Woo hoo!
That’s my quick and dirty assessment of the current state of the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.
At the moment, there are nearly a dozen high-profile people running in the June 2026 primary, including the white-board wielding former Congressmember Katie Porter, Trump-antagonist Rep. Eric Swalwell and British American former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
I haven’t had this much fun watching a gubernatorial race since 2003, when a motley cross section of California crowded onto the ballot to recall then-Gov. Gray Davis. (Remember him?)
Among the 135 people who qualified for that ballot were a porn actress, a famous political commentator, a former child TV star, a bunch of Very Serious Politicians and dozens of regular people who looked at the lineup and thought, what the hell? Ultimately, the voters tossed out Davis in favor of one of the most famous actors of the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who went on to be a pretty decent governor. Who knew?
The short recall campaign was often very silly. It even spawned a brief reality TV show, “Who Wants to Be Governor of California? The Debating Game.”
But it managed something that many campaigns fail to do: It captured the attention of people who are usually too busy to care much about the state and local candidates who generally have a greater effect on their lives than whoever sits in the Oval Office.
To be sure, 2026 is unlikely to match the sheer absurdity of 2003. But it’s shaping up to be far more compelling than the last several election cycles. That’s not just good for people like me, who will be closely watching the campaigns, but also for California voters, who have a reason to tune into the debates and listen to discussions of housing affordability, public school funding, homelessness and other important issues.
California is a tough state, perhaps the toughest, to govern, and it’s appropriate that it has more than just a couple of party establishment-approved candidates in the running.
At the top of the polls are two Republicans (Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, the former Fox News guy) and two Democrats (Porter from Orange County and Swalwell from the Bay Area). Other notable candidates include former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who ran in the 2018 primary; Xavier Becerra, former Health and Human Services secretary under President Biden; former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer and tech entrepreneur Jon Slavet. There aren’t any A-list movie stars running – at least not yet. There’s still time for the lineup to change on a dime.
Support Democracy. Support Golden State.
Just consider: Until October it seemed likely that California might elect its first female governor. The initial candidates were dominated by a handful of well-qualified women — including Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former leader of both the state Senate and Assembly Toni Atkins, former state Controller Betty Yee and Porter. There was also the possibility that former Vice President Kamala Harris (previously a U.S. senator and California attorney general) would decide to run, which would have cleared the field and made it her race to lose.
With less than six months until the June 2 primary, it’s looking unlikely that the gubernatorial glass ceiling will be broken this time around. Harris decided not to run. Kounalakis and Atkins dropped out. Porter’s campaign was shaken by two videos that showed her being mean to people. And all the entrants since then have been men.
Mariel Garza
The pack of candidates also has red and blue partisans on both sides grumbling about how a crowded field will give an advantage to the other side. California’s “jungle” primary means that the two candidates who get the most votes advance to the general election regardless of party.
“If Republicans divide their support among multiple candidates, Democrats will take both top spots — and voters will be left with no real choice in November,” said GOP San Diego Assemblyman Carl DeMaio in a post on his "Reform California" website.
A more troubling possibility, given the anti-California and anti-democratic tendencies of the GOP, is that two Trump-supporting Republicans will end up in the November runoff, Joe Mathews wrote in a recent Connecting California column.
I don’t think either scenario is likely. People who fail to gain much traction in the polls or attract donors over the next couple months will probably drop out and throw their support to other candidates. This means we will probably see a general election much like those from the recent past: one Republican, one Democrat and one assured outcome in this deeply liberal state. Yawn.
At least getting there will be fun.
Paul Thornton
