This is not a race for governor of CA; it’s a game of chicken

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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The political media routinely uses “race” to describe races for public office. However, the word implies movement and would therefore be inaccurate if applied to this year’s election of a new governor.

Sixty one names will be on the June 2 primary ballot, including 10 leaders who say they are serious about seeking the post.

However, they do not compete. Rather, the top eight Democrats look like child’s play, sitting in a circle, staring at each other, waiting for someone to blink. Meanwhile, the top two Republicans are shooting at each otherpotentially undermining the GOP’s only chance to elect a governor for the first time in two decades.

For weeks, polls of voters have shown this three Democrats are tiedalbeit at a small level, around 10%, while the other five Democrats are buried in the single digits.

California’s top-two primary system puts all candidates on the same ballot, regardless of party, with the top two finishers advancing to the November general election.

Given the size of the field, anyone who garners about 20% in June is likely to win a runoff spot — or about twice as many as the top three Democrats — Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell and Tom Steyer — currently.

With postal voting set to begin in a month, the calendar is starting to be a factor. Any mail-in ballot eliminates the possibility for that voter to change his mind. It should therefore be expected that those who have even a semi-realistic chance of making cuts will now be running all-out campaigns.

However, the only highly visible campaign is that of the billionaire Steyer, who not only bounces around the state for personal appearances but also splashes millions of his own money on television and Internet ads.

Much of Steyer’s campaign focused on Swalwell, who received significant union support, most notably from the California Teachers Association. Swalwell also benefited from Donald Trump’s FBI threats to release files from the investigation into Swalwell’s relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.

Steyer and Swawell appear to be vying for the leftmost bloc of Democratic voters, while Porter is fighting the name earned during her losing U.S. Senate campaign two years ago and hopes that being the only woman in the trio will propel her into one of the top two spots.

But Democratic leaders are openly worried that the two Republicans — Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco — could finish 1-2, thereby guaranteeing the GOP governorship. They would like the five lower-tier Democratic candidates to publicly surrender, thereby increasing the chances of a Democrat making it to November.

However, the members of this five-member Democratic Party show no signs of letting up, and if they continue to fight despite the thin support, the possibility of the Republicans finishing the primary with a 1-2 result remains.

The GOP’s only chance to pull off such an upset would be for Hilton and Bianco to work as a team, raising their support — 16 percent and 14 percent respectively in the latest poll — to the magic 20 percent level. However, they are campaigning as opponents, although if only one of them runs in the November election, he will almost certainly lose to whichever Democrat survives the primary.

This static, who-will-blink-first scenario contains one surprising aspect — the failure of San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan to unleash the momentum he needs to enter the race, despite having apparently unfettered support from wealthy Silicon Valley individuals who want a tech- and business-oriented governor.

On Wednesday, Politico reported that it has a shake-up in Mahan’s campaign due to so-called strategy differences. Perhaps that explains why his campaign has been so anemic since his high-profile late entry. He hasn’t raced much either.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.