California's primary produced no clear winner in its chaotic gubernatorial contest, with early tallies showing Republican Steve Hilton, Democrat Xavier Becerra, and billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer bunched at the top as mail-in ballots continued trickling in across the state.
The results were decisive enough for two Democratic contenders to exit the race. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa both conceded shortly after polls closed, acknowledging they would not advance to November's general election.
Both Becerra and Hilton signaled confidence they would claim the top two spots that advance under California's unique primary system, which sends the two highest vote-getters regardless of party to the general election. Steyer stopped short of conceding, telling supporters in San Francisco that the race remained fluid. "It might take some time to figure out where this is going," he said. "We're going to wait until every ballot is counted."
The sluggish vote count reflects California's heavy reliance on mail-in ballots and its meticulous verification process. More significantly, many Democrats deliberately held their ballots until election day itself, a strategic choice made to prevent any late-breaking developments from derailing their preferred candidate in November.
The path to this moment was unlike any recent California campaign. Sixty-one gubernatorial candidates crowded a single primary ballot, including two who had already withdrawn from the race and an eccentric who had legally changed his name to Barack Obama. The chaos emerged because no prominent Democrat stepped forward to consolidate the field.
After Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, many California Democrats anticipated Harris would return home to run for governor. She declined. Other heavy hitters, including U.S. Senator Alex Padilla and Attorney General Rob Bonta, also passed. That left a vacuum that ambitious but largely unproven candidates rushed to fill.
The state's Democratic Party convention exposed the dysfunction. No candidate secured the 60 percent threshold needed for the party's endorsement, ending in deadlock. Major figures like Governor Gavin Newsom, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and labor unions split their support across multiple candidates, unable or unwilling to coalesce around a single challenger.
Becerra's improbable rise from the bottom of polls to frontrunner status dominated the late campaign period. The former Biden health secretary and former California attorney general had faced calls from fellow Democrats to drop out and consolidate the field. Instead, he rebranded himself as competence personified, launching a tongue-in-cheek "hot competence summer" campaign that emphasized government expertise at a moment of widespread economic anxiety.
A shock in April reset the entire race. U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, who had been pulling away from his Democratic rivals, abruptly suspended his campaign and resigned from Congress after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct and assault. Allegations he denied. His collapse scattered support among voters and opened space for Becerra's surge.
Steyer offered a starkly different pitch. The climate activist and billionaire investor had poured $200 million of his own money into the race, betting that a self-funded campaign insulated him from outside influence. He cast himself as a progressive outsider capable of disrupting Sacramento's political establishment, even as critics accused him of attempting to purchase political relevance.
Hilton, a Fox News personality and former adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, framed the race as a referendum on one-party Democratic rule. With Trump's backing, he argued that California's persistent problems with housing affordability and public safety reflected the failures of liberal governance.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass advanced to the general election, but the race for the second spot tightened dramatically. Reality television personality Spencer Pratt emerged ahead of progressive City Council member Nithya Raman, capitalizing on voter anger over Bass's January handling of devastating wildfires. Bass had traveled to Ghana on a diplomatic trip just as fires swept across Los Angeles, eroding support she had accumulated since taking office in 2023.
Pratt, a political newcomer whose own Pacific Palisades home burned during the fires, made Bass's crisis response and the city's homelessness epidemic central to his campaign. Raman, once allied with Bass before entering the race at the last minute, positioned herself as the change candidate for America's second-largest city.
Author James Rodriguez: "This primary exposed a fundamental problem for Democrats: when everyone runs, nobody wins, and the chaos invites Republican competition where it should be impossible."
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