Low-polling Democratic candidates for governor on Tuesday swiftly rejected a top party official’s call for them to quit the race ahead of Friday’s filing deadline, even as Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was sympathetic to the idea that some should step aside.
In an open letter published Tuesday morning, California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks warned that with a broad Democratic field and no clear frontrunner, two Republicans — Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco — could win the most votes in the June top-two primary, locking Democrats out of the general election. He called that outcome “implausible,” but “not impossible,” and said it could depress turnout and hurt Democrats’ efforts to flip the U.S. House of Representatives.
In a follow-up interview with The Sacramento Bee, Hicks declined to say whether he had private discussions with candidates about dropping out. He reiterated his call for them to assess the viability of their campaign, saying only they could determine whether they have a path to win.
“I’m simply saying publicly what many have said in private,” Hicks said.
Those voices are increasingly becoming public.
Newsom, who has stayed out of the race to replace him, suggested he agreed with the sentiment of the letter in a Tuesday interview with CBS Los Angeles.
“To be candid with you, my first reaction is, I get why he sent the letter,” Newsom said.
And, in a statement, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, urged candidates not to file if “they aren’t ready or able to go the distance.”
“With respect, they know who they are,” Rivas said.
A Public Policy Institute of California survey released last week found three Democrats — former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, billionaire Tom Steyer, and Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin — were locked in a virtual dead heat with Hilton and Bianco.
None of the remaining six Democratic candidates, who each polled at 5% or less, appeared willing to heed the calls to step aside.
Former state Controller Betty Yee filed official candidacy paperwork Tuesday, despite what she described as daily emails urging her to drop out of the governor’s race. Yee noted that a majority of voters told PPIC pollsters they were not following the election closely.
“To me, this is still wide open,” Yee said.
Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said he plans to officially file for the race Wednesday and argued that he remains a top-tier candidate despite a dip in his polling since Steyer and Swalwell entered.
“Viability is about winning votes, not polls,” Becerra said, pointing to the statewide votes he won en route to being elected California attorney general in 2016.
Other candidates responded to Hicks’ letter more stridently.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond filed his official candidacy paperwork Tuesday and posted a video on social media calling the political system “rigged” and “corrupted by the political elites.”
“The California Democratic Party is essentially telling every candidate of color to drop out,” said Thurmond, who is Black.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement that “voters choose the next governor, not political gatekeepers,” and former Assemblymember Ian Calderon from Los Angeles said that the party should “stop trying to manage the outcome.”
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Ben Paviour is the California political power reporter for The Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Bureau. He previously covered Virginia state politics for public radio and was a local investigations fellow at The New York Times. He got his start in journalism at the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. Before becoming a reporter, he worked in local government and tech in the Bay Area.