5 things you need to know about the California election results

from Ben ChristopherCalMatters

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It was a good night for mainstream Democrats, a bad one for self-funded campaigns, a mixed bag for state lawmakers seeking higher office and yet another 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 anchor and British political adviser Steve Hilton and longtime Democrat Xavier Becerra hold the top two positions needed to advance to the November gubernatorial election. Tom Steyer, the billionaire former hedge fund manager turned left-leaning political donor, holds a distant but technically viable third place. The Associated Press has not announced the race.

Veteran state election watchers will know this it could be weeks before the final result of the June primary election is tallied. But a few early takeaways are already in focus:

Money can’t (always) buy you love

Will Steyer eventually work his way into the top two spots in the governor’s race after spending a record amount of his self-funded campaign, it must be a disappointing return on investment.

In the end, Steyer spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on his populist gubernatorial bid. The fact that all that advertising didn’t lead to an electoral failure is no surprise, said Gary South, a longtime strategist for the California Democratic Party.

“It might sound like a joke to say you can have too much money in a campaign, but actually the way these wealthy self-funded candidates spend their money becomes a liability. … They wear out their welcome.”

Steyer isn’t the only candidate who has dug deep into his personal finances only to screw up at the polls. Patrick Wolf put $600,000 of his own money into his campaign for insurance commissioner, Yvonne Yiu put $750,000 into her statewide race Leveling board and Saikat Chakrabarty put most of the millions he spent to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress. In Los Angeles, Zach Sokoloff bet $1 million – with millions more to come coming from his mother — to remove the sitting city controller.

Chakrabarty could not reach the top two in his competition, losing to the state Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan. As of Wednesday morning, the remaining three trailed in their respective races.

Good night to the “standard” Democrats

Anti-government populism may be in the national zeitgeist, but California voters seem perfectly content with — or at least comfortable with — experienced, diverse Democrats.

“What they want is an elected representative of the Democratic Party who can go and fight Donald Trump,” said Andrew Sinclair, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna University.

Hence Becerra’s sharp, sudden rise after the political implosion of former favorite Eric Swalwell. Swawell was also known as a seasoned politician who “Donald Trump didn’t like,” Sinclair said. The soft-spoken Becerra, with a deep political background and limited baggage, was the next logical choice. “Who is your standard, non-standard Democrat that you can get to fight the Republicans? Becerra is probably that guy.”

It helped that Becerra’s main Democratic opponent, the self-styled populist Steyer, had the easily-assailable status of a billionaire, and Democrats, worried about being shut out in the general election, wanted to get behind the top pollster.

Many of the Democratic incumbents in Congress also appear to be fighting off challenges from younger, more progressive insurgents — or at least keeping them firmly in second place. Among them are Mike Thompson, Brad Sherman and Doris Matsui.

The party still matters

Back in 2010, when California adopted the top-two primary system, supporters pitched it to voters as a way to shake up the partisan gridlock of California politics. Instead of voters in the Democratic and Republican primaries predictably choosing candidates who appeal to the ideological poles, a system that allows every candidate from each party to compete on the same ballot should have encouraged candidates reaching across the aisle who might appeal to voters in the middle.

Voters in the middle are less likely to show up in primaries, South said.

Nor has the state’s top-two system ever produced a two-Democrat general election race for governor. For all the tales of the then Lieut. With Gov. Gavin Newsom running against Antonio Villaraigosa in 2018 or the possibility of a Becerra-Steyer showdown this year, California’s gubernatorial races have always reverted to a partisan model with energized Democratic voters gravitating around their candidate and Republicans doing the same.

Likewise, the top two spots in both the lieutenant governor and treasurer races are also blue versus red. The one exception: Starting Wednesday, two Democratic nominees will become the next insurance commissioner — Jane Kim and Sen. Ben Allen — appear to be headed for the November election.

The exclusion that wasn’t

Democrats can now officially stop worrying about a dreaded “shutdown” scenario..

With so many Democrats crammed 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 first and second place in the primary.

Concerns about such a paradoxical and Democratic nightmare result prompted party chairman Rusty Hicks to order a study to get some of the lowest-performing Democratic candidates to withdraw for the good of the party and the state.

almost no one did. But or because Democratic voters were scared enough strategic avoidance that outcome—or because the shutdown was never that likely in the first place—doesn’t seem likely to happen.

Democrats have dodged such electoral bullets before. In 2018, a glut of anti-Trump Democratic congressional candidates threatened to give Republicans both top spots in competitive statewide races. There were no disruptions in the primary this year. California Democrats eventually cleaned things up in the ensuing “blue wave” general election. There were similar ones Democratic hand wringing on the eve of a recall election over a possible procedural mishap that could hand the governorship to a Republican. Newsom crushed the takedown.

Despite repeated bouts of anger from Democrats, the most famous of the two biggest deadlocks in recent memory was in a deeply conservative state senatorial district in the Sierra foothills in 2022, where a tight pack of Republicans finished cannibalizing the GOP vote leaving two Democrats in first and second place.

The winner of this contest, Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gilswitched parties to join the Republicans anyway. Early Wednesday, she was trailing in third place in her re-election race behind Jaron Brandon, a Democrat, and Alexandra Duarte, a Republican.

Which senator?

Anthony Rendon was a former speaker of the California Assembly. In the organizational chart of state government, this made him one of the three most powerful people in the Capitol, along with his Senate counterpart and the governor.

Alas, that wasn’t enough star power for Rendon to secure the largely symbolic position superintendent of public instruction. As of Wednesday, he is in fourth place.

Similarly say Sen. Anna CaballeroThe Merced Democrat, who once served as a powerful state Senate president, is a distant third in her bid to become treasurer — far behind Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and little-known Republican Jennifer Hawkes. deputy Jasmeet Bainsa moderate Democrat, is also trailing in his race to unseat Central Valley Republican Rep. David Valladao, currently ousted from second place by Sen. Bernie Sanders-backed college professor Randy Villegas. And the former state senator. Stephen Bradford brings eighth place in the race for insurance commissioner.

That wasn’t bad news for state lawmakers looking for other job opportunities. Sen. Ben Allen is second in the insurance race, while Wiener and Sen. Aisha Wahabtwo Democratic lawmakers from the San Francisco Bay Area, both easily topped their respective congressional races.

Jeanne Quang contributed to this report.

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