It’s a
quiet Tuesday morning in Sacramento. On any given weekday this past year, the
City of Trees is normally bustling with state workers heading to their offices,
construction workers hammering away at the new Capitol Annex, or City Parking
Enforcement Officer Grant Nakamura breaking his previous record of having handed out 22,000 parking
tickets in 2025.

But, with
last week’s primary results still being counted, the state is now reeling from
one of the most unpredictable primary elections in recent history. For the past
six months, Californians have witnessed a parade of gubernatorial candidates
who have vied to replace Gavin Newsom as the state’s next governor. In what
many have called a turbulent election, the primary has seen everything
from the cataclysmic downfall of Representative Eric Swalwell to the close
race between three candidates from across the political spectrum—Xavier
Becerra, who experienced a historic rise from among the last to being the
front-runner; Steve Hilton, a wannabe Trump in California with the blessing of
the Trump himself; and Tom Steyer, a billionaire and political outsider who
courted progressive voters with his vision of environmentalism.

Several
other candidates, including Elizabeth Warren acolyte Katie Porter and former
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, fell short. This was the most expensive
election in California history, with $316 million spent. Two hundred million of that came from Steyer tapping his personal war chest, along
with a myriad of corporate donations for Becerra and Hilton.

In any
case, Californians will have to wait a few more days for the primary dust to
settle, and then it’s on to November to decide on who will replace the
presumably presidential primary–bound Gavin Newsom and sort out the myriad
challenges he’ll leave behind: skyrocketing costs of living, a lack of housing,
an increasing number of climate change–driven wildfires, and the constant
animosity of the Trump administration.

With
Becerra already called as one of the candidates, and Hilton leading by several
percentage points over Steyer, it looks as if the final showdown will be
between Becerra and Hilton. If so, Becerra, the sole Democrat in the race, will
likely take the state. Why that matters nationwide is that Becerra, like many
veteran Democrats, is a poster child for much of the Democratic leadership—experienced
but moderate. While I would like to give Becerra a chance to prove himself, as
he stands, he will be much like—well, Gavin Newsom.  

Becerra
has a deep résumé. He is the former secretary of health and human services
under the Biden administration, a former state attorney general, and former
member of Congress who represented the heart of Central and East Los Angeles. As
state attorney general, he defended DACA and the Affordable Care Act during Trump’s
first term and sued the administration over fracking. The son of Mexican
immigrants, who grew up in Sacramento, he was the first in his family to attend
college when he enrolled at Stanford University.

On paper,
his portfolio would make him an ideal Democratic candidate—experience in both
Sacramento and Washington, from a working-class background, the son of
immigrants. After Swalwell, the first mainstream Democratic contender, fell
from grace, Becerra positioned himself as a steady choice for many Democrats.
And it paid off: By late May, polls showed Becerra leading beyond the other
contenders by a safe margin, beating back earlier fears of a Republican shutout
from earlier in the election.

Becerra’s
rise can also be understood in the context of the state’s racial politics. Back
in March, Becerra protested the exclusion of himself and other candidates of color from
the ABC7-USC debate. As he said in an open letter to USC’s President Beong-Soo
Kim: “My father used to tell me of the days when he would encounter signs
posted outside establishments that read ‘No Dogs, Negroes or Mexicans Allowed.’
USC’s actions may not seem so transparent. But, you have deliberately chosen to
selectively filter the voters’ view of the field of gubernatorial candidates in
what all observers characterize as a wide-open race.”

The move helped
cement his connection to Latino politics in the Golden State, where 41 percent of California’s
population is Latino.
Communities are not monoliths—as the 2024 election demonstrated, the Trump
campaign received a significant number of Latino votes. But Becerra, who is the
first in his family to attend university, who fought against ICE in his time as
attorney general during the first Trump administration, and would be the first
Latino governor and governor of color in California history since Romualdo
Pacheco in 1875, does appeal as someone who understands the immigrant
experience at a time when immigrants are under attack.

At the
same time, Becerra’s emergence as the front-runner brought a wave of corporate backers.
If money talks, then Becerra can be expected to give lip
service to Chevron, Meta, Uber, and PG&E. It’s no wonder Becerra has received the most scrutiny
for his anticipated catering to groups that inflame issues important to many
California Democrats: climate change, the rise of AI, and affordability.

Becerra described
this as pragmatism—as he said in one debate statement: “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.” While he cited his lawsuits against oil companies and his
support for green energy, he said in the end that Chevron remains an
important employer to the state. But it is worth noting that Chevron’s contribution to a Becerra PAC was the first
time it had donated to a California gubernatorial election in a decade. 

David
Dayen of The American Prospect has noted how the final days of the
primary were defined by Becerra’s corporate backers. In his article on Becerra’s inaction on pharmacy
benefit managers, or PBMs, Dayen pointed out that as attorney general Becerra sought
to rein in PBMs. He rolled back his stance once appointed to the Biden
administration (in parallel with his change of heart on the single payer option).

Becerra’s
rise, to Dayen, has been a credit less to his talent as a policymaker than to a
lack of accountability from the California Democratic Party. While Becerra
proposed seizing patents for medication made with government research as a
means of cutting down on pharmaceutical price gouging during his time as state
attorney general, he later backtracked on the plan when he became health and human services secretary. “Governing matters less than internal power
positioning,” said Dayen. 

This
accounts for the potent challenge mounted by Tom Steyer, the billionaire former
head of investment group Farallon Capital who used his personal fortune to
combat climate change and take on the oil industry. As Joe Hagan outlined, in
his profile of Steyer for Men’s Journal back in 2017, Steyer seemed nothing like a
billionaire in his lifestyle or interests. That may be why he has enjoyed
some success in an era when billionaire is a dirty word. Steyer has enjoyed
endorsements from some key progressives, including former U.S. Secretary of
Labor Robert Reich and Representative Ro Khanna.

A
Becerra-Steyer matchup may offer a more interesting election than a race
between Becerra and right-wing blowhard Steve Hilton. But, based on the current
AP results, we are likely facing a November election between Becerra and
Hilton.

California was doomed to have a chaotic election. In 2009, Republican
state Senator Abel Maldonado authored what would become Proposition 14, a
measure that would amend the state constitution to create the current open
primary system. Then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger championed the measure as a
staple of his legacy and in 2010 promoted Maldonado to be lieutenant governor.

At the
time, some pundits viewed the measure as a means of preventing extreme
candidates from winning an election. Others saw it as a system that limited the
power of third parties to compete in the jungle primary. But what stands out most
of all is the fact that, in California at least, it was a solution in search of
a problem: Before 2010, most elections—save the explosive recall election of
Governor Gray Davis—were relatively tame.

As The New Republic’s
own Timothy Noah previously
noted, California’s electoral problems are down to the stagnation of the
state Democratic Party, which has changed very little since the Clinton years. As
Republicans have moved increasingly rightward as part of capitulating to Donald
Trump, their importance in state politics has dwindled to a few conspiracy
theorists and as foil to Gavin Newsom. Whoever the next Democratic governor is,
they would do the party a favor by eliminating the open primary. 

California
Democratic politics have been increasingly defined by the party’s centrism, which
has become more deeply rooted even as the state’s biggest problems—affordability,
environmental devastation, the seemingly intractable housing crisis—have become equally entrenched. There are no outside forces strong enough to shake this
status quo. Few have challenged the main Democratic establishment at the
statewide level. Since 2006, no Republican has been elected to statewide office.
The Democratic Party in California has maintained a steady grip on statewide
policy to the point that many within the party seem mostly concerned about
maintaining its monopoly. And moderate Republicans fleeing MAGA’s corruption in
tenuous alliance with the Democratic Party’s center have only more deeply
instilled the party’s corporate bent, seen most vividly in the way state
Democrats tend to cater to major business interests like Silicon Valley.

As Dayen put it to me:
“I think the party has generally evolved a mild antipathy to governing, which
is poisonous in the current environment where voters are disappointed at the
lack of follow-through on campaign promises. Wanting to be liked more than wanting
to get things done creates a slow, painful toxicity that emerges in approval
ratings of the Democratic Party.”

Outside the
governor’s race, some challenges to the established order have bubbled up. The
Los Angeles mayoral race has received the most attention for the fact that
former reality-television fixture Spencer Pratt channeled anger over the L.A.
wildfires and slung AI campaign videos left and right to become the first major
Republican mayoral challenger in decades.

But it is
not only challenges from the right that are rocking city politics. Nithya Raman,
a onetime ally of incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, entered the race against her, blasting her former colleague for her handling of programs
supporting the city’s significant unhoused population. 

Bass seems
likely to survive—and, as of Sunday, Raman
had eked a small lead ahead of Pratt. This election has demonstrated that
Bass’s leadership does not sit well with many Angelenos angered about the fires
and hoping for more than just the status quo. But it nevertheless demonstrates
that many L.A. Democrats still lean toward moderates. For the next few months, Bass
will have to defend her reputation and prove that she is serious about caring
for Angelenos.

Elsewhere,
anti-establishment figures are doing more than merely rattling some cages. In
San Francisco, State Senator Scott Weiner will face off against City Supervisor Connie
Chan to replace Democratic legend Nancy Pelosi. Although Chan received endorsements
from both Pelosi and former San Franciso Mayor Willie Brown, she finished
second in the primary. Weiner, a Democratic state senator with a long track
record of authoring legislation on issues ranging from LGBTQ+ rights to housing,
has received praise as the brains behind the No Secret Police Act, which required federal agents to
demask, and one of the earliest bills to regulate artificial intelligence (it
was vetoed by Newsom). Since then, Weiner has authored several AI
regulation bills that have been signed by the governor, and some speculate his
state legislation being
a template for federal oversight on AI.

East of
the Bay Area in Sacramento, Representative Doris Matsui of California’s 7th congressional district has faced a significant challenge from Sacramento City Council member
Mai Vang. Matsui and Vang will face off in the November election, in what will
be a standoff between different generations of the Democratic Party—in some
ways a microcosm for party politics writ large. Matsui is part of a family
political dynasty that began when Robert Matsui was elected to California’s 3rd
district in 1979. Until his death in 2005, he worked on legislation that included
blocking the privatization of Social Security to shepherding the Civil
Liberties Act of 1988, which offered redress to Japanese Americans formerly
incarcerated in camps during World War II. That same year, Doris, his wife, ran
successfully for his seat in a 2005 special election. Since then, Doris Matsui has
been a longtime advocate for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights.

But while
in previous years Matsui’s reelections have been relatively calm and certain,
this year the race has been contentious. Vang and Matsui have attacked
each other on a personal level, often pointing to their generational differences. Matsui has been criticized for
her age (she is 82) and her
slow response to ICE’s predations. Vang, who was elected to the City Council in 2020, has been criticized for lacking the experience needed to serve
in Congress.

As with
the governor’s race, money
played a crucial role in this election. Matsui raised $1 million to Vang’s $600,000,
and Matsui later took out a $1.4 million loan to finance her campaign (Matsui’s
second husband is billionaire Roger Sant).  

The Sacramento Bee ultimately endorsed Vang after Matsui declined to
speak with the paper’s editorial board. In the board’s words: “Mai Vang
embodies today’s Sacramento. Doris Matsui does not. The Bee endorses
Vang for a much-needed and historic changing of the guard for Sacramento in
Washington.” The Bee’s Robin Epley also accused
Matsui of platforming Zachariah Wooden, a college student running as the
Republican, in order to pull votes away from Vang.

When I
asked Dayen what he saw in this primary, he described it as an important
moment where a lack of strong leadership left many voters uncertain about their
future—a sentiment with which The New Republic’s Perry Bacon concurred. “I
think there is a strain of restlessness in California,” Dayen said. “The governor’s race
didn’t have a locked and loaded establishment figure for the first time in 20
years. The late redistricting unsettled the House races to a degree, and
there’s a real questioning of what it takes to win in swing-district territory.”
However, as demonstrated by the wealth of support for Becerra from companies
like Chevron and Meta, Dayen says the influence of corporations still influences
state politics: “The money thrown around continues to frustrate public desires.”

For
decades, Californians have seemed to want calm and easygoing elections,
preferring familiar faces to firebrands. And they’ve largely gotten their wish,
even at the top of the ballot in this current cycle. As longtime Los Angeles
Times columnist George Skelton put it, Becerra offered
something that has, with some exception, dominated California politics: “Nothing
flashy, just plain but comfortable.”

But what
remains are the underlying problems—environmental disasters
like wildfires, rising housing costs, and anxiety over the AI industry, to name
a few—that have plagued
California residents and have made life anything but calm and easygoing. And
while challenges to the status quo have been more a trickle than a flood, it’s
a warning sign to those who’ve clung to power in the established order that
they must start delivering solutions. At some point, something’s got to give—or
else MAGA’s next Golden State savant might successfully convince voters to give
them the reins. Democratic leadership should pay attention to the rumblings out
west; California will be a bellwether for what could happen to the party across
the nation.