- State & Local
- California
- Campaigns & Elections
X-actly what happened? Let’s begin with the man most likely to be California’s next governor: former state attorney general Xavier Becerra, the leading Democratic voter-getter this week (words that seemed unlikely as a few weeks ago, when Becerra as a lower-tier hopeful struggled to get on a debate stage).
Why go bullish on Becerra, who didn’t get the most votes on Primary Day in California? (Here's a link to a still-in-progress vote count, made even more glacial by Californians holding onto their ballots until the last moment.)
Call it basic California math. Assuming the November contest ends up as a face-off between Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News on-air personality, the numbers suggest a fait accompli: as of mid-May, California election officials report, there were 4.6 million more registered Democrats than Republicans in the Golden State.
Still, the race might be competitive. Becerra’s rise to the top of the Democratic pyramid, despite not much in the way of pizzazz or revolutionary thought, leads one to ask: is boring back?
Political thrills or not, California voters aren’t in a happy place. This poll, on the primary’s eve, showed a majority of voters saying the Golden State is on the wrong track and disapproving of Governor Gavin Newsom’s job performance. And in case you’re wondering why Newsom didn’t endorse a fellow Democrat as his successor, it might be as simple as wanting to avoid embarrassment: he endorsed Josh Fryday for lieutenant governor back in April, only to see Fryday fail to make the runoff (unless there’s a remarkable swing in uncounted ballots).
Given that California hasn’t chosen a Republican to replace a retiring governor since 1990, a straight-up bet seems foolish. Let’s go instead with a point spread taken from a previous election involving an uncharismatic Democrat. Should it be a Becerra-Hilton matchup, does the first poll suggest something akin to 2002, when former governor Gray Davis won by only 4.9 percent statewide, a difference of fewer than 364,000 votes?
The Mark . . . of Zohran? Unlike America’s jet stream that blows from west to east, it’s not so clear that political trends and practices move the same way.
One such example: a Los Angeles mayoral contest that paralleled what transpired last year in New York City, when an upstart mayoral hopeful benefited from a gonzo social-media campaign—the socialist Zohran Mamdani splashing about in icy waters to underscore his call for a rent freeze.
In 2026, the “LA story” is Spencer Pratt, the former reality television “villain” whose second-place campaign featured over-the-top AI videos depicting the political outsider as a superhero battling villainous nemeses (imagine Pratt as Batman and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass as the villainous Joker).
Pratt’s campaign understood something: in 2026, alternative media can be just as effective as traditional news outlets in reaching out to voters. For Pratt, that meant a leg-up from the likes of TMZ’s Harvey Levin and broadcaster/podcaster Billy Bush (you might remember Bush from a controversy that arose during Trump’s first presidential run).
Combine that with relentless social media posts, and Pratt built a steady presence in the mayoral primary . . . though maybe not an electable one, given that Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly 3-to-1 in Los Angeles County.
Think of this as this a natural progression in American politics: as technology advances, candidates change their approach to messaging media. In 1993, a newly elected Bill Clinton boasted that Larry King’s eponymous interview show on CNN “liberated” him from the drudgery of dealing with the White House press corps. In 2016, Donald Trump’s improbable win showed the value in harnessing Facebook and Twitter (as opposed to Barack Obama holding a traditional press conference three days after winning the presidency in 2008, President-elect Trump instead turned to Twitter).
Will a Democratic or Republican presidential hopeful follow the Mamdani-Pratt playbook in 2028? Ironically, it might be Newsom, who showed up in this pro-Pratt Star Wars spoof as California’s answer to the evil Sheev Palpatine.
Has Tom Steyer finally cashed out? At last check, the hedge-fund billionaire and chronic candidate/political activist had spent $213 million of his fortune trying to make the November runoff, only to finish behind Becerra and Hilton.
That number will climb after the Steyer campaign turns in its next financial report showing what else the campaign spent in the primary’s home stretch. Assuming Steyer is the odd man out for the general election, reporters will delight in the forensics of what he spent in way of media buys, buying influencers, and enabling political consultants to purchase vacation homes.
Not that Steyer is a fool, but the man and (a good-sized chunk of) his money parted ways. Back in 2020 and convinced that campaigning as a born-again climate-change activist was his ticket to the Democratic nomination, Steyer spent $345 million of his own money on a presidential effort that didn’t last beyond the South Carolina primary.
Assuming Steyer doesn’t make up the gap and remains mired in third place, is this the last time he runs for office, with little to show after spending $600 million on two failed candidacies? If so, local media outlets, podcasts, and streaming services should thank him for frittering away hundreds of millions of dollars that could have served a nobler purpose (Steyer’s $600 million translating to a free four-year ride for about 2,750 UC-Berkeley undergrads).
No way, (San) Jose. A la Steyer, what’s the next political move for San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, whose gubernatorial run never took off despite considerable seed money from his wealthy friends and neighbors in Silicon Valley?
Mahan will need to revisit his campaign strategy. Though a frequent jouster with Governor Gavin Newsom over the latter’s approach to homelessness, it’s not as if the mayor established much of a beachhead as a “change” candidate.
Also worth second-guessing: why the Mahan campaign figured that touting the virtues of San Jose, a city not foremost on Californians’ minds, would sway voters (well, that and the distraction of a candidate walking around in ads unshaven and with his dress shirt untucked, looking more like a beta male than an alpha mayor).
If upward political mobility is Mahan’s long game, here’s the bad news: there won’t be many openings in Sacramento in 2030 or sooner—not with a new governor and multiple statewide constitutional officers beginning their first terms in January.
Now, the good news for the forty-three-year-old Mahan: there are second and third acts in California politics.
Just ask former governor Pete Wilson, who finished a distant fourth in 1978’s Republican gubernatorial primary. Wilson was a forty-four-year-old San Diego mayor with little statewide name recognition outside his area code. Four years later, Wilson bested Jerry Brown in a US Senate contest. Eight years after that, he was elected governor of California.
Does Mahan have the same patience—waiting a dozen years to make the two-hour drive from San Jose to California’s State Capitol? If so, will an older (and presumably wiser) Mahan bother to shave and tuck in his shirt?
A lack of initiative(s). National Recycling Month isn’t until November, but let’s end by recycling a familiar complaint in this space: the exclusion of citizens’ ballot measures from California’s statewide primaries.
It’s a problem that’s been years in the making—all the way back to 2011 and Jerry Brown’s first year in office, in his second go-round as governor, when he signed SB 202 and banned voter-driven initiatives from future Golden State primary ballots.
Brown defended his action as what’s best for democracy: “There are dramatically more voters at a general rather than a primary election,” the governor’s signing statement read. “The idea of direct democracy is to involve as many voters as possible. This bill accomplishes that objective.”
What wasn’t said: moving such initiatives to the November ballot, with its larger turnout among progressive voters, meant better odds of defeating right-leaning initiatives.
But in this year’s California primary, a few such ideas would have been welcome relief from a contest that turned ugly in the home stretch, with Steyer and Becerra questioning each other’s moral compass.
In a primary open to voter initiatives, California might have engaged in a debate over voter identification. A November initiative, if approved, would require voters to present government-issued identification to vote in person, or the last four digits of a government-issued number for mail ballots.
Or, the Golden State could have had a full-blown conversation about wealth, taxes, and the future of California’s economy—matters all germane to another November initiative which, if approved, would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on California billionaires (in fact, ads attacking the initiative made something of a cameo appearance during the primary even as Steyer’s massive ad buys dominated the airwaves.
Those ads were still on California’s airwaves after the polls closed earlier this week, which suggests a bitter and expensive argument ahead over wealth, taxation, and California’s fragile revenue stream despite a world-class economy.
The next governor might not end up saying, “It’s good to be king.”
