One of the sleepiest governor’s races in recent California history has turned into a mad scramble after the sudden departure of Eric Swalwell amid sexual assault allegations.
As soon as the first accusations hit Friday afternoon, Democratic candidates and potential donors blew up phones across California with text messages and phone calls. Social media users hyped their new favorites online.
And in a turbulent race that has grabbed the attention of voters thanks to Mr. Swalwell’s implosion, longshot candidates have newfound reason to believe they can still mount a last-minute comeback.
“Everyone just feels chaos and is scrambling,” said Marva Diaz, a Democratic strategist who is the publisher of California Target Book, which handicaps state races.
Merely one week ago, Mr. Swalwell strode into a town hall at a Masonic lodge in Sacramento as a Democratic front-runner who seemed confident he would be the next governor of California.
Now, he has resigned from Congress and faces criminal investigation, although he has denied the allegations against him. And several of his Democratic rivals are appearing at a forum Tuesday night in the same capital city, trying to seize momentum in the race.
Under California’s nonpartisan primary system, the two candidates who get the most votes in the June 2 election, regardless of party, will face off in the November general election.
It seems likely that only one Democrat will emerge from the seven high-profile candidates still running to secure a spot in the general election. Though Republicans have fewer voters in the state, their party is fielding only two prominent candidates, and one of them, Steve Hilton, recently received President Trump’s endorsement.
Mr. Swalwell’s departure seemed most likely to benefit the two Democrats who had been polling closest to him: Katie Porter, a former congresswoman who gained fame grilling executives on Capitol Hill with stern questions and a whiteboard; and Tom Steyer, a billionaire who has been active in progressive politics since leaving the finance world in 2012.
Both have positioned themselves as anti-Trump liberals and are more familiar to voters than many others in the large field. Mr. Steyer has flooded the airwaves with his commercials by spending more than $120 million from his personal fortune.
Still, some Democrats who were on their last campaign breath — doing so badly in the polls that their own state party leaders had urged them to leave the race — feel they have a new path to victory.
In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Swalwell’s exit, money from wealthy individuals was coalescing around Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, who has won over tech leaders but has middling support in the polls.
Matt Rodriguez, who runs an independent committee backing Mr. Mahan called Back to Basics, told supporters in a memo on Tuesday that the race “has fundamentally shifted” since Mr. Swalwell’s departure and that the group now had an opportunity to introduce Mr. Mahan to voters just as they were beginning to pay real attention to the race.
Mr. Rodriguez said that his groups had raised more than $12 million in pledges since Mr. Swalwell’s scandal began and was beginning a $14 million ad buy.
“Everything’s changed,” Mr. Rodriguez said in an interview.
On Monday, Back to Basics disclosed more than $7 million in new donations, with Mr. Rodriguez saying additional millions arrived on Tuesday. Some of that money came through a separate Silicon Valley fundraising drive that had been trying to raise $35 million before releasing the money, but decided to transfer some of it early to capitalize on the Swalwell vacuum.
It’s not clear that Silicon Valley money will be enough to boost Mr. Mahan’s chances. His tech boosters have so far barely moved the polling needle with their dollars. And the Democratic establishment has generally ignored Mr. Mahan, seeing him as too aligned with billionaires and too moderate.
Xavier Becerra, another candidate with lackluster poll numbers, has seen a surge of interest on social media in the days since the accusations against Mr. Swalwell were first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN.
The campaign for Mr. Becerra, a former California attorney general who was health and human services secretary under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., reported 1.59 million views on Instagram since Friday, compared with 90,400 views in the four days before. Mr. Becerra has also seen a sharp increase in interest from audiences on other platforms.
The California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union, two powerful unions that had endorsed Mr. Swalwell and had set aside millions of dollars to support him, have not yet decided how to proceed. Mr. Becerra has state government experience and could be seen as a conventional choice for such groups.
But time is running short for Mr. Becerra and other candidates to make a surge. Mail ballots, which is how the vast majority of Californians cast their votes, will be sent out the first week of May for the June 2 primary.
Mr. Becerra’s campaign, which had raised less money than the front-runners, had held off on advertising until this month because it had anticipated a major shake-up in the race as the election drew closer, said Michael Bustamante, a campaign spokesman.
“Our timing couldn’t have been any better,” he said.
Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles who also had middling poll numbers, is looking to make his own move and is working to keep Mr. Becerra from gaining momentum. He has increased his attacks, focusing on the child migrant crisis during Mr. Becerra’s tenure in the Biden administration and on a corruption scandal that engulfed two of Mr. Becerra’s top aides last fall.
Mr. Villaraigosa’s campaign aides held a Zoom meeting with some of Sacramento’s top lobbyists Tuesday and shared a presentation to make the case that he can win. They argued that the race was wide open and that the other Democratic candidates had plateaued.
“Now is the time to rally behind Antonio and give him a boost so he can surge into the lead,” the presentation said.
The Swalwell fallout could give campaigns and their donors more reason to spend in the final weeks. The race on Tuesday officially became the most expensive gubernatorial primary on record, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm, with about $156 million spent so far.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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