IT WAS A GOOD NIGHT for normie Democrats, a bad one for self-funded campaigns, a mixed bag for state legislators aspiring to higher office and another electoral reminder of President Donald Trump’s dominant role in our politics — even in deepest blue California.
At the top of the ticket, Republican former Fox News host and British political adviser Steve Hilton and longtime Democratic politico Xavier Becerra hold the top two spots needed to progress to the November election for governor. Tom Steyer, the billionaire former hedge fund manager turned left-leaning political donor, is holding a distant though technically viable third. The Associated Press has not called the race.
Veteran state election observers will know that it may be weeks before the final score of the June primary election is tallied. But a few early takeaways are already coming into focus:
Money can’t (always) buy you love
Whether Steyer ultimately claws his way into the top two spots in the governor’s race after spending a record-setting sum on his self-funded campaign, it’s got to be a disappointing return on investment.
Steyer ultimately spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on his populism-coded gubernatorial bid. The fact that all that advertising didn’t translate to an electoral blowout is no surprise, said Garry South, a longtime California Democratic strategist.
“It may sound facetious to say that you can have too much money in a campaign, but in fact the way these rich self-financing candidates spend their money becomes a liability. …They wear out their welcome.”
Steyer isn’t the only candidate to have drawn deeply on his personal finances only to flounder at the ballot box. Patrick Wolff put $600,000 of his own money toward his insurance commissioner campaign, Yvonne Yiu invested $750,000 in her race to join the state Board of Equalization and Saikat Chakrabarti put up the bulk of the millions he spent in his bid to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress. In Los Angeles, Zach Sokoloff put up $1 million — with millions more coming from his mother — to unseat the sitting city controller.
Chakrabarti couldn’t crack the top two in his race, losing to state Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan. As of Wednesday morning, the remaining three trailed in their respective races.
A good night for ‘standard’ Democrats
Anti-incumbent populism may be in the national zeitgeist, but California voters seem perfectly happy with — or at least, fine settling with — experienced, garden variety Democrats.
“What they want is a Democratic elected official who can go and fight Donald Trump,” said Andrew Sinclair, a Claremont McKenna College political science professor.
Hence the sharp, sudden rise of Becerra following the political implosion of former frontrunner Eric Swalwell. Swalwell was also well known as an experienced politician who “Donald Trump didn’t like,” said Sinclair. Mild-mannered Becerra with a deep political resume and limited baggage was the next logical choice. “What’s your standard, out-of-the-box Democrat who you can get to fight Republicans? Becerra is probably that guy.”
It helped that Becerra’s main Democratic opponent, the self-styled populist Steyer, had the easily-attacked billionaire status, and Democrats worried about being locked out of the general election wanted to get behind whoever was polling best.
Many of the Democratic incumbents in Congress also appeared to be fending off challenges from younger, more progressive insurgents — or at least keeping them firmly in second place. Those include Mike Thompson, Brad Sherman and Doris Matsui.
Party still matters
Back in 2010 when California adopted the top-two primary system, proponents pitched it to voters as a way to shake the partisan gridlock out of California politics. Rather than have Democratic and Republican primary voters predictably electing candidates who appeal to the ideological poles, a system that lets every candidate from every party compete on the same ballot was supposed to encourage across-the-aisle reaching candidates who can appeal to voters in the middle.
Voters in the middle are less likely to show up in primary elections, said South.
Nor has the state’s top-two system ever produced a general election race for governor with two Democrats. For all the talk of then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom squaring off against Antonio Villaraigosa in 2018 or the possibility of a Becerra vs Steyer showdown this year, California governor races have always reverted to the partisan pattern with energized Democratic voters gravitating around their candidate and Republicans doing the same.
Similarly, the top two spots in both the lieutenant governor and treasurer’s races are also blue vs. red. The one exception: As of Wednesday, two Democratic candidates to become the next insurance commissioner — Jane Kim and Sen. Ben Allen — appear to be headed to the November election.
The shut out that wasn’t
Democrats can now officially stop worrying about a dreaded “shut out” scenario.
With so many Democrats packed into the race and none dominating the field, many party members worried early on that the two most prominent Republicans running, Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, could claim the first and second place spot in the primary.
Concerns over such a paradoxical, and for Democrats, nightmarish outcome prompted party chair Rusty Hicks to commission a poll to push some of the lowest-polling Democratic candidates to step aside for the good of the party and state.
Almost none did. But either because Democratic voters were sufficiently spooked into strategically avoiding that outcome — or because a shutout was never that likely in the first place — it doesn’t appear likely to happen.
Democrats have dodged such electoral bullets before. In 2018, a glut of anti-Trump Democratic congressional candidates threatened to hand Republicans both top spots in competitive races across the state. There were no shutouts in that year’s primary. California Democrats ended up cleaning up in the subsequent “blue wave” general election. There was similar Democratic hand-wringing in the run-up to the recall election over a possible procedural fluke that could have handed the governor’s office to a Republican. Newsom swatted down the recall in a landslide.
Despite the recurring bouts of Democratic angst, the most prominent top two “lock out” in recent memory was in a deeply conservative state Senate district in the Sierra foothills in 2022 which a crowded pack of Republicans ended up cannibalizing the GOP vote leaving two Democrats in first and second.
The victor in that race, Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, ended up switching parties to join the Republicans anyway. As of early Wednesday, she is trailing in third place in her re-election contest behind Jaron Brandon, a Democrat, and Alexandra Duarte, a Republican.
Senator who?
Anthony Rendon was the former speaker of the California Assembly. In an org chart of state governance, that made him one of the three most influential people in the Capitol, alongside his counterpart in the Senate and the governor.
Alas, that wasn’t enough star power for Rendon to secure the largely symbolic position of superintendent of public instruction. As of Wednesday, he sits in fourth place.
Likewise, state Sen. Anna Caballero, a Merced Democrat who once served as the state Senate’s powerful appropriations chair, is a distant third in her bid to become treasurer — far behind Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and little-known Republican Jennifer Hawks. Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a moderate Democrat, is also trailing in her race to unseat Republican Rep. David Valadao in the Central Valley, currently boxed out of the second place spot by Sen. Bernie Sanders-backed college professor Randy Villegas. And former state Sen. Steven Bradford is bringing up eighth place in the insurance commissioner contest.
It wasn’t all bad news for state lawmakers looking for other employment opportunities. Sen. Ben Allen is in second place in the insurance race, while Wiener and Sen. Aisha Wahab, two Democratic legislators from the San Francisco Bay Area, both easily claimed the top spots in their respective races for Congress.
Jeanne Kuang contributed reporting.
This story originally appeared in CalMatters.
