To the Point host Alex Bell sat down with California’s governor candidates to hear directly from them about their priorities and what they’d bring to the job.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — This June, Californians will head to the polls to help decide who could become the state’s next governor. While the final decision comes in November — for now, nine leading Democratic hopefuls and several Republicans are in the race.
To help you get to know them and what they say they’d bring to the job, ABC10 “To the Point” host Alex Bell sat down with the candidates.
To keep things fair, names were drawn at random for these interviews. Interview responses have been cleaned up and slightly condensed for easier reading, while keeping the candidate’s words intact.
Congressman Eric Swalwell
Q: For people that are meeting you for the first time, why would you say that you’re running to be the governor of California?
Congressman Eric Swalwell: “Well, the next governor has two jobs. The first is to keep the president and his troops and his ICE agents out of our streets, out of our homes, out of our lives. I’ve done that work as a former prosecutor, but also someone who’s been a part of every major investigation against Donald Trump from the Russia investigation to both impeachments to leading the January 6 effort that exists now, I’ve got a lawsuit, the only one that survived the new presidency, me and the January 6 officer, so I know how to go on offense as he chases immigrants in California through the fields and factories where they work. And as governor, I’ll go on offense every single day. Not why I want to do the job. That’s what you have to do.
The second part is what I really want to do, which is to lower the costs. I was a planning commissioner and a city council member in Dublin where I grew up. It was a place of low income, lower expectations, but when I came back home, we built like crazy. We attracted new small businesses and ultimately higher paying tech and biotech jobs, and we saw the schools get better, the streets get safer, and the quality of life go up. They used to call us “Scrublin when I was growing up there. They don’t call us Scrublin anymore. It’s one of the best places to live in California. I want to do that all over the state.”
Q: If you were to be elected, what would be your top three priorities your first year in office?
Congressman Eric Swalwell: “Yeah, it’s going to be increasing revenue for the state so that we can pay for our healthcare and education obligations. It’s going to be meeting our housing need, particularly apartments and first-time homebuyer homes, and it’s going to be going on offense against the administration so that the most vulnerable Californians are protected.”
Q: California has spent billions in addressing homelessness. Why do you think this major problem still persists to this day when we’ve already spent so much money on it? And what would you do differently to address this?
Congressman Eric Swalwell: “I don’t see it as a resource challenge. We’ve put a lot of resources in this, and so I’ll focus particularly on the nonprofit and faith-based community where they’re already doing the work rather than creating a new state program surge resources to what they’ve done. Governor Newsom led the way with Prop 1 that created a lot of funding and mental health.
We’re going to expand on that, but I know personally from having a family member who was homeless and chasing him through the tenderloin in this city in San Francisco that too often we give all of the rights to the person in the equation who is least able to take care of themselves or make decisions, and that relates to the severely ill and the severely addicted.
So I want to work with the legislature to do the really hard part and make a policy change as it relates to who has the rights to decide the care that they get.”
Q: Do you think California has gone too far, not far enough, or struck the right balance when it comes to criminal justice reform?
Congressman Eric Swalwell: “I’m a former prosecutor. I’m a son of a cop, brother to cops, and I know that paramount in our community is to protect Californians, and that’s why I worked to protect them from ICE agents who are chasing them through the streets. It’s also why I’m endorsed by the California Police Chiefs Association and the firefighters and I supported Prop 36 back in 2024. I want to make sure that people who were committing this mass retail crime in our communities were held accountable.
But I also know that most individuals who commit crimes are worthy of redemption, redemption that I would work with them to find when I sat in the courtroom as a prosecutor and as governor, redemption that I’ll work with them to find as a leader of the state.”
More interviews with the candidates for governor will be posted as they air on ABC10.