An ocean of contenders is running for California governor — 61 names when the Secretary of State certified the list for the June 2 primary ballot — but only eight of the candidates will appear in a debate held at Pomona College on Tuesday, April 28. The meetup between the leading competitors will be broadcast live on CBS stations and on apps and streaming services like YouTube.
The candidates appearing in the 90-minute debate are the two leading Republicans — Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco — as well as six Democrats: Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer, Katie Porter, Matt Mahan, Antonio Villaraigosa, and Tony Thurmond.
Tuesday’s is the second debate in the governor’s race. The first brought six to the stage on April 22 and was a scrum at times between the Democrats but fairly congenial between the two Republicans, who were leading the race at the time.
According to a compilation by 270toWin of five recent polls, Hilton, a Fox contributor, was in the lead with 17-20 percent of voters. Chad Bianco, the former sheriff of Riverside County, tied with billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer at 14.6 percent in the polls conducted between April 16 and 20. Xavier Becerra, who headed Health and Human Services for the Biden administration and was California’s attorney general before that, received a high of 23 percent in a poll by Independent Voter News and averaged about 12 percent in the compilation. They are followed by former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter (10.8 percent), San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan (4.8 percent), former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (2.6 percent), and California’s Superintendent of schools Tony Thurmond (1.5 percent).
In California’s “jungle primary,” only the two top winners in the June 2 vote go on to the general election in November. With so many candidates currently splitting the Democrat vote, the June primary is a crucial one.
What could prove confusing for voters filling out their ballots for the June 2 election is that two well-known Dems have dropped out of the governor’s race but will appear on the ballot nonetheless: Eric Swalwell and Betty Yee. Both dropped out of the race after the ballot language was certified on March 26. In the Secretary of State’s tally of voter registration 60 days before the election, a record 23,112,854 eligible Californians were registered to vote, Secretary Shirley Weber reported. By party, 10.3 million registered as Democrat; 5.7 million registered as Republican; 5.2 million as No Party Preference; 959,354 as American Independent; 231,356 as Libertarian; followed by 229,869 as Unknown/Other.
