Expand<\/a><\/p>\nSteyer was generally quick on his feet during the town hall, making his points with a mix of humor and outrage. He frequently cited his wife, Kat Taylor, who was on hand at Wednesday\u2019s event. Taylor capped her husband\u2019s oratory by belting out a hymnal rendition of Jackson Browne\u2019s \u201cI Am a Patriot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steyer also traded compliments with Khanna and Huffman, whose North Coast district includes the Luther Burbank Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy far my favorite (California governor) was Jerry Brown 2.0,\u201d Huffman told the audience during introductions. \u201cI think Jerry Brown in his second act got to this point where he was done with presidential ambition. And he just brought all of his brilliance, and this fearless independence, to governing the people of California.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see potential for exactly that in Tom Steyer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huffman didn\u2019t mention Xavier Becerra by name. But there was no doubt whom he was describing as \u201ca decent guy\u2026 but maybe not the guy to fight back against Trump the way I think we need. And definitely not the guy to break out of this establishment hold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steyer, on the other hand, did name-check his rival, who has emerged as the mainstream Democratic pick.<\/p>\n
He pointed to a recent CNN interview in which the host listed a number of daunting challenges facing California and asked what the state could be doing better. Becerra highlighted California\u2019s massive economy and breezily replied, \u201cSomething\u2019s going on that\u2019s not bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, Steyer argued, \u201cIt\u2019s not working for working-class Californians in this state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steyer referred to ICE, meanwhile, as \u201ca criminal operation\u201d that should be abolished, while acknowledging the governor of a state doesn\u2019t have direct oversight of the federal agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I can do is this: We can prosecute ICE agents for racial profiling,\u201d Steyer said. \u201cWe can prosecute ICE agents for violence against Californians. And we can prosecute people who send them to do violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Few of the questions asked during the Q&A session that followed could be characterized as particularly incisive or discomfiting.<\/p>\n
Audience members asked Steyer about getting young people more involved in politics, about housing construction in the wildland-urban interface, about making sure the proliferation of AI data centers doesn\u2019t harm the environment and the possibility that the Trump administration will \u201csteal votes\u201d in November.<\/p>\n
Steyer said protecting democracy in 2026 and 2028 will be \u201ca fulltime job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo I think they got 60,000 masked, assault-rifle-armed people in ICE just for immigration? That\u2019s not true,\u201d he said. \u201cThose guys are gonna be going around in November of this year, to try and make sure the vote comes out the way they want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the candidate spoke, someone asked for a show of hands among those who considered themselves \u201cundecided\u201d on the governor\u2019s race. Perhaps a third of attendees raised their hands. But afterward, most of the people lined up to greet Steyer or pose for a selfie said they\u2019d already voted for the man at the front of the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized after I got here that voting first, coming second was the wrong order,\u201d said Owen Wheeler, 25, who grew up in Santa Rosa and is currently home from UC Irvine Law. \u201cBut once I got here, in my eyes, he passed. I was really happy with his answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wheeler was there with Madigan Traversi, 21, also back in town from college, at UC Berkeley. Climate action is among the top concerns of these two young voters. It\u2019s a topic Steyer has made central to his campaign.<\/p>\n
And unlike other politicians she\u2019s heard, Traversi said, Steyer has articulated clear policy mechanisms.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the climate crisis, the clock is ticking and we need urgent, big change,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I think it was great to hear a lot of his really tangible plans for what he\u2019s gonna do, and how.\u201d<\/p>\n
Debra Vinson drove all the way from Antioch to hear Steyer speak. Vinson is a California delegate. She voted for Betty Yee at the nominating convention. When Yee dropped out and endorsed Steyer, Vinson said, \u201cIt was the cat\u2019s meow.\u201d<\/p>\n
She told The Press Democrat about talking to an undecided voter at the Wednesday event. That person, Vinson said, walked away promising a vote for Steyer. The Antioch resident is brimming with confidence about Election Day. She gave Steyer \u201ca 200% chance\u201d of making it out of the primary.<\/p>\n
But the wealthiest, most progressive candidate in this race doesn\u2019t have much time to swing ballots his way.<\/p>\n
A poll released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California poll showed Becerra with 23% support among likely voters, Hilton with 20% and Steyer with 15%. They were followed by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, at 13% and former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter at 12%.<\/p>\n
Expect to see Steyer\u2019s face a lot before Tuesday. He has spent or booked close to $200 million for ads across TV and radio, according to the Associated Press. No politician in America, running for any office, has outspent him.<\/p>\n
Correction (4:40 p.m., May 28, 2026): This story has been revised to correct a mistake in a mention of Republican candidate Steve Hilton. His first name was wrong in a previous version.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forty-five minutes before Tom Steyer\u2019s town hall at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts on Wednesday evening,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,119837,20906,2871,28416,3604,59978,25299,3707],"class_list":["post-337276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-primary","tag-governors-race","tag-ice","tag-jared-huffman","tag-pge","tag-ro-khanna","tag-tom-steyer","tag-xavier-becerra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337276","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=337276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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