California — the state with the largest population, the biggest economy and some of the country’s most powerful politicians — is electing a new governor this year. If that’s news to you, you’re not alone; even some California voters seem a bit unaware.
But this year’s election has already taken shape in unusual ways. Most alarming to Democrats in this deep-blue state: Thanks to the way California structures its primary, there is a chance that nobody from the party will make it to the general-election ballot in November.
I live in Los Angeles and have been watching the race with interest — but to learn more, I turned to Laurel Rosenhall, my Sacramento-based colleague who has been closely covering the contest. Here’s our conversation, edited and condensed.
Hi Laurel, thanks for joining me today! We’ve had some larger-than-life governors — Ronald Reagan, Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger and, of course, Gavin Newsom. Usually, campaigns for governor attract widespread attention. Is it just me, or is this year’s election quieter?
It’s definitely different!
One factor is that the redistricting fight last year soaked up so much attention and money. The governor’s race got off to a late start.
Now we know who’s running, but the public is only beginning to learn about them — and none have captured enough support to become a front-runner. So it’s a huge field with no dominant, singular personality driving the attention, as we’ve had in the past.
This week, there was a fairly surprising poll that showed two Republicans leading the field. That can happen because of our “jungle primary,” where both Democrats and Republicans run in the same primary and the top two advance to the general election. Obviously, two Republicans advancing would be a disaster for Democrats. How likely is that scenario?
It’s not likely but it is possible, which is causing a minor freakout among Democratic activists and leaders in California. Polls show that a lot of voters remain undecided ahead of the June 2 primary contest. In the poll you mentioned, 16 percent said they didn’t know who they would vote for, which is more than any Democratic candidate received.
Voters will eventually have to choose a candidate, though. So support for some Democratic candidates is likely to rise when that happens.
But theoretically, Republicans could still capture both of the top slots?
The math makes it possible. Eight prominent Democrats and two well-known Republicans are running, plus an assortment of lesser-known candidates. Even though voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, all those Democratic candidates could cannibalize one another and splinter the vote. Meanwhile, Republicans are divided basically in half. So their slices of the pie could wind up being the biggest.
Chatter about whether Democrats will be shut out of the governor’s race has reached such a frenzy that there’s a new parlor game for California politicos — clicking refresh on this fun little simulator, “California Top Two Twins,” which spits out the probability of which candidates will emerge as the top two. I just refreshed it and it’s showing the odds for two Republican winners at 22 percent right now.
What fun for political fanatics! The “Twins” reference is a delightful wink back to one of Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood hits. For those who haven’t paid attention yet, how would you describe the field?
The two leading Republicans are the easiest to describe. Steve Hilton is a former Fox News host who worked in conservative politics in Britain before moving to California years ago. Chad Bianco is a sheriff from Riverside County, an inland area of the state that is becoming purple but has traditionally been a conservative stronghold.
The Democratic field is enormous, so I’m going to break it into a few buckets.
Politicians who are good at grabbing attention: Representative Eric Swalwell and former Representative Katie Porter are polling at the top of the Democratic field. Both have a strong presence on social media and are frequent guests on cable news programs.
Guys with access to loads of money: The billionaire Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, has shot up in the polls after pouring $88 million into his campaign and flooding TV with his ads (and using the same ad firm that Zohran Mamdani did last year). He’s now basically in a statistical tie with Swalwell and Porter. Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, isn’t a billionaire and is polling in the single digits, but he has support from Silicon Valley titans. They are each aiming for different lanes: Mahan is a moderate, and Steyer is a progressive.
Everyone else: This group includes four candidates with deep experience in government but little support in the polls. Xavier Becerra was the California attorney general and served in former President Joe Biden’s cabinet. Antonio Villaraigosa was a speaker of the State Assembly and a mayor of Los Angeles. Betty Yee was the state controller, and Tony Thurmond is the state superintendent of schools. Despite their careers in public service, they are not as well-known by voters. Here’s the polling picture:
Many of the lower-polling candidates have interesting histories. Villaraigosa, for example, was the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in modern history. Race has played a bit of a surprising role in this campaign so far. It’s especially interesting given that Latinos make up roughly 40 percent of the state’s population. What’s going on there?
The Democrats who are polling at the top or raising a lot of money are white, while the others are Latino, Black and Asian American.
This became an issue when the California Democratic Party chairman called on candidates who are not viable to drop out of the race. Thurmond, who is Black, criticized him for “essentially telling every candidate of color” to get out. Now Becerra and Villaraigosa, who are both Latino, are pushing back at the organizers of a debate next week for inviting only the white candidates. The criteria to qualify for the debate considered fund-raising and polling.
There are a couple of factors to think about: One is that Latino voters are not showing a particular preference for Latino candidates.
Another is that with the exceptions of Thurmond and Mahan, who is white, many of the lower-polling candidates are older than 65 and have been out of office for a while. Some voters may be looking to turn the page.
More Trump endorsement whiplash
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Some Republican strategists in Colorado said Trump’s move seemed to suggest that he had recognized the weaknesses of Hurd’s right-wing primary challenger, Hope Scheppelman.
A House candidate’s off-color Facebook posts
Peter Chatzky, a wealthy tech executive and Democrat who is running to unseat Representative Mike Lawler of New York, a Republican, has spent millions and transformed the crowded race to flip a key House seat.
He also has a long history of making sexually explicit jokes on Facebook, my colleague Nicholas Fandos writes, including crude cracks about Melania Trump and hosting a sex party for swingers.
No, Trump hasn’t achieved the ‘world’s lowest’ drug prices.
President Trump, cognizant of his party’s vulnerability on the cost of living, has repeatedly claimed that his administration’s new website TrumpRx offers Americans the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs.
But that is not true, my colleague Rebecca Robbins writes.
The drugs listed on TrumpRx can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars, according to a review by The New York Times and German news organizations. A patient walking into a German pharmacy, by contrast, pays next to nothing.
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Laurel Rosenhall, Taylor Robinson and Ama Sarpomaa contributed reporting.
Jennifer Medina is a Los Angeles-based political reporter for The Times, focused on political attitudes and demographic change.
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