Dem
47
GOP
53
Now that Eric Swalwell is out of the way, the coast is clear for billionaire Tom Steyer to try to buy the governorship of California. It is not unheard of for billionaires to become governor of a state. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) is a billionaire. The former governor of West Virginia, now-Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV), is also a billionaire. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, yet another billionaire, was formerly governor of North Dakota. Steyer has already spent $115 million in broadcast ads, with more to come. This is much more than all the other candidates combined, and by a large margin.
Steyer is not the first person to spend a lot of money running for office in California. Rick Caruso spend over $100 million running for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022. Meg Whitman spent $179 million running for governor in 2010. Both of them lost. However, both of them are Republicans, and California is a very blue state. In contrast, Steyer is not trying to get Republicans to vote for him. He is trying to convince Democrats that he is the best Democrat running. That is much easier.
Although many Democrats hate billionaires and think they have too much power and influence, in terms of his stated policy positions, Steyer is a pretty generic, center-left Democrat. Or he was, at least. His campaign website lists eight issues he is running on:
Readers might be able to infer Steyer's strategy from that rundown. He very clearly thinks that the progressive lane is up for grabs, and he's making a play for it. There is not a lot there that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would object to, except maybe he might prefer blocking AI rather than focusing on making it benefit everyone. Steyer's commercials, which are on TV constantly (see: $115 million and counting) lean into this even more aggressively. It's not a crazy thought; the only "true progressive" who has made a dent is Katie Porter, and some lefty voters are not sold on her bona fides, while others find her personally unlikable.
We've written a few times that the revelations that ruined Swalwell came in the midst of a Steyer-funded anti-Swalwell ad blitz. Consequently, more than a few people put two and two together, and speculated that Steyer was behind the revelations. Reader S.C. in Mountain View, CA is pretty dialed in, and reports that it just isn't so:
Back on April 13, when (V) & (Z) first wrote about the news that the Swalwell campaign was unraveling, they remarked that "there is some scuttlebutt that the information that brought Swalwell down came courtesy of the Steyer campaign." However, they did not link to any stories or social media posts that contained or referenced that scuttlebutt. Not that this is the reason why they didn't, but apparently that scuttlebutt wasn't true.
According to this Politico story, the information that brought down Swalwell was collected by two social media posters—Arielle Fodor (also known as "Mrs. Frazzled") and Cheyenne Hunt—and an unnamed friend of Hunt; they then referred the women who contacted them to CNN. (On The Media did an interview with Melanie Mason, one of the authors of the Politico story, that I highly recommend. It's the first segment of the April 17 podcast.)
At best a political consultant by the name of Mike Trujillo (no, not THAT Mike Trujillo), who formed a Super PAC to support former Assembly Speaker and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's campaign for Governor, played a small role in the unraveling. But as far as I can tell Tom Steyer's campaign did not provide the information that led to Swalwell's downfall.
Full disclosure: I am active with the California Democratic Party (CDP) and was able to talk directly to two Gubernatorial candidates, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Board of Equalization member and former State Controller Betty Yee at the recent CDP State Convention in Sacramento. I was impressed by both of them, but I know Betty better (she was supportive of my starting a Children's Issues Caucus in the CDP decades ago) and would like to vote for her in the primary. However, according to a tracking poll being released every few weeks by the CDP, she's not doing so well. I won't make up my mind until the weekend before the primary, maybe not even until the day of the primary. But if I had to rank them today, my order of preference would be Yee, Thurmond, Porter, Xavier Becerra, Villaraigosa, Steyer, and some of the remaining Democrats (excluding Swalwell) plus the No Party Preference candidates in some order. (There will be 24 Democrats including Swalwell, 12 Republicans, one Libertarian, one Peace and Freedom candidate, and 23 No Party Preference candidates on the ballot.)
Thanks, S.C.!
As chance would have it, about 12 hours after we got S.C.'s report, Yee officially reached the end of the line and dropped out. She chose a curious strategy, in that her politics are progressive, but her message was "slow and steady governance." She even took to calling herself "Boring Betty." Problem #1 here is that progressive voters prefer dramatic action, not "slow and steady governance." Problem #2 is that nearly all Democrats in California hate Donald Trump, and want someone who will poke him in the eye on a regular basis, the way that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) does. So, Yee not only failed to catch fire, she actually bled support among the voters who have previously supported her (most noticeably, Asian Americans). Yee's fundraising was anemic and she was barely registering in polls. That's a very bad combination, and so she's done.
Since Yee was polling at around 1%, her exit doesn't figure to affect the race all that much. There have now been three polls conducted since Swalwell exited the race. And since Trump made his endorsement (of Steve Hilton) before Swalwell imploded, that means the polls took place after that, as well. Here they are:
| Pollster | Steve Hilton | Chad Bianco | Tom Steyer | Xavier Becerra | Katie Porter | Matt Mahan |
| Emerson | 17% | 14% | 14% | 10% | 10% | 5% |
| Kreate Strategies | 18% | 14% | 16% | 10% | 10% | 4% |
| Independent Voter News | 20% | 17% | 14% | 23% | 11% | 4% |
We've included every candidate who polled at 5% in any of the three polls.
That Independent Voter News poll is the most recent of the three, having been completed on Monday and released yesterday. We pass it along, because we're a full-service site, but we don't like anything about it. We don't like the wonky-looking result, we don't like the name of the pollster, we don't like that we've never heard of this pollster. That said, it is clear from the combination of the three polls that Becerra has some momentum. Is it enough for him to overtake Steyer? Maybe. Californians don't like politicians who try to buy their offices (see above), and since Becerra might consolidate the Latino vote, and some fair chunk of the progressive vote.
The other thing to note, is that Bianco finished in third place in each poll. He finished behind a different Democrat in the first two as compared to the third one, and his third-place finish was by a fraction of a point in the Emerson poll. Still, the evidence continues to suggest that California's unique jungle-primary political gravity is kicking in, and that the state's Democratic voters will not be so foolish as to lock themselves out of the general election. (Z & V)