race

This race for an open seat pits a former U.S. assistant attorney who represented President Obama, the FBI and NASA against a seasoned Los Angeles County public defender who has taken more than 100 trials, some with three-strikes implications, to verdict.

David DeJute, who defended Obama against the so-called birther claims, spent a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He now works in litigation at a private firm.

Anthony “A.J.” Bayne’s background includes nearly two decades serving in the Compton Courthouse, where he for a time served as deputy in charge. He’s now handling serious felony cases at the Torrance branch.

DeJute is rated “qualified” to serve by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Bayne is rated a notch higher, “well qualified.”

Here’s what you need to know about the candidates.

Anthony “A.J.” Bayne, L.A. County deputy public defender

Bar rating: Well qualified

Bayne’s 31-year legal career includes more than a quarter-century as an L.A. County deputy public defender. He has taken more than 100 jury trials to verdict, including murder, special circumstances and three-strikes cases, some of which carried sentences of death or life in prison.

“Even during the [election] primary period, I continued taking cases to trial rather than continuing them, because my clients should not be prejudiced by unnecessary delay,” he said.

He spent 19 years at the Compton Courthouse, where for a time he served as deputy in charge, supervising misdemeanor trial deputies. He now is stationed in the Torrance branch, where he handles serious felonies.

Bayne is an inventor, with patent-pending applications for artificial intelligence tools that automate legal workflows. One helps with closing arguments; another uses court reporter transcripts to generate cross-examination questions.

Using AI to address the county’s heavy caseload is a priority. He argues the technology could modernize court infrastructure, aiding in case management, scheduling and document processing.

Bayne, who trains in jiujitsu and Krav Maga self-defense, said extensive jury trial experience has prepared him to be an effective judge.

“Wherever I go, people want the same things: a judge who is prepared and fair, who will listen to their side of the case, and who treats them with respect,” he said.

David DeJute, law professor/attorney

Bar rating: Qualified

The son of a late judge, DeJute has had a 35-year legal career. After graduating from law school, he clerked for a U.S. district judge and then worked at a boutique litigation firm. He spent nearly a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

In 2005, he was appointed as an assistant U.S. attorney. Over more than a decade, he worked on 10 trials, including successfully defending President Obama against “birther” lawsuits that challenged his eligibility to hold office. DeJute represented the FBI and NASA in other cases.

He joined Michelman & Robinson in 2017 and is part of the complex litigation group.

An adjunct professor at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law, he’s taught ethics, antitrust, copyright and patent law. After last year’s wildfires, he returned as director of the disaster relief clinic, where he instructed students who provided pro bono legal services to victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

“I continue to provide free legal help to wildfire survivors who have asked me to stay involved,” he said, though he no longer runs the clinic.

DeJute said he has experienced discrimination as an openly gay man, which drives his desire to ensure that everyone in the justice system is treated with dignity and respect.

“Justice requires more than achieving certain results,” he said. “It requires a fair process untainted by bias.”

This runoff for a vacant seat on the bench features a longtime public defender running against a veteran alternate public defender. Both boast extensive trial experience.

Donna Tryfman, a deputy public defender, serves in the major cases unit, where she handles homicide and other high-profile defendants. She also has extensive experience in juvenile cases.

David Ross is an alternate in the Torrance branch of the public defenders office and also works in Bellflower and Long Beach. He claims to have represented more than 10,000 clients at hearings and in trials.

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. rates both attorneys as “qualified” for office. Here’s more of what you need to know about the candidates.

Donna Tryfman, L.A. County deputy public defender

Bar rating: Qualified

Tryfman began with the public defender’s office in 1998, logging more than 100 jury trials. Her experience includes supervising Eastlake Juvenile Court, where she ran a branch with 15 lawyers and represented clients in the collaborative drug court. She is stationed in the major cases unit, focusing on capital homicide litigation.

Tryfman has served as a Superior Court judge pro tem, handling traffic and small claims cases. She has proctored teen courts at Dorsey and Hamilton high schools and last year received the peer-bestowed Gideon felony attorney of the year award.

Conversations on the campaign trail have helped her understand what works and what doesn’t in the justice system.

“It has reinforced for me that experience and knowledge of the law matter enormously, but so does how people are treated when they walk into a courtroom,” she said.

Tryfman said the heavy caseload of a public defender has prepared her for the bench’s rigors. She also cited her life experience as the daughter of immigrants, a single mother and a widow who was faced with the decision of whether to discontinue life support for her husband.

“Experiences like that teach you something about responsibility, compassion and judgment that cannot be learned from a law book,” she said.

Outside the office, Tryfman spent five years as president of the California Public Defenders Assn. and chaired the Rent Stabilization Commission for the city of Beverly Hills. She has served as vice chair of the L.A. County Bar Assn.’s Conference of California Bar Assns., where she helps develop state legislative proposals.

David Ross, L.A. County deputy alternate public defender

Bar rating: Qualified

Ross has more than three decades in the legal field, but it was not his original calling. The Los Angeles native served as a legislative aide to the late U.S. Rep. Floyd Fithian (D-Ind.) on Capitol Hill, then worked as a television journalist and documentary producer in Washington, D.C., Tennessee and Kansas.

“I grew up wanting to be Peter Jennings, not Clarence Darrow,” he told The Times.

Ross passed the bar in 1994, joined the Riverside County public defender’s office the following year and began as a Los Angeles County deputy alternate public defender in 2000. He has litigated 113 jury trials, conducted more than 2,000 preliminary hearings and represented some 10,000 indigent clients. Assigned to the Torrance office since 2018, he also has worked in the Bellflower, Long Beach and Pomona branches, among others.

Ross, who lives in Long Beach, said he has spoken with more than 60 Democratic clubs, unions and other organizations on the campaign trail and frequently has heard a desire for qualified and independent judges who will listen to all sides.

A priority would be ensuring that even if a party loses, they walk out of the courthouse knowing the judge paid attention.

Ross said his mix of legal and life experience and his time as a journalist, in which he “listened to real people, gathered the facts and told objective stories,” provide a unique perspective.

Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso declined once again to endorse either incumbent Mayor Karen Bass or challenger Nithya Raman in the Nov. 3 runoff election, but expressed what he called “extreme concern” about Raman’s plans to remove Police Chief Jim McDonnell.

The billionaire developer lost to Bass in the 2022 election, and was a staunch critic of the mayor for her response to the 2025 Palisades fire. Even so, he appeared with the mayor at his upscale Palisades Village shopping center Tuesday to promote a new program to streamline city utility services.

While declining to endorse Bass, Caruso commended the mayor by saying “she’s done her work, and she’s worked with the team, and I compliment this.”

“In comparison, Councilwoman Raman has made statements that we should all ask for an explanation to,” Caruso said, citing her plans to replace McDonnell. “I do show extreme concern when a candidate is talking about firing a chief of police.”

Raman’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

At last week’s televised mayoral debate, Raman said that if elected mayor she would replace McDonnell, saying the LAPD appeared to be protecting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during their operations in L.A. Raman didn’t give a clear timeline of when she would act.

Bass has publicly backed the chief she hired two years ago, and warned that the Police Department could be thrown into disarray if he is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games.

Caruso applauded Bass’s support for McDonnell at Tuesday’s event.

“I don’t think we need LAPD being a lab experiment for the DSA,” Caruso said, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Raman. “It’s going to take L.A. in the wrong direction, and we should all be concerned about the direction she wants to take LAPD.”

When pressed by reporters about a possible endorsement, Caruso said, “I can’t answer that tonight or today. I’ll let you know.”

Caruso also declined to make an endorsement at a groundbreaking he attended with the mayor last month for the new Palisades Recreation Center, calling both Bass and Raman “tough choices.” Bass also sidestepped questions from The Times at the September event about whether she’d welcome Caruso’s endorsement.

Caruso funneled more than $100 million of his own fortune into his 2022 mayoral campaign, outspending Bass 11 to 1. Bass defeated Caruso by nearly 10 percentage points. Caruso didn’t run for the 2026 race, despite many expecting him to challenge Bass again.

Caruso said Tuesday that he and Bass haven’t always agreed on policy, but came together to help Pacific Palisades in a time of crisis. Caruso has played a prominent role in helping rebuild Pacific Palisades and Altadena following the fires.

The 67-year-old developer is behind popular L.A. malls, including the Grove and the Americana at Brand. He also owns Palisades Village, which first opened in 2018 and closed down after the fires destroyed much of downtown. Palisades Village reopened on Aug. 15, after 19 months and more than $100 million in renovations, Caruso said.

“I know what I’ve seen in the last year and a half, and the help she’s leaned in and given to this community,” Caruso said of Bass. “So, we did get together because it has to transcend politics, and we have to do the right thing.”

Bass and Caruso both acknowledged their longstanding relationship, dating back to Bass’s days in Sacramento, she said. The pair have been in constant communication since the 2022 mayoral race and started directly collaborating immediately after the Palisades fire, she said.

“My love for the city transcends politics, and I’m going to stand behind people that are doing right for the city and doing right for the people of the city that need the help the most,” Caruso said. “That’s why I’m standing here today.”

Caruso joined Bass Tuesday to announce Power Ready LA— an effort that will streamline how the Department of Water and Power delivers utility services to commercial and residential projects.

The effort will result in lower upfront costs for eligible housing and commercial projects, Bass said. It builds on an executive directive the mayor signed in April, which aims to cut delays, introduce tech automation and speed up building permits for residential and commercial development.

A group of parents claims local admission policy boosts Black and Latino students while constraining Asian applicants.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case about the role of race in admissions to selective Maryland middle schools after a group of parents claimed policies discriminated against Asian students in favour of Black and Latino students.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear the parents’ plea on four academically rigorous “magnet” schools in Montgomery County, a suburb on the outskirts of Washington, DC, in the neighbouring state of Maryland.

The high court said it would weigh whether the parent group has enough evidence of discrimination for the case to move forward.

Lower courts previously dismissed the case because Asian-American students were not underrepresented at the specialised-curriculum schools compared with the pool of students that applied.

If the Supreme Court rules for the parent group, the Association for Education Fairness, it could revive the lawsuit.

The court is expected to hear arguments in the coming months and rule by June.

‘The Pandemic Plan’

The Montgomery County school district’s selection process was introduced in the 2021-2022 school year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It screens all students for academic potential, and then implements a lottery to randomly assign students from that pool to receive enriched instruction at either a magnet school or a local school.

The suit alleged that the screening process makes it harder for Asian-American students, who the challengers said are clustered in “high-performing, low-poverty elementary schools”, to enter the lottery pool.

Part of the process ranks a student’s performance by comparing the student’s test scores against those of other students whose family incomes are at a similar level.

“Under the applicant pool benchmark, the government can set specific racial targets, hit them, and avoid even an inquiry into discriminatory intent,” so long as it has not explicitly called out race in its process, they wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court.

Previously thrown out

The case was thrown out in 2022 by US District Judge Paula Xinis. She noted that the percentage of admitted Asian-American students exceeded the percentage of Asian Americans among all applicants to the magnet schools.

Xinis also found no evidence that the lottery policy was implemented with discriminatory intent.

The school system has consistently argued the new admissions policy, called the “Pandemic Plan” due to the timing of its release, is race-neutral.

“The Pandemic Plan is a colorblind lottery,” lawyers wrote in a brief asking the Supreme Court not to take up the case. “Nothing about the Pandemic Plan, its history, or its purpose is offensive to the Constitution.”

Supreme Court justices will now consider whether a group claiming to be targeted by a race-neutral policy must show it was disproportionately harmed to prove intentional discrimination.

THINGS look like they’re about to get tense for Princess and Junior Andre in a first look at their mission on Celebrity Race Across The World.

The offspring of Peter Andre and Katie Price jetted off to take part in the BBC series at the start of the year, and the show will return to screens next week, on October 28.

But in preview images from the show, Princess, 19, and Junior, 21, look to have their work cut out for them.

Geared up in t-shirts and trainers, brandishing massive green backpacks, the pair are seen in the snaps looking stressed out as they face the TV challenge.

Branded “the wildest race yet” by the show’s producers, the siblings are pictured poring over a map and a compass, working out which direction they’ll need to head.

The pair will start their race in Kuching, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak in North West Borneo, and attempt to navigate their way to the final destination of Melbourne, Australia.

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Despite their pop star dad Peter hailing from Down Under, the brother and sister team don’t look too sure about making the nearly 3,500 mile voyage.

The siblings will compete against singer-songwriter Ella Eyre and her childhood friend Nana, veteran sports broadcaster Jeff Stelling and his son Matt, and musician Sam Ryder with his best friend and tour manager Kaz.

Bosses rushed to sign up the pair after the success of ITV2’s The Princess Diaries, which featured influencer Princess and her big brother, who is taking after Peter’s footsteps with dreams of a singing career.

A source said earlier this year: “Princess and Junior have proven themselves to be well-mannered, hardworking kids and opportunities continue to come their way.

“Execs were impressed with the ratings for The Princess Diaries but also how they came across.

“They’re brilliant signings for Celeb Race as they bring with them a younger audience.

“But bosses are also looking forward to seeing how they cope with the stripped-back style of travelling as they’re more at home in five- star hotels than a hostel.”

Junior and Princess left London to start work on the show in February, amid the start of the controversy surrounding their mum Katie’s whirlwind wedding to Lee Andrews.

Now, eight months on, the marriage has fallen apart, with Katie bracing herself for a complicated divorce in the wake of Lee’s conman behaviour and stint in jail.

Fans of the famous offspring will be able to chart Junior and Princess’ mission when Celebrity Race Across The World returns to iPlayer and BBC One next Wednesday.

Dozens of groups have lined up behind the proposal, including the Trust for Public Land, TreePeople, Friends of the Los Angeles River and many others. At City Hall, the measure is backed by Rodriguez and several other council members as well as City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

Rodriguez and Mejia signed the ballot argument in favor of Charter Amendment PRK, as did Rev. Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, Nicole Chase, president and chief executive of the Boys & Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley, and several others.

Backers of the measure say the parks department provides an essential safety net for the city’s low-income residents, offering summer camps, sports activities and senior programs for free or at reduced prices.

When temperatures soar, the city’s recreation centers welcome residents who lack air conditioning. During emergencies, those facilities are converted into places of refuge from fires, floods or other disasters.

Despite those varied responsibilities, the department has been underfunded for years, said Tori Kjer, executive director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, who pushed for the measure to reach the ballot.

“If you talk to many Angelenos, they are unhappy with their local park, and that is because we have not funded it with the resources it needs,” she said.

Kjer said the department never recovered from the 2008 recession, when city leaders cut staffing by more than 25%, leaving it with about 1,500 workers last year. The city also began charging the department for the cost of water, electricity, trash pickup and other city services.

The measure aims to tackle the cost of what it takes to run a campaign and to broaden the pool of people who could run for office without being tethered to any individual, group or special interest.

“The increasing costs of political campaigns can force candidates to rely on large contributions from wealthy donors and special interests, which can give those wealthy donors and special interests disproportionate influence over governmental decisions,” the measure states.

There have been several attempts to allow for public campaign financing in California. Five charter cities, including Los Angeles, and at least 14 other states already allow some version of it.

“This bill will restore control to local governments and the state by giving counties, districts, general law cities, and the state the same option that charter cities currently have to enact public financing of campaigns,” a Senate rules committee analysis states.

SACRAMENTO —  When does positive reform become negative regression? That’s what Californians need to answer before voting on Proposition 45, which would substantially change the state’s landmark environmental protection law.

The business-backed ballot measure would make it much easier and less costly to build loads of projects — not just housing, but also water works, clean energy and transportation facilities.

It also, however, would give citizens much less time and fewer tools to assess and oppose projects they deem unfit for their area — like freeway expansions or giant warehouses.

“It tips the scale from favoring the public and the environment to favoring developers and polluting projects,” asserts state Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas), chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee.

“It’s an overreach.”

“We streamline the building process for billionaires to erect stadiums. Why don’t we do it for middle-class homebuyers?” declares Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., a major backer of Proposition 45.

It’s a bitter, high-stakes fight that’s too close to call. Polling has indicated the outcome could be decided in the final days before the Nov. 3 election.

Proposition 45 would be the most significant overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act since Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan signed it in 1970.

CEQA — as it’s commonly called and used as a four-letter obscenity by developers — is justifiably credited with keeping California air less polluted, water relatively clean, urban traffic from being worse and more outdoors open to the public.

It requires developers — private and public — to undergo a lengthy process of analyzing a project’s environmental effects and reducing their negative impacts.

But over the years CEQA became blatantly abused.

Union blackmailers — ”greenmailers” — threatened frivolous CEQA lawsuits unless developers caved to labor demands. Business rivals drove off potential competitors by filing protracted suits that wore down investors. NIMBYs — ”not in my backyard” — fought local projects that crowded their spaces or blocked views.

As a CEQA battle dragged on, the developers’ costs soared and many cut their losses by abandoning the project. Home building plummeted in California and the law of supply and demand ruled. Housing costs skyrocketed.

Project opponents legitimately concerned about environmental impacts also filed lawsuits, but they weren’t the developer’s big problem — not like the CEQA abusers.

Finally, prodded by Gov. Gavin Newsom, lawmakers have been responding in recent years to the developers’ frustration. They’ve been pecking away at CEQA with meaningful reforms for most types of housing, especially urban apartment projects near transit hubs.

“You’ve got to just move things,” Newsom exclaimed at an economic summit in Long Beach last week. “I’m just done with the [CEQA] litigation…. Years and years of B.S…. Eight years to develop something? Give me a break.”

But the nearly termed-out governor still hadn’t taken a position on Proposition 45.

Money and power, of course, have always had their privileges in the state Capitol. Billionaire sports team owners have had no trouble securing CEQA exemptions for construction of new stadiums or arenas. The exemptions are handed out like free bobbleheads.

In fact, Newsom recently signed legislation essentially granting a CEQA exemption in San Diego for a 16,000-seat sports arena and housing project led by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke.

Dunmoyer says that lawmakers “have done quite a bit” to expedite housing, “although not quite enough. It has been limited in scope and size — limited to urban infill and close to transit. It doesn’t address the overwhelming amount of housing needs in California.

“It doesn’t help the first-time middle-class homebuyers or address market rate rentals.”

He pegs the cost of a CEQA battle at $75,000 per new home, noting that’s added to the selling price — if the dwelling ever gets built.

Opponents of Proposition 45 argue that the measure’s backers wish to return California home building to 1960s sprawl when the state’s population was half its current size and there was more usable open space to pave over with roads and subdivisions — more orchards to rip up and wetlands to drain. And that led to longer smog-spewing car commutes to city jobs.

“Sprawl housing is not affordable housing,” Blakespear says. “There are costs to build new infrastructure like utility lines and water facilities, and high insurance costs. Then taxpayers have to clean up the pollution.

“Do we really want new sprawl housing developments in wildfire areas? We need to incentivize [urban] infill housing, instead of in the middle of the forest or the desert.”

Proposition 45 — generated by the state Chamber of Commerce — would streamline the CEQA approval process for several types of construction projects the measure deems “essential.” They include housing, water systems, clean energy, health facilities, jails, fire stations, wildfire reduction, broadband access and transportation.

Two very controversial projects were excluded — the bullet train and delta tunnel —
and so was nuclear power.

Opponents insist that the proposition eases the way for construction of massive data centers. But backers adamantly deny it, and they make sense. The anti-45 campaign is trying to scare voters with a Halloween bogeyman.

But there’s plenty of other ugly and smelly potential projects that could benefit.

If this were solely about housing, it wouldn’t ring so many alarms.

Here’s how I see it: We elect a governor and Legislature to handle such complex issues. Let them — especially the new governor, presumably Xavier Becerra — consider enacting new CEQA reforms, holding months of public hearings and ultimately compromising on a deal.

OK, maybe that’s dreaming. But it beats voters trying to wrap their heads around this in a few days.

Unlike regular legislation, if the ballot measure did pass and flaws emerged, it would be very hard for lawmakers to amend, requiring a two-thirds vote.

Proposition 45 rolls back CEQA protections too far — especially with a dangerous anti-environment California abuser in the Oval Office.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ‘He’s everywhere’: This California Republican wants to make his party relevant again
CA vs. Trump: Big assertions, sharp exchanges, little clarity define DOJ election battle with California
The L.A. Times Special: Voter guide to the 2026 California general election

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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While Republican Steve Hilton has spent months jackrabbiting around California during his long-shot bid for governor, Democratic front runner Xavier Becerra just recently emerged from quasi hibernation and stepped into political daylight.

Hilton has blasted Becerra as taking the state’s voters for granted, failing to hold public campaign events to explain his detailed plans to address California’s many ills. Despite pledging to participate in multiple debates, Becerra brushed aside several invitations, agreeing to just a solitary one-hour face-off against Hilton on CNN in late September.

That month, Hilton held 14 public events, a dozen more than Becerra, but the Democrat’s spokesperson said he appeared at multiple functions sponsored by other groups. Hilton wasn’t buying it.

“He is a useless nothing, a totally unaccomplished pipsqueak who is so smug, so arrogant, so entitled, that he somehow thinks he’s owed this job just because he was picked as a useful puppet by the Sacramento machine,” Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and British political strategist, said last week in West Sacramento.

On Oct. 10, Becerra, a longtime member of Congress and Biden’s secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, scoffed at his GOP rival.

“Uh, hello?” Becerra said sarcastically to reporters in Sacramento after being asked about his absence from the campaign trail.

“That Steve Hilton doesn’t see me on Fox News is his problem, not mine. I am gonna talk to voters,” Becerra said, rattling off a list of his recent campaign events. “I will talk to them until November the 3rd, and then I’ll be ready to talk to voters and taxpayers and the people of California when I’m the next governor.”

On Thursday, Becerra held a news conference in downtown Los Angeles with Latino leaders and famed Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez urging voters to turn out despite alleged intimidation efforts by the Trump administration.

On Monday, he held get-out-the-vote events in Santa Clarita and Glendale, shortly after he campaigned for former state Sen. Richard Pan, a congressional candidate, in Sacramento, and urged voters to cast their ballots early at an event in Santa Rosa. In September, Becerra promoted Proposition 1, a proposal on the November ballot that would allow the state to sell nearly $11.3 billion in bonds to fund affordable housing.

“We know we can get these men and women who are wearing these orange vests to work and keep them working, so they can afford to buy a house if we pass Proposition 1,” Becerra said, standing alongside union members in front of a chain-link fence encircling a vacant lot in North Long Beach.

Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra held a news conference in Long Beach on Sept. 4 to highlight his housing agenda.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, who endorsed Becerra in April and appeared at the housing event, pushed back on the notion that Becerra is taking the election for granted after winning a top spot in the primary, positioning him to be the first Mexican American elected governor of California.

“I’ve seen firsthand the work that has taken place under the radar that may not be explicitly, openly political or openly be seen as campaigning, but it is the kind of thing you want to see,” Richardson said in an interview on Thursday, adding that he saw Becerra meeting with elected officials of both parties, the mayors of the state’s largest cities and labor leaders. “I’ve seen a very active candidate that has been making sure that real time was put into building relationships that will ultimately translate to a successful governorship, because that’s the goal. I mean, ultimately, what we want is a leader who has the relationships to lead our state.”

Becerra’s campaign said that the candidate has frequently met with voters since the primary without press coverage to hear from Californians, and that he would be a frequent public presence in the weeks before the election, when “voters really get engaged, when ballots land in their mailbox,” said spokesman Jonathan Underland.

“People have incredibly busy lives. They are worried about affording their healthcare, putting food on the table, paying for gas to fill their tank,” Underland said. “What is at the forefront of Secretary Becerra’s mind is the very real problems that Californians are facing every day.”

In contrast, Hilton has been publicly barnstorming California since the June primary.

Becerra’s schedule is not surprising given Democratic dominance in California, where the party’s registered voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1. While appearing at parades, pancake breakfasts and in voters’ living rooms can be effective for candidates running in local campaigns, the most effective way for candidates to reach voters in a state as vast as California is through sustained advertising buys, which can cost tens of millions of dollars.

“If you’re the Democrat running in California, the operating theme of your campaign is do no harm and measure the drapes and figure out how you’re going to put an administration together and what is the tone that you’re going to set for that administration,” said Tim Rosales, a veteran GOP consultant who led businessman John Cox’s unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial campaign and previously worked on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful effort to replace Gov. Gray Davis in the 2003 recall campaign.

Newsom was more active in the 2018 general election campaign against Cox than Becerra has been this year, but Rosales argued that could be because Becerra views it as the final chapter of his political career, which also may have been the case with former Gov. Jerry Brown in his 2014 reelection campaign. Newsom, however, is pondering a 2028 run for the White House.

“This is potentially more of a swan song for Xavier Becerra, the icing on the cake for a long and distinguished political career, and for Gavin Newsom, it was a stepping stone,” Rosales said.

Becerra has raised $40.5 million, as of Friday, while Hilton has raised $29 million, according to the fundraising disclosure reports filed with the state. Those figures do not include the exponential advantage that Becerra had in independent expenditure committees’ spending over Hilton in the primary.

Veteran Republican strategist Rob Stutzman, an advisor to Schwarzenegger, said that while Becerra will almost certainly be the state’s next governor, he should be cautious about his approach weeks before the November election.

“What he needs to be careful of is a big Democratic night across the United States that looks muted in California, and if that happens, the analysis will be that it’s his fault,” Stutzman said. “He should want to optimize his political capital as the clear leader of his party now in California. So he has to be a little careful of leaving some political capital on the table by not creating a stronger brand over the next three weeks.”

The last gubernatorial race that was viewed as competitive took place in 2010 between Brown and former eBay chief Meg Whitman, then a Republican who spent $144 million of her personal wealth on her campaign.

That contest drew national attention, but Brown beat Whitman by nearly 13 percentage points. Every gubernatorial election since that race has been sleepy and ignored in national politics, with Democratic candidates coasting to victory. The state has seen contentious gubernatorial primaries, notably in 2018, and this year, when the Democratic field was so crowded that party leaders urged low-polling candidates, including Becerra, to drop out.

He won the top spot in the primary after then-Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) dropped out amid rape and sexual assault allegations.

Mason Harrison, who worked for Republicans Carly Fiorina in a 2010 Senate bid and Neel Kashkari in a 2014 gubernatorial campaign, and worked with Hilton on business ventures but is not affiliated with his campaign, noted that while Brown was well-known by Californians because of decades in the public eye, Becerra is not. However, given Democrats’ edge in the state’s voter registration, as well as current headwinds against the GOP in California and across the nation, it’s unsurprising that Becerra has been less visible than Hilton. Harrison compared Becerra’s campaign to Biden’s in 2024 before the then-president bowed out of the race.

“The calculus seems to be, the more he gets out on the campaign trail, the greater the potential of him having a misstep in an interview or getting some tough question that he’s going to have to answer, and what’s the advantage of that in a year when you’re running against a party that, by historical standards, stands to lose significantly,” Harrison said. “Why make it more competitive by making yourself more vulnerable?”

Indeed, Becerra previously committed to multiple debates, but has participated in one so far and appears unlikely to agree to another. Still, he has repeatedly disputed the notion that he is taking the race for granted.

“If I were trying to coast, I’d be out on the coast right now instead of here with you all,” he told reporters one sweltering August afternoon in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, an area he represented in Congress.

Xavier Becerra, center, walks with Helen Ota, left, president of the 2026 Nisei Week Foundation, while touring businesses and meeting with business community leaders at Japanese Village Plaza in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles on Aug. 18.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

While there, he met with local business and community leaders. And he bought merchandise and delicacies, including a sweet mango mochi wrapped in a thin, fluffy pancake at a 123-year-old Japanese confectionery.

Times staff writer Nicole Nixon contributed to this report from Sacramento.

Money generated by Proposition 3, like the current tax, would flow to education, with 89% going to K-12 schools and 11% to community colleges.

Then, because the state constitution requires minimum levels of spending on education, more dollars are freed up to pay for services including healthcare and the University of California and California State University systems, said Kayla Kitson, a senior analyst with the California Budget and Policy Center.

Proposition 3, like the current high-earners tax, has the added effect of raising the minimum levels of funding required to flow to K-12 schools and community colleges, because of the complicated formulas California uses to set its budget, Kitson said.

If Proposition 3 fails, the state could expect to lose between $5 billion and $15 billion annually in tax revenue starting in 2031, according to estimates from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The California Democratic Party is backing Ma, whose quarter-century in electoral politics includes stints on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in the State Assembly and on the State Board of Equalization. She was elected treasurer in 2019 and is termed out.

The California Republican Party has endorsed Romero, who has been campaigning with Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton on what the two term a “golden ticket” (though voters elect each office separately).

The Republican designation is relatively new for Romero. She was a Democrat when she served in the Legislature from 1998 to 2010. She became a Republican in 2024, asserting that Democratic party standards no longer aligned with her beliefs.

“I consider myself to be common sense, a new Republican with the values of American exceptionalism that once upon a time the Democratic party stood for, but it’s been overrun by the socialists and the communists that have taken over the party,” she told the Times.

Ma’s parents emigrated from China and eventually settled in New York. Her father started a design and manufacturing firm, and her mother was a high school art teacher. Fiona Ma played sports, was a Girl Scout — “a top cookie seller,” she boasts on her campaign website — and graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology. She moved to San Francisco, started an accounting practice and became a part-time field representative to Assemblymember John Burton. She won her San Francisco supervisor’s seat in 2002 and, four years later, was elected to the Assembly.

Romero grew up in a Catholic household in Barstow, with pictures of the Pope and President Kennedy on the walls. She described her parents, a railroad worker and a mother who once cleaned houses, as “Depression-era Democrats.”

She started in community college and eventually earned a PhD. She was a college professor, an L.A. Community College trustee and a city of L.A. charter reform commissioner before being elected to the state Assembly in 1998. She moved to the Senate in 2001 and became the first female majority leader. Today she lives in El Sereno.