California voters haven’t made up their minds, and it’s disturbing a lot of politicos who think an unsettled governor’s race portends chaos. Those people might want to get out more for some reassurance: After I spent a day on Southern California’s Metrolink trains chatting with riders about the election, I found a fair amount of disengagement, but also a willingness by voters to take their time and weigh their choices. What some call indecision might just be diligence.
Five weeks before the June 2 primary, polls indicate no single frontrunner for governor. Recent surveys show Democrat Xavier Becerra surging, but others have Republicans – former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco – claiming the top two spots. Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer also lurks atop some polls.
This uncertainty isn’t normal in recent California history. Even in 2018, the first gubernatorial election under our so-called jungle primary without an incumbent running, then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom consistently polled in the top spot among a crowded field of Democrats. No one raised the possibility of a runoff between Republicans Travis Allen and John Cox (remember them?).
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Since polling hasn’t told us much, I did the next best thing and resorted to an old-school journalistic method: Talk to a whole bunch of people.
On Earth Day, Metrolink offered free fares across Southern California. I rode between Los Angeles Union Station and San Bernardino, asking riders one simple question: If you had to vote today, who would you support for governor? Scientific this wasn’t, but the 57.6-mile corridor covers an ethnically and economically diverse area. I wasn’t just posting up at a Starbucks in Hollywood.
On my 115-mile journey, I approached 39 strangers on the train and at stations and had conversations with 16 of them. Most people declined to give their full names, and others used it as an opportunity to mess with me, such as the two guys in San Bernardino who kept saying, “Trump for everything!”
Here’s what I heard:
“Any Democrat” was the most popular option.
Six people said they would cast their vote for whichever Democrat was polling the best before June 2. Their motivation was to prevent two Republicans in the race from both advancing to the November general election.
Mariel Garza
Cesar Banuelos, a commuter between Monterey Park and Pomona, said he liked former California Attorney General and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, but he wasn’t too optimistic about the latter’s chances: "With all due respect to Villaraigosa, like other than being mayor of L.A, what has he done lately? What has he been up to other than that?"
There’s something about Chad Bianco.
His name came up 11 times, far more than any other candidate’s. But then, this train did terminate in the Inland Empire, and Bianco is the high-profile elected sheriff of Riverside County. Four people said they’d vote for him, but just as many said they wanted to prevent him from winning.
“I myself am from Riverside, so I'm quite familiar with Chad Bianco,” said Robert, a Cal State Los Angeles graduate student. “I'm quite familiar with the effects of him, and that's not something I want for California.”
Disillusion and disengagement were common.
Several of those who declined to talk said they didn’t know anything about the election or just didn’t care about it. Two people who did speak to me said they weren’t planning to vote at all.
“It's sad to say, I don't even know if I want to vote,” said Renita Lancaster, who was waiting in San Bernardino for a train to Upland. She said she wasn’t familiar with any of the candidates running.
Paul Thornton
“It’s too much, too argumentative, and I don't like arguing,” she said. “I don't like really debating too much.”
Plenty of people evinced a normal relationship with politics.
Which is to say, they don’t follow it as closely as journalists or politicos. In my conversations, I found evidence of people paying attention to politics only long enough to inform their votes, which seems healthy.
Several of the people I quizzed admitted that while they planned on voting in the June 2 primary, they didn’t know much about the candidates yet and would learn more as election day approaches. If that seems odd, perhaps it is simply a rejection of the endless-election cycle.
Fahed, another Cal State L.A. student, calmly resisted my efforts to get him to name a preferred candidate, saying he had yet to determine which candidate best aligns with his beliefs as a Muslim: “I would kind of have to look into whatever they said before.”
Adam Henig
Eric who?
Not one person I spoke with mentioned ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell, who was the Democratic frontrunner until several women accused him of sexual assault and other misconduct earlier this month. He quickly dropped out of the race – and evidently from the political consciousness of my Metrolink focus group members.
The unsettled race for governor might annoy members of the Democratic establishment, and my tiny sample of voters riding Metrolink on Earth Day won’t offer them any insight into the race. But after my informal poll, I feel pretty good about the people who will decide what happens on June 2.
