house seat

Today we discuss Texas, overreaction and the voluminous field of candidates for California governor.

Is there anyone who is not running for governor?

I’m not. And neither are my two cats. At least they weren’t as of this morning, when we discussed the race before breakfast.

That leaves us somewhat short of the 135 candidates who ran in California’s 2003 recall gubernatorial election. But not by much.

I count nearly a dozen serious candidates, with possibly more to come. Why so many?

Opportunity.

This is the most wide-open race for California governor in decades. By comparison, you’d have to go back to at least 1998, when Lt. Gov. Gray Davis surged past a pair of moneybag candidates, Al Checchi and Rep. Jane Harman, in the Democratic primary, then stomped Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren in November to win the general election.

Now, as then, there is no one who even remotely resembles a prohibitive front-runner.

Polling in the governor’s race has shown former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and Chad Bianco, Riverside County’s Republican sheriff, narrowly leading the field. But with support for both in the middling 13%-to-21% range, we’re not talking about a pair of world-beaters.

Like nature, political ambition abhors a vacuum.

Speaking of moneybags…

Tom Steyer!

Yes.

After making a bundle as a hedge fund manager, the San Francisco billionaire and environmental activist has been panting after public office for years. Running for president didn’t work out in 2020, even after Steyer spent more than $345 million on his effort. (That’s close to what the Dodgers spent on their 2025 payroll.)

So now Steyer is running for governor, a move he appeared to telegraph by airing nearly $13 million in self-promotional ads that, oh yes, supported passage of Proposition 50, the Democratic gerrymander initiative.

What are his chances?

Longtime readers of this column — both of you! — will know I make no predictions.

But California voters have never looked favorably upon rich candidates trying to make the leap from political civilian to the governorship or U.S. Senate. In fact, over the last 50-plus years, a gilded gallery of the well-to-do have tried and spectacularly failed.

Perhaps Steyer will display the policy chops or the razzle and dazzle they all lacked. But his launch video certainly didn’t shatter any molds. Rather, it presented a stereotypical grab bag of redwood trees, potshots at Sacramento, multicultural images of hard-working-everyday-folk, a promise to fight, a pledge to build more housing and, of course, a dash of profanity because, gosh darn it, nothing says “unbridled authenticity” like a political candidate swearing!

Maybe his fellow billionaire, Rick Caruso, will show more creativity and imagination if he gets into the governor’s race.

At least Democrats have been showing signs of life.

Indeed. Dare I say, the party’s mood swing from near-suicidal to euphoric has been quite something.

Winning gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia — not by a little, but a lot — and prevailing in down-ballot contests in Pennsylvania and Georgia had a remarkably transformative effect. (Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in sky-blue New York City was no big surprise once the democratic socialist prevailed in the primary.)

Literally overnight, Democrats seized the momentum heading into the 2026 midterm election, while Republicans have begun scrambling to reposition their party and recraft its messaging.

All that being said, even before their buoyant off-year performance those widespread reports of Democrats’ demise were greatly … well, we’ll leave that Mark Twain chestnut alone. As analyst Charlie Cook points out, 2024 was a deeply disappointing year for the party. But it wasn’t a disaster.

Democrats gained two House seats. There was no net change in any of the 11 gubernatorial races and legislative contests across 44 states ended in something close to a wash. The party lost four Senate seats — and control of the chamber — but three of those losses came in the red states of Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.

“This is not to argue that Democrats had a great night in November 2024, but it certainly wasn’t a massacre or a party-wide repudiation,” Cook wrote in a recent posting. “If voters had intended to take it out on the party as a whole, the results would have looked quite different.”

Rather than a wholesale takedown of Democrats, the result seemed very much a rejection of President Biden and, by extension, his hasty replacement on the ballot, Vice President Kamala Harris.

What does that mean going forth?

If you’re asking whether Democrats will win control of the House or Senate…

Yes?!?

…I haven’t a clue.

Democrats need to gain three seats to take control of the House and both history and Trump’s sagging approval ratings — especially as pertains to the economy — augur well for their chances. The president’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections and, according to Inside Elections, the fewest number of seats that flipped was four.

That’s why I thought Proposition 50, which sets out to all but decapitate California Republicans in Congress, was a bad and unnecessary move, effectively disenfranchising millions of non-Democratic voters.

An appeals court last week tossed out a Republican gerrymander in Texas, putting Democrats in an even stronger position, though the legal wrangling is far from over. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the decision, pending review. And still to come is a high court ruling that could gut the Voting Rights Act and yield Republicans a dozen or more House seats nationwide.

So the fight for control is far from decided.

As for the Senate, Republicans stand a much better chance of keeping control, given how the seats contested in 2026 are located on largely favorable GOP terrain.

But until the votes are counted, nobody knows what will happen. That’s the thing about elections: they help keep wiseacres like me honest.

She’s a little bit country; he’s a little bit rock ‘n’ roll.

And me? I’m a little bit stunned. Two politicians have emerged, against all odds, to surprise and impress us this year: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

You’d be hard-pressed to find two Americans less similar — politically, culturally, geographically, maybe even molecularly. These two occupy opposite poles. She’s NASCAR and CrossFit. He’s electric vehicles and Pinot Noir. They shouldn’t have much in common, but lately, both have done the unthinkable: They’ve taken on President Trump and lived (politically) to tell about it.

Let’s start with Greene because, honestly, she’s more fun.

For years, MTG was seen as an embarrassment. The QAnon congresswoman. The “Jewish space laser” lady. The lawmaker who, just two years prior to winning her House seat, questioned whether a plane really hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

She harassed a then-teenage Parkland survivor and coined the immortal phrase “gazpacho police,” apparently confusing the soup with Nazi secret police.

But then, something strange happened: Greene started making sense. Not “agree with her at dinner” sense, but the “wait, that’s not totally insane” kind.

She blasted Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, which — if you take the “America First” philosophy literally and not just as performance art — is consistent with her beliefs. And in a time when selling out is perceived as being shrewder than standing for something, the mere act of holding a consistent position is a virtue.

MTG also called out her own party for blocking the Epstein files, and volunteered to walk “on the House floor and say every damn name that abused these women.”

And in an act of shocking populist coherence, she ripped into Republicans for letting Obamacare subsidies expire: “Health insurance premiums will DOUBLE,” she thundered on X, adding: “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!”

Trump, naturally, took all this personally. “I don’t know what happened to Marjorie,” he said, recently. “Nice woman, but she’s lost her way.” To which Greene, never one to back down, fired back: “I haven’t lost my way. I’m 100% America First and only!”

The thing I’m liking about Greene isn’t just that she’s standing up to Trump — although, I admit, it’s fun to watch. But what’s really refreshing is that she’s a true believer who got elected, got famous and yet continues to believe.

Which brings us to Gavin Newsom.

Newsom has always been the poster boy for everything people hate about California — a man who looks like he was genetically engineered by a Napa Valley venture capitalist to play a slick politician.

The “important” coiffed hair. The smug grin. The French Laundry dinner during COVID-19, while the rest of us were holed up in our houses microwaving Lean Cuisines.

Once upon a time, he and his then-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, posed on a rug for a Harper’s Bazaar spread where they were dubbed “The New Kennedys.”

Enough said.

If Greene is the quintessential MAGA mama, Newsom is the slick bro you want to throat punch. But somehow he has had a banner year.

Newsom stood firm against ICE raids and troop deployments in Los Angeles. Then, he trolled Trump with online memes that actually landed.

After Texas Republicans tried to grab five congressional seats for the GOP, Newsom shepherded Prop. 50 through California — an amendment to the state constitution aimed at mitigating Texas’ gerrymandering by redrawing maps to help Democrats even the score.

Then, he waltzed into Houston for a celebratory rally — some political end zone dancing on the opponents’ home turf, just to twist the knife.

Like Greene, the guy has moxie.

And here’s the thing I’m learning from the Trump era: Guts come from the most unlikely places, and looks can be deceiving.

You never know when some heroic-looking leader will fold like a cheap suit, just like you never know when some “heel” out of central casting for villains will turn “face” and rise to the occasion.

I don’t mean to sound naive. I’m not proposing a Newsom-Greene 2028 unity ticket. (Although … tell me you wouldn’t watch that convention.)

The odds are, both of these figures will disappoint me again, probably by next Thursday. Life is complicated, and it’s sometimes hard to disentangle heroism from opportunism.

Indeed, some have speculated that MTG’s sudden streak of independence is the result of Trump putting the kibosh on a “Greene for U.S. Senate” bid in Georgia. And as for Newsom — is his show of toughness an act of patriotism, or a prelude to his own presidential campaign?

Frankly, that’s a difference without a distinction.

For now, here’s what is clear: These two political figures have shown a flash — a glimmer — of something like backbone.

And in the year of our Lord 2025, that’s rarer, and more valuable, than almost any commodity in politics.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”