California Democrats walked away from their annual convention this weekend without making an endorsement for their anointed successor to Gov. Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n
With eight candidates eligible for the state party\u2019s endorsement \u2014 San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan jumped into the race too late to be considered<\/a> \u2014 the odds that 60% of delegates would coalesce around one candidate were low. But with some candidates who have been consistently polling toward the back of the pack garnering support from party insiders, it\u2019s unclear whether Democrats will be able to shrink the field before the filing deadline next month.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it is a little clearer on who needs to get out, but there\u2019s not a big impetus to do that,\u201d Sonoma State Political Science Professor David McCuan said, noting that it\u2019s going to take Democratic heavyweights like Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi or former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to put pressure on some of the candidates.<\/p>\n Democrats looked to capitalize off the momentum of the passage of Proposition 50 \u2014 the gerrymandering ballot initiative approved by voters in November \u2014 at the three-day convention, which was held at San Francisco\u2019s Moscone Center. The gathering of 3,500 delegates and other party members also acted as a sort of swan song for Pelosi, who was one of the featured speakers and was honored at a special tribute service for her nearly 40 years in Congress as she heads toward retirement<\/a>.<\/p>\n But consolidation of candidates in the governor\u2019s race was also at the forefront of many Democrats\u2019 minds at the convention. With nine prominent Democrats in the race, there\u2019s been a growing concern reverberating throughout the party that the Democratic candidates will split their party\u2019s vote in June, effectively sending two Republicans into the runoff. California has a \u201cjungle primary\u201d system where the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the November election.<\/p>\n Former state Controller Betty Yee was among the candidates that McCuan said were \u201ctargets for consolidation,\u201d but she ultimately found strong support among the party with the second-highest percentage of delegates (17.3%) casting their vote for her.<\/p>\n Yee performed poorly in an independent poll from Emerson College<\/a> released last week, placing second to last among Democratic candidates with 1.8% of support<\/a>\u00a0among all voters, with a similar showing among Democratic voters surveyed.<\/p>\n McCuan credits the disconnect to Yee\u2019s ability to \u201cleverage the party faithful\u201d as she\u2019s run in San Francisco\u2019s political circle for years now. But that isn\u2019t likely to translate to voter support.<\/p>\n \u201cThe activist-insiders do not elect the governor,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s still a mountain to climb if you are a single-digit candidate (in the polls).\u201d<\/p>\n Yee has dismissed calls for her to drop out and told the Bay Area News Group that she tries \u201cnot to pay attention to (it) because I\u2019m just staying focused on how I run a race and continue to garner support.\u201d<\/p>\n The former controller, who cast herself on Saturday as the \u201cadult in the room that doesn\u2019t need on-the-job training,\u201d said she hopes she receives a bump from this weekend\u2019s vote and that her \u201cphone has been burning up\u201d since the results were announced.<\/p>\n Former health secretary and Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose polling has stayed stagnant in Emerson College\u2019s last two polls at 3.5%, also outperformed his polling numbers at the convention, receiving the third-highest share of the vote at 14%. Becerra also received the endorsement from the California Young Democrats this weekend.<\/p>\n McCuan said that while Becerra \u201chasn\u2019t really caught fire\u201d in the race yet, his performance at the convention this weekend could help him in the near term as consolidation talks heat up.<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, who has built his name on skirmishing with President Donald Trump, had the most support among delegates with 24% of the vote. His speech to attendees on Saturday afternoon was met with one of the loudest receptions of any of the candidates as he pledged to get Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents out of the streets and lower Californians\u2019 costs.<\/p>\n Billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer, who came in fourth in the delegate vote, took aim at both Mahan and Swalwell in his convention speech, telling the crowd: \u201cThe question is, are we going to have a government that listens to working people? Or to tech bros?\u201d<\/p>\n While Steyer hosted a luncheon packed to the brim with supporters on Saturday before his speech, a group of convention-goers in orange prison jumpsuits with the words \u201cTom Steyer made millions off private prisons\u201d on the back roamed the halls looking for the gubernatorial candidate. Steyer\u2019s past investments previously came under fire when he ran for president in 2020.<\/p>\n Three candidates received fewer votes than the 8.5% of delegates who cast their ballots for no endorsement or no preference \u2014 state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Assemblymember Ian Calderon. According to the Emerson College poll, 21% of voters are still undecided.<\/p>\n Bill James, the chair of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, said that there was \u201csome level of near-term anxiety about the number of candidates\u201d at the convention this weekend. However, he believes that the field is strong enough that \u201ca couple of those candidates will emerge\u201d as the frontrunners.<\/p>\n James blames much of the discourse around consolidation and fears of Republicans taking control of the governor\u2019s office on California\u2019s top-two system.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s productive and I don\u2019t think it helps our democracy in the conversations that we could be having to have folks wonder whether they should pull out before they\u2019ve had their chance to make their case to voters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n State Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, D-Cupertino, who has endorsed Swalwell, said that while it\u2019s not out of the realm of possibility for a Republican versus Republican matchup to occur, he\u2019s confident that a Democrat is going to be the state\u2019s next governor.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what I expect to see is there to be a lot of conversations and a lot of meetings with the candidates in the race and I expect us to start to unite together around one common candidate in the next few weeks,\u201d he said. \u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not uncommon for statewide candidates to not receive the party\u2019s endorsement. In 2018, only 39% of delegates cast their vote for Newsom.\n<\/p>\n This time around, the party failed to make an endorsement in a majority of statewide races including for lieutenant governor, treasurer, insurance commissioner and superintendent of public instruction.<\/p>\n Some key endorsements, however, were made in several notable congressional races. The party opted to endorse state Sen. Scott Wiener in his bid to succeed Pelosi of San Francisco, the former House Speaker, and state Sen. Aisha Wahab in her quest in the open race for Swalwell\u2019s East Bay congressional seat.<\/p>\n While the party\u2019s endorsement of a candidate for governor \u2014 or lack thereof \u2014 certainly won\u2019t be a weighty factor in the race for voters, McCuan, the political science professor, said it is a sign of what\u2019s to come as they approach next month\u2019s filing deadline.<\/p>\n \u201cThis set of candidates is not setting fire to the electorate,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom this result, Swalwell gets a little bit of a bump, and that helps him, but I don\u2019t know that there is that much clarity about who should get out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California Democrats walked away from their annual convention this weekend without making an endorsement for their anointed successor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[37945,7,47501,9,8,400,1751,23,100,182,13],"class_list":{"0":"post-189462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-2026-election","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-governor-election","11":"tag-california-headlines","12":"tag-california-news","13":"tag-california-politics","14":"tag-democrats","15":"tag-local-news","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-pm-report","18":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}