Five things to know about the California election

from Ben ChristopherCalMatters

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It was a good night for Democrats, a bad night for self-funded campaigns, a night of mixed results for state lawmakers seeking higher office, and yet another reminder of President Donald Trump’s dominant role in our politics, even in Democratic California.

At the top of the list, Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born former Fox News host and political consultant, and veteran Democrat Xavier Becerra hold the top two seats needed to advance to the November gubernatorial election. Tom Steyer, the billionaire former hedge fund manager turned left-wing political donor, is a distant, if technically viable, third place. The Associated Press has not yet announced a winner.

Veteran state election observers know this it could be weeks before the final result of the June primary is known. But some initial conclusions are already beginning to emerge:

Money can’t always buy love

Regardless of whether Steyer ends up winning the top two spots in the governor’s race after spending a record amount in his self-funded campaign, will undoubtedly be a disappointment.

In the end, Steyer spent almost $250 million on his populist gubernatorial campaign. That all that publicity didn’t translate into a landslide election victory isn’t surprising, said Gary South, a longtime strategist for the California Democratic Party.

It may sound ironic to say that you can have too much money in a campaign, but in reality, the way these wealthy, self-funded candidates spend their money becomes a liability. …They are running out of voters’ patience.

Steyer is not the only candidate who has relied heavily on his personal finances only to lose the election. Patrick Wolf invested $600,000 of his own money in his campaign for insurance commissioner, Yvonne Yiu invested $750,000 in her bid for State Board of Equalization and Saikat Chakrabarty contributed most of the millions he spent trying to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress. In Los Angeles, Zach Sokoloff invested a million dollars – with millions more to come comes from his mother- to remove the acting municipal controller.

Chakrabarty failed to place in the top two in his race, losing to the state senator Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan. As of Wednesday morning, the remaining three trailed in their respective polls.

Good night to the “traditional” Democrats.

Anti-governor populism may be on the national airwaves, but California voters seem perfectly happy with — or at least happy with — seasoned, grassroots Democrats.

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

Hence Becerra’s rapid and sudden rise after political collapse of previous favorite Eric Swalwell . Swawell was also known for his political background, which Sinclair said “didn’t like Donald Trump.” Becerra, an amiable character with a solid political history and few troubled backgrounds, was the next logical choice. “Who is the quintessential non-traditional Democrat who can stand up to the Republicans? Becerra is probably that guy.

It helped that Becerra’s main Democratic opponent, the self-described populist Steyer, had billionaire status, an easy target for attacks, and that Democrats, worried about being shut out in the general election, wanted to back whoever did better in the polls.

Many of the current Democratic congressmen seem to have resisted the challenges of the more progressive young rebels, or at least kept them firmly in the background. Among them are Mike Thompson, Brad Sherman and Doris Matsui.

The game still matters

In 2010, when California adopted the two-round primary system, advocates pitched it to voters as a way to break the partisan gridlock in California politics. Instead of Democratic and Republican primary voters predictably electing candidates who appeal to ideological extremes, a system that allows all candidates from all parties to compete on a single ballot should encourage the participation of candidates who might appeal to centrist voters.

According to South, centrist voters are less likely to participate in primaries.

The state’s two-vote system has never resulted in a general election race for governor with two Democrats. Despite speculation of a showdown between then-Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa in 2018 or the possibility of a Becerra-Steyer showdown this year, California’s gubernatorial elections have always followed a partisan pattern, with mobilized Democratic voters backing their candidate and Republicans doing the same.

Likewise, the top two positions in both the lieutenant governor and treasurer races are also contested between Democrats and Republicans. The one exception: Starting Wednesday, two Democratic nominees will become the next insurance commissioner — Jane Kim and Sen. Ben Allen- They seem to be heading for the November election.

The goalless game that wasn’t

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

With so many Democrats running and no one dominating the race, many in the party feared from the start 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 result, and for Democrats a nightmare, led party chairman Rusty Hicks to commission a study to pressure some of the Democratic candidates least likely to vote to withdraw for the good of the party and the state.

almost no one did . But was it because Democratic voters were scared enough to for strategic avoidance that outcome, or since total defeat was never very likely in the first place, doesn’t seem likely to happen.

Democrats have already overcome similar electoral hurdles. In 2018, the large number of anti-Trump Democratic congressional candidates threatened giving Republicans the top two seats in tight statewide races. There was no crushing defeat in the primary this year. California Democrats swept the ensuing general election, known as the “blue wave.” it was a similar concern among Democrats on the eve of a recall election over a possible procedural error that could hand the governorship to a Republican. Newsom rejected the withdrawal by a large majority.

Despite repeated bouts of Democratic unrest, the most notable of the top two “lockdowns” in recent memory occurred in a heavily conservative state senatorial district in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 2022, where a large group of Republicans finished cannibalizing the Republican vote, leaving two Democrats in first and second place.

The winner of this race, Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil eventually switched parties and joined the Republicans. Early Wednesday, he was in third place in his re-election campaign, behind Jayron 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.

Unfortunately, this charisma was not enough for Rendon to occupy the largely symbolic position of superintendent of public instruction . As of Wednesday, it was in fourth place.

Likewise, state Sen Anna Caballero The Merced Democrat, who once chaired the state Senate’s powerful Appropriations Committee, is a distant third in the running for treasurer, far behind Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and little-known Republican Jennifer Hawkes. The deputy Jasmeet Bains a moderate Democrat, is also trailing in the race to unseat Central Valley Republican Rep. David Valadao, currently ousted from second place by university professor Randy Villegas, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders. And a former state senator Stephen Bradford He is in eighth place in the race for insurance commissioner.

That wasn’t bad news for state lawmakers looking for other job opportunities. The senator Ben Allen came in second in the insurance race, while Wiener and Senator Aisha Wahab two Democratic legislators from the San Francisco Bay Area easily took first place in their races for Congress.

Jeanne Quang contributed to this report.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under license Creative Commons Attribution/Attribution-Noncommercial.