Here’s why Democrats have made a mess of California governor’s race

As the California Democratic Party faces the growing possibility of its candidates being locked out of the November election and a Republican becoming governor, some top Democrats are musing about their leaders orchestrating their version of a Joe Biden Reckoning Moment. 

After Biden’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump in June 2024, top donors and party leaders, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, publicly and privately questioned whether Biden should continue running, in part based on polling. 

Biden eventually heeded the call and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Now, some Democrats are calling for a similar intervention with lower-polling candidates in the state. Part of the reason that two Republicans are leading in the polls is that eight Democrats are splitting the vote. 

The problem is that it’s too late to have that conversation. All the lowest-polling candidates are already on the ballot. There is no top California Democrat with the juice and the desire to have those tough talks. Complicating matters is that it’s politically unpalatable for a top white Democratic leader to ask the candidates of color, all of whom are polling poorly, to quit when so many party members are people of color. Besides, it’s unlikely the candidates would heed those requests anyway. 

The reason that leading party figures, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pelosi and others, haven’t publicly backed a candidate or strong-armed anyone to leave is “because nobody knows who can win,” said former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who is close to both. Voters haven’t coalesced around any Democrat.

So now what? Two Republicans are leading the polls roughly a month before voters receive their ballots, and there’s a 19% chance that two Republicans will advance from the June 2 primary to the general election, according to an online tool developed by political data expert Paul Mitchell that runs thousands of simulations of the race. The top two finishers in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, advance.

Here is what top state Democrats are considering doing, although none of their ideas are foolproof: 

Paging Gavin Newsom: Newsom, with a 55% approval rating among likely voters, according to a March survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, is the most likely person to tap some candidates on the shoulder and ask them to bow out. “But he’d have to do it quietly. He wouldn’t have to do it publicly,” said former California Sen. Barbara Boxer.

But, as Brown pointed out, Newsom “is not motivated. Because in a year when he says, ‘Help me (run for president),’ those people will say, ‘Remember when you buried me?’” Newsom’s likely route to the Democratic presidential nomination will be to appeal to the base of the party, which includes many Black and brown voters, Brown said. Muscling out candidates of color would hurt him in achieving his next goal. 

Pelosi to the rescue again: Joe Cotchett, a San Francisco attorney and leading Democratic donor, said, “We need Nancy Pelosi to talk to people directly and tell them, ‘Look, our democracy is at stake.’” But Pelosi’s focus now is saving democracy on another front: She’s traveling the country raising money for Democrats in the midterms. If Democrats can flip the House, they would be able to better check Trump’s power. The situation isn’t as dire in California. Even if a Republican became California’s governor, the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature would handcuff him.

Get the party chair some help: Rusty Hicks, the California Democratic Party chairman, has unsuccessfully tried to winnow the field two different ways. Days before the deadline to file to be on the ballot, Hicks wrote an open letter telling candidates: “It is imperative that every candidate honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaign.” Only one candidate, former Assembly Member Ian Calderon, heeded Hicks’ imperative. Days later, Hicks unveiled a plan to conduct extensive polling and publish the results as a way to publicly shame candidates out of the race. But after the first round of polling was released last week, candidates dug in and vowed to continue. 

The chairman has no juice.

“Rusty WHO?” Brown said Thursday, belittling his lack of power. Brown said his longtime friend and former state party chair, John Burton, never would have let eight Democrats gum up a primary field and risk the governor’s mansion in a deep blue state. “He would have called them up if he heard they were even thinking about it,” Brown said.  

Think of California over self: David Campos, the vice chair of the state party, would like to see a top state Democrat step in. As a person of color, he said, he wants someone like himself to become governor. But that appears unlikely at this point, and so it may be time for the candidates and their supporters to think bigger-picture. 

“The worst thing that can happen for people of color is to elect a Republican governor,” Campos said, “Even if it’s not the ideal candidate that you want to represent the Democratic Party, I will take that imperfect Democratic candidate if it means a Democrat over a Republican.”

Stay the course: Nilza Serrano, chair of the Latino/Chicano Caucus of the California Democratic Party, would like to see all the candidates of color remain in the race because the white candidates can learn something from their lived experiences. Eventually, she hopes the lower-polling candidates realize “that the state is bigger than yourself. The perfect example is President Biden. He did the honorable thing and said, ‘OK, I have to go.’”  

Like Campos’ idea, it’s a nice sentiment, but unlikely to happen at this point. Candidates have invested too much in the race. Plus, there’s a lot of ego involved. As Boxer said, “It’s a very personal decision to run for office. You’ve dreamt about it, you’ve thought about it, you’ve thought about it for a long time. So somebody just telling you not to run is not going to work.”

Do your own poll, then reevaluate: Boxer, who has endorsed former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, had another idea. She said that she would advise candidates who are “polling at under 5% or 4%” to commission their own rigorous polling from a trusted pollster. “See where you are, and look at that (number) and believe that. At that point, for your own future, it would be very smart to endorse someone else who’s closest to you, hold a press conference with that person and be a hero.”

Has she shared that advice with Villaraigosa, currently at 4% of the vote in the state party poll? 

“No, but I am now,” Boxer told me. “And I would if he called me and asked.” 

Leaders need to do better: Eliminating the lower-polling candidates won’t solve the Democrats’ problem mathematically, said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the 2.3 million-member California Labor Federation, which has jointly endorsed former Rep. Katie Porter, environmental activist Tom Steyer, Rep. Eric Swalwell and Villaraigosa. Even if they left, she said it would be hard to predict where their voters would migrate. They might not coalesce around one candidate.

Instead of pressuring low-polling candidates to quit, Gonzalez said, “the bigger kind of push needs to be with those who are at the top to ensure that they’re pushing an agenda that can light people on fire. It’s not so much that people have to drop out, but the people at the top, who are sitting at 10%, really need to get out there and make their case.” 

Form alliances: Brown, the famously transactional former Assembly speaker, suggested that low-polling candidates form an alliance with a top-polling one and look for a top job in their administration. He suggested that Betty Yee, a former state controller and state budget director who polled at 1%, “is the one that all the other candidates ought to be talking to, because she could actually participate in helping to run the state. She has skills.” 

Cut off their funding: Cochett, who is wired into state and national donors, said he met with some of the state’s top fundraisers last week, “trying to figure out how we get a group going that can visit people and say, ‘You are done, my dear friend, here’s something else you can do.’”

“It’s come time for people to face reality,” Cochett said. “There are four or five people that just have to get out of the race to save our democracy. We can’t allow one of the two of the Republicans that are in the race to be elected because they’re nothing but Trump sycophants.”