Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra are headed to a faceoff for governor in the November general election.
Eric Thayer/LA Times via Getty, Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
The utterly unpredictable race for governor of California became utterly predictable late Tuesday when the Associated Press projected that Republican Steve Hilton had bested Democrat Tom Steyer for second place.
That almost certainly means that barring some tectonic unforeseen event, Democrat Xavier Becerra will be elected governor in November.
Along the way, California had slew gubernatorial front-runners — presumptive, polling and actual — over the past year: former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Rep. Katie Porter, Sen. Alex Padilla, former Rep. Eric Swalwell, Hilton and Becerra.
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It’s noteworthy that until late April, Becerra was languishing in single digits in the polls before Swalwell was forced from the race and had to resign his safe congressional seat because of revelations that would have proven even more disastrous for the Democrats had they not been revealed ahead of the primary.
The Sacramento-San Francisco Political Anointment Machine discovered that maybe the barely vetted, stubbly, social media maven Swalwell was engaged in unwanted sexual advances, frightening encounters allegedly involving drugs, and unwanted photo exchanges with young women on his staff and off.
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With that, the same machine that had lined up behind Swalwell decided that the smartest person in the race, Porter, was too testy to play ball with because she expressed pique in a few TV clips. Capital crime, that. Men never do such awful things, right? Oh, wait, Becerra went on to lecture an L.A. TV journalist on how not to ask him questions. (Let’s not even bother discussing the president’s Sunday tantrum on “Meet the Press.”)
Simply put, the machine wanted a safe bet. Fearful D’s had fretted for months about a potential top-two consisting of a Hobson’s choice between the charming but out-of-sync Hilton and the terribly inarticulate Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
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Steyer spent $215 million of his billions while Porter fumed about his big bucks, and Becerra was picking up steam with exhausted voters who, like the party big wigs, mostly wanted unity behind a candidate who could be assured victory without a messy battle over how the Democrats should govern.
Becerra, a man of little charisma and even fewer actual policy ideas, will almost certainly succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
Do I feel a yawn coming on?
At-best a stolid campaigner, Becerra probably won’t have to lift a finger against his, yes, charismatic but out-of-sync former Fox News host challenger.
Hilton, to his credit, distanced himself on Tuesday from Trump’s squalid ramblings about the alleged hinkiness of the glacial California vote count and a contest that has been many things, but wasn’t “rigged.”
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“We’ve seen nothing,” Hilton told reporters in Norwalk on Tuesday regarding Trumpian allegations of fraud.
Of course, Trump will continue his delusional bleating about California’s molasses-vote counting, and will likely bring this unreality show to other contested states until Election Day. It won’t work.
So is the November election a foregone conclusion? Yes, Becerra’s former campaign manager Dana Williamson, former chief of staff Sean McCluskie, and lobbyist Greg Campbell all took plea deals in their unseemly campaign money-shifting scheme, but that seems to be as far as this goes — fingers crossed.
If there is more juice in that orange, Hilton and his Republican rewards team will certainly squeeze it out. But don’t bet on it.
Instead, head over to Polymarket and place your wager on the likelihood that the coming negative ad blitz will be a wash and that the parties will fall in line behind candidates, handing Becerra victory in November.
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This race, like those in San Francisco, left progressives out in the cold. A golden opportunity to elect a truly progressive Golden State governor was missed. Why?
Maybe because Steyer, a billionaire who had to spend billions to position himself as the true progressive in the race, didn’t simply fund the campaign of a credible working class hero candidate like Porter or Toni Atkins.
Now California liberals are stuck with Becerra, who noted without irony awhile back that, “You need Chevron. I need Chevron. My people of the state of California need Chevron … Chevron wants to give me a check, that’s — that’s their prerogative.”
Not an inspiring slogan for any Democrat in 2026, and California progressives will have to suck it up until 2030 or 2034.
Likewise, Becerra has expressed, um, a lack of enthusiasm for Newsom’s EV goals for 2035, which once seemed attainable. With Becerra saying he’d also “scrap” high-speed rail until the bugs are worked out you can pretty much kiss those aspirations of fighting climate change goodbye.
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Of course, Gov. Becerra may not end up being so horrible, but he sure doesn’t seem well positioned to shake things up. More than likely, he’ll sign things into law that are OK, but don’t look to him to stand up to the special interests in Sacramento.
That’s why they tapped him, after all.
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Becerra has made an entire career playing Chauncey Gardner, the pleasantly vacant character in the 1980 film “Being There,” mostly being there for whoever wants him to be there.
I guess that includes California’s Democratic electorate.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman