Hilton, Becerra lead and Steyer trails in California governor poll

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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In two weeks, we’ll likely know which of the 61 gubernatorial candidates finished 1-2 in the primaries and will face each other in November for the dubious honor of governing a state that may be ungovernable.

The weasel adverb “probably” is justified because three gubernatorial candidates are in a close race, and California is notorious for taking a long time to do a final election count.

The the latest Democratic pollreleased Tuesday, Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born former Fox News commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former attorney general, were nearly tied with 22 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Billionaire Tom Steyer is still alive with 15%, but all the other once-viable candidates trail by single digits.

There are three potential outcomes of the June 2 primary, assuming none of the remaining 58 candidates defy political gravity and enter the race in the next two weeks.

Hilton and Becerra are most likely the top two qualifiers and will face each other in the November election. It’s less likely that Hilton and Steyer finish 1-2, or that both Democrats hold both top spots.

Given the state’s lopsided Democratic voter registration advantage, Hilton’s only realistic chance to win in November would be for his Democratic challenger to somehow self-destruct. This is an unlikely scenario, but this campaign has already generated a series of unpredictable events, so nothing should be dismissed immediately.

A semi-covert campaign is underway by Democratic operatives to publicize Hilton’s ties to deeply unpopular President Donald Trump, hoping it will spark a surge of Republican support that will propel him into one of the top two rankings, thereby avoiding a Democrat-versus-Democrat showdown.

That’s exactly what happened in the U.S. Senate race two years ago, when Democrat Adam Schiff helped Republican Steve Garvey advance to the November election, avoiding a showdown with Democrat Katie Porter. Porter is now running for governor, but has faded to 7% in the latest poll.

Earlier in the governor’s race, Democrats worried about a 1-2 Republican finish in the primary that would lock them out of the governorship, but that possibility disappeared when the leading Democrat, Eric Stallwell, erupted amid accusations of sexual harassment and assault.

Stalwell’s dropout (his name remains on the ballot) thrust Becerra, who had been languishing in the lower tier of candidates, into contention overnight.

Since then, he has been the target of ever-escalating personal attacks from Steyer, who has spent millions of his vast fortune on a nonstop barrage of TV and Internet ads accusing Becerra of seemingly everything that doesn’t cause psoriasis palpitations.

The most pressing charge is that Becerra was somehow guilty of a scheme in which money from one of his campaign accounts was siphoned into the pockets of what he believed to be a trusted aide.

Three people have pleaded guilty to federal chargesand prosecutors consider Becerra a victim, not a perpetrator. But that hasn’t stopped Steyer from launching attacks that are just a micrometer away from blaming Becerra.

One Steyer pin: “Becerra’s campaign manager and chief of staff have been accused of stealing from his campaign, raising the question: Was Becerra complicit or too incompetent to notice?”

While the scenario of a 1-2 Republican finish disappeared with Becerra’s rapid rise and the drop of the other GOP candidate, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the possibility of a Republican freeze has so unnerved Democratic leaders that they now plan to do away with the top-two system that they — and GOP apparatchiks — never liked in the first place because it leaves too much to chance.

Or, in other words, it’s considered too small “d” democratic.

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