What the election night results mean for the California governor’s race

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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An interrogation is a staple scene in cop TV shows, with a detective often telling a suspect that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

That phrase pretty much describes the situation of Democrat Xavier Becerra Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary.

It seemed almost certain that he would finish first or second in the polls and early results on Election Day and thus advance to the general election in November. But it was not certain whether billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer or Steve Hilton, a British-born former TV commentator, would also be one of the top two.

If it were Hilton, Becerra likely would have won easily in November, given the state’s very uneven margin of registered Democratic voters over Republicans — the latest count of 45% to 25% — and Hilton’s relationship with the wildly unpopular President Donald Trump.

Meeting Steyer in November would be a much different scenario. he spent more than $200 million on his primary campaignmuch of it in television and Internet ads that portray Becerra as incompetent or potentially corrupt. If given the chance, he would spend even more on attacks.

As of Wednesday morning, 12 hours after the polls closed, it looked very likely that Hilton would be Becerra’s November challenger if the results stood, and therefore just as likely that the former congressman, attorney general and Biden administration cabinet member would succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.

like votes were counted throughout the nightBecerra and Hilton went head-to-head with shares in the mid-20% range — Hilton slightly ahead this morning — while Steyer trailed by about seven or eight percentage points.

Late Tuesday night, appearing before a crowd of cheering supporters in Los Angeles, Becerra came close to declaring himself the primary winner. He cast himself, should he win in November, as “a working-class governor with a law degree and a union card.”

He will also be California’s only Latino governor in the state’s modern era, and thus a symbolic figure for the state’s largest ethnic group, which he celebrated by delivering some of his remarks in Spanish.

Becerra’s rise to the top of a field of 61 candidates for future governor is one of the many unforeseen aspects of a campaign unlike any we’ve seen in the post-World War II era.

For months we didn’t even know who was running. The race did not have a natural favorite as potentially dominant figures like the former vice president Kamala Harris weighed their chances but missed it. Senator Alex Padilla and Attorney General Rob Bonta also deviated. Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announced she would run, then dropped out to run for state treasurer, a race she leads with more than half the ballots counted.

The field has narrowed down to 10 serious candidates. Two months ago, Becerra was just one of several lower-level politicians with just a 4 percent share of support in an April 5 poll by the state Democratic Party. Congressman Eric Swwell was the leading Democrat in that poll at 12 percent, closely followed by Steyer.

Only days later, however, Swawell suspended his campaign and resigned from Congress after several women accused him of sexual harassment or assault. By mid-April, Becerra had shot to the top of the Democratic pile, tied at 13% with Steyer in a later poll.

From then on, it was a one-on-one duel with Steyer. Despite a steady barrage of personal insults from his rival, Becerra continued to win, and as of the latest Democratic Party poll on May 16, he led Steyer 21% to 15%, about the same margin in the election results so far.

While it’s still arithmetically possible that Steyer could claim one of the top two positions, nothing in the overnight results pointed in that direction.

That means we’ll soon be moving into November and what will likely be an easy win for Becerra, who will then learn just how difficult it is to run such a complex country.

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