choice voting for statewide elections. The other is Alaska. Ranked-choice voting is also used in municipalities across the country.

Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who has reached her term limit in the office, endorsed Pingree, the Democratic nominee, to succeed her. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won Maine by 7% in 2024.

Pingree is a former speaker of the House in Maine’s state legislature.

Pingree’s opponent, Charles, is a former naval intelligence officer and was the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs under President George W. Bush. He also served in the White House under the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1983.

Californians couldn’t escape billionaire Tom Steyer’s political ads — during newscasts, sitcoms, or sporting events; on streaming services, YouTube, influencers’ social media feeds, or their mailboxes. Even the Puppy Bowl.

Yet despite spending a record-shattering $216 million of his wealth on his run for governor, the Democrat failed to win enough votes in last week’s primary to advance to the November general election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Money isn’t everything, even though it obviously helps,” said Andrea Godfrey Flynn, a marketing professor at the University of San Diego. “It boosted Steyer way up. … But there are so many other factors at play that it may not have been enough.”

Steyer, a hedge fund co-founder turned environmental warrior, polled at 1% shortly before he entered the governor’s race in November, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

He climbed in subsequent polls, hitting 19% in the same poll shortly before the June 2 primary, putting Steyer in contention for winning one of the top two spots in the contest that would allow him to advance to the November election. But then he hit a ceiling, and on Tuesday, it became official that he failed to advance.

Steyer emailed supporters Tuesday expressing gratitude for their efforts backing his campaign, endorsements and votes.

“Together, we fought for a California that belongs to the people who keep it running every day, and we insisted that they do not have to settle for a system that protects corporate profits at the expense of working people,” he wrote. “I’m proud of how we never compromised our values or lowered our sights for what California can and should be.”

He pointed with pride at major corporations such as Chevron and Meta spending heavily to oppose his bid, and said their tens of millions of dollars spent attacking him shows the flaws in the electoral system. And he acknowledged that may be part of the reason some voters were skeptical of voting for a billionaire.

“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” Steyer said. “This campaign proved that business-as-usual depends on politics-as-usual, and there is no going back. We must continue to fight for a system where democracy serves Californians, not corporations — and where you do not have to be a billionaire to run on single-payer, or on breaking up monopolies, or on calling out a corrupt system when you see it. Because people are fed up with a system rigged to benefit billionaires and leave them behind.”

As of Tuesday evening, Steyer had received more than 1.9 million votes of the more than 9 million cast, lagging behind the two candidates who will appear on the November ballot: Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a longtime elected official who most recently served in President Biden’s cabinet. Steyer was trailing Hilton, the second-place finisher, by just over 200,000 votes.

Steyer immediately endorsed Becerra, whom he had relentlessly attacked in the closing weeks of the campaign as beholden to corporations with business in front of the governor.

California has a history of unsuccessful self-funders. Former Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi spent more than $40 million of his money on an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary campaign in 1998, which broke records at the time.

More than a decade later, former EBay chief Meg Whitman spent $144 million of her wealth on her bid to become California’s governor, setting a new national record for spending on a state election. She won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election.

This year’s gubernatorial contest is not the first time Steyer has spent an inordinate sum seeking office. In 2020, he spent $342 million on a brief, unsuccessful presidential campaign.

Sheri Sadler, a veteran Los Angeles-based Democratic media buyer, said Steyer’s 2026 gubernatorial deluge was notable.

“I literally saw his spots ad nauseam,” she said. “They left almost no stone unturned.”

Sadler worked for Steyer in the final weeks of his presidential bid and scheduled $50 million of billionaire Rick Caruso’s money on ads during his unsuccessful 2022 Los Angeles mayoral campaign.

She believes that Steyer hit a ceiling because voters who are bombarded by ads eventually feel that the candidate is trying to purchase their affection.

“It’s one thing to give me a message I can resonate with. If they’re just trying to buy my vote, that feels different to me,” she said, adding that Steyer’s wealth undermined his platform, which included support for raising taxes on billionaires. “That’s my gut. And I feel like that’s what happened to us on Caruso and possibly why he didn’t run” for governor this year.

Steyer, 68, made his fortune founding a hedge fund that included investments in fossil fuels, private prisons and other businesses that are controversial among Democrats. He told voters that he walked away from the firm 14 years ago, leaving an enormous amount of money on the table, because it did not align with his morals. Steyer adds that he and his wife have pledged to give away most of their wealth before they die.

And unlike many wealthy self-funders, Steyer did not leap into a campaign as a political neophyte who assumed their business skills would translate into being an effective elected official.

Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor, are longtime donors to Democratic candidates, but for well over a decade, they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on liberal causes such as fighting climate change, mobilizing young voters, urging the impeachment of President Trump, opposing an effort by oil companies to suspend California environmental standards, increasing the state cigarette tax and supporting last year’s redrawing of the state’s congressional districts to counter Trump.

Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist who advised Checchi, said that Steyer’s focus on such causes had the potential to be meaningful to voters who are often skeptical about the sincerity and motives of rich candidates.

“Tom Steyer has done a good job in that respect, because if you’re going to overcome that skepticism, it’s very helpful for the candidate to show that he or she has actually been involved in the world of public policy and politics for an extended period,” and Steyer has, Sragow said.

Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles), who endorsed Steyer, argued that he promoted proposals that were against his personal interests, such as the proposed billionaire’s tax that is expected to appear on the November ballot.

“Interestingly enough, Tom Steyer is also the only candidate who’s talked about campaign finance reform and wanting to get money out of politics, including his money, to return power to the people and have publicly financed elections,” Bryan said after a Steyer rally near downtown L.A. on May 31.

Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also campaigned on limiting the influence of corporate PAC money in elections, or implementing publicly financed elections in California. Porter often criticized Steyer for running as a “change agent” while spending millions he earned from investments in oil and gas.

“You paid the lowest tax rate on this stage and yet you made the billions that you’re using to fund your campaign off fossil fuels,” she said to Steyer during an April 28 debate in Claremont.

Political experts argue that messages that seem contradictory to a candidate’s background, as well as drowning voters with incessant ads, can be jarring and off-putting to the electorate.

“It can be an overload to voters where they hit that tipping point where they’re no longer interested,” Flynn said.

Despite Steyer’s foundational argument that his wealth meant he was not beholden to anyone, she said voters may be unable to reconcile a billionaire’s ability to understand or empathize about an average Californian’s needs.

“The messaging still is a giant factor,” Flynn said. “I’m curious [about] how believable it came across to voters — can you trust a billionaire to really care about affordability, someone who made money working with business or in business not to care about special interests?”

While Steyer campaigned as a hard-left liberal, he failed to be the top pick for progressives. Steyer had the support of 35% of likely voters who identified as strongly liberal while Becerra was backed by 37%, according to Berkeley’s May poll.

After talking to college Democrats at UCLA on the eve of the primary, Steyer said regardless of what happens in the primary, he will remain politically involved, though he would not run for president in 2028.

“I’m going to keep working on these issues, because I’ve been working full-time on these issues for 14 years,” Steyer said. “There’s no question what I’m going to do. How I do it is a little bit up in the air.”

Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flashback!

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

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

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

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

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

Cha-ching!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A self-fulfilling prophecy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sacramento still a boy’s club

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

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

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

Unfair? Perhaps.

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

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

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

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

Youth won’t be served

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

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

He should have stuck to those words.

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

But it would be equally premature to write Mahan off.

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

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

After the polls close in California on Tuesday, NBC News data analyst Steve Kornacki will just be getting started.

Since December, the khacki-clad vote-counting guru has been going live and uninterrupted on streaming platforms to provide results and analysis of every special election and even some state Senate contests.

The stream — called the Kornacki Cam — provides unadulterated number-crunching without any pundits weighing in. Rather than getting updates that last a few minutes, Kornacki provides continuous real time results until the last available total is counted.

“This all happens in full view,” Kornacki said Monday in a phone interview. “The audience gets to see the whole thing. They get to see the buildup, the anticipation, the payoff.”

In the 10 Kornacki Cam sessions streamed by NBC News so far, 20 million viewers have sampled on YouTube alone. The coverage — consisting of Kornacki, his Big Board, his producer and a Stedicam operator — is also available on NBCNews.com, the NBC News app and the division’s social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

The Kornacki Cam will focus on the primaries for Los Angeles mayor, California and several Congressional districts, shortly after the state’s polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific.

In a Monday chat with The Times, here are the trends Kornacki says he’ll be looking for on the night.

Polling in mayoral races is typically pretty unreliable. What do you make of the contest based on what you’ve seen?

You don’t always have super-competitive mayoral elections and they’re not all created equal. It’s not quite like a presidential election so you just don’t have a wealth of data to draw on for expectations either.

I’ve seen the polling you’ve seen. It suggests that of the three candidates, (Mayor Karen Bass, reality TV star Spencer Pratt and City Council member Nithya Raman) Bass is in the best position to get into the runoff. It also suggests that Spencer Pratt has had the most positive movement in the last month or so of the campaign. But we go in knowing there will be volatility and I’m open to any and all possibilities.

Spencer Pratt is an unusual candidate who has been able to take up a lot of oxygen in the race. Is there a hidden vote for him that people might not be eager to admit to pollsters?

You can look at the city and know where to look for whether Pratt is having a big night. The San Fernando Valley is gonna be more than a third of the vote, probably close to 40%. If he gets in the general election, he wants to be winning there by a big margin. 
If it’s not happening there for Pratt, I don’t think it’s happening anywhere else. Karen Bass is going to rely on central and south L.A., with probably a third of the vote coming out of those two places. Those should be her bulwarks. The Westside, I think could be more of a toss-up. There’s a fair chunk of the vote there.

We don’t do a ton of mayoral races around the country. So we’re still trying to figure out exactly how detailed we’re going to be able to zoom in, at the neighborhood level and the precinct level.

Turnouts usually are low for Los Angeles mayoral races. Will this year be different?

This mayoral race has received a lot more national attention than 2022. 
So my thought is that the turnout would be higher, just based on that. But this is something that is resonating nationally because Pratt has that celebrity factor. The number was 646,000 (total votes) for 2022. So that’s something we’ll be following — are we trending over or under that?

And what will be the best indicators for the gubernatorial race?

The place that I kind of got circled here is Orange County. In the last two sort of major statewide elections, it was the first to report out vote. 
At 8:06 p.m local time in California, in 2024, Orange County reported out half of its vote, right? So you’re getting, you know, you’re getting hundreds of thousands of votes, potentially, from this enormous county within, potentially within 10 minutes of polls closing. 
There were a couple others — the Central Valley, and we got a we got a good chunk of Merced and Fresno quickly.

So how long are we going to have to wait for a result on Tuesday night?

One of the other things that just surrounds everything in California, whether it’s the mayor’s race, or governor’s race, or anything else, is nothing is definitive in the first hour or so after the polls close. We’re probably realistically looking at a days or even weeks-long process of getting all the vote counted.

I know it drives many people nuts. Without editorializing on that, it’s just a fact that they can get out of about two-thirds of their vote on election night, and if the races aren’t clear and definitive, then you’re generally in for a pretty long haul.

We do know in California that they’re not going (to count) nonstop until they get a result. They’re going to then start doing updates as they process and count the remaining vote by mail, which is usually a considerable pile in a lot of these places. The vote by mail in California can continue coming in for seven days after the election.

So do you think your coverage reflects a shift in what the consumer wants? We already know how fragmented the audience is. Are there now enough political junkies who want the pure uncut stuff?

I’ve been doing this about 20 years, and when I would tell people that I reported on politics for a living, they either moved away from me or changed the subject. And now, you know, I found the last, you know, 10 years or something, has just totally changed. People come up to me, even if they don’t know I work in politics, and they want to talk politics. Everybody seems into it whatever side they’re on.

As Californians dawdle about casting ballots before Tuesday’s primary, the leading candidates hoping to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom crisscrossed the state making their closing arguments to voters.

With former Biden Cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra surging in recent polls, the two candidates battling to win the second spot in this week’s primary and advance to the November election highlighted the strategic reasons why they believe voters ought to support them.

Republican Steve Hilton — a former conservative commentator who rocketed past his main GOP rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, after President Trump endorsed him in April — urged voters to back him to avoid the possibility of two Democrats facing off in November.

“I want us to fight like we are third. We aren’t going to let this slip away,” Hilton told a few hundred people at the Santa Monica Hilton Hotel & Suites on Sunday morning.

Steve Hilton surged ahead of his GOP rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, after receiving an endorsement from the president.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

The former British political strategist once led the polls, but has slipped slightly behind Becerra. Not too far behind Hilton is billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate change activist Tom Steyer, a Democrat.

During his hour and a half appearance, Hilton veered between his oft-repeated criticisms about 16 years of Democrat-led rule in California to jabs at the top Democrats in the race.

Steyer’s nonstop advertising blitz is “one reason alone to defeat him,” while Becerra is the “living embodiment of more of the same.”

“Our secret weapon? The Democrat candidates,” Hilton said to chuckles.

Asked why voters shouldn’t back Bianco, Hilton said it was simple math. Only the first- and second-place finishers in the June 2 primary will advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

“Every vote for Chad Bianco is a vote for two Democrats in the top two,” he said.

If a GOP gubernatorial candidate fails to make the November ballot, it would depress the Republican vote, harming the party’s down-ballot candidates, as well as handicap a Republican-led ballot initiative that would require voters to show government-issued ID to cast ballots.

California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer takes a picture with a volunteer during a Get Out the Vote rally at Los Angeles Trade Technical College on Sunday.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Steyer, who has spent a record-breaking $216 million of his wealth on his gubernatorial bid, argued that he is the only candidate in the race who is not beholden to special interests. He hammered Becerra for the support he has received from corporations including Meta, Airbnb, Uber and Chevron. Steyer argued that Becerra, if elected governor, would be more responsive to special interests than financially strapped Californians.

“We’ve seen it in this race. Chevron cuts you a check and you look the other way when they hike prices at the pump. Meta gives you money and your AI plan starts sounding like ChatGPT,” Steyer, sporting a ball cap labeling himself a “class traitor,” told more than 500 supporters at a community college near downtown Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. “That’s the story of Xavier Becerra.”

Corporations, along with labor unions and interest groups including the California Assn. of Realtors, have spent more than $18.7 million to boost Becerra as of Sunday, according to the election spending tracker California Target Book.

“These companies may be selfish, but they’re not stupid. They don’t give hundreds of thousands of dollars to get someone elected unless they know he’s going to be on their side,” Steyer said.

Though Steyer earned his fortune in part through past investments in private prisons, fossil fuels and private equity, his supporters described him as a reformed billionaire who stepped away from those industries more than a decade ago.

Francesca Fiorentini, a comedian and podcaster, compared Steyer to Charles Dickens’ fictional miser Ebenezer Scrooge.

“At the end of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ nobody turns to Ebenezer and is like, ‘No, I’m not gonna accept your gifts.’ No, they welcome him. They might clown him a little bit, but we need to welcome someone like Tom Steyer,” Fiorentini said. “Tom Steyer is actually listening, he actually cares, he’s actually changing his belief system and he’s acting accordingly.”

Though he mainly went after Becerra, Steyer also made sure to criticize Hilton.

“You are not voting for who’s on the ballot, you’re voting for the California that comes after,” Steyer said. “The California that Steve Hilton is running on sounds exactly like what Trump wants: higher prices, lower wages, and less freedom.”

His campaign underscored his attacks against Becerra by having a handful of supporters dressed as zombies speak outside of Becerra’s Sunday evening rally in Long Beach. Waving signs naming businesses that have supported Becerra, they wore lanyards describing “Big Oil,” “Big Tech” and other corporate sectors as Becerra’s “bestie.”

At a raucous rally, elected officials, labor leaders and reproductive rights advocates were among the speakers who introduced Becerra, who attacked Steyer and Hilton, though not by name.

“We are not going to let a billionaire or Trump’s handpicked candidate take over this state,” he told more than 1,000 people at the city’s convention center. “We are not going to let them gut Medicaid while Californians work hard to build a future. We are not going to let them buy an election…. Not here, not in this state, not on our watch.”

Becerra seemed in awe as he stood in front of the packed room.

“Look around this room. One of our opponents has a billion dollars in a checkbook,” he said. “We have something better… We don’t have the money, but we have the movement. We don’t have the money, but we’ve got the momentum. And in this state, if you’ve got the momentum, you run across the finish line, and you win, baby, you win.”

Becerra also released a new video that ostensibly attacks Hilton as “Trump’s favorite” — a thinly veiled effort to prop up Hilton among Republicans to ensure he finished ahead of Steyer in the primary. Given that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by almost 2 to 1, Becerra would much rather face Hilton than Steyer in the general election.

Newsom’s campaign employed this strategy to boost GOP businessman John Cox in the 2018 gubernatorial election, as did then-Rep. Adam Schiff against Republican Steve Garvey in Schiff’s successful 2024 U.S. Senate race.

Billionaire Tom Steyer has argued that he is the only candidate not beholden to special interests.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Steyer launched an ad this weekend titled “Risky” that implies Becerra could face criminal charges related to the acts of two former advisors who have plead guilty to federal charges related to stealing campaign funds from a dormant Becerra campaign account.

Becerra’s campaign called the ad defamatory in a cease and desist letter sent to the Steyer campaign on Saturday.

Becerra, Hilton and Steyer, the front-runners in the race, barnstormed the state in the final days before the June 2 primary. They devoted much of their attention to voters in Southern California, which is home to many of the state’s 23.2 million registered voters. Lower-polling candidates also stumped in the Southland — San José Mayor Matt Mahan greeted diners at Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles, and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter kicked off a union canvassing event in Orange on Saturday.

Unlike recent contests to lead the nation’s most populous state, this year’s gubernatorial contest failed to energize the electorate. Despite a crowded field of candidates with notable resumes, as well as record-breaking spending by Steyer and independent-expenditure committees. Californians only recently tuned in.

Political experts of both parties believe voters malaise was due to fatigue about the nation’s political polarization, as well as Trump administration policies such as federal tariffs that drove up prices everywhere and some that disproportionately affected California, such as immigration raids. Southern Californians were also reeling from the devastating wildfires in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena and last year’s special election to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries.

Earlier this year, Democratic leaders worried that their voters would splinter among their candidates, creating a scenario where two Republicans advanced to the general election. They controversially urged their party’s candidates to assess their viability, effectively urging several low-polling candidates to drop out of the race.

Democratic turnout also prompted concerns. As of May 22, mail ballots returned by Democrats were 9.2% lower compared with the 2022 gubernatorial primary, while ballots returned by Republicans were 11.6% higher, according to Political Data Intelligence. But the return rates are shifting — as of Friday, Democrats were 7% behind their 2022 return rate, while Republicans were 6.8% higher.

The most recent polls suggest that the prospect of two Republicans advancing to the general election is nonexistent, and there is now a slim chance that two Democrats win the top two spots in the June 2 primary.

SACRAMENTO — The state’s biggest energy utility has made the unusual move to attack candidate Tom Steyer in the California governor’s race.

State campaign filings show that Pacific Gas & Electric has plowed at least $13.5 million into efforts to oppose Steyer. Other major utilities in the state have also donated to another committee backing the anti-Steyer effort.

Steyer, a billionaire and former hedge fund founder who became a high-profile environmental advocate, accuses the big three California utility companies — PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison — of “raking in” record profits at the expense of their customers. He blames the utilities for high consumer bills and causing deadly wildfires with their faulty utility equipment.

Though other candidates in the race are also criticizing the utilities, Steyer is the most aggressive.

“Big energy companies really piss me off,” Steyer said in one of his own campaign ads earlier this year.

In another attack, Steyer called PG&E less of an electric company and more of a “sophisticated Sacramento lobbying and influence operation that also happens to sell electricity. California needs a governor who will stand up to these monopolies, hold them accountable, and break them up.”

Lynsey Paulo, a spokesperson for PG&E, declined to answer questions about the utility’s spending, referring The Times to the committee running anti-Steyer ads.

“Tom Steyer has spent over $200 million trying to buy the Governor’s office,” the committee said in a statement.

Steyer, a Democrat who is relying on his vast fortune in the race, is seeking to advance past the June 2 primary to the November general election. Recent polls put him behind Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, and onetime Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

The utility-funded advertisements against Steyer don’t mention his position on energy policies, focusing instead on his onetime hedge fund’s investments in coal and for-profit detention centers. One ad compares him to President Trump.

“When Steyer sells himself as a different kind of billionaire, tell him where to stick it,” a voiceover says.

Another advertisement from the anti-Steyer group California is Not for Sale highlights its support for Becerra. The California Assn. of Realtors and the California Building Industry Assn. are also supporting the group.

Steyer’s campaign last week embraced the spending from PG&E and others.

“When you’re opposed by the people responsible for devastating wildfires and outrageous rate hikes, you’re doing something right,” Steyer spokesperson Sepi Esfahlani said.

Steyer has used his criticism of the California utilities and the oil industry as a shield against attacks that he made billions of dollars from fossil fuels when he ran his hedge fund, and to elevate himself as an advocate for working-class Californians.

When Democratic rival Katie Porter ripped into Steyer at a recent debate for using his riches to support his gubernatorial campaign, Steyer pointed to the attacks by PG&E and others as evidence that he’ll take on Sacramento’s powerful special interests.

“There is one person that the corporations are going after, including Big Oil, who is spending millions of dollars to stop me,” Steyer responded during the April debate at Pomona College in Claremont.

“The electric monopolies, PG&E, millions of dollars to stop me, because I’m the person on this stage who’s the change agent,” he said. “I’m the person who’s going to drive down costs for the people of California by taking on the special interests.”

PG&E CEO Patti Poppe and Steyer lauded one another in social media posts after appearing together at various conferences last year, the California Post reported.

“Loved sitting down to talk the future of energy with Tom Steyer at the Galvanize Solutions Summit,” Poppe wrote on LinkedIn in December. Steyer co-founded Galvanize, an asset management firm.

The California Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee this year collected at least $2 million each from PG&E, Sempra — the parent company of SoCalGas and San Diego Gas & Electric — and Edison. The chamber’s committee in turn has donated $9.75 million toward the anti-Steyer committee.

John Myers, a representative for the Chamber of Commerce, said the committee’s leadership, not donors, make spending decisions.

California electric rates are the nation’s second highest after Hawaii, contributing to the state’s high cost of living — one of the biggest concerns of voters.

PG&E serves Northern and Central California, while Southern California Edison is available in Central, coastal and Southern California. San Diego Gas & Electric services Southern California.

The California Public Utilities Commission sets the rate of return that the companies can make. Steyer has argued that “perverse” structure allows utilities to disregard cheaper cost-effective solutions in favor of more expensive options, such as undergrounding power lines.

Despite Steyer’s talk of “breaking up” utilities, he doesn’t propose dismantling them. Instead, he vows to put reform-focused appointees on the regulatory agency and reduce utility rates. He also wants more battery storage for renewal energy, as well as additional rooftop and community solar.

The three utilities recently opposed a bill to require that wildfire safety spending by Southern California Edison, PG&E and San Diego Gas & Electric be audited by an independent accounting firm.

The bill by Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner, an Encinitas Democrat, stalled out earlier this month. It would have required the state’s regulatory agency to consider the audits’ findings before agreeing to raise customer rates to cover even more wildfire prevention spending.

Audits of the three companies’ wildfire spending from 2019 to 2020 found that $2.5 billion could not be accounted for.

Matt Abularach-Macias, political director of Environmental Voters, said the utilities probably consider Steyer as a threat to their business. The companies plan infrastructure projects five or 10 years ahead and don’t want disruptions, he said.

Environmental Voters has endorsed Steyer and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter. The group’s educational arm received a $500,000 donation from a Steyer-backed entity in 2013.

Leah Stokes, associate professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara, called PG&E’s outlay in the governor’s race part of a “corrupt system.”

“These are monopoly companies, you can’t choose to buy from anybody else,” Stokes said. “They take your money, turn it into profits because they are poorly regulated, and then undermine political candidates who would actually hold them accountable.”

Stokes has publicly endorsed Steyer.

A spokesperson for Southern California Edison said the company funds its political contributions from “shareholder dollars.”

“No customer dollars, or any part of the rates paid by Southern California Edison customers, are used to support political candidates,” he said.

Times staff writer Melody Petersen contributed to this report.

For the sixth and final time before votes are counted, the leading contenders for California governor gathered Thursday night for a televised debate, this one a 90-minute session in San Francisco.

Times columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria absorbed the rhetorical blows, followed the heated back-and-forths and took in each and every one of the candidates’ myriad policy prescriptions. Here’s their assessment:

Arellano: Near the end of the debate, co-moderator and San Francisco Examiner editor-in-chief Schuyler Hudak Prionas groaned as candidates talked over each other while trying to answer a question that was supposed to elicit a yes or no response.

That’s pretty much how California voters have reacted to this primary.

In an era where politics are far too often about choosing the least worst option, voters in this election are left with the political version of the Angels baseball team.

No candidate has polled higher than 20-some percent — a testament to how many are in the running, but also an indication that none of them has truly captured the zeitgeist of today’s California.

This year’s debates have done little to catapult anyone to the top, and tonight was more of the same. I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for, and no one inspired me to side with them. No one offered a clear vision of how they would pull Californians out of a spiritual malaise that has so many of us leaving the state, or thinking about leaving.

Instead, what I heard too many of the candidates evoke was the glories of the past — their past.

Antonio Villaraigosa’s closing remarks made a mantra out of “Dream with me,” a slogan he used back when he was L.A. mayor — that was 13 years ago.

Xavier Becerra bragged about how he stood up to President Trump as California attorney general — that was five years ago.

Katie Porter pulled out a white notebook with something written on it and directly challenged Becerra to answer a question — a callback to her time as a congressmember grilling people on Capitol Hill with a whiteboard and a marker, which she first made famous seven years ago.

The two Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, spoke of a halcyon California destroyed by feckless Democrats and vowed a return to those days.

The only candidates who didn’t live in the past were San José Mayor Matt Mahan and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer — but they seemed particularly out of their league, with Steyer too often looking down at notes instead of speaking off the cuff with his well-rehearsed populist pluck.

The word “nostalgia” first emerged to describe what doctors back then considered a malady, thinking it unwise to long for the past. It’s a concept historically antithetical to California, long boosted as the land of today and tomorrow by everyone from the Mission fathers to orange barons, developers to politicians. Indeed, nostalgia has sometimes been a dangerous factor in California politics, unleashing the Spanish fantasy heritage movement, Prop. 13, Prop. 187 and all sorts of other nonsense.

The two candidates who advance to the general election would be wise to offer Californians a hope for the future that doesn’t call back to our yesterdays. For now, the only real winners are the political consultants, and the only real losers are Californians, because we still don’t know for sure that any of the candidates can make things better.

All we can expect is that they’ll turn things for the worse.

Barabak: A popular expression — which Steyer mentioned — defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

By that measure, was the audience for Thursday night’s throwdown insane? Masochistic? Or a group of high-minded, dutiful, quite-conscientious California voters?

The leading gubernatorial candidates have been at this so long that they’re like actors in a stage troupe, delivering well-rehearsed lines, or an old band getting together to play their greatest hits, though far less melodious.

Among those reprising familiar roles were Steyer as the boastful billionaire; Bianco as the angry white avenger; Hilton as the chipper doomsayer; Mahan as the kid brother insinuating his way into the conversation; Porter as the left-wing tribune promising a progressive Valhalla; and Villaraigosa as the old political war horse.

Once more, Becerra was the focal point of attacks, befitting his newfound status as the candidate to beat. “This is what happens when you take the lead in polls,” he rightly noted.

And so rivals again assailed Becerra’s performance as state attorney general and Health and Human Services secretary in the Biden administration. They accused of him being a shill for Big Oil. They tried, implying guilt-through-association, to rope Becerra into the scandal involving his former aides who embezzled from a dormant campaign account.

(Becerra, crisper and more lively than he’s previously been, noted that prosecutors in the case have described him as a victim and not a perpetrator or co-conspirator.)

It’s hard to see all the jostling and thrown elbows making a huge difference. The promises made and attacks scattered like buckshot on the San Francisco soundstage all seem much less important than the numbers that show up in opinion polls between now and Election Day.

Many Democrats, spooked by the prospect of their party being frozen out in June’s top-two primary, have been clinging to their ballots, intending to vote at the last moment for whichever Democrat appears likeliest to finish first.

In that way, the race seems to be shaping up as less a competition than a self-fulfilling prophecy. And Thursday night’s performance, while not wholly irrelevant, was just another television rerun broadcast to a less-than-mass audience.

Chabria: Here’s what I’ll say about Thursday night: It was a debate. The old-school kind where everybody is mostly well-behaved and polite, and the audience scrolls on their phones to stay awake.

The candidates themselves seemed low-energy, even with their jabs — which were largely directed at Becerra, as Mark said.

But no sparks also means we have more clarity. Barring an Eric Swalwell-style blow-up, the top three — Becerra, Steyer and Hilton — are really the only true contenders.

But I’ll give a shout-out to Porter, who had her best performance to date with answers that were clear and laid out policy with detail. Still, I fear it’s too little, too late.

Becerra, on the other hand, seemed subdued to the point of flat (sorry, Mark, he came off crisp like a week-old apple to me) often relying on the line that he sued Trump more than a hundred times as attorney general of California during Trump’s first term. I’m not sure that’s inspiring, though it did lead to some court victories.

Granted, Becerra has had a hard week, with a gaffe with a reporter that went viral and a plea deal by a former aide in that case of money misappropriated from his dormant campaign account. It’s not clear yet if voters care about either of those glitches — but if they stick in people’s minds, that could open a path for Steyer to scrape up the small margin he needs to get through the primary.

But Thursday night also did little to help Steyer’s cause — or hurt it. He made some clear, forceful points that positioned him as the changemaker progressive, especially around his policies on moving away from fossil fuels. He also had some convoluted answers that didn’t land. He didn’t give undecided voters much to work with.

I’ll end with one answer from Hilton that women should pay attention to: He said that if elected, he would allow California abortion providers to be extradited to states such as Louisiana to face criminal charges for mailing abortion medications.

Women across the U.S. now must rely on states such as California for any access to abortion care. Hilton’s position is not just bad for California but presents a risk to women everywhere.

For me, that answer should disqualify him for the highest office in our pro-choice state.

SACRAMENTO  — As Xavier Becerra rose to the top echelons of power in Washington and Sacramento over the last two decades, his trusted advisor Sean McCluskie joined him at every step.

The son of a Scottish immigrant, McCluskie had a reputation as a political street fighter and his gruff style complemented Becerra’s more measured, cerebral approach.

Now Becerra is under attack in California’s wide-open governor’s race after McCluskie, 57, pleaded guilty in December to stealing more than $200,000 from Becerra’s campaign account.

The charges were part of a broader scandal that implicated or brushed up against some of Sacramento’s most influential Democratic political advisors, a scheme prosecutors allege included payments, bank fraud and an FBI sting operation that swept McCluskie’s incriminating private conversations and texts into evidence.

Rivals in the California governor’s race have seized on the case to question whether Becerra, one of the front-runners in the contest to succeed outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, is fit for office and could be swept up in the case.

“We can’t have someone who is running as a Democrat who could run into legal difficulties,” said candidate Tom Steyer, who is close to Becerra in the polls.

Becerra has not been accused of wrongdoing, and prosecutors’ court filings describe him as a victim. He told The Times that he cooperated with investigators, including appearing before the grand jury.

“Sean was as close as any staffer that I’ve ever had,” Becerra said in an interview last week, describing how McCluskie moved across the country twice to work for him.

He added that he’s “racked” his brain to understand the case involving McCluskie and his longtime political consultant, Dana Williamson, both of whom he described as “very highly accomplished people.”

Williamson, who also served as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff, was indicted in November. She had refused to cooperate with federal investigators and pleaded not guilty, but recently discussed a plea deal with prosecutors. A court hearing is set for Thursday, according to court filings.

An agreement could unearth more details about the case in the coming weeks, a possibility not lost on the Democrats and Republicans running for governor.

Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, one of the Democrats who has watched Becerra’s rapid ascent in the race, said in a CNN interview Monday that California can’t risk having Becerra in the race with the specter of the ongoing criminal case.

She acknowledged that “I do not have the facts” about the case, but said if Becerra were to finish in the top two in the June 2 primary and then be indicted by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice, a Republican ultimately could win the governor’s race in November.

“Secretary Becerra cannot and has not guaranteed or promised the people of California that he will not be named as a co-conspirator and indicted,” she said.

Other candidates, and reporters, have questioned whether Becerra had a blind spot in trusting McCluskie.

Appearing on Fox40 News last year, Becerra likened the criminal case to being “married for 20 years” and “all of a sudden you find out that your spouse has been cheating.”

According to prosecutors, McCluskie, Williamson, and another consultant skimmed $225,000 from one of Becerra’s dormant campaign accounts and funneled it to McCluskie through various entities.

McCluskie, who declined to speak to The Times, sought the money because he’d taken a pay cut after joining Becerra in Washington when Becerra became Health and Human Services secretary in 2021, according to prosecutors.

And unlike Becerra, he didn’t move full-time to D.C., and was splitting his time between the nation’s capital and California, where his family lived.

On a phone call recorded by the FBI in 2024, McCluskie talked about the scheme and told a consultant, “This money you guys are giving me is helping me fly back and forth to D.C. and live there half part time.”

Becerra, in an interview, said McCluskie never mentioned his money problems. The pair worked together when Becerra served in Congress and as California attorney general.

After President Biden appointed Becerra to lead Health and Human Services, the pair discussed the move back to D.C.

“Even before we went to HHS, we had talked about whether we wanted to do this,” Becerra said. “We both agreed, ‘Yeah, you know, it’s going to be a sacrifice. We’re going to have to make changes.’”

Former Becerra staffers told The Times that Becerra and McCluskie were such a close team that they have a hard time imagining Becerra working in government without McCluskie.

Another former staffer, Amanda Renteria, said the two men bonded over their humble immigrant backgrounds. McCluskie’s family came from Scotland and Italy; Becerra’s relatives came from Mexico.

McCluskie relished going to battle for those less fortunate, she said.

“When Becerra became A.G., [people questioned] whether or not he had the style that could really take on Trump. If you were to meet Sean, you’d be like, Oh yeah, Sean is totally ready for a fight, he’s ready to take him on.

“That was sort of a difference with Becerra. Becerra had that fight in him. Sean wore it a little bit more,” said Renteria, a political strategist.

Becerra has faced repeated questions about his financial judgment after the criminal case revealed that he agreed to pay up to $10,000 a month to Williamson and another consultant to oversee one of his dormant campaign accounts.

The consultants charged him the fee as part of the scheme to divert money to McCluskie, prosecutors allege.

At the time, Becerra, a Biden Cabinet member, was barred from involving himself in campaign matters.

Becerra defended the payments during an interview with Fox40 last year, stating, “I was told that’s the rate I would have to pay to get someone who could manage that and make sure that I don’t have to worry about [violating any federal rules].”

Campaign finance records show Becerra had never paid such a high fee for his other accounts.

Becerra told The Times that his longtime attorney Stephen Kaufman, whom he was also paying to oversee the account, didn’t flag the payments. “I would have expected him to raise issues if he thought there was something wrong,” Becerra said.

Kaufman didn’t respond to questions about the account.

Los Angeles-based political consultant Eric Hacopian told The Times that the fees are “certainly high.”

“It’s obviously something he should’ve noticed. Either he was not paying attention, or was too trusting of these people,” said Hacopian, who isn’t involved in the governor’s race. “At the end of the day, he’s the primary victim.”

At a debate last week, rival candidate Antonio Villaraigosa pounced on the payments made by Becerra, saying that the politician “has to be under suspicion because it doesn’t pass the smell.”

Danni Wang, a spokesperson for Steyer, said in a statement, “So, which is it — did Becerra know about the illegal payments and participate in the campaign’s corruption, or was he a totally incompetent manager oblivious to what was going on underneath his nose?”

Renteria, the former Becerra staffer, said the allegations against McCluskie and others are particularly surprising given Becerra’s reputation as a “straight A student.”

“Part of it broke my heart,” she said.

Jonathan Underland, a Becerra spokesperson, said Becerra “has always been consistent and clear: Every action he took was in accordance with the law.”

“What he didn’t know — and what the FBI’s own investigation goes out of its way to clarify — is that his staff cooked up a scheme designed to deceive him.”

Becerra, in an interview, repeatedly said that he relied on McCluskie. It was McCluskie, he said, who advised him to make the payments. “I trusted him to handle the accounts,” he said.

He also said he was unaware of some of the details laid out by prosecutors.

Prosecutors said Williamson and others created a “no show” job for McCluskie’s wife, Kerry MacKay, to do work for the consultants.

MacKay never was paid, however, and the money went to an account controlled by McCluskie. MacKay, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, was not charged.

McCluskie’s plea agreement states that he told Becerra about his wife’s job with the consultants, though he didn’t tell the politician that his wife wouldn’t actually be doing any work.

Becerra, in an interview, said he didn’t recall McCluskie informing him about his wife’s work.

McCluskie’s sentencing is scheduled for June 4, two days after the primary.