other candidate

Wildfire and insurance — issues amped by climate change — along with the price of gas, took center stage at the California governor’s debate on Tuesday night.

Here are some of the candidates’ defining statements, starting left of the stage:

Tony Thurmond

The Democratic State Superintendent of Public Instruction addressed the state’s wildfire insurance crisis, where private insurers have been dropping policies as climate changes fuels more frequent catastrophic fire. The state has allowed insurers to raise rates in return for writing more policies, but so far its backup FAIR Plan, meant to provide coverage when other companies will not, continues to grow.

Thurmond said he would withhold tax credits, subsidies and benefits from non-cooperative insurers, although moderators and other candidates raised questions about the legality of this strategy.

“The governor can certainly work with the Insurance Commissioner to say there should be no rate increase unless the insurance industry is actually writing policies. They have failed California in our greatest need. They’ve taken the money for premiums and then when people needed to have support to rebuild their homes, they said, ‘whoops, we’re not going to help you.’ Then they got a rate increase. I’m sorry, where I come from, when you do a bad job, you don’t get a raise.”

Chad Bianco

The Republican Riverside County Sheriff said insurers aren’t leaving California because of climate change, but because the state has failed to pass and enforce vegetation management and defensible space policies that would reduce wildfire risk.

“It wasn’t global warming, stop believing that. It was a failed environmental policy that doesn’t allow fire departments to prevent defensible space around our homes or clear out the brush for 30 years that are building in our mountains and in our hills that took out a city. [Insurers] specifically said we were going to lose a city, and our governor said ‘we don’t care.’ And so the insurance companies left.”

Inadequate brush clearance has contributed to other fires in the state, although it’s not a factor experts cite in the Los Angeles fires specifically.

Tom Steyer

The Democratic billionaire hedge fund founder who is positioning himself as the climate candidate in the race, touted his drive to make oil companies pay for damages from climate change, including rising insurance rates and homes lost to wildfires.

“In environmentalism, I have three real rules. Number one is polluter pays. It’s absolutely critical that if people are going to pollute and damage the environment and cause harm to their neighbors, they pay. Two, we have to include environmental justice in every single environmental rule. And third is we need to start to deploy all of the clean energy stuff that’s cheaper now and get us back to the front of the world in leading it.

“There is one person that the corporations are going after, including Big Oil, who is spending millions of dollars to stop me. The electric monopolies, PG&E, millions of dollars to stop me, because I’m the person on this stage who’s the change agent.”

Steve Hilton

The former Republican Fox News commentator said insurers should be allowed to raise rates consistent with actual wildfire risk. He also advocated for “modern forest management,” removing fuel from forests, as a way to protect against wildfires, reduce carbon emissions from fire, and revive the state’s timber industry.

“We can create jobs and opportunity in rural California and reduce carbon emissions in the process, because we won’t have the mega wildfires.”

Asked if he supports the transition to electrification, he promoted natural gas: “Yes, but let’s be sensible about electric. Right now, we have a fleet of gas fired power stations generating electricity that are running at 10 to 15% of their capacity, even though we have abundant natural gas in California that we could be using to generate affordable, reliable electricity that would lower the cost of electric bills for consumers and businesses.”

According to the U.S Energy Information Administration, California’s natural gas production provides less than one tenth of what the state consumes.

Xavier Becerra

The former Health and Human Services Secretary said he would call a state of emergency as governor to require wildfire insurers to freeze rates and come to the table.

“This affordability crisis is hitting every family, and we have to act as if this were a break glass moment … Rate payers have to understand what their risk is, so they understand why they are going to pay for what they’re going to pay for their home insurance. But an insurance company has to be open and transparent about how its pricing its policies so people can afford it.”

Moderator Julie Watts noted that California home insurance rates are below the national average and questioned the legality of a freeze.

Katie Porter

The former Democratic Orange County Congresswoman was asked whether California should keep its refineries. Two of them closed in the past year, reducing the state’s refining capacity by 20 percent and causing California to lean more heavily on imports.

She said the state should keep the remaining refineries open, but also rapidly scale up green energy to meet the state’s growing electricity demand: “Right now we need to keep all of our energy sources online. That’s just the reality that we’re in. … Right now those refineries, they’re up, they’re running, they’re creating good jobs. Let’s keep them there. But I want to be really clear … The people who work at those refineries, and the people who live in Kern County also face some of the worst pollution and lower life expectancies. Green energy gets us out of that.”

She also backed an idea to have state dollars cover insurance for insurers, known as reinsurance.

Matt Mahan

Democratic San Jose Mayor called to suspend the state’s 61 cent-per-gallon gas tax, used to fund road repairs, bridges, and public transport. The state is looking at a $216.4 billion revenue shortfall over the next decade due to increasing fuel economy and electric vehicles. The other Democratic candidates support keeping the tax; Mahan has instead proposed a flat fee on all vehicles.

He said: “I’m the only candidate on this stage who has pledged to suspend and then reform the gas tax. It is the most regressive tax in California. Working people, rural people, are spending three times as much maintaining our roads as wealthier EV owners.”

On the wildfire insurance crisis he said: “The government in Sacramento created so many restrictions, including taking over a year to approve any rate changes, prohibiting insurance companies from using climate data to project future costs, that they stopped writing new policies. The answer is bring them back, force them to compete, allow them to appropriately price risk, and then hold government accountable for maintaining our wildland, reducing all that vegetation and wildfire risk so that we don’t have these catastrophic fires.”

Antonio Villaraigosa

The former Democratic L.A. mayor expressed his concerns with the readiness of the state’s infrastructure to support a transition to electric vehicles.

“We need an all of the above strategy that understands we’ve got to transition from oil and gas to renewables. But here’s an example: the 2035 mandate [to ban gas-powered car sales]. We built 167,000 charging stations in the last 10 years. We need 2 million more to get to that mandate, and if we build them, we don’t have a grid. So we ought to build the grid instead of arguing about whether or not we need an all-of-the-above policy.”

Xavier Becerra needed to land a knockout punch, even more so than the five other candidates for California governor he was facing at Wednesday night’s debate.

Instead, he fired off some slaps.

He needed to roar about his many accomplishments in his 35-year career in Sacramento and Washington, to distinguish himself from the relative political neophytes around him.

Instead, Becerra recited his resume with the vigor of someone rattling off his LinkedIn page.

He needed to uplift Californians with a vision of hope, when many feel the state is going in the wrong direction.

Instead, he offered the oratory equivalent of a pat on the shoulder.

No candidate had more at stake that night than Becerra, who went from an afterthought to a contender after Eric Swalwell dropped out and resigned his congressional seat over sexual assault allegations.

Five weeks ago, Becerra and other candidates of color were protesting their exclusion from a USC debate because they were all polling so low. Now, the 68-year-old has a chance to become California’s first Latino governor.

This possibility seems to have uncorked California’s silent majority — the rancho libertarians turned off by hard-right politics but also the wokoso politics they feel have left them behind. The people who yearn for an unglamorous, competent leader after eight years of all-about-me Gavin Newsom and a decade of Donald Trump.

Becerra’s campaign, once as rudderless as a leaf in a river in a race so chaotic for Democrats that many feared two Republicans would win on June 2 and face each other in the general election, suddenly latched onto a palpable wave.

At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last weekend, I saw people sporting Becerra campaign buttons who had just come from a rally that was expected to draw a few hundred but instead had over 2,000 RSVPs. On social media, friends who had never especially cared for state politics suddenly declared they were for Becerra and fought off their more lefty pals who think he’s a Latino Ned Flanders not up for this fraught moment.

Unglamorous and competent are Becerra’s middle names, and they were on display at the debate — for better and mostly worse. This was his chance to show both his new followers and undecided voters that they could trust him as California’s next governor.

But where he needed to be limber like a prizefighter, the former California attorney general was as tightly wound as a Rolex.

While the other candidates pressed their palms against the podiums, ready to pounce on every question, Becerra clasped his hands like an altar boy. When he did gesture, his movements never went further than the span of his shoulders.

As the others grinned and grimaced at their rivals’ responses, Becerra was as stone-faced as Buster Keaton. He stumbled more than he should have — how could someone in his position mistake Iraq for Iran when criticizing Trump’s Middle East quagmire? — and rarely seemed at ease, as if the weight of the moment and the good luck of his surge had suddenly hit him at the worst possible time.

Candidates in California’s gubernatorial race, from left, Matt Mahan, Xavier Becerra, Chad Bianco, and Steve Hilton look on during a debate Wednesday, April 22, 2026, in San Francisco.

(Jason Henry / Associated Press)

Becerra’s supporters say a level-headed leader is what California needs. But voters almost never go for what they need — they pick what they want. And California wants someone who’s loud, or at least louder than Becerra. There’s a reason why strident partisans like Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton and progressives Tom Steyer and Katie Porter have consistently placed high in the polls, while moderates like Becerra, his frenemy Antonio Villaraigosa and San Jose mayor Matt Mahan have lagged.

The weird thing is that Becerra does know how to brawl. Wallflowers don’t go from a working class Mexican immigrant family to Stanford Law School. Wimps don’t survive the ruthlessness of Eastside politics as an outsider to become a congressmember at just 34. Cowards don’t file over 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration as California’s top prosecutor or tackle the coronavirus pandemic as President Biden’s health secretary.

I’ve only encountered the Sacramento native a few times but always came away impressed. In small crowds, he makes people laugh and tear up. He’s quick with ripostes, righteous in off-the-cuff remarks and has a do-gooder aura that never comes off as sanctimonious.

We saw hints of that Becerra at the debate. To Hilton, he quipped, “You can be a talking head and not worry about the consequences of what you do” after the former Fox News host babbled on about how one-party ruled had failed California.

After Porter accused him of not offering hard numbers for his economic plans, Becerra responded that he has balanced federal budgets larger than California’s. “It’s easy to say you haven’t done this; it’s easier to prove that you actually have,” he concluded.

But after Becerra described the evils of racial profiling by law enforcement and Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, ranted that California politicians need to stop thinking so much about race, it was Porter who responded with a verbal haymaker as Becerra silently looked on.

You don’t fight as a choirboy in a battle royale. Becerra wasn’t bad at the debate but he also wasn’t great — and that won’t win this race.

Voters want someone who’ll do the job, yes — especially if it comes with no drama. They also want to elect someone they think is a human, not a joyless bureaucrat. So how did Becerra respond to the debate’s last question about what was the last series you’ve streamed?

Becerra flashed his biggest smile of the night. It was such a softball query that even a kindergartener could have slammed it à la Shohei Ohtani.

“I wish I could tell you I had time to watch streaming shows,” he replied.

Dude. We’re all overworked, but everyone I know unwinds by watching mindless drivel (my current obsession is “Vanderpump Villa”). We all need to relax, even for a moment. As my dad says when he sees me filing one columna after another and urges me to take a break, “El trabajo nunca se acaba pero uno sí se acaba.”

Work never ends, but people do.

Xavier, you know you’re on the wrong side of California when the only other candidate with a similar answer was Bianco, who said he doesn’t watch television at all.

Being careful has served you well, but this is the greatest opportunity of your life. You don’t have to suddenly become a flamethrower, but some sparks would help. It’s six weeks until the primary, so time to throw down — channel your inner cholo and go get what should be yours.

SACRAMENTO — The big-money backers and Democratic heavyweights who tried to crown Rep. Eric Swalwell as California’s next governor before his scandal-plagued exit from the political arena are now scrambling to find a new favorite among the candidates they either spurned or actively tried to undercut.

Swalwell (D-Dublin) announced Monday he would resign his seat in Congress. He faced potential expulsion and an ongoing criminal investigation after reports were made public Friday alleging he sexually assaulted a young female staff member and engaged in inappropriate behavior with three other women, including sending them nude photographs. Swalwell denied the allegations and, in his announcement Sunday that he was dropping out of the governor’s race, vowed to fight to clear his name.

The immediate beneficiaries of Swalwell’s fall are likely former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire financier Tom Steyer. Both were challenging Swalwell to be the top Democrat in the race even though each has faced attacks from within the party on various issues.

This new round of chaos only feeds the anxiety that has enveloped the California Democratic Party for months, stirred by fears that the lack of a singular party front-runner might lead to two Republicans winding up on the November ballot. Swalwell’s exit from the race also may revive candidates who have been languishing in the midsection of recent opinion polls — former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San José Mayor Matt Mahan — adding to the uncertainty.

“What happens now depends on what campaigns do to take advantage of this,” said Andrew Acosta, a Democratic political consultant who is not involved in any of the campaigns. The other candidates, he said, “can use this as an opportunity to make their case.”

They wasted no time.

Porter’s campaign on Sunday circulated internal polling showing that nearly half of Swalwell’s supporters listed her as their second choice. Steyer announced endorsements from lawmakers including Northern California Rep. Jared Huffman, who was among the first House Democrats to call on Swalwell to resign from Congress.

Others quickly used Swalwell’s departure as a fundraising tool.

“This changes the race,” Mahan’s fundraiser Stephanie Daily Smith wrote in an email blast to supporters on Sunday, adding that Swalwell “had been gaining real traction in the Bay Area media market and now that vote share is up for grabs.”

Former state Controller Betty Yee told her email list on Monday that “we can forget the polls” that showed Swalwell as a front-runner, suggesting he led because of an “obsession with who looks the part.”

“I’m not flashy, and I don’t ‘look the part’ of what the talking heads think wins,” she said.

Swalwell’s campaign had been gathering momentum over the last month. A poll released in mid-March by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed that Swalwell and Porter were both supported by 13% of likely voters, with Steyer not too far behind. The top Republicans in the race, former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, led with 17% and 16% support, respectively.

Elected officials, labor unions and other groups that had endorsed Swalwell abandoned him en masse after the allegations against him were publicized. But it’s unclear which candidate those influential voices will lend their support to next.

While many Democrats see Steyer and Porter as the next-most viable candidates, they each have their own baggage. Steyer has faced criticism on the campaign trail over his former hedge fund’s investments in a private prison company that is now housing people detained by federal immigration authorities, while Porter’s campaign is still haunted by embarrassing videos in which she berated a staffer and belittled a television reporter.

Primary election ballots will begin hitting California voters’ mailboxes in just a few weeks, and Swalwell’s campaign had been gaining steam and financial support that may now be up for grabs by other candidates.

Powerful organizations including the California Medical Assn. and SEIU California have poured millions into independent expenditure committees supporting Swalwell. But as the scandal unfolded, their leaders called emergency meetings to withdraw their support and pulled the plug on ads supporting him. Neither has indicated whether they would re-endorse in the race.

Over the weekend, Democratic members of the Legislative Women’s Caucus hastily organized calls with Porter and Yee — the only women left in the field of top candidates — according to two people familiar with the conversations. Though several of the lawmakers had not planned on backing either candidate, they’re reconsidering, driven by anger at Swalwell and frustration that other qualified women, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and former state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, previously dropped out of the race.

“Epstein files keep coming, Cesar Chavez rocked California and now this,” one lawmaker on the calls said. “If we cannot elect a woman to the state’s highest office in 2026, what is wrong with us?”

Swalwell reported raising more than $7.4 million in direct donations through April 9, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance data. About 60% of the contributions were from California donors.

Stephen Cloobeck, another Swalwell benefactor and longtime Democratic donor, said he is changing his party registration and is considering endorsing Hilton for governor.

“Don’t be surprised,” Cloobeck said in an interview on Monday.

“We agree on probably 90% of the issues,” he said, adding that he had met Hilton about a half-dozen times and appreciated his campaign message. “We are friends. I’m for unity. I come from old-school unity. I don’t cast aspersions.”

A protege of the late Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Cloobeck entered the gubernatorial contest but dropped out once Swalwell, with whom he had a long-term friendship, jumped into the contest. Cloobeck endorsed the congressman and put about $1 million into an independent expenditure committee backing him. Swalwell stayed at Cloobeck’s Beverly Hills mansion after the news of the allegations against him broke — until Cloobeck kicked him out.

Cloobeck said he knows all of the seven prominent Democrats who remain in the governor’s race and has long said he isn’t impressed by any of them. He said he wished the California Legislature would amend the state Constitution so he could file to reenter the race.

Donna Bojarsky, a longtime Democratic political insider in Los Angeles, attended Swalwell fundraisers this year thrown by Hollywood business leaders.

“People are horrified,” Bojarsky said. She said there have been rumors about sexual indiscretions, but nobody suggested allegations of sexual assault.

Swalwell has close ties to the industry and was set to be an executive producer on a film about the nation’s gun crisis before pulling his name over a labor dispute. He also maintains a real estate investment firm and media company geared toward producing television, film and online content.

Actors Sean Penn, Robert De Niro and Jon Hamm are among several Hollywood figures who donated to Swalwell’s campaign for governor.

Bojarsky hopes the silver lining of the scandal is that there “might be more of a race” as people scrutinize the field of candidates.

“People are paying attention,” she said.

When Estuardo Mazariegos was 22, he was pulled over by Los Angeles police officers who found a gun and ammunition in the back seat of his Nissan Sentra.

The gun, he said, was not his. He was holding onto it for a friend, he said, but he got hit with a felony gun possession charge, later pleading it down to a misdemeanor.

Seventeen years later, Mazariegos is running for Los Angeles City Council — and he believes his gun conviction makes him a better candidate.

“I think it’s a strength. It’s not a liability,” said Mazariegos, who was born in Guatemala and grew up in Hollywood and South L.A. “I feel like it creates more of a connection with me and the community, because there’s so many people that are justice-impacted.”

But the gun charge could also be an issue for Mazariegos in his race against five other candidates to represent Council District 9, which covers part of South L.A. He was also convicted of shoplifting when he was 19.

The district is the poorest the city, and the council race is expected to be one of the most competitive city contests this June, with the current council member, Curren Price, terming out.

Mazariegos is head of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, a grassroots advocacy organization. The 40-year-old is backed by the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and supports leftist policies like reducing funding to the LAPD to spend more on other programs.

Jose Ugarte, a District 9 candidate who was a longtime Price staffer, believes his opponent’s criminal history is a red flag.

“Getting arrested and convicted for multiple crimes, including carrying a concealed loaded gun, should disqualify Estuardo in this race,” Ugarte said in a statement. “Instead, the Democratic Socialists of L.A. are propping up his candidacy and hiding his criminal past from voters who deserve to know the truth.”

DSA-LA co-chair Leslie Chang said her group is “proud” to stand with Mazariegos.

Mazariegos’ supporters say he hasn’t hidden his past.

Georgia Flowers-Lee, a vice president with United Teachers Los Angeles, said Mazariegos discussed his gun conviction and the circumstances surrounding it during his interviews with the union, which ended up endorsing him.

“He was up front, honest about the challenges and honest about the gun charge,” she said. “Walked us through what had happened and where it led and how and why he ended up pleading it out,” she said.

Flowers-Lee, who lives in the district, said that young men of color like Mazariegos are overpoliced.

“I do not see this as a disqualifier. And let’s talk about redemption,” she said.

Wednesday night, Mazariegos released a campaign video featuring him discussing gun violence and his conviction with childhood friends. He said it was a turning point in his life.

“That was the moment where I was like, it’s either now or never,” he said. “Either I leave this s— behind, or it’s going to eat me up. I’m never going back to that lifestyle. I’m going to dedicate myself to the people.”

Mazariegos said he never carried a gun, except for that one day, but many of his friends did.

“Guns were a very common thing. It was almost like having a bike,” he said.

Mazariegos said that in 2009, he was driving home from the San Fernando Valley in the early morning, after dropping friends off, when he was pulled over by the LAPD. He said the officers gave no reason for stopping him, but they made him get out of his car and searched it without a warrant, finding the gun.

He was a permanent resident at the time, after moving from Guatemala at a young age, and was advised by his attorney to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle, to avoid possible deportation, he said.

He was sentenced to 24 months of probation and one day in jail, court records show.

Growing up in Hollywood and Hyde Park, among other parts of the city, Mazariegos was intimately familiar with gun and gang violence.

His friend, Oscar Michael Morales, was shot to death in 2001 at age 14. He remembers Morales’ mother cleaning the blood off the sidewalk the next day.

His gun conviction helps him connect with residents of Council District 9, Mazariegos said, and he frequently discusses it while door-knocking.

Ugarte, meanwhile, is paying off $25,000 in fines to the city Ethics Commission for failing to disclose years of outside income while he was working for Price.

Price himself has been criminally charged with four counts of voting on matters in which he had a conflict of interest, five counts of embezzlement and three counts of perjury. Prosecutors allege he voted to approve deals with developers or agencies that had done business with his wife.

Democratic legislative leaders on Monday called on voters to boycott USC’s upcoming gubernatorial debate if the university does not invite candidates who were excluded from participating.

The unsparing letter adds another layer of controversy to Tuesday’s forum, which as a result of the university’s selection criteria would not include any of the leading candidates of color.

“We are writing to demand you open the March 24 gubernatorial debate to all leading candidates,” said the letter sent Monday evening to USC President Beong-Soo Kim by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón (D-Goleta) and the leaders of the legislative Latino, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Native American, LGBTQ, Jewish and women’s caucuses. “The outcry over this debate is deafening and includes legal demands from the excluded candidates’ attorneys, public calls by elected leaders across the state, concerns from the included candidates’ own campaigns, and growing alarm from California voters. Instead of responding to these valid concerns by expanding the debate, USC has doubled down.”

USC officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. Tuesday’s debate is scheduled less than two months before ballots begin arriving in voters’ mailboxes.

The university has been embroiled in controversy over the criteria it used to select the candidates it invited to participate in Tuesday’s debate, which is co-sponsored by KABC-TV Los Angeles and Univision.

Specifically, critics have pointed out the methodology allowed San José Mayor Matt Mahan — a white candidate who recently entered the race and is polling poorly — to vault above former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee.

“The university’s selection process — built on a formula never before used for a debate of this scale, has delivered a result that is biased,” the letter says. “When a methodology produces this outcome — one that elevates a candidate with notable ties to USC’s donor community and the co-director of the Dornsife Center for the Political Future — the burden falls on USC to explain itself, not on everyone else to accept it. If USC does not do the right thing, we call on California voters to boycott this debate.”

Mike Murphy, a co-director of the USC center hosting the debate, has been voluntarily advising an independent expenditure committee backing Mahan. The veteran GOP strategist previously said he had nothing to do with organizing the debate and that he has asked for unpaid leave at the university through the June 2 primary if he takes a paid role in the campaign.

USC has also received tens of millions of dollars in donations from billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and his wife. Caruso, a USC alumnus who served as a trustee for years, is also a Mahan supporter.

“I had no conversations with the debate hosts or organizers,” Caruso said in a statement to The Times on Monday. “This is the most important election for California in a generation, and I encourage everyone to be engaged, learn as much as possible about each candidate, then form an opinion who can move California forward in the most positive of ways. Watching debates is a part of that process. That is why I believe debates should include all the credible candidates.”

The debate sponsors released a joint statement on Friday defending their decision.

“We want to be clear that we categorically, unequivocally deny any allegations that the debate criteria was in any way biased in favor or against any candidate and want to clarify the facts,” said the statement by the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future and its broadcast partners. “The methodology was based on well-established metrics consistent with formulas widely used to set debate participation nationwide — a combination of polling and fundraising — and developed without regard to any particular candidate.”

Hours later, the four prominent Democrats who were excluded from the debate called on their rivals to boycott the event, reiterating their concerns that the criteria used to determine who was invited to participate resulted in every prominent candidate of color being excluded from the forum.

The four Democrats who are participating in the debate — Rep. Eric Swalwell of Dublin, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and Mahan — all issued statements criticizing USC’s selection criteria, but did not pull out of the debate.

“It is a shame that USC has decided to elevate one candidate at the expense of others,” Swalwell wrote on X on Sunday. “USC, and every host of a gubernatorial debate, should employ fair, objective, and honest criteria for all candidates. I remain hopeful they will do so Tuesday night.”

Porter expressed similar thoughts.

“Criteria used to determine which candidates qualify to participate in a debate must be transparent, fair, and objective,” she wrote on X. “I’m disappointed by how USC handled the process for Tuesday’s debate. Candidates and Californians deserve answers.”