Let’s come up with a hypothetical Democratic primary for governor in heavily Democratic California. Imagine that one candidate (let’s call him Candidate 1) has largely avoided taking any positions on key economic questions like taxes, but has taken significant contributions from such massive California-based corporations as Chevron and the utility PG&E. Now, imagine another candidate (Candidate 2) who is the sole candidate in the field who supports a wealth tax on California billionaires, who’s taken no corporate donations (he’s independently wealthy), but has been the subject of at least $32 million in attack ads from an independent expenditure organization funded by the state’s realtor association, Chamber of Commerce, and PG&E. Another independent expenditure organization has devoted $13 million to ads backing Candidate 1, to which Airbnb and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta have each ponied up a cool million dollars, while Chevron, McDonald’s, and the California Resources Corp. (a large California oil driller) have chipped in $500,000 apiece.
Problem is, none of this is hypothetical. Candidate 1, of course, is Xavier Becerra, while Candidate 2, equally of course, is Tom Steyer. And according to the Los Angeles Times/UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Poll released on Friday, Becerra leads in the state’s top-two jungle primary tomorrow with 25 percent support, with Republican Steve Hilton second at 21 percent and Steyer third with 19 percent. Support for the other Republican in the race, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who once was running second, has dropped to 11 percent, while that for former Rep. Katie Porter has dipped to 7 percent. As the poll is based on responses from more than 5,000 likely voters—four or five times more than the typical poll—its findings should be considered pretty damned accurate, though not definitely predictive of the final outcome, as some voters remain undecided.
The corporate millions flowing to Becerra are just the latest example of the California corporate sector’s fundamental electoral strategy, which is not to donate to the Republicans who may share their overall perspectives, as Republicans haven’t won a single statewide contest since 2006 and hold such a small share of the seats in the legislature (usually around 25 percent) that they lack even the power to block, much less enact, any legislation. Instead, corporations routinely donate to those Democrats they deem sufficiently moderate (that is, occasionally pro-corporate) on economic issues. Over the past several decades, such Democrats have formed Moderate Caucuses in the legislature; two of their caucus chairs have resigned mid-term, one to go to work for pharma, the other for Chevron.
But if there’s anything that mobilizes the Democratic base in 2026, other than its loathing for Donald Trump and all his works, it’s an anti-corporate populism arrayed against big money’s domination of both the economy and politics. For which reason, if this were a straight-on Becerra-vs.-Steyer Democratic primary, I wouldn’t bet on Becerra (though he’d probably command a higher-than-usual share of the Latino vote).
But it’s not a straight-on anything. Very understandably, the jungle primary—in which all candidates from every party are on the same ballot, and the top two finishers go to the general election—compelled Democrats to make sure that one Democrat broke from the pack (if not the PAC) so that they wouldn’t be confronted with two Trumpians running off in November. With all the polls until recently showing that to have been a real possibility, tactical considerations outweighed those of values and ideology. And those same calculations kept the usual progressive organizations like the Working Families Party from endorsing in the governor’s race. (The California WFP did endorse in two down-ticket statewide contests and seven U.S. House races, in none of which was an all-Republican November runoff a plausible outcome.) Moreover, the presence of two progressive Democrats in the gubernatorial field—Steyer and Porter—also posed an obstacle to any progressive group that would otherwise have endorsed. All this has deprived those candidates of the kind of ground-game, precinct-walking operations that have generally benefited other progressive candidates in recent years.
Ironically, tactical voting now dictates a Democratic vote for Steyer. Should Steyer make it into the two-candidate runoff against Becerra, one effect would be a clear falloff in Republican voting in November, as there’d be no Republican atop the ballot to entice them to the polls. That would likely enable the Democrats to pick up the five currently Republican-held House seats that have been redistricted, and maybe even one more. (An Emerson College poll released on Saturday suggested that an all-Democratic runoff is a genuine possibility: It had Becerra leading with 28 percent, Steyer in second with 22 percent, and Hilton in third with 21 percent.)
The idea of bettering the Democrats’ House prospects should November’s gubernatorial runoff feature two Democrats has probably also occurred to those Democratic strategists and consultants who flocked to Becerra’s banner after the previous front-runner, Rep. Eric Swalwell, was compelled to withdraw from the race. I doubt, however, that any of them want to broadcast this new and revised tactical consideration, even though it could help the party pick up more House seats. My hunch is that it’s more important to them to maintain ties to the state’s gazillionaires by opposing Steyer than it is to pick up those more marginal seats in Congress. How I’d love to be proven wrong.
