Newsom, Pelosi won’t reject Democratic candidates for governor

from Maya S. MillerCalMatters

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Democrats are looking for a hero to save them in the California governor’s race.

So far, no one from the party leadership has come to the rescue.

Despite Rep. Eric Swawell’s elimination from the race this week the Democratic field remains unwieldy, with seven primary candidates still splitting the field less than three weeks before ballots are mailed out. Each has refused to drop out, regardless of their poll numbers, in the hope that they can attract some of the voter attention that Swawell’s death has brought to the race.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, the face of the party in California, isn’t interested in naming a successor. Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks, who has faced criticism for not using his position to root out the field, has relied on party-commissioned polls and vague requests for candidates to “honestly assess” the viability of their campaign, refusing to openly pressure anyone to drop out.

Even former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, known for pushing then-Rep. Adam Schiff running for the Senate and former President Joe Biden dropping his re-election bid – he won’t interfere.

“People were coming up to me saying, ‘Your mom needs to do something!'” said Christine Pelosi, daughter of the San Francisco congresswoman and herself a candidate for state Senate.

“I said, ‘You know what? But she doesn’t,'” the younger Pelosi said. “She already did that with Biden and Harris. She won’t do it — don’t expect her to do it again.”

Gone is the heyday of San Francisco based political machinea network of political talent that dominated state politics for decades and produced titans like Pelosi and Newsom, both of whom moved on from California politics.

That line has now dried up, and there is no clear successor to Newsom this year for the party to rally behind. No incumbent state officials have joined the fray, and the two perceived front-runners — former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla — have opted not to run.

That made top Democrats reluctant to participate in the state’s first truly open Democratic primary in 16 years. In 2018, Newsom, then lieutenant governor, was widely considered the most likely successor to former governor Jerry Brown, another product of the San Francisco political machine.

The 2026 race is also only the second time an open field has competed under the basic best-two system, adopted 16 years ago to the chagrin of both sides. That means two Democrats or two Republicans can go ahead in the general election and block the other party.

Newsom reiterated his lack of interest this week when he issued a statement that said in part, “I have every confidence that voters will choose a candidate who reflects the values ​​and direction that Californians believe in.”

Too much democracy for the Democrats?

While grassroots activists have for decades decried kingpins in politics as a domestic machine, the alternative — a plethora of candidates with no clear favorite — has also proved unattractive.

The resulting decision paralysis revived calls for the intervention of a strong leader.

“It was incredibly frustrating, not to mention scary, with the idea that we might end up with two Republicans” said RL Miller, a longtime delegate and chairman of the party’s environmental group. “I really believe there has been a failure of leadership at the top.”

Miller theorized that party leaders were overcorrecting after years of backlash after the 2016 presidential election, in which establishment Democrats ignored grassroots support for Sen. Bernie Sanders and instead anointed Hillary Clinton.

With more and more Democratic gubernatorial candidates entering the field over the past year, Miller said he thinks leadership has the “admirable intention” of letting delegates take the field on their own.

But anxiety had already grown ahead of the Democratic convention in February, where none of the nine candidates vying for the gubernatorial nomination, garnered more than 25% – well short of the required 60%. Hicks then faced repeated questions about whether he would intervene, but insisted that was not his role.

“The alarm bells have been going off for months since the party convention,” said Miller, who has consistently voted against Hicks in internal party elections.

After the convention, Hicks released an open letter urging “each candidate to honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaign” and “if you don’t have a credible path to the general election” not to apply. Only one was listening, former Assemblyman Ian Calderon, who polled about 1% or less.

Later, Hicks announced that the party would hold ongoing polls in the race and run them every seven to 10 days until early May when ballots are sent out.

Hicks’ defenders said he was right to refrain from picking favorites. Christine Pelosi said it would be “inappropriate” for the speaker to weigh in on the candidates after delegates at the party convention chose not to endorse anyone.

Hicks’ calls for candidates to “consider their viability” was a “somewhat extraordinary and surprising” move, said Paul Mitchell, the architect of the fraudulent congressional maps that voters approved by Proposition 50 to boost congressional Democrats in the upcoming elections.

“Maybe it wasn’t surprising to people who think the Democratic chairman is like a backroom dealer who’s going to knock heads off or something,” Mitchell said. “But that’s not the role of the chairman in California right now.”

The first two main ones add to the tension

Both Mitchell and Christine Pelosi blamed the top two system for much of the drama. The small possibility that two Republicans may emerge from the primaries spurred many of the calls for leadership to gain weight.

Mitchell argued that because President Donald Trump has tipped the scales by endorsing former Fox News anchor Steve Hilton, there is less risk that he and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco will end up in the November election, easing some of the pressure on Democrats.

“If it wasn’t top two, people wouldn’t care,” Christine Pelosi said. “You won’t have the added hype of ‘there’s only two Republicans and a bunch of Democrats.'”

In particular, the state GOP failed to endorse a candidate at their recent convention, indicating that Trump’s nod may not have as much impact as Democrats assume.

Still, if Hicks is trying to convince rank-and-file Democrats that he’s doing enough, it’s not working.

Amar Shergill, former leader of the party’s progressive caucus, suggested that its weak, decentralized leadership was designed to give moneyed interests greater control over who gets elected.

“Rusty Hicks is a piece of furniture that people with real power use as they see fit,” Shergill said.

“There is no kind of anger or animosity towards him as a person,” he said. “If it wasn’t Rusty, it would have been somebody else. It’s just the political situation right now.”

In an interview, Hicks told CalMatters he’s “doing whatever it takes” to ensure a Democrat wins the race. But when repeatedly pressed, Hicks wouldn’t elaborate on what that job entails, whether he believes what he’s done so far is working or whether he should have had a stronger hand in hitting the field, as his critics have suggested.

“I’m not interested in opening the book on what we’re going to do or not do in the coming days and weeks,” he said.

Yue Stella Yu of CalMatters contributed to this report.

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