One after another, his enemies — and by that I mean anyone who has ever done anything other than grovel — were defeated in elections across the country.
Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican, was perhaps the most high-profile to go down in flames. Massie, you may recall, joined with his California Democratic colleague Ro Khanna to campaign for the release of the Epstein files, which made Trump big-mad since his name is in them a lot.
But was it? Or is it simply now crystal clear that it is a party that will follow its leader, no matter the consequence — even personal ruin? And if Trump still wields this much power over his base, what does it mean for the November general election?
“Republicans are united behind President Trump,” RNC spokesperson Kiersten Pels told Politico. “While the media tries to manufacture division, Republicans remain focused on delivering results for the American people and building momentum heading into 2026.”
As much as I’d like to believe Greene has a point (I can’t believe I’m saying that), all signs instead indicate Pels is, at least mostly, right — the Republican party is alive and well, by Trump’s standards, anyway, and may be gaining momentum for a November none of us will ever forget.
Tuesday’s proof
Gallrein wasn’t the only Trump-backed Republican to win voter approval. Trump also saw his candidates win in places including Idaho, Pennsylvania, Alabama and Georgia.
And in Texas, Trump threw down another retribution bomb by endorsing state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. That race will go to a runoff next week, with Paxton’s chances significantly boosted.
And in case there’s any doubt on why Trump is choosing his favorites, just check out his reasoning in his own social media post for that endorsement. Spoiler: It has nothing to do with the good of the country or even the Grand Old Party.
So personal loyalty is the name of the game, and Republicans seem more than willing to play it.
Still, there has been some chatter that ousted lawmakers including Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who just lost his primary to a Trump candidate, could gum up the works for Trump in their remaining months. Cassidy voted with Democrats this week on a war powers resolution to at least slow down Trump’s Iran offensive.
Personally, I wouldn’t bet on it. Recent polls have shown Trump’s approval ratings to be down in the dumps, but not with Republicans. They still love this guy.
A poll by Echelon Insights this week found that 74% of GOP voters view Trump favorably. That’s about the same percentage of people who love Costco and NASA, and who doesn’t love Costco and NASA?
Add to that a Wednesday poll from Quinnipiac University that found that while 64% of voters disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy, 73% of Republicans actually approve — for real. They are OK with $6 gas and beef priced like gold.
Granted, that’s down from 88% of Republicans loving this economy a month ago, but still, three-quarters of Trump’s base backs this dumpster fire of financial mismanagement and looting.
In the same poll, 80% of respondents said congressional Republicans should be doing more to work with Trump, while 13% said they should be standing up to him.
Folks, Republicans are not turning away from this president — they are embracing not a party, but his one-man rule, and doing it with a big, warm bear hug.
Get to November
What does all that mean for the November election? Not a whole lot of good for Democrats, but I’ll start with one possible bright spot: Texas.
Yes, Texas — where, if Paxton does beat Cornyn, Democrats will do a happy dance. That’s because Paxton is seen as the more extreme candidate, plagued by scandal, and would be running against the increasingly popular everyman-preacher man James Talarico. If Talarico prevails, he would be the first Democratic to win a statewide office in the Lone Star state since the 1990s.
But on the national front, there is very little reason to believe any Republicans will break with Trump, as voters or candidates. That means it will come down to gerrymandering and independents, neither of which is especially hopeful for Democrats.
In the Echelon poll, 68% of independent voters said they believed the country was on the “wrong track,” with more than one-third citing the economy as their most important issue. The Quinnipiac poll found that only 26% of independent voters who responded approve of how Trump is handling the job of president.
But.
Both polls found independent voters also did not approve of the job Democrats are doing in Congress — almost three-quarters had a bad impression. Despite all of the middle-ground voter animus toward Trump and those he backs, Democrats apparently have done almost nothing to capitalize on it.
The takeaway is that the voters who will decide November — at least in the remaining places where maps are not rigged — really don’t like any of their choices, and may just hold their noses and vote for whoever seems least-worst.
If he finds a way to bring prices down, that could be Trump‘s GOP.
As plenty of Californians remain undecided about the gubernatorial primary’s unsettled Democratic field, some are waiting to cast their ballots, creating the potential for a slower vote count or a longer wait to find out the winners.
Though the landscape could change quickly if Democrats coalesce around a single candidate within the next several days — signs of which were emerging this week — for now, many Democratic-leaning voters appear to be waiting for new developments before making their final decisions, political analysts say.
“This has been a roller coaster of a race, and I think voters are waiting to see when the ride is going to end and cast a vote at that time,” said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic strategist.
A larger-than-usual number of people casting mail ballots on or close to election day could extend the ballot-counting process, said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. County election officials said they were prepared for that possibility. Early returns so far haven’t made it clear whether most voters will wait longer than usual to cast ballots.
Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County registrar, said the county was “fully prepared” for the possibility of receiving “a significant number” of ballots returned close to or on election day, June 2.
“It is not uncommon in primary elections, particularly those with a large number of contests and candidates, for some voters to take additional time to review their ballots and hold onto them longer before returning them,” he said.
Californians who want to vote on or close to election day can vote in person or use a mail-ballot return option that doesn’t rely on the U.S. Postal Service to help speed the process and avoid the risk of a mail ballot arriving late, election officials said.
Hesitation by Democratic-leaning voters reflects the toll of a historically uncertain primary race for governor. The contest has been marked by the unusual lack of a clear Democratic front-runner and the party’s failure to line up behind a single candidate after former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out in April.
Early concerns within the party that a split Democratic electorate could put two Republicans on the November ballot under the state’s top-two primary system also heightened the sense of stakes among left-leaning voters.
Those factors, combined with a large slate of candidates, voter confusion about how candidates’ platforms differ and a desire to choose the person “most likely to win” have made Democratic-leaning voters uncertain, said Christian Grose, director of the USC Democracy and Fair Elections Lab.
“There’s a little bit of, whoever’s in the lead some Democrats are choosing to vote for … but people don’t know who that person is,” Grose said, noting that “some of that [could start] to go away” as the race tightens.
An indication that Democrats are starting to consolidate around Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, came Tuesday in a new survey released by the California Democratic Party. It showed Becerra with support from 21% of respondents, followed by billionaire Tom Steyer with 15%.
Republican-leaning voters appear to favor Steve Hilton, who had support from 22% of survey respondents. Republican Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, had 10%. Under California’s primary system, the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party.
Tallies from a handful of counties showed varying early turnout so far.
In San Francisco, a relatively small number of ballots have been returned, indicating that voters may be waiting, Michelle Parker, president of the city’s elections commission, said Tuesday. If people vote by mail close to election day — rather than voting in person or using a drop box — it could affect the speed of vote-counting, a possibility the city’s election staff is prepared for, she said.
“We’ll see how quickly they come in, but knowing what the news has been like and watching what the dynamic has been like across the state, I’m not surprised people are waiting,” Parker said, referring to the governor’s race.
In San Bernardino County, 5.6% of mail ballots had been returned as of Tuesday, a rate comparable with previous elections, Registrar of Voters Joani Finwall said. Election officials “strongly encourage” voters to cast ballots early using drop boxes or early voting locations, Finwall said.
In Orange County, by contrast, data so far indicate that voters are not waiting, the Registrar of Voters office said. More than 129,000 vote-by-mail ballots had been returned by the end of the day Monday, more than had been returned by the same time in the 2024 and 2022 primaries. Of those, a slightly higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats had voted.
If a large number of voters were to wait until June 2 to cast a mail ballot, the county would be able to efficiently process them, said Registrar of Voters Bob Page, noting that 90% of the county’s early vote-by-mail ballots were included in election night results in the 2024 presidential primary.
Voters should be prepared for the possibility that the gubernatorial results aren’t determined on election night, Grose said. One candidate could appear to be in the lead on election night and another could overtake them once all ballots are counted.
State election officials warned this month that some social media posts urging Democrats to vote “late” could be misinformation. Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office said it would look into such posts, one of which falsely attributed the message to historian Heather Cox Richardson.
Mail ballots must be postmarked on or before election day and arrive within seven days after the election; otherwise, they are considered late and not counted.
Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, acknowledged chatter around people holding onto their ballots but said the survey released Tuesday indicated voters are “beginning to move towards specific candidates.”
Even as Becerra and, to a lesser extent, Steyer rose in popularity, other Democrats saw support in the single digits in the poll, including former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, San José Mayor Matt Mahan and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
“This race isn’t over; we’ve certainly seen a lot of twists and turns to this point, but you do see some clear consolidation taking place for both Democrats and Republicans,” Hicks said on a call with reporters. “I’m not concerned about California Democrats having their voices heard.”
“There is some uncertainty among Democrats about, ‘Is there one more shoe to drop for someone?” Grose said. “That’s one reason people are holding onto their ballots.”
Voters who want to cast ballots later than May 26 should return their mail ballots at a voting site, county election office or drop box, rather than via the Postal Service, by 8 p.m. on June 2 or should vote in person, recommended Alexander, of the California Voter Foundation.
Because mail ballots require election officials to conduct signature verification, they take longer to count than in-person ballots. In addition, recent changes at the U.S. Postal Service have slowed mail service, creating a higher potential for mailed ballots to arrive late.
Alexander also urged voters to take advantage of Saturday in-person voting, available at county election offices statewide the weekend before election day, and other early voting options.
“I am very sympathetic with voters who want to take their time to make their decision in this very fluid election,” she said. “The important thing is to have a plan.”
Former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra remains the top Democrat in the California governor’s race despite being targeted by a barrage of negative political ads and enduring sharp attacks from his rival candidates during recent debates, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the state Democratic Party.
Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democrat who is shattering self-funding records for statewide office, has been flooding the television airwaves, internet and social media with ads ripping Becerra’s long record in public office, as well as for accepting campaign donations from oil giant Chevron. But, thus far, that has not been enough for Steyer to overtake Becerra.
The survey found that 21% of likely voters backed Becerra, who also served in Congress and as California’s attorney general, while 15% backed Steyer. Among the other top Democrats: Former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter received 7%; San José Mayor Matt Mahan came in at 4%; and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa registered at 1%.
Becerra on Tuesday said he believes he has climbed in the polls because voters are now paying attention to the race.
“They’re really looking closely at who’s out there, and I think I’ve been one of the beneficiaries of folks looking for a place that they can feel comfortable, where they can trust,” Becerra told reporters after a campaign event in South Los Angeles. “I think more and more as people look at the candidates, they’re going to start to crystallize behind somebody who won’t need training wheels, as I say, when they get into the governor’s office and can hit the ground running, day one.”
He said he thinks Steyer’s attacks aren’t working because Californians are skeptical of the billionaire.
“He’s spending like no one before, and he’s hitting like no one before, and so far, it hasn’t made a difference,” Becerra said. “We continue to surge, even after weeks of his barrage of lies and attacks…. California voters are not anxious to have someone who wants to buy the office.”
Leading all candidates in the race was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, who was supported by 22% of likely voters. His top GOP challenger, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, was backed by 10%, the poll showed.
While Hilton and Becerra right now appear to be the likeliest candidates to finish in the top two in California’s June 2 primary, which is required to advance to the November general election, there still remains plenty of time for political fortunes and voter support to rise or fall. Ballots were mailed to the state’s 23.1 million registered voters and early voting sites opened earlier this month, but most Californians have not sent them in thus far.
For Becerra, the strong poll results indicate an astounding turnaround for a campaign that appeared all but dead just weeks ago. In early April, the California Democratic Party tracking poll showed Becerra with support from just 4% of likely voters. That changed after then-Northern California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had been the front-running Democrat in the race, withdrew from the campaign and resigned from Congress after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct.
The California Democratic Party launched a series of tracking polls in March after leaders and allies grew increasingly concerned that Republicans would win the top two spots in the primary, shutting the party out of the November general election. This prospect, while statistically possible given the crowded field of candidates running for governor, has grown increasingly less likely as California voters finally focused on the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Under California’s top-two primary system, only the candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their political party or affiliation.
The poll of 1,200 likely voters took place between May 14 and 16 and has a margin of error of 2.83% in either direction.
ALLEN, Texas — President Trump on Tuesday endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, supercharging his effort to oust incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a Republican primary runoff.
“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on social media.
When news of the endorsement broke, Paxton supporters began cheering and dancing to “YMCA,” a Trump campaign anthem, at an event in Allen, Texas, where the attorney general was scheduled to speak.
Paxton and Cornyn qualified for the May 26 runoff after a March 3 primary, while Rep. Wesley Hunt finished third and did not advance.
Although the four-term Cornyn has backed Trump’s agenda in Washington, Paxton pitched himself as a political warrior for the Make America Great Again movement. Trump’s endorsement puts him at odds with his party’s establishment, which is convinced that Cornyn is the better candidate for November’s general election. The Democrats nominated Texas State Rep. James Talarico as their candidate for Senate.
In response to Trump’s endorsement, Talarico said in a statement that “it doesn’t matter who wins this runoff. We already know who we’re running against: the billionaire mega-donors and their corrupt political system.”
Cornyn’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, the senator said he believed that Trump had decided not to weigh in with an endorsement.
“I think the president doesn’t want to disappoint some of his own political base, and some of the Paxton people have been talking to him and encouraged him to support him, I think that was a bridge too far for the president so he’s just opted to say out of the race,” he said.
Cornyn also argued that Paxton is a liability in a general election, where Democrats hope to flip the seat blue, and “Ken Paxton would hand it to them on a silver platter.”
Trump, in his social media post, said Cornyn was “a good man” but “he was not supportive of me when times were tough.” He complained that “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination.”
The runoff between Cornyn and Paxton had been shaping up as a bitter and expensive battle for the future of the Republican Party, and one that was diverting resources from other competitive races elsewhere in the country.
Trump frustrated some Republicans by declining to endorse earlier in the race. On the Friday before the March 3 primary, he said that he had “pretty much” decided whom to support — but declined to say who — when asked by reporters on a visit to Corpus Christi.
On the day after the primary, Trump promised to make an endorsement and said he would expect the candidate without his support to drop out. Paxton had said that he would not leave the race.
Trump has had an at-times cool relationship with Cornyn, notably after the senator suggested in 2023 that Trump could not win the presidency again in 2024 and that his “time has passed him by.”
Cornyn also was an early critic of Trump’s plan for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico — a project he now supports.
A former state attorney general and state Supreme Court judge, Cornyn was first elected to statewide office 36 years ago. His understated style and judge’s temperament contrast with the fiery rhetoric of Trump and his Make America Great Again movement.
Cornyn has had support from Senate Republican leadership, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who warned that “it is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee.”
Some Republican leaders have worried the party will need to spend much more money to defend the seat if Paxton is the nominee — money they could be spending on Senate races in more competitive states. Paxton was acquitted in a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. He also reached a deal in 2024 to end a long-running securities fraud case.
Trump stoked the competition on Feb. 27 in Corpus Christi, noting there’s “a little bit of a race,” while acknowledging their attendance.
“We have a great attorney general, Ken Paxton. Where’s Ken? Hi, Ken,” Trump said. He continued, “And we have a great senator, John Cornyn. Hi, John.”
“It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people,” he added.
Trump mentioned the third candidate, Hunt, after running through the long list of Texas lawmakers present.
“Another friend of mine who is doing very well, Wesley Hunt,” he said. “Wesley Hunt, what a good job.”
Beaumont, Bedayn and LaFleur write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Bedayn reported from Austin, Texas.
Billionaire Tom Steyer, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, as of Monday has donated a record-shattering $192.4 million of his personal wealth to his campaign in the lead-up to the June 2 primary.
The cash infusion dwarfs the money raised by all his Democratic and Republican challengers combined, and has fueled a torrent of political ads and a campaign infrastructure that’s kept him near the top of the opinion polls.
But Californians have dismissed rich candidates in the past, especially those who use their own fortunes to appeal to a largely middle- and working-class electorate struggling with day-to-day expenses in the notoriously costly state.
Steyer hopes to avoid the fate of former EBay CEO Meg Whitman, former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, banking and oil heir Michael Huffington and former Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi, none of whom were able to turn their riches into successful gubernatorial or senate campaigns in California over the last three decades.
Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist who managed Checchi’s unsuccessful 1998 bid for governor that set a self-funding record, said voters have long been skeptical of the motivation of rich people who run for office.
“Their basic reaction is, this person is incredibly successful, has made obscene amounts of money, could do anything they want to do in the world. Why would they want to run for office? Why would they want to represent me? What’s in it for them?” Sragow said. “And voters just go, ‘You’re just doing this for sport.’ … because they’re bored and they have big egos and they want something to do. That is the fundamental challenge for a self-funding candidate.”
Sragow said Steyer could benefit from his sustained involvement and financial support of climate change policy and other Democratic priorities, in addition to his immense spending in a race that lacks a clear front-runner less than three weeks before the primary.
Steyer said his and his wife’s decades-long work and funding of progressive causes sets him apart from previous wealthy self-funding candidates.
“I’m completely different from those people,” Steyer said in an interview on Friday. “I’ve been working full time on behalf of Californians for 14 years, and I was involved before that. You know, those people … never did anything but the private sector.”
He pointed to his and wife Kat Taylor’s work on ballot measures that took on the tobacco and oil industries, protected environmental laws and taxed out-of-state corporations to fund schools. They also backed successful efforts providing free breakfast and lunch for every California schoolchild, registering 1.2 million voters in the state, and supporting the state’s largest provider of services for immigrants, Steyer said.
“We didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. We didn’t just decide in our boardroom [that] we’re smarter than everybody else, they should listen to us.,” Steyer said. “We have been working within this system as private citizens for really a long time, and that’s the truth.”
Steyer said his background is completely different from the people who thought they would bring a business accounting method to state government, a belief he called “super juvenile.”
The hedge-fund founder turned environmental warrior has spent nearly $1 billion on his political pursuits. In addition to the $192.4 million Steyer has spent to date on his gubernatorial bid, he spent nearly $342 million on his unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid, $325 million on national Democratic candidates and causes, $67.4 million on state efforts and nearly $13.5 million backing a successful California gerrymandering ballot measure last year that was widely viewed as a precursor to his gubernatorial bid, according to state and federal fundraising disclosures and Open Secrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks electoral finances.
Californians watching television cannot escape his ads during local newscasts, sitcoms and niche programming such as the Puppy Bowl (the Animal Planet show that airs on Super Bowl Sunday).
Voters are being inundated with glossy multi-page mailers touting Steyer’s environmental record, his work taking on corporations and President Trump, and his campaign promises to build 1 million new affordable homes in four years, cut electric bills by 25% and enact single-payer healthcare.
Steyer bought advertising time on television stations across the entire state
His television ad buys have totaled nearly $59.5 million. In some areas around San Francisco, his spending at all stations combined totaled more than $22 million. He has also paid nearly $20.7 million to a media company that focuses on digital ad buys.
Amount spent, in millions
Data current as of May 18.
California Secretary of State, Federal Communications Commission
Gabrielle LaMarr LeMeeLOS ANGELES TIMES
Recently placing second in Real Clear Politics’ average of recent polls, Steyer is now third behind Republican Steve Hilton, a former conservative commentator and political strategist, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a longtime elected official who most recently served as President Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary.
Steyer’s Democratic rivals argue that he is trying to buy the election with money his hedge fund made investing in fossil fuels, private prisons currently housing ICE detainees and other industries that are anathema to liberal voters. Only after making money from those ventures did he come out and oppose them, his challengers say.
Steyer “is a billionaire who got rich off polluters and ICE prisons and is now using that money to fund this election,” former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter said during an April debate.
Steyer responded that corporations such as Chevron and PG&E are spending heavily to defeat him because he is the sole candidate who would not be beholden to them.
“‘I’m the only person in this race that the corporate special interests are spending money against, and they’re spending tens of millions of dollars. And the reason that’s true is because I said I will only put the interest of working Californians first,” he told reporters last month in Sacramento. “They’re worried that I mean it, and I do.”
Steyer said the idea that the money funding his campaign is from controversial investments is “absurd.”
“That is such a bunch of bull, that that’s where my money comes from,” he said in the interview. “My money came from long-term investing over 27 years. It did not come from a couple of investments out of thousands that were there for a very short time and were, in terms of the actual money, irrelevant.”
Additionally, endorsements by influential left-leaning organizations — including actor/climate change activist Jane Fonda’s political action committee, the California Nurses Assn. and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund — could assure voters who may be skeptical of his past.
He has donated millions to environmental groups and individuals who have endorsed him. Their goals align with Steyer’s long-term commitment to environmental causes. But he was accused of trying to use his money to win endorsements in Iowa and South Carolina during his 2020 presidential bid. He has also recently come under fire that social media influencers who were touting his gubernatorial candidacy did not disclose that Steyer was paying them.
In the 2010 governor’s race, Whitman spent $144 million of her wealth on an unsuccessful campaign, which set a record for statewide campaign spending in the nation until Democrat J.B. Pritzker broke it in 2018 by donating roughly $171.5 million of his fortune to his successful bid to be elected governor of Illinois.
Adjusted for inflation, Whitman’s spending would be nearly $220 million today. But she spent the money in a lengthy primary and general election, while Steyer is still weeks away from the primary and will almost certainly contribute more money before the June 2 primary and if he advances to the November election. Steyer declined to say how much he plans to spend on his bid.
Steyer’s outsized spending in a state that is home to many of the nation’s most expensive media markets could break the unsuccessful streak of wealthy Californians trying to win the state’s top offices, according to political experts.
“Steyer is outspending his opponents by far more than any other self-funded candidate in California,” said Dan Schnur, a longtime politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University. “It’s not a question of his message but rather the magnitude of his spending.”
However, Schnur added that the unsettled nature of the race reflects Democratic voters’ “built-in” resistance to supporting a billionaire who became wealthy because of investments that contradict their morals.
Veteran GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, a top adviser to Whitman during her 2010 campaign, said he didn’t think voters’ primary concern would be Steyer’s self-funding, but the money could make a difference.
“It’s not just that Steyer has self-funded to this amazing number,” Stutzman said. “There’s really nobody [else] that’s even spending enough money, arguably, to be successful.”
Steyer’s net worth is estimated at $2.4 billion by Forbes.
In 1986, Steyer founded Farallon Capital, once one of the largest hedge funds in the world. He sold his stake in it in 2012, saying he didn’t want to be associated with investments that did not align with his values.
“There’s a reason I walked away from that business and walked away from a ton of money, because I felt like that is not the life I want,” Steyer told San Francisco voters in March.
Though Steyer has repeatedly expressed regret about Farallon’s investments, his Democratic rivals argue that this is a convenient stance while Steyer benefits from the largess that Farallon created for him. He is using his money to not only tout his record and build a robust campaign operation, but to slash at competitors who present a threat to his candidacy.
Steyer has unleashed a blistering attack ad campaign against Becerra, who was once mired in the single digits and surged in the polls after former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) dropped out of the race in April after being accused of sexual misconduct and assault.
Ads on television and social media accuse Becerra of being inconsistent about his position on single-payer healthcare and about what he knew about a federal corruption scandal that ensnared a former top campaign strategist for stealing funds from a dormant Becerra campaign account.
Steyer recently sent voters a mailer that castigates Becerra for taking campaign contributions from oil, tobacco and utility companies, and his handling of unaccompanied migrant children when he was HHS secretary.
“Xavier Becerra was supposed to keep immigrant kids safe, but thousands were lost, trafficked, or exploited,” the mailer says. “Becerra failed to protect children and they paid the price. What price will California pay when he fails us?”
On April 27 on the social media platform X, Steyer also called on Becerra to return a $39,200 contribution from Chevron.
Becerra responded with an ad that highlighted California’s natural beauty, from the coastline to the desert to the redwoods, as a respite from the deluge of Steyer ads.
“Take a break from all those Tom Steyer ads. Enjoy,” reads the introduction to the ad.
When Swalwell was still in the race, and topping the field of Democratic candidates, Steyer questioned the then-congressman’s eligibility to run for governor because of residency concerns, as well as his attendance record in Congress. Steyer ran ads saying that Swalwell skipped more than two-thirds of congressional votes while in office.
Rich politicians have won prominent elected offices, including financial executive Jon Corzine, who spent more than $100 million of his money on campaigns for New Jersey senator and governor. In California, self-funders have won lower offices, including Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who dropped out of the 2026 gubernatorial race and is now running for state treasurer; Richard Riordan in his 1993 Los Angeles mayoral bid; and Rep. Gil Cisneros, Rep. Sara Jacobs and former Rep. Jane Harman in their congressional races.
Steyer has never been elected to public office. The two times he has jumped into a race, there was a familiar pattern.
In last year’s state campaign about redrawing California’s congressional districts to counter Trump’s efforts to do so in GOP-led states, Steyer spent significantly in support of the effort led by Gov. Gavin Newsom. However, he did not donate to the official campaign backing Proposition 50. Instead, he spent his money featuring himself in ads that were widely viewed as a way to raise his visibility among voters before a gubernatorial bid.
In 2019, Steyer spent $8.5 million airing nearly 19,000 ads calling for Trump’s impeachment, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. That was on top of several million dollars he spent on ads that featured himself, leading Trump to call him “unhinged” and a “wacko” in 2017.
That year, when asked by The Times whether his financial support for Trump’s impeachment was laying the groundwork for a future political bid, Steyer demurred.
“One of the things that is now true in American politics — it is reflected in that question — is there is no sense that people might try and do something for its own purpose,” he said. “Throughout American history, people have chosen to do the right thing ’cause they felt like it was important.”
A year and a half later, Steyer launched his presidential campaign. Facing similar questions about the source of his wealth and poor showings in early Democratic primaries, he dropped out in February of 2020.
Times staff writer Nicole Nixon in Sacramento contributed to this report.
It’s a tight three-way race at the top, with a second helping of “Beef,” which won eight Emmys for its first serving, barely ahead of Richard Gadd’s “Baby Reindeer” follow-up, and a suburban noir with abundant heart from Steven Conrad, the maker of “Patriot.”
Glenn Whipp says, “ ‘DTF St. Louis’ is the standout limited series, a murder mystery in form that’s really about suburban loneliness, particularly the isolation that can cripple middle-aged men.”
While Lorraine Ali calls “Half Man” “the series to watch in this race,” not all of her Buzzy buddies are as enthusiastic: “I fear that ‘Half Man,’ Richard Gadd’s aggressively unpleasant follow-up to ‘Baby Reindeer,’ will get a knee-jerk nomination here,” says Kristen Baldwin, “but that vote would be better spent on PBS’ superb adaptation of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ or Riz Ahmed’s ‘Bait.’ ”
Tracy Brown says, “Recent trends suggest this race might come down to voters’ appetites for bleak British miniseries” such as “Half Man,” but “ ‘Adolescence’ co-creator Jack Thorne’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ adaptation was a bit more in my lane so I’ll give it the edge.”
The twice-cooked “Beef” isn’t to all the panelists’ tastes, either. Matt Roush says it “left me cold but probably has a better chance than the streamer’s terrific historical drama ‘Death by Lightning.’ ”
1.“Beef” 2. “Half Man” 3. “DTF St. Louis” 4. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” 5. “All Her Fault” 6. “The Beast in Me” 7. “Bait” 8. “Lord of the Flies””
Los Angeles Times
Lorraine Ali
1. “Half Man” 2. “Bait” 3. “DTF St. Louis” 4. “All Her Fault” 5. “The Beast in Me”
“ ‘Half Man’ is the series to watch in this race, but what should you watch on your screen at home? ‘Bait,’ which follows a struggling British Pakistani actor (Riz Ahmed) as he auditions to become the next James Bond. Is the world ready for a brown Bond? Not really. Hilarity ensues.”
Freelance Critic
Kristen Baldwin
1. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” 2. “Beef” 3. “The Beast in Me” 4. “DTF St. Louis” 5. “All Her Fault”
“I fear that ‘Half Man,’ Richard Gadd’s aggressively unpleasant follow–up to ‘Baby Reindeer,’ will get a knee-jerk nomination here, but that vote would be better spent on PBS’ superb adaptation of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ or Riz Ahmed’s ‘Bait,’ a surreal blend of showbiz satire and immigrant-family comedy.”
Los Angeles Times
Tracy Brown
1. “Beef” 2. “DTF St. Louis” 3. “All Her Fault” 4. “Lord of the Flies” 5. “The Beast in Me”
“Recent trends suggest this race might come down to voters’ appetites for bleak British miniseries. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘Baby Reindeer’ creator Richard Gadd’s ‘Half Man’ is among the nominees, but ‘Adolescence’ co-creator Jack Thorne’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ adaptation was a bit more in my lane so I’ll give it the edge.”
Blavity
Trey Mangum
1. “Half Man” 2. “Beef” 3. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” 4. “All Her Fault” 5. “DTF St. Louis”
“ ‘Love Story’ was the talk of the town when it first premiered, but the last few episodes seemed to have landed softly with the majority of people. I think later entries ‘Beef’ and ‘Half Man’ are immediately dominating conversations, and at the right time.”
TV Insider
Matt Roush
1. “Half Man” 2. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” 3. “Beef” 4. “DTF St. Louis” 5. “All Her Fault”
“Not the strongest field this year, though Richard Gadd’s ‘Half Man’ and Ryan Murphy’s ‘Love Story’ seem unstoppable. The offbeat ‘DTF St. Louis’ might be a spoiler. Season 2 of Netflix’s ‘Beef’ left me cold but probably has a better chance than the streamer’s terrific historical drama ‘Death by Lightning.’ ”
Los Angeles Times
Glenn Whipp
1. “DTF St. Louis” 2. “Beef” 3. “Half Man” 4. “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” 5. “All Her Fault”
“ ‘DTF St. Louis’ is the standout limited series, a murder mystery in form that’s really about suburban loneliness, particularly the isolation that can cripple middle-aged men. The cast — Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Linda Cardellini, Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday — is superb. Emmy noms for all!”
In the northwest corner of the United States, Oregon has fostered a reputation as a left-wing stronghold. Since the 1980s, the Beaver State has consistently elected Democrats in most of its statewide races.
But even in a comfortably blue state like Oregon, the fight to hold onto political power can be competitive.
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On Tuesday, the state will hold its latest primary races, with each of the major parties picking its nominees for November’s midterm elections.
But a packed field of roughly 25 contenders, both Democrats and Republicans, is jockeying to replace Tina Kotek as she seeks a second term as governor.
Tuesday’s vote could also serve as an economic bellwether. Voters will weigh in on a referendum that could repeal a state fuel tax, as the US-Israel war on Iran heaps strain on consumers at the gas pump.
Who is running? And which races have attracted the most attention? We tackle those questions and more in this brief explainer.
What time do polls open?
Polls will open on Tuesday at 7am Pacific US time (15:00 GMT) and close at 8pm (4:00 GMT).
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek is seeking re-election in 2026 [File: John Rudoff/Reuters]
Who is running for governor?
Incumbent Governor Kotek is making a bid for a second four-year term. But she is fielding competition from dozens of other candidates, including nine Democrats.
Going into the Democratic primary, Kotek is the frontrunner. Her challengers include a children’s book author, the leader of an Indigenous nonprofit and an inventor who hopes to address water shortages.
Even more contenders are angling for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
Among them is State Senator Christine Drazan, who ran against Kotek in 2022. Drazan has been critical of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies but supportive of his tough stance on immigration.
Also on the Republican ballot is former NBA player Chris Dudley, who was the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2010. He had the smallest losing margin of any Republican candidate in decades.
State Representative Ed Diehl, meanwhile, is hoping to capitalise on the momentum he gained after leading the charge to block Kotek’s gas tax and fee increase package.
What are the opinion polls saying about the governor’s race?
Polls show Drazan leading the race to receive the Republican nomination, with 35 percent support.
Kotek is likely to grab an easy victory in the Democratic primary, with none of her opponents polling close behind.
What about the Senate race?
Another Democratic incumbent attempting to hold onto his seat is US Senator Jeff Merkley.
The 69-year-old, who began his career working on affordable housing, is running for a fourth consecutive six-year term. He first took office in 2009.
But while the senator faces eight rivals on the campaign trail – one Democrat and seven Republicans – his seat is considered relatively safe.
He is expected to win the Democratic primary on Tuesday and become the frontrunner for November’s general election.
Jeff Merkley is defending what is considered a safe seat for Democrats in the US Senate [File: Annabelle Gordon/Reuters]
What other positions are up for grabs?
All six of Oregon’s members of the US House of Representatives are running for re-election and will face the primary process on Tuesday.
Five are Democrats. One, Cliff Bentz, is a Republican, and he represents Oregon’s second congressional district, a sprawling area encompassing the entire eastern half of the state.
Also on Tuesday, voters will choose their party representatives in races for the state Senate and House.
The election will also determine a nonpartisan commissioner to lead the state Bureau of Labor and Industries.
Why does this race matter?
Oregon is a closed primary state, meaning that voters choose nominees only for the party they are registered under.
Given the state’s left-wing bent, the winners of the statewide Democratic primaries will likely emerge as frontrunners in November’s midterm races.
Still, there is room for surprise. According to state voter rolls, less than 25 percent of Oregonians are registered Republicans. But only 32 percent are registered Democrats, with the largest proportion of voters identifying as “non-affiliated” with any party.
Primary races in right-leaning areas like Oregon’s second congressional district could signify how closely the state’s Republican politicians want to align with President Trump.
Voters will also have a chance to vote on the referendum that could repeal the gas tax increase on Tuesday’s ballot.
Democrats in the state legislature raised Oregon’s gas tax to pay for roads and supplement the state’s transportation budget.
But as the US-Israel war on Iran causes gas prices to skyrocket, Republicans have used the referendum to appeal to voters on the cost of living. Gas is now averaging about 80 cents more in Oregon.
In addition, there are nearly 100 local measures sprinkled on ballots across the state, tailored to different counties. Many will focus on funding local fire departments, schools and libraries.
When are results expected?
Preliminary results are expected on Tuesday evening, shortly after polls close at 8pm local time.
But ballots will continue to arrive after election day, as mail-in votes and provisional ballots are counted, and some races may not be officially called until days later.
The race pitting a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump against Congressman Thomas Massie, a rare Republican critic of Israel, has become the most expensive House of Representatives primary contest in the history of the United States.
The avalanche of spending, totalling more than $34m by Monday, according to official records, highlights the significance of the elections that could oust one of the few Republican opponents to the war with Iran.
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In the final stretch of the campaign ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Massie has sought to highlight the oversized role of pro-Israel groups – including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – in the race.
He said the election will be a “referendum on foreign policy” and whether pro-Israel lobby groups will be able to “bully” members of Congress.
“You can tell that I’m ahead in the polls, and they’re desperate,” Massie told ABC News on Sunday.
“That’s why they’re sending the secretary of war to my district tomorrow. That’s why the president’s losing sleep and tweeting about this. That’s why AIPAC has dumped another $3m into my race this weekend.”
Trump has been incessantly bashing Massie on social media, and in an unusual move, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has travelled to Kentucky to campaign for Ed Gallrein, the Navy SEAL veteran challenging the congressman.
Massie has been critical of the unconditional US military aid to Israel and of the country’s abuses in Gaza and Lebanon. He has also helped spearhead the push for the release of government files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The money
Despite the intensity of the race, the candidates have not raised record amounts of money themselves.
The bulk of the spending, more than $25.8m, has come from outside groups, known as super political action committees (super PACs).
Super PACs are usually used by special interest groups to spend heavily to oppose or support a candidate without the constraints of legal limits on direct campaign contributions.
Pro-Israel groups and donors have played a central role in the flood of funds and ads directed against Massie, with three groups linked to them spending more than $15.5m in the race, Federal Election Commission (FEC) data shows.
United Democracy Project (UDP), AIPAC’s election arm, has spent more than $4.1m.
The RJC Victory Fund, which is affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition, came in with around $3.9m.
MAGA KY has been the largest spender, at $7.5m.
The PAC’s finances have not been made fully public. But available records show that one of the group’s top funders is Paul Singer, a pro-Israel billionaire investor who has also made the largest individual donation to UDP over the past year – $2.5m.
MAGA KY also received funds from Preserve America PAC, a group linked to Israeli-American megadonor Miriam Adelson.
Details of the finances of Preserve America PAC remain unclear for this election cycle. But Adelson donated $106m to the PAC in 2024 to help elect Trump as president.
Trump has openly admitted that Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson have influenced his Middle East policies.
Before the race in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District, the most expensive House primary was the 2024 election that ousted then-Democratic Congressman Jamaal Bowman, in which pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, were also the largest spenders.
The third most expensive primary also involved AIPAC and its pro-Israel allies, who succeeded in helping defeat progressive Congresswoman Cori Bush in 2024.
The Trump factor
Beyond the millions of dollars in pro-Israel spending, Massie needs to survive another potent force in Republican politics – Trump’s wrath.
The US president has all but purged the party of lawmakers who have disagreed with him on major issues.
Most recently, Senator Bill Cassidy – who voted to convict Trump after the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot – lost his primary to a challenger backed by the US president.
Trump is actively campaigning against Massie. In less than 24 hours between Sunday and Monday, the US president fired off three social media posts berating the congressman, calling him “weak”, “pathetic” and a “bum”.
“The worst Congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican Party is Thomas Massie,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday. “He is an obstructionist and a fool. Vote him out of office tomorrow, Tuesday. It will be a great day for America!”
However, Massie appears to have a few advantages that other Republican dissidents lacked.
Over the years, the congressman has built a reputation as a combative, principled libertarian and has gained popularity among right-wing commentators.
His campaign directly raised $5.5m, significantly more than Gallrein’s $3.1m, while also receiving outside support from pro-gun rights and libertarian PACs.
Massie has also been endorsed by some of his Republican colleagues, including Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, an outspoken right-wing lawmaker.
And due to the involvement of pro-Israel groups, Massie’s supporters are arguing that the race is not all about Trump, who remains popular amongst Republican voters.
“Why does Trump hate Massie? Is the congressman a secret liberal? Not at all,” right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson said in his newsletter on Monday.
“Unlike nearly everyone else in the Republican Party, Massie has refused to go along with the White House’s abandonment of the America First principles that got the president elected. He is one of the few honest people in politics. Everyone who cares about our country should root for him.”
SACRAMENTO — The Democrats’ mantra this election year — especially among wannabe governors — is that the richest Californians should “pay their fair share.” But by any objective measurement, they already do.
I’m referring to state taxes, not federal. It’s a valid argument that the most prosperous Americans should kick in more to the federal government, particularly after President Trump and the Republican Congress lowered taxes for the wealthy, who already had a pretty good deal.
George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings.
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The state Franchise Tax Board recently reported which income groups pony up the most taxes. The more money you earn, the steeper your income tax burden. Of course, that’s the way it should be. But California pushes its progressive tax system to the extreme.
We’ve got by far the highest state income tax rate in the nation at 13.3%.
In 2024, the latest year for which there’s complete data, the top 1% of California taxpayers accounted for 40% of the total state income tax revenue, the FTB reported. But they earned just 24% of the taxable income. To be in the top 1%, your annual earnings had to be at least $973,000.
The top 0.1% kicked in 21% of the tax, while earning 12% of the income. To be in that megarich class, you needed annual earnings of at least $4.7 million.
By contrast, middle-class families with incomes between $73,000 and $139,000 paid 9% of the state’s income tax take.
This doesn’t mean we should weep for the rich and demand more from the struggling lower middle class.
But the problem with Sacramento living off the wealthiest taxpayers is that they’re unreliable. Their fortunes flourish in boom times and fall when the economy busts. When the stock market sneezes, California state government catches pneumonia.
If the state treasury is overflowing, Democratic lawmakers tend to spend freely, expanding programs and creating new ones. Then when the cache inevitably shrinks in bad times, the policymakers’ usual response is to essentially turn their eyes.
Rather than sharply whack spending and raise taxes, they gimmick up the budget with borrowing, deferred spending and crossed fingers. And they dig the hole deeper.
For decades, under Democratic and Republican governors, we’ve sorely needed to update our archaic tax system to make it less volatile and more dependable.
A reform that makes lots of sense is to extend the sales tax to services primarily used by businesses. They could deduct the cost on their federal tax returns. And California state and local governments would steadily collect several billion dollars annually. Some income and sales tax rates could even be lowered.
California also has the nation’s highest state sales tax rate at 7.25%. Combining state and local sales tax rates, we have the seventh-highest at 8.99%.
Taxing deductible business services makes sense to many politicians — but only privately. They’re too weak-kneed to seriously consider it in public. There’d be winners and losers and high political risks.
“We need to stabilize our tax system in California with a more steady source of revenue,” he told me. “But I’m not a fan of the sales tax to begin with. It lands on working families.”
He was not interested in exploring a possible tax on services that didn’t hit working families.
Becerra, a former California attorney general and U.S. health secretary, added: “Before we start exploring new taxes, we should explore existing budget spending. We have to scrub the budget.”
In revising his new budget proposal last week, Newsom proposed $5.1 billion in modest tax hikes on businesses — even as unanticipated revenue was surging. He asked the Legislature for a limit on corporate tax credits and a tax on digital software.
He also proposed to trim $3.7 billion from Medi-Cal healthcare for the poor.
Newsom proposed spending $349.9 billion in the next fiscal year and asserted that budgets would be balanced for 18 months. But after that, he and practically everyone else in Sacramento foresee deficit spending without extensive fiscal restructuring.
But you don’t hear a peep about that from leading Democratic candidates running to replace Newsom. Most are talking about imposing significantly higher business taxes to pay for new or expanded programs.
Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer wants to close “the corporate tax loophole.” What he’s talking about is gutting Proposition 13’s property tax breaks for commercial holdings. He’d make it easier to reassess when partners sell their portions of a property — a commonly called “split roll” that would treat commercial property differently than residential.
That was tried in 2020 and rejected by voters.
Steyer also supports the billionaire tax that’s expected to be on the November ballot. It would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California’s 200-plus billionaires.
To their credit, no other gubernatorial candidate supports this misguided proposal. Practically all the $100-billion windfall would flow solely into healthcare while causing fed-up super wealthy to flee the state.
Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter would raise taxes on the most profitable corporations to pay for free child care and college tuition. They’re both good causes but of questionable fiscal feasibility right now.
Rather than pushing rich investors and job creators out of state, we should be encouraging them to stick it out in California and continue to pay their fair share.
The Hollywood sign is ablaze as Spencer Pratt, the reality TV star now running for mayor of Los Angeles, suits up as Batman, enters City Hall and leads the people to overthrow a cabal of corrupt, out-of-touch progressives intent on destroying the city.
Then he is Luke Skywalker. Dressed in a Jedi robe, he swoops through the city on an Imperial speeder bike, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (Emperor Palpatine) rebukes incumbent Mayor Karen Bass (Darth Vader) for not burning the city down to the ground in her first term.
“Make sure you finish the job in your second,” Newsom tells Bass with a tilt of the head and a smirk.
“The only thing that can stop us is someone telling the truth,” Bass replies. “As long as they don’t have any hope, the city’s ours.”
Pratt’s fan-generated AI election campaign videos have been praised and mocked, but heavily shared. And some see them as a harbinger of how artificial intelligence could reshape political messaging across the country.
His supporters are far from the first to create AI-generated ads. But political experts say it’s remarkable the degree to which they have used new technology to churn out a stream of outlandish, hyper-cinematic memes, creating buzz around his campaign and his message.
Some warn, however, that as the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will become harder for many people to distinguish between AI and real videos.
“When you’re creating content that is not based in reality, and then platforms are amplifying it in order to attract more eyeballs, you are putting a burden on the public for figuring out what is real and what is factual, and what is fake and misleading,” said Mark Jablonowski, the chief executive of DSPolitical, a progressive advertising firm.
Pratt’s campaign did not create the viral AI videos depicting him as a superhero taking on a cast of California Democratic villains. But he has shared the ads crafted by AI filmmaker Charlie Curran, founder of L.A.’s Menace Studio.
Supercharged and Hollywood inspired, the videos represent a brazen new era of fan-generated AI in political campaign advertising. Deploying generative AI tools to clone human voices and images, they bolster a hyperbolic and ultra-conspiratorial political narrative that depicts L.A. under Democratic rule as a hellscape in which Newsom and Bass deliberately conspire to harm the people.
Bass has condemned the ads, describing them as “very scary” and “absolutely 150% fiction.”
“His social media is now taking on a violent turn,” Bass told CNN, citing the Batman ad that depicts Angelenos pelting her with tomatoes.
Some political experts dismiss such fears of AI campaign ads as overblown. Most AI videos shared by political campaigns and their fans, they note, are more comedic than deliberately misleading.
“Spencer Pratt is using AI the way it should be used, which is to sharpen reality,” said Matt Klink, an L.A.-based Republican political consultant. “His whole shtick is that Los Angeles is broken, the insiders have failed, and the political class wants to explain away what voters are seeing with their own eyes.”
“Obviously, you don’t run an AI ad where you have someone saying something that they didn’t say, and you should disclose that they’re generated by AI,” Klink noted. But when it comes to ads that depict Pratt as Batman or Luke Skywalker, he said, “if you don’t know that they’re AI generated, you’re pretty clueless to begin with.”
For as long as political candidates and their supporters have experimented with new technology — from the pamphlets of the 1600s to the memes of the 21st century — they have faced complaints that they mislead the public.
As large language models ushered in a new era of AI, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned in 2024 that “a deluge of deception, disinformation and deepfakes are about to descend on the American public.”
The term “deepfake” was first coined in 2017 by a Reddit user who used open-source face-swapping technology to splice celebrity faces onto porn performers’ bodies. Within months, it entered the mainstream lexicon as a way to describe any AI-generated synthetic media that realistically clones a person’s image or voice.
Blumenthal cited a “chilling example.” In January 2024, Republicans placed robo calls using an AI “deepfake” voice mimicking President Biden to New Hampshire residents to discourage Democrats from voting in the presidential primaries.
New Hampshire authorities said the message violated the state’s voter suppression laws. A month later, the Federal Communications Commission outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by AI. The company that sent the messages agreed to pay a $1-million fine.
But others kept pushing the boundaries of AI — mostly as overt parody or satire, an arena that offers greater 1st Amendment protection.
In July 2024, an AI content creator created a mock campaign ad of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris with a computer-generated voiceover to make it seem she was describing herself as the ultimate “diversity hire” and “deep state puppet.” The post was titled ‘Kamala Harris Campaign Ad PARODY.’
Newsom slammed the post, saying on X, “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal.” Two months later, he signed into law a series of bills that clamped down on AI in politics.
But a federal judge blocked one of the new laws that regulated election-related content that is “materially deceptive,” saying it probably violated the 1st Amendment.
No comprehensive federal rules govern the use of AI content in political ads or messaging. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 29 states have passed laws restricting the use of deepfakes in political campaigns: Some states, such as Texas and Minnesota, prohibit the use of deepfakes a certain number of days before an election; the other 27 states require a media disclosure if content contains a deepfake.
Some political advertising experts call for more federal regulation. The state-by-state patchwork of regulations, they argue, makes it very difficult for social media platforms to be compliant.
“At the end of the day, we really need to see platforms being more responsible with the content that they’re sharing,” Jablonowski said. “We need to have clear guidelines and a level playing field across the country, so we’re not in a position where what’s OK in one state is not OK in another.”
Pratt’s embrace of AI is part of a larger 2026 political trend.
In January, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton released an ad depicting two of his opponents for a Senate seat — Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett — waltzing and swinging. A few months later, the National Republican Senatorial Committee shared a video that used a manipulated image of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the Texas Senate seat, mouthing his own tweets.
But Pratt has been particularly successful in using fan-based AI to help garner attention, pulling in a number of content creators to craft AI videos for his campaign.
One posted a video parody of the 2004 Downfall film, portraying Bass as Hitler. Another created an animated video,geared to a Latino audience, showing Angelenos lining the streets to cheer as Pratt wheels a garbage can piled with trash and the incumbent mayor. The slogan “SPENCER, SACA LA BASSURA” [Spencer, take out the trash] flashes atop the screen.
A recent survey from the American Assn. of Political Consultants shows that AI adoption is growing rapidly among political consultants — and Republicans are more likely to use it than Democrats.
But political observers in L.A. note that leading Democrats in the mayoral race are unlikely to follow Pratt in using AI. Bass, they note, is a more cautious political figure than Pratt, a brash online influencer who relished playing the role of villain on MTV’s “The Hills.”
While Pratt’s user-generated AI ads have inspired giddy delight from out-of-state Republicans — conservative radio host Buck Sexton praised the Batman video for ushering in “a new era of online persuasion” — it’s still not clear if they will convince Angelenos to vote for him.
Certainly, the ads have helped Pratt gain recognition. They have also given voice to a groundswell of frustration with L.A.’s Democratic establishment and created space for more pressing debate on the future direction of the city.
But there is little evidence that the AI ads, in themselves, are persuading new voters.
So far, none of the AI ads that Pratt has shared have received as many views on his X account as a non-AI ad his campaign produced that has racked up more than 14 million views.
In it, Pratt stands outside Bass’ city-owned Hancock Park mansion and Nithya Raman’s home in leafy Silver Lake, then pans to an Airstream on the charred ruins of his own home, which burnt down during the Palisades fire.
“They don’t have to live in the mess they’ve created,” Pratt says as he walks down an L.A. street littered with homeless tents.
Meghan Daum, a former Los Angeles Times columnist who has endorsed Pratt and dubs herself a self-appointed “liberal elite whisperer for Pratt,” said she thought Pratt’s Airstream ad was more effective than the AI superhero ads. She voiced concern his sharing of AI videos could actively undermine his campaign.
“They will be repellent to the undecided voters Pratt needs to catch, most of whom will think they’re coming directly from the campaign,” she said on X. “Get smarter, guys.”
Using AI, she told The Times, could turn off voters in a town where so many film workers have lost jobs to AI. She also worried about the legality of ads — such as one video purporting to be a Bass campaign ad — that put words in the mouth of computer-generated politicians.
But Daum noted that others told her this was the aesthetic of the new world and a way of getting people who have not voted in the past excited about something.
“That may be true,” she said.
So far, there is little evidence that AI in U.S. political campaigns has affected elections.
“There’s a lot more fear about the effects of AI in politics than evidence of the effects of AI in politics,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College who co-authored a recent report on AI and persuasion.
During the 2024 election, Nyhan noted, AI was frequently used to create “obviously false” images of attention-grabbing, funny or raging content. “It seems to be more of a mechanism for reaching your base,” he said, “rather than persuading voters who haven’t made up their mind or might stay home.”
Some L.A. political observers admit they were surprised by Pratt’s performance in a May 6 televised debate with Bass and Raman.
”Spencer Pratt was kind of a laughingstock when he first announced that he was going to run, and he has dramatically exceeded expectations,” said Klink, the GOP strategist. “I think that he surprised people in his ability to come up with solutions. … That’s what’s going to convince people to vote, not the Batman or Star Wars ad.”
As millions of people click on Pratt videos — in some cases more than the 3.8 million people living in L.A. — Klick said there was one question Pratt needs to be asking: “Do views of his ads translate into votes?”
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who serves the 4th District, makes her way across an empty, unnamed backlot, presenting her case to be the city’s next mayor.
“Studio lots like this one used to be filled with people, costumers, electricians, set medics, caterers, thousands of Angelenos making a living,” she says in the video posted on social media. “Now these lots are quiet. Since 2018, shooting days in the city have fallen by half.”
After telling voters this issue is “personal” (her husband is a TV writer and producer), criticizing Mayor Karen Bass’ leadership on the matter and outlining her own plans, Raman proclaims, “I’m running for mayor to make sure Los Angeles stays the film and TV capital of the world.”
Placing the concerns of the entertainment industry at the center of the city’s mayoral race would have been unthinkable even in the last election cycle. But the production crisis, which has rocked Hollywood and pummeled its workforce, has reached a critical juncture. The state of L.A.’s signature industry is now a political flashpoint alongside affordability, crime and homelessness in the upcoming election.
A person films an interaction between mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt and another person on his cellphone during a “Community Meet and Greet” event out of a house for sale on Long Ridge Avenue in a residential neighborhood of Sherman Oaks on Saturday.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
In campaign ads, interviews and the recent televised debate, the top three contenders: incumbent Mayor Bass, former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt and Raman, have made the ongoing production slump a pivotal topic, highlighting their plans to revitalize the industry while deploying the issue to undercut one another.
For decades, elected officials have not had to focus on the film and TV business, let alone turn it into a campaign issue. It was simply a given that local production would continue to play a dominant role in the city’s economy as it has for more than a century.
But the cumulative effects of consolidation, runaway production to tax-friendly states and countries and the end of the streaming boom has caused Los Angeles to lose billions in economic activity, shed some 57,000 jobs over the last four years and led to the closing of more than 80 film and television production service businesses across the city since 2022.
“For us, ‘save Hollywood’ is more than a slogan and more than headline. It is what needs to be done,” said Pamala Buzick Kim, one of the co-founders of Stay in LA, a grassroots campaign aimed at increasing film and television production in Los Angeles.
To be sure, the biggest driver of where studios and producers film are state and federal tax credits, over which the city has no control.
But Buzick Kim and others argue that “there is lots the mayor can do, hand-in-hand with the City Council.”
Mayor Karen Bass, center, walks with Avance Democratic Club President Nilza Serrano, to the right of Bass, during Avance’s politics and tacos event at Ernest E. Debs Regional Park in Los Angeles on Saturday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
For starters, say filmmakers and advocates, much can be done to tackle the city’s sclerotic bureaucracy, onerous regulations and a slow and costly permitting process that has pushed filmmakers to flee to friendlier and cheaper locales.
While steps have been put in place recently, including a pilot program offering reduced-cost filming permits for shoots that demonstrate a “low impact” to the surrounding community, many complain such steps have come too little and too late.
Scott Niner, president and owner of Dangling Carrot Creative, checks on woodwork being produced at his shop in North Hollywood.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“The industry is in collapse and people have been talking about fixing things for years, but all we get are incremental little changes,” said Ed Lippman, a location manager of 34 years who lives in Sherman Oaks and has worked on such shows as “ER” and “The X-Files” and movies including “Galaxy Quest.” “And if the city is not being business-friendly, the business will go elsewhere.”
Compounding the problem, the Los Angeles area has more than 100 jurisdictions, many of which have their own set of rules and regulations regarding filming.
“There needs to be universal standards,” said Travis Beck, a location manager for commercials, small films and music videos. “Burbank is different from Glendale, which is different from Pasadena.”
The recent kerfuffle over filming “Baywatch,” the lifeguard reboot at Venice Beach, underscored both the efforts to bring production back to L.A. — enticed by a $21-million tax credit — and the complex, baffling red tape required to film here.
When shooting began in March, the production encountered a number of hiccups, including that it needed nearly double the parking space it had received a permit for, which was not part of the original approvals.
An anonymous crew member claimed on Facebook that government restrictions had forced production to relocate from Venice Beach. Production staff denied they had relocated. However, the incident prompted a backlash, becoming a rallying cry over L.A.’s burdensome filming bureaucracy.
The “Baywatch” team quickly met with city and county officials and resolved the issue, securing an agreement for a 20% parking discount from the city, and the mayoral candidates used it as an opportunity to score political points.
Pratt slammed the city’s permitting problems.
“LA turned its back on Hollywood — now the golden goose needs CPR,” he wrote on his Substack.
“The City of Los Angeles will always clear bureaucratic barriers, making it easier and more affordable to film in the entertainment capital of the world,” she wrote on X last month.
On April 21, the mayor unveiled programs to offer productions 20% discounts on city-owned parking lots and other equipment, reduced filming fees at places like the Griffith Observatory and reopened the Central Library for filming. Last August, she appointed Steve Kang, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, as the city’s film liaison.
Raman has pledged her support for expanding the state’s $750-million tax incentive program, streamlining permitting and lowering fees and eliminating those for small productions. She has also said she will establish a dedicated city film office with a liaison who understands production.
Councilmember and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman speaks to a crowd at the “Families for Nithya” event at Vineyard Recreation Center in Los Angeles on Saturday.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
“Los Angeles is losing Hollywood,” Raman said in a statement. “Not because productions want to leave, but because we’ve made it too hard for them to stay.”
On his Substack and various podcast interviews, Pratt has promised to slash location fees in half, speed up permit approvals, reduce on-set city staff for the majority of productions and waive all fees for shoots with budgets under $2 million.
All three candidates have attacked one another over their approach to Hollywood.
Pratt and Raman have said Bass moved too slowly to address spiraling production and retain film jobs, saying she enacted measures only recently as the mayoral race was heating up.
Speaking on the Monks & Merrill podcast, Pratt criticized Bass’ moves to cut costs to film at the Griffith Observatory, saying, “Who needs that shot right now with the homeless poop all around it?”
The incumbent mayor has defended her administration’s record with the entertainment industry.
Bass and Pratt have taken Raman to task, calling her out for what they say is her lack of advocacy during her time on the City Council.
“She feels very strongly about it. But never offered one motion on the industry, and when motions came up on the industry she either recused herself, or got up and walked out,” said Bass during a debate this month.
Citing a potential conflict of interest over her husband’s work in television, Raman refrained from voting on several motions related to Hollywood.
Many working in the industry would like to see full-throttled support coming from the mayor’s office that will get results. They note how New York City has successfully promoted itself as a leading film destination over the years. (Kang, the city’s chief film liaison, said the city is working on a similar marketing campaign to promote filming that will launch by early fall.)
“For all the talk about, ‘We need to support and bring back filming,’ if they just did basics like lowering the fees and simplifying the process … that would actually help people and get things produced,” said Chris Fuentes, 66, who worked for 30 years as a location manager until he retired last year.
“We’ve heard a lot of great things, but not all things are possible in the mayor’s remit,” said Buzick Kim, noting that tax incentives are a state and federal issue.
Still, she said, “the mayor must understand that Hollywood needs to be made a priority and to find and create inspired thinking to make things easier and cheaper.”
Kang agrees, but says there are limits to what the mayor can achieve.
“We definitely can do a lot to really open up the entertainment industry, but at the same time, we recognize the larger impact needs to come from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., because L.A. just does not have the resources to compete with other jurisdictions in providing millions of dollars in tax incentives,” he said.
For most working in the industry, they just want city leadership that will execute on more than just talking points.
“This is the birthplace of cinema,” Beck said. “It shouldn’t be so hard to film here.”
Eddie Martinez can’t stand Donald Trump. So when Eric Swalwell entered the race for California governor, Martinez had his candidate.
“I liked the way he took Trump on, the impeachment thing in Congress,” Martinez said of the former Bay Area congressman, a Trump nemesis who served as one of the House prosecutors in 2021 when Democrats held the wayward president to account for the second time.
Martinez has been familiar with Becerra for decades, going back to when the former congressman, state attorney general and Biden Cabinet member was in the state Assembly. To his credit, said the 65-year-old retired public relations strategist, Becerra has largely kept clear of controversy and there’s never been a whiff of personal scandal — an important consideration after Swalwell’s spectacular self-destruction.
On top of all that, Martinez said as he prepared to drop his mail ballot at a post office in Alhambra, it would be nice for California to elect its first Latino governor in modern times. It’s been, Martinez observed, more than 150 years.
With the gubernatorial primary entering its final two weeks, a contest that had been stubbornly formless has finally gained coherence. Becerra, who’d been widely given up for dead as he foundered near the bottom of polls, has unexpectedly emerged as the Democrat to beat.
“He has the most experience,” said Ruben Avita, a 57-year-old actor who leans Democratic and is tilting toward Becerra over hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer. “At this point,” Avita said as he waited to catch a double feature at a cineplex in Monterey Park, “I want someone with a proven track record.”
“He’s got a lot more common-sense approach than any of these other idiots,” said Wayne The Flame — yes, he explained, that’s his legal name —which, while not exactly a ringing endorsement, still counts as a vote.
The Claremont independent, retired at 73 after a career selling motorcycles and hot rods, described Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other major GOP contestant, as a racist and dismissed the entire Democratic field with a string of epithets. “Dumb—,” he said of the voters who keep putting the likes of them in power.
Peaches, a chihuahua/boxer rescue, stands alongside her owner, Wayne The Flame
If not terribly enthused, at least The Flame has made up his mind. Many voters remain undecided — or, at least, not entirely wed to a candidate.
Some are holding on to their ballots longer than usual, awaiting any last-minute developments and weighing the election odds as though wagering in a high-stakes game of poker.
A 40-year-old project manager at the Getty Research Institute, Dwyer held his 2-year-old daughter as his son, 6, romped on a pleasant afternoon in Sierra Madre’s Memorial Park. Across the street, the bells of Christ Church chimed the hour.
“None of the Democrats are putting forth anything that is making me excited,” said Dwyer, who’s ruled out Becerra (he doesn’t see much there) and is deciding between Steyer and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter. He’s trying to cast his ballot strategically, the East Pasadena resident said, and “it’s the first time in a while I haven’t really had a clue who I’m going to vote for so close to election day.”
Democrat Priscilla Vega of Monrovia has yet to settle on her candidate for governor
This is a deeply unsettled season in California, with precious little hope the next governor — whoever he or she turns out to be — will make things better anytime soon. That mix of discouragement and discontent surfaced repeatedly, like a dull ache, in conversations with dozens of voters across the San Gabriel Valley.
The region’s ethnic and economic diversity — from the working-class neighborhoods of Pomona through the Asian-majority suburbs to the mountainside mansions of San Dimas and Pasadena — make the valley a prime battleground in the race for governor.
Alana H., who asked not to use her last name, said she wasn’t even bothering to vote.
She ticked off some reasons: The soaring price of gas and rising cost of, essentially, everything else. The fear her college-age daughter will never be able to buy a home in California. Worse, is her loss of faith. She no longer believes in the promise, once taken for granted, that each generation will improve its lot over the last. And, Alana said, she’s not alone: “Anyone who’s an average person is in the same boat, we’re all just trying to stay afloat.” Standing in front of the post office in Alhambra, the 52-year-old paddled her arms as though to keep from sinking.
Jaunenito Pavon, in his Glendora wine and chocolate bar, would like California to elect a governor who could unify the state. He’s still deciding on a candidate
The politicians in both parties are “so out of touch,” she said, “all they’re doing is fighting over this and that, when everyone I know doesn’t care what party you’re in. They just want to put food on their table. They want their kids to have a better life.”
Shelby Moore has some of the same concerns. Forget about ever buying a home, said the 30-year-old California native, a Democratic-leaning independent. It’s no small feat scraping up money for rent. “I’ve lost almost every single friend that I went to high school or college with,” Moore said between waiting tables at a Mediterranean restaurant in Glendora. “They’ve all moved out of state.”
Shelby Moore, 30, a waitress in Glendora, said all her friends from high school and college have left California because it’s so expensive.
She’ll definitely vote, Moore said, though she doesn’t know for whom. One of the Democrats. Someone who’ll work to make California more affordable and keep people like her friends from being priced out.
In Claremont, Eric Hurley was another undecided Democrat. He attended last month’s gubernatorial debate at Pomona College, where the 56-year-old professor teaches psychological science and Africana studies. Otherwise, he’s been too busy to pay much attention to the race.
But it’s important, Hurley said, that whoever wins “keep fighting the good fight and standing by our liberal principles. I would hate to see someone in the governor’s office start capitulating to what the current administration is asking.”
Democrat Eric Hurley is undecided in the governor’s race. But he wants someone who’ll stand up to the Trump administration.
Jennifer Harris, 56, is a single mom in Monrovia who oversees payroll at a food manufacturing company. She has to stretch each of her dollars to make ends meet; soon she’ll be shelling out $30,000 a year for her daughter to go to college. Buying a home, Harris said, is out of the question.
She confessed to chuckling at the governor’s memes — an over-the-top oeuvre that includes Newsom as super hero, Newsom as religious beacon, Newsom as romance-novel hunk — and his other cheeky jabs at the president. “But that’s not an adult way to handle it,” Harris said between errands in Monrovia’s quaint shopping district. “It’s not solving any problems.”
Better, she said, for the next governor — she hasn’t decided whom she’ll support — to focus on practicalities: improving the economy, making housing and healthcare more affordable, dealing with homelessness and the underlying mental health issues.
Jennifer Harris said Gov. Newsom’s over-the-top social media presence is amusing. But she wants the next governor to focus on more practical things.
Britnee Foreman echoed that sentiment.
The 41-year-old, who lives in Azusa and works in the music business, was meeting a friend, Priscilla Vega, 43, for lunch in Monrovia. Along with a meal, the two Democrats shared their concerns about inflation and income inequality.
“Memes are great for publicity,” said Foreman, who’s deciding between Becerra and Porter, based on their policy experience. (Vega, a lifestyle marketer, has yet to narrow down her choice.)
Britnee Foreman says the next governor needs policies “with teeth,” not an active social media presence.
“But I prefer policy,” Foreman went on. “I don’t want them just to be the popular person out there on social media. It’s great if they’re tweeting and have a cute little Insta-story. But I need their policies to have teeth and actively move us forward. And not just look like it’s moving forward.”
After nearly eight years, amid widespread unease, California seems ready to put the Newsom era in the past. It’s just not clear what path voters will choose, or which candidate they’ll prefer to steer the state toward, hopefully, a better place.
The Preakness post time is 4:01 p.m. PDT. The race will air on NBC.
Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo isn’t running the Preakness. Cherie DeVaux, the first woman to train a Derby winner, said the schedule was too tight for Golden Tempo, with two weeks between races.
But trainer Brittany Russell has prepared Taj Mahal for the race and could follow up on DeVaux’s big win with one of her own. Russell would be the first female trainer to win the Preakness and could extend a potential female trainer Triple Crown bid in an industry long dominated by men.
“It would sort of feel like probably a fairy tale,” Russell said of a potential win. “ … It would mean an awful lot.”
Iron Honor in the ninth post position opened the day favored slightly at 9-2. Taj Mahal in post No. 1, Chip Honcho in post No. 6 and Incredibolt at post No. 12 were not far behind with 5-1 odds.
Taj Mahal has one other edge, winning three previous races at Laurel Park, home of the Preakness.
NEW YORK — A federal immigration court in Lower Manhattan has come to represent the Trump administration’s deportation campaign in New York City, with agents carrying out chaotic and sometimes violent arrests in the hallway as migrants leave hearings.
Now the court is serving as a front in a different kind of battle: one of the city’s most closely watched congressional races.
In the Democratic primary between incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman and former city Comptroller Brad Lander — for a district so solidly blue that the June primary is considered its deciding election — both candidates have made the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants at 26 Federal Plaza a feature of their campaigns, but with decidedly different approaches.
Goldman — an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune and former prosecutor who was lead counsel for President Trump’s first impeachment — has approached the topic with a lawyerly bent that leverages the power of his office.
He sued the administration to open immigration detention centers to members of Congress, conducts oversight visits and turned his office across the street into what he’s called a triage center that connects immigrants with advocacy groups and legal services that has, his campaign said, helped more than 30 people get released from federal custody.
After a recent visit, Goldman credited his oversight work as a reason conditions at a holding facility inside the building have improved.
“What you see from our multipronged approach is the way that I push back, which is not performative, but it is substantive,” he told the Associated Press outside 26 Federal Plaza after he toured the detention center that is closed to the public.
Meanwhile, Lander — a progressive city government stalwart who is running with the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — has acted as protester and court observer, watching hearings and attempting to accompany immigrants out of the building past masked federal agents.
His efforts have gotten him arrested twice, with the most recent case headed to a trial scheduled to take place just before the primary.
“I would characterize his oversight function as strongly worded letters,” Lander told AP when asked about Goldman’s approach. “And my oversight function is: Show up with hundreds of your neighbors and bear witness and accompany people and demand access and stay until they give it to you or they arrest you.”
Lander’s first arrest happened last year when he linked arms with a person authorities were attempting to detain in the hallway outside the court. Lander was running for mayor at the time, and the arrest gave his campaign a jolt of excitement at a time when Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo were considered the front-runners in the race.
A few months later, after losing the mayoral primary but not long before launching his congressional campaign, Lander was arrested again during a large protest at the building and hit with a misdemeanor obstruction charge.
But instead of accepting a deal that would have made the case go away in six months, Lander instead opted to go to trial. He said the case would extract information about the federal government’s immigration enforcement efforts at the building during a tense period that predates Goldman’s oversight visits.
Goldman dismissed Lander’s efforts as performative.
“I don’t understand why someone would reject a dismissal of a case so that he can have a public trial, ostensibly to ask for information that I could provide him whenever he wanted because I have the answers from doing my oversight,” he said.
This week, Lander returned to 26 Federal Plaza to sit in on hearings. But just before entering the building, his team got word that federal agents were lingering outside an immigration hearing at a different federal courtroom in a building across the street. He raced over and eventually found the agents, who were wearing masks and milling around in the court’s waiting room.
“The challenge is trying to figure out who they’re going to arrest,” Lander said, popping out of the hearing, where he sat in a back row and took notes. After a while, the agents walked away from the hearing room, down a hallway and exited the floor. It was not clear why they left.
“Maybe we have different styles,” Lander said of his opponent after the agents departed. He later went back across the street and filmed a campaign video in front of 26 Federal Plaza.
That’s the mantra of a multiracial group of civil rights leaders and activists organizing opposition to a mostly white conservative alliance dismantling the Voting Rights Act and political districts that allowed Black and other nonwhite voters to choose more of their elected leaders for the last half-century.
“We have to respond as quickly as possible,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in an interview. “The real question,” Johnson told the Associated Press, “is how do we as a country really address the effort to shrink us backwards into a 1950s reality?”
Johnson’s 117-year-old association, which was at the forefront of legal and legislative fights for Black political rights in the 20th century, is among scores of groups coming together Saturday in Alabama for a rally and tribute to the Civil Rights Movement that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They plan events in Selma, where voting rights advocates were attacked by white law enforcement officers on Bloody Sunday, and Montgomery, where a rescheduled march concluded two weeks later.
Unlike 61 years ago, the Alabama events are not the pinnacle of a protracted movement. Instead, civil rights activists hope they serve as a catalyst for a renewed crusade after the U.S. Supreme Court, two weeks ago, further weakened the VRA by no longer allowing race to be considered in how congressional and other districts are drawn.
They acknowledge difficulty in countering a white-dominated conservative network entrenched in the White House, Capitol Hill, federal courts and many state legislatures of the Old Confederacy, where a majority of Black Americans still live.
The VRA “was the foundational nucleus of the Civil Rights Movement,” said Jared Evans of the Louisiana-based Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. “They’ve taken that from us,” he said, with the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision on congressional districts and the earlier Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013 that rolled back federal oversight of election procedures in states and localities with a history of discrimination.
Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, said from his pulpit that the result is “Jim Crow in new clothes.”
Warnock pointed to King and the last voting rights movement. “We need political power. We need economic power. We need personal power,” he said, assuring parishioners that “your adversaries know that your voice matters” because they’re “bending over backwards” to diminish it.
Evans reached further back into history to say what must happen next.
“Our response must be and will be a second Reconstruction period,” Evans said.
Some Democrats want an answer from Congress
The ultimate goal, organizers said, is to win more elections, sway policy fights and protect diverse political representation at all levels.
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, a Black lawmaker who represents Selma, Alabama, said an immediate priority is to “reform and reintroduce” Democrats’ flagship voting bill, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Sewell, whose seat ultimately could be threatened under redistricting, said Democrats want to “completely” eliminate partisan gerrymandering.
She also said the legislation would “bring back pre-clearance,” the requirement for certain federal approvals that the court struck down in Shelby.
“We need to come up with a modern-day formula for showing just how egregious the behavior of these state actors is,” Sewell said.
The Supreme Court ruled in Callais that states do not have to draw majority nonwhite districts under the Voting Rights Act and, in fact, should not consider race at all when drawing boundaries. By arguing that the law’s remedies to combat discrimination had themselves become racist, the decision allows states to redraw heavily Black districts that have historically elected Democrats while arguing that the designs are based on party interests, not race.
President Trump praised the decision as “a BIG WIN for Equal Protection under the Law, as it returns the Voting Rights Act to its Original Intent, which was to protect against intentional Racial Discrimination.”
Groups mobilized for redistricting sessions
Many of the same groups who’ll be in Alabama on Saturday have already gone to Southern statehouses, where white Republican lawmakers moved swiftly to redraw congressional districts after Callais.
Alabama and Louisiana lawmakers reverted to a single majority-Black district, each scrapping a second district that had been ordered by lower federal courts under now-reversed VRA interpretations. Tennessee lawmakers gutted a majority Black district by splitting greater Memphis into three different sprawling districts — itself an obvious racial gerrymander the court had previously forbidden, Evans said.
Anticipating the Callais outcome, Florida and Texas proceeded with redistricting before it came down. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a term-limited Republican, has called a June session to redraw congressional lines for the 2028 cycle. Mississippi and South Carolina have delayed the matter for now.
South Carolina state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey was among the few white Republicans who pushed back against GOP redistricting plans. He said that not even pressure from Trump could sell him on disenfranchising Black South Carolinians instead of doing what’s best for his state.
Other white conservatives are still talking openly about ousting Reps. Jim Clyburn and Bennie Thompson, the only Black U.S. House members from South Carolina and Mississippi, respectively.
Evans, the Louisiana activist, predicted the fight ahead won’t just be about congressional representation.
“Look for them to go after state house and state senate seats — and then it will be the local level,” he said, adding that “it’s going to be an entire erasure of Black representation.”
The issue is more than a partisan Washington fight
Heavily minority districts drawn under the VRA before Callais nearly always elect Democrats. Black Americans have overwhelmingly aligned with the party since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, sparking a decades-long migration of most white Southern politicians to the Republicans. Latino and Hispanic voters still lean Democratic in most places as well.
The immediate fight shapes the midterm campaign scramble for control of the U.S. House during the final years of Trump’s presidency. Trump initially pushed Republican-run states to redistrict to protect the party’s fragile House majority.
But Johnson, the NAACP leader, said all voters should see more than partisan warfare or a regional battle over race.
Beyond party allegiance, Johnson argued, white conservatives want to curtail a range of rights “depending on how you pray, depending on who you love,” while also pushing economic policies that punish workers across racial and ethnic lines. From legislation to the confirmation of federal judges who decide constitutional questions, those policy outcomes start with election results.
“It’s not a Black problem,” Johnson said. “That’s an American problem.”
There is no singular movement or leader yet
Evans, Johnson and others acknowledged the complexity in harnessing disparate organizations and galvanizing voters on issues like redistricting and gerrymandering. But they insist the brazen nature of Republicans’ course has spurred engagement.
Johnson said he was on an organizing call in Mississippi this week that had 8,000 participants. Evans pointed to packed hallways in the state Capitols in Baton Rouge and Nashville, respectively.
The NAACP and allies have challenged new maps in multiple states, despite Callais. Many groups want to spur midterm turnout among Black voters, and others are disenchanted with white conservatives’ maneuvers in racially diverse places.
Johnson stressed the need for perseverance.
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was seismic, with a unanimous court declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional and reversing 19th-century precedents denying Black Americans’ fundamental rights.
But it took 17 years — and many more court battles — for it to be implemented in most Southern school districts. Fights over mandated student busing continued beyond the South. It was a decade after Brown before Congress and Johnson enacted the movement’s seminal laws.
There’s no clear leader of a modern movement.
Johnson said it’s worth remembering that even with King at the helm before his assassination, “there was tension around strategy” in the 1950s and 1960s.
But even “through that tension, through many episodes, we were able to get directly in the right place.”
SAN FRANCISCO — As Californians cast ballots in the most unsettled governor’s race in recent history, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat surging in the polls, once again took most of the heat during a contentious debate among the top candidates for California governor.
Becerra’s rapid rise as the top Democrat in the race was greeted on stage by a fusillade of political attacks from rival Democrats and Republicans, notably regarding his former campaign manager’s guilty plea to federal corruption charges hours before the clash.
Then came accusations that he wavered on support for single-payer healthcare, and failed to stem healthcare and unemployment fraud while serving as California’s attorney general.
“This is what happens when you take the lead in the polls and you’re ahead of everyone else. They all come at you,” Becerra said. “I get it. So they have to try to beat you down. This is a great Trump tactic that’s used. I didn’t expect it to come from fellow Democrats.”
“With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Becerra later said.
The face-off took place at a critical moment before the June 2 primary. Republican voters appear to be consolidating behind Hilton, who was endorsed by President Trump, while Becerra and billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer are favored most by Democrats.
From left, Katie Porter, Chad Bianco, Antonio Villaraigosa and Xavier Becerra at Thursday’s debate.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Pool via Associated Press)
Up for grabs
As ballots land in mailboxes, California voters are finally tuning in to the race to lead the nation’s most populous state and fourth-largest economy in the world. Thursday’s 90-minute CBS debate may have been the final opportunity for candidates to directly address large numbers of voters.
Until now, scandal drew the most attention to the contest, as former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), once an establishment favorite and nominal front-runner, dropped out in April amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct
Five Democrats — Becerra, Steyer, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — and two Republicans — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former conservative commentator Steve Hilton — clashed about affordability, housing, public safety, climate, education and healthcare. State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, a Democrat, failed to reach the polling threshold to qualify for the debate.
CBS News Bay Area reporter Ryan Yamamoto, CBS News Los Angeles reporter Tom Wait, and San Francisco Examiner Editor-in-Chief Schuyler Hudak Prionas moderated the face-off in front of nearly 200 people at the historic Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco’s Financial District, with sweeping views of the city.
The opulent Beaux-Arts venue contrasted with the tense confrontations among the candidates that underscored Becerra’s swift rise among Democrats in the field after Swalwell dropped out of the race. Even before the face-off, his Democratic rivals began ramping up their focus on Becerra.
Becerra under attack
The candidate faced a barrage of attacks over a string of unfavorable publicity this week, including a widely circulated exchange with a KTLA reporter in which the Democratic candidate asked, “This is a profile piece, this is not a gotcha piece, right?”
Although Becerra has not been accused of wrongdoing, that did not temper criticism from his political rivals during Thursday’s debate. They questioned his judgment and said Becerra should have noticed where his money was going.
Hilton said Becerra should be preparing his own criminal defense, rather than running for governor. Porter warned that damning evidence against Becerra could come out later — which, if he finishes as the top Democrat in the primary election, could undercut his campaign and lead to a Republican being elected California’s next governor.
Becerra defended himself, pointing out that federal prosecutors never accused him of being involved and stated that none of the candidates for governor were implicated in scandal.
Democrats also painted Becerra as a leader who allowed fraud and mismanagement to fester under his watch.
“He wasn’t minding the shop” as state attorney general, Mahan said, pointing to fraudulent unemployment and hospice claims early in the COVID-19 pandemic. “I mean, the Biden administration had to sideline him during COVID. This is not good leadership.”
Matt Mahan, left, is polling in the single digits and made a last-ditch effort to leave an imprint during Thursday’s debate.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Godofredo A. Vásquez/pool Ap Via Ap)
Major focus on kitchen table issues, a critical concern among voters
Affordability was a major theme in the debate, which included an introductory video of a single mother struggling to fill her gas tank and buy groceries.
Steyer said he would reduce costs by taking on special interests and bringing about structural change and breaking up monopolies.
“I am the person who will tax the billionaires like me, and the big corporations so we can afford to make the changes” to pay for healthcare and great education, he said.
Mahan said the answer was to “put more money in people’s pockets by bringing down costs,” and that that would not occur under either Steyer or Hilton.
“Tom Steyer’s structural change sounds to me more like socialism. His plans literally would double the size of state government,” Mahan said. “That’s not going to drive affordability. Steve Hilton is touting his Donald Trump endorsements. You’ve got tariffs and wars driving up costs.”
Hilton returned fire: “I love the way Matt talks about how he’s going to lower costs when his city was recently rated the most expensive, the least affordable for housing, in the world.”
Daylight between Republicans about climate change
The Republican candidates avoided attacking each other during the debates, offering compliments instead. But the two split when asked about whether climate change was having a real-world impact.
Bianco said California is destroying itself with its environmental policies.
“Of course we can say that temperatures are increasing,” he said, but he also said he was not “naive” enough to think that humans can affect or control the climate, which has been changing since he was a child, and that California has to stop all the environmental regulations that are “activist related” and destroying the state’s economy.
Tom Steyer spoke Thursday of affordability, a hot-button issue: “I am the person who will tax the billionaires like me.”
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Pool via Associated Press)
Hilton said he believes in climate change but that California needs to have “common sense” on the issue rather than ideological responses. He said it is “of course” right to want clean water and air but that policies in California are not working — as has been made clear by the recent “mega-fires” in the state.
The Democrats on stage were closely aligned on the need to respond to the climate crisis and ensure that environmental protections are not dismantled by the Trump administration.
Last-ditch efforts by struggling candidates
Candidates in the crowded field who have struggled to break through — centrist Democrats Mahan and Villaraigosa, who have languished in the single digits in the polls — made a last-ditch effort to leave an imprint during Thursday’s gathering.
Mahan went after nearly every candidate on the stage in the opening moments of the debate.
“The change we need is rooted in accountability for results,” Mahan said. “It’s not the change billionaire Tom Steyer’s offering, which is higher taxes and bigger government. It’s not the change Fox News talking head Steve Hilton’s offering — fear, division and more Donald Trump. And let’s be honest, Xavier Becerra is not offering change; he’s the embodiment of the status quo.”
Villaraigosa leaned heavily into his experiences leading Los Angeles and in the state Assembly to argue that he was most qualified to lead the state while castigating his fellow Democrats’ policies.
“This is a state with big challenges, the challenge of affordability, the challenge of healthcare, homelessness, and dirty streets and crime-filled streets,” Villaraigosa said. “The fact is, I’m the only candidate on this stage who, in addition to hitting Donald Trump, which I do, have challenged us, challenged this party, and said, ‘Hold it, a lot of the problems that we face have come from Sacramento policies.’ We need someone with the courage to take on Donald Trump, but also take on our friends when they’re wrong. I’ve had a record of doing that.”
Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Nixon from San Francisco.
WASHINGTON — House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries had warned Republicans they would come to regret the congressional redistricting fight, and when Democrats counterpunched last month with a redrawn Virginia map, he had made his point.
The net tally of seats gained and lost was essentially a wash.
“F— around and find out,” said Jeffries after the election victory.
But in a matter of days, the race for control of the House — and the speaker’s gavel — was dramatically reset by back-to-back court rulings that wiped out the Democratic gains in Virginia and now threaten to erode Black representation by Democrats in the Deep South.
The shifting political prospects have been a wake-up call for Democrats, who have been favored to win back the House this November, riding the wave of President Trump’s dipping approval ratings, and a test for Jeffries as the party faces an enlarging map of Republican-friendly seats.
The leader’s aligned outside group has spent some $60 million, much of it on Virginia alone, a hit to the Democrats’ resources as they confront Trump’s Republicans.
“It sort of crystallizes the election is now a contest between one side that has the money and the maps, and the other that has the voters and the candidates,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist and former deputy director of the House Democrats’ campaign arm.
Jeffries would make history as the first Black speaker of the House
Jeffries, who is in line to make history as America’s first Black speaker of the House, acknowledged the Democrats may need to flip twice as many Republican seats — a total gain of six rather than just three — to win the majority in the aftermath of the redistricting fights.
But he insisted that Democrats were on track to pick up seats, as they did in 2018 during Trump’s first term, because Republicans are relying on redistricting — rather than policy solutions — to win elections.
Trump Republicans “don’t give a damn” about Americans’ financial struggles, Jeffries said, paraphrasing the president’s own remarks.
During a closed-door meeting on Wednesday with House Democrats, Jeffries described the work ahead in almost existential terms for the country.
He said the court rulings against the Voting Rights Act and the Virginia measure were “disgusting.” And he warned his colleagues that Republicans would proceed with “diabolical intensity” in their campaigns to regain control of the House, which Democrats will not only have to match but “we have to exceed it with righteous intensity at all times.”
“Failure is not an option,” he told the Democrats, according to a person in the room granted anonymity to disclose the private remarks. “We have to win, and we are going to win.”
Path to power depends on a handful of House seats
Never easy, the race to the House majority was also not expected to be this complicated. Republicans hold a slim majority, among the most narrow in modern House history, and midterm elections tend to favor the party out of power, as a check on the White House.
But when Trump said last summer that Republicans were “entitled” to five more GOP seats from Texas, it sparked a redistricting crusade that led Jeffries to respond in kind.
Rather than take what they call the high road, Democrats said they decided to fight back, believing they could not fully count on the nation’s institutions — in this case, the courts — to provide a check on the GOP power play.
Jeffries flew to Austin to join the Texas Democrats fighting the redistricting plan in their state and stood with those same lawmakers in Chicago where they fled to deny statehouse Republicans a quorum. He joined the private meetings of California Democrats as they launched their counter attack, a voter initiative that put five more seats in the Democratic column. The Democrats picked up a seat in Utah.
And on it went.
“We had to very quickly make a decision, set a course and take a risk,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., recalling the closed-door talks last summer. “There was no guarantee this was going to work out.”
The Virginia measure became a turning point, Jeffries’ biggest swing yet, putting Democrats essentially at parity, if not a potential upper hand in the number of seats gained, and shifting Old Dominion more securely into the party’s column.
He rallied some 1,000 churchgoers in Richmond ahead of Election Day as voters headed to the polls.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday called the Democratic play for Virginia a “crazy overreach” that was rightly rejected by the state’s high court.
“Fortunately, the plan failed spectacularly,” Johnson said.
Redistricting battles push into 2028
While Democrats said they expected the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act, the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to toss last month’s election results blindsided many of them.
Jeffries joined a call with furious Virginia Democrats over the weekend who said they were more determined than ever to win the Republican seats outright, regardless of their loss over the map changes.
The overall tally after nearly a year of redistricting battles is still shifting as Republican legislatures in the South rush to redraw their maps in the aftermath of the ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, many of them preparing to eliminate districts held by some of the most senior Black lawmakers in Congress.
Rep. James Clyburn, the veteran Democratic legislator from South Carolina whose own seat is at risk, blamed the justices, not Jeffries, for the outcome in Virginia and elsewhere.
“What the hell, he can’t control the courts,” Clyburn said, vowing to run for reelection regardless of where his district is drawn. “Don’t put that on Jeffries. We won the vote.”
Jeffries acknowledged that this year’s maps are almost set, and pivoted to 2028 when he said Democrats will redouble their efforts to confront the GOP redistricting battle ahead of the next election.
“We know this unprecedented assault on Black political representation, the likes of which we have not seen since the Jim Crow era, the ghost of the Confederacy” will continue, he said. “The challenge that is in front of us is ensuring that there is a decisive and overwhelming response in advance of 2028.”
A briefing memo obtained by The Times appears to support former Rep. Katie Porter’s accusation that a Tom Steyer staffer leaked a video of her yelling at an employee, an outburst that tainted her gubernatorial prospects when the video became public.
The video, which was obtained in October by Politico, showed Porter erupting at a staff member who appeared in the background of a prerecorded Zoom call between the former congresswoman and then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
During a nationally televised interview on CNN by Dana Bash on Monday, Porter accused the Steyer campaign of leaking the damaging video.
“I am confident that is the case,” Porter said after Bash asked how she knew Steyer was the source. “I’ve been told by many people it’s a Department of Energy video, it was only held by the Department of Energy, and people can follow the trail to who his campaign staffers are and understand what happened there.”
Following the CNN interview, Steyer’s campaign denied that the candidate was involved with the leak.
Gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer hosts an “LA Block Party” campaign event Wednesday at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park. Rocky Mosse, 9, waits his turn for a photo with Steyer.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
“Tom has nothing to do with that video,” Steyer campaign spokesperson Sepi Esfahlani said after Porter levied the accusation on Monday. “This is an attempt from Katie Porter to deflect from her past mistakes. Katie Porter only has one person to blame for her standing in the race, and it’s herself.”
According to a briefing memo from the meeting obtained by The Times, Steyer spokesman Kevin Liao was listed as an “expected participant” on the video call between Granholm and Porter, which took place on June 21, 2021, and was filmed to promote electric vehicles by the Biden administration. Granholm and Liao were the only participants listed from the Energy Department, according to the document obtained by The Times.
“This is a 20 minute recorded Zoom with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to discuss the importance of investing in electric vehicles,” the document apparently prepared for Porter and her staff states. “Kevin Liao, Granholm’s press secretary, reached out to set this up. His team will edit this video down into a 2-3 minute clip for social media. Secretary Granholm will have a whiteboard, as noted in the script.”
The edited video conversation was posted on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Facebook page in early July 2021. Politico reported that the Porter staff member snapped at by the congresswoman was not the source of the video provided to the news outlet.
The clip from the Porter-Granholm call was the second unflattering video of the candidate to surface last fall. Days earlier, another clip began to circulate, showing Porter threatening to end an interview with CBS California reporter Julie Watts after becoming frustrated by Watts’ questioning.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm speaks during the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2024.
Before the videos became public, Porter had a narrow edge in the race, according to a poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, though many voters at the time remained undecided. Though Porter has continued to hover in the upper tier of gubernatorial hopefuls, she currently trails behind two Democrats — Steyer and former Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra — and one Republican, former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
The UC Irvine law professor has repeatedly said she apologized to the employee, who spent four more years working in Porter’s congressional office. Dozens of former staffers also came to her defense in an open letter last month.
Liao declined to comment when reached Wednesday evening. He is a primary spokesman for Steyer’s campaign and sent the press release announcing the San Francisco billionaire’s campaign for governor in November. Granholm, when reached via text message, denied leaking the video and said she did not know who did.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Liao, a Los Angeles-based political consultant, worked as Granholm’s press secretary from January through October 2021, during the time the Porter video was recorded. In 2024, he founded Frontrunner Strategies, a consulting firm which has been paid more than $45,000 by Steyer’s campaign, according to campaign finance records.
Porter’s campaign declined to comment on the document.
Voting is underway in the primary election to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is term-limited and exploring a 2028 presidential bid.
A Wednesday Emerson College poll showed Democratic former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra leading with 19%, followed by both Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Steyer at 17%. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, had support from 11% of likely voters and Porter had 10%. San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond were in single digits. Twelve percent of voters were undecided, according to the poll.
Top candidates, with the exception of Thurmond, are slated to appear in a Thursday night debate hosted by CBS California and the San Francisco Examiner.
Sacramento — A veteran California political consultant has agreed to plead guilty in a scheme to steal campaign funds from Xavier Becerra, now a leading candidate for governor, when he served in the Biden administration, according to filings in her criminal case on Thursday.
Dana Williamson will plead guilty to three counts, including bank fraud and lying to authorities. In exchange, the federal government will dismiss 20 other counts against her related to her tax filings and a federal COVID-era loan she received.
A court hearing is scheduled Thursday morning.
Williamson, a former chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom, was arrested in November and pleaded not guilty. The government secured guilty pleas in December from two advisors who worked with alongside her to skim money from Becerra.
Prosecutors say that Williamson, Becerra’s then-chief of staff Sean McCluskie and lobbyist Greg Campbell took part in a scheme to siphon money from Becerra’s dormant campaign account and funnel it to McCluskie.
McCluskie needed the money, according to prosecutors, so he could afford to fly home frequently to see his family in California while working for Becerra, who was Biden’s health secretary, in Washington, D.C.
As part of the scheme, Williamson and another consultant charged Becerra’s account up to $10,000 a month to manage one of his dormant state campaign accounts.
Becerra approved the payments, even though he had never paid such a high amount for a similar job. He told The Times that McCluskie told him to pay the fees.
Becerra’s rivals in the governor’s race are hammering him over his decision, arguing he should have known something wasn’t right. Becerra has said that he didn’t know about the criminal behavior and has called the charges a “gut punch.”
Known as an hard-nosed and aggressive operator, Williamson’s career in politics also included working for former governors Jerry Brown and Gray Davis and mentoring other women.
McGregor Scott, Williamson’s attorney, told reporters last year that federal authorities initially approached Williamson about helping them with a probe into Newsom. She refused, he said, and was subsequently charged.
Details contained in the indictment and other public records suggest that federal authorities were looking into the state’s handling of alleged sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard Inc., a video game company.
Each one says less about the candidates involved, and more about this moment in politics and where the races for California governor and L.A. mayor may be headed. Each ad also hints at deeper issues that haven’t quite reached the water-cooler conversation level, but maybe should.
Becerra blunder
The first ad that grabbed my attention was a quick-turn by San José Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan (still stuck in single-digit polling numbers), who jumped on Xavier Becerra’s first major mess-up.
Becerra chastised KTLA interviewer — on camera — not to give him too many hard questions because, “This is not a gotcha piece, right?”
That left a lot of folks wondering about his temperament and transparency, something rival Katie Porter knows a bit about.
The video went viral, and Mahan mashed it up with now-infamous clips of Porter walking out of a different interview earlier in the campaign cycle.
The result was a fast, funny, pointed jab that made both Becerra and Porter look prickly and unaccountable. For Porter, that damage was done long ago. But this moment for Becerra, the very-slim-margin front-runner, could have sticking power.
The bigger issue is that there are many hard questions that Becerra will likely need to answer if he does make the general election — questions he’s largely been dodging with pat answers.
This week, one of the lobbyists charged in a scheme that allegedly stole more than $200,000 from one of Becerra’s old campaign accounts will appear in court again.
She’s apparently been working on a plea deal, so it’s likely either that will be formalized, or the case will move forward to a trial. Becerra is not accused of any wrongdoing and told my colleague Dakota Smith that he had testified before the grand jury in the case.
But Becerra has also said he was aware that up to $10,000 a month was being paid out of a dormant campaign account to manage that money, since his role as the Health and Human Services Secretary made it illegal for him to be involved directly.
The question that seems relevant in this age of fraud-and-waste panic is who pays $10,000 a month to have someone watch over a dormant account and doesn’t think that’s excessive? Becerra may have been an innocent victim, but $120,000 a year is a lot of money to pay someone to babysit a largely unused stack of cash.
If Becerra does make it through to the primary and faces Hilton or potentially Steyer, both successful businessmen, expect this lack of financial acumen to be an issue — a hard question that is fair to ask of the person who wants to run the fourth largest economy in the world.
Steyer backers
Speaking of money, the second ad (or sort-of ad) that caught my attention is tied to Steyer, the billionaire who has spent more than $100 million of his own money in this race.
The Sacramento Bee reported that Steyer’s campaign has been paying influencers to post support of him online. The account mentioned in the Bee’s report seems to have removed those videos, but others have archived some of them.
These posts are meant to decidedly not feel like advertisements, but just organic support from Steyer supporters. Steyer’s is far from the first campaign to do this and won’t be the last.
While there may be nothing shocking in Steyer’s digital strategy, it should alarm us on the larger level of having a healthy democracy. We’ve largely forgotten the black hole of delusion that millions of Americans fell into during the pandemic era from online misinformation brokers. Remember QAnon?
Influence campaigns are shockingly powerful, and growing in sophistication by the minute. While Steyer’s efforts may be run-of-the-mill, it’s an area of political communication that demands greater transparency and regulation.
Pratt problems
Which brings us to Spencer Pratt, and the ad (ads, really) that caught everyone’s attention — the AI-generated mini-movies that blatantly steal the “Batman” and “Star Wars” intellectual property and which have earned so much viral attention that the mayor’s race can now fairly say it’s got national reach.
Pratt did not make these ads, but he’s reposted them, and millions have watched. Though it may seem obvious they are made by artificial intelligence, they are not identified as such.
Though parody is protected speech, one of the AI videos Pratt has promoted ends with a crowd, including a child, pelting L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris with fruit until they flee.
I disagree. While a certain segment of conservative white male voters might find it hilarious to pelt women of color until they run in fear, I’m pretty sure there are some messages in that missive that aren’t getting the scrutiny they deserve.
The links between hate speech and political violence are well documented. Outrage and action are tied, but now increasingly removed from reality. How AI — especially AI depicting political rivals as unhinged, evil villains — will affect voters, and democracy in general, isn’t yet understood.
I doubt these ads on behalf of Pratt will change the minds of many voters, but they do change politics.
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.
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.
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.
