Gubernatorial candidates from both major parties gathered at Fresno State on April 1 for a bipartisan forum focused on affordability and challenges facing rural California, with discussions centered on rising costs, water access and the future of the state’s agricultural industry.
The forum, co-hosted by more than 30 agricultural organizations and the Maddy Institute, featured republican candidates Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, along with democratic candidates Katie Porter, Xavier Becerra, Antonio Villaraigosa and Mayor of San Jose Matt Mahan.
Organizers said the event aimed to elevate Central Valley concerns in a statewide race often dominated by urban issues. Opening remarks emphasized the region’s economic importance and ongoing challenges.
“This region produces a quarter of the nation’s fruits and nuts, grows more than 350 commodities, helps feed the world, and yet at the same time, many valley communities face high poverty and higher than average unemployment,” said Blake Zante, executive director of the Maddy Institute.
Affordability was a central focus throughout the forum, with candidates offering different approaches to reducing cost tied to housing, energy and food.
“This is a crisis,” said Becerra, former U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. “This is a break-glass moment when young people today don’t believe they can afford to buy a house. When the very people who pick the crops that feed us can’t afford to go to the grocery store. When we don’t know if we can afford to let our child stay in a hospital room, it’s a crisis.”
Every candidate named two ways that they would make California more affordable, and even though there was a bipartisan mix, everyone seemed to agree that California should cut back on its regulations.
“We’re not serving ourselves by having overly onerous compliance rules that force people to study everything and then you get sued anyway because you missed one thing,” Mahan said.
When it comes to the energy costs of California, republican candidates Hilton and Bianco both took partisan stances that included getting more of our oil from California, and Bianco’s nuclear solution.
The democratic candidates all had different ways of bringing down the cost of energy, but every candidate agreed on speeding up permitting and regulations.
“We’re over being taxed,” said Riverside County Sheriff Bianco. “We are going to be energy independent in California. We are going to be oil independent in California. Electric will be nuclear. You want to talk about clean? There is nothing more clean than nuclear.”
When talking about food affordability, every candidate agreed that the regulations on farming are causing the high food prices at the grocery store.
“California farmers have innovated and innovated,” said former U.S. representative Porter. “They have stretched. They have used technology. They have done what we have asked them to do, but we have to listen back to them.”
Another key point was protecting the agricultural economy in the Central Valley. Each candidate agreed that farming has too much regulation in the state, and that California needs to help farmers by giving them more incentives to stay here.
This topic of conversation also brought up partisanship in California, where former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa talked about the importance of democrats challenging their own party.
“There are a lot of us who figured out that it’s broken up in Sacramento,” Villaraigosa said. “I’ve had the courage to take them on on gas, on overregulation and on housing across the board. I had a relationship with republicans and democrats and we got things done. We’ve lost our way since then.”
The final topic that they discussed was water access in California, specifically water from the delta, groundwater and water storage. Most candidates agreed that there needs to be more ways to store our rainwater and more ways for communities that depend on it to access their groundwater.
“We can manage the reservoir stocks better and the flows in and out of them,” said Hilton, author and Fox News anchor. “The Alice system, for example, there’s so many things that we can do to get back to what we need, which is abundant water for our industry and the whole state.”
The forum also reflected broader differences in how candidates approach solving California’s affordability crisis, particularly when it comes to balancing economic growth with environmental policy. While there was general agreement that costs are too high, candidates offered varying solutions on how to address regulations, energy production and long-term sustainability.
Organizers said the event was meant to get more people in the region involved and give residents a chance to hear directly from the candidates. According to the Maddy Institute, the forum was meant to highlight Central Valley concerns that are often overlooked in statewide elections.
The Fresno event is one of several forums being held across California as candidates seek to connect with voters ahead of the June primaries. As the race continues, affordability and rural issues are expected to remain central to campaign discussions.