From the very first polls, the 2026 California governor’s race has almost always been led by two Republicans: former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. This was due to the fact that there were so many credible Democrats dividing the 65% to 70% of voters who at least lean left. Since write-in ballots are not allowed in the general election, this created the possibility that the two very MAGA Republicans would advance in the June primary, ensuring that deep blue California would elect a Donald Trump devotee as governor in November.
But it always seemed just a matter of time before at least one Democrat would consolidate support and reach the general election. Bay Area Rep. Eric Swalwell, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer looked like the best bets. Yet none of them have made gains since the winter, leading pollsters sympathetic to Democrats to warn last month that there was a 20% chance that voters would see a Hilton-Bianco race come fall. And the Democratic freakout began.
State party chairman Rusty Hicks urged prominent Democrats with the least support to drop out. But none did. Former Controller Betty Yee, state schools chief Tony Thurmond, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra all are still running.
Now this freakout has moved to a new focus — one that blames this predicament not on these stubborn veteran Democrats but on election reforms approved by the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010. They created California’s top-two open primary system, in which all candidates run on a single primary ballot and the two highest vote-getters advance to November, regardless of party — meaning general elections can feature two candidates from the same party instead of one Democrat and one Republican.
Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton and influential consultant Steve Maviglio are among those who argue that it is time to admit the reforms have failed — that they hadn’t achieved their goal of moderating state politics by ending a partisan primary system that often gave general election voters a choice between hard-left and hard-right candidates. Instead, they’ve led to many elections in which the options are very progressive and moderately progressive politicians, and they’ve also led to elections in which well-funded Democratic candidates essentially pick their Republican opponents by helping them directly or indirectly before primaries. The latter phenomenon is a genuine problem.
But on balance, a case can be made that in one very significant area, the reforms have paid off. In districts with higher concentrations of low-income voters, there are fewer Democratic lawmakers eager to support costly, far-reaching environmental policies than there used to be. This is a key reason why nearly all of the major new green initiatives in recent years have been accomplished via Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive orders or California Air Resources Board edicts.
What we are seeing is the political version of the aphorism that “hard cases make for bad law.” Democrats shouldn’t overreact. If the experts are right, there is still an 80% chance that a Democrat will advance to the general election and then win easily. And if that doesn’t happen, there is a 100% chance that Gov. Hilton or Bianco will be recalled. Republicans who backed the laughable and deservedly unsuccessful 2021 recall of Newsom won’t have a leg to stand on in blasting this as an undemocratic power play.