Four Democratic candidates for California governor took the stage in San Francisco Wednesday night, hoping to shake up the scattered Democratic support and emerge as a frontrunner while knocking the two Republicans out of their leading positions.
The 90 minutes of mostly gentle jostling – with occasional barbs among the Democrats – likely won’t produce a dramatic shift, although San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan appeared the sharpest, most prepared of his party’s candidates. Meanwhile, Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco delivered solid performances, training their fire on the liberal leadership of the state while Democrats focused on President Trump as their biggest foil.
Mahan made his biggest contrasts by pointing out what California doesn’t need, even as he sought to define himself as a reformer with a proven record of government management in California’s third largest city.
“We don’t need a billionaire who made his money in private prisons and oil and gas that he’s now supposedly against, or Trump’s handpicked candidate, or a D.C. insider who the Sacramento establishment is now” trying to rally around, Mahan said.
Mahan was referring to Democrat Tom Steyer, billionaire hedge fund founder and liberal activist, former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who previously served as California attorney general. Former Rep. Katie Porter worked to regain her footing and seize on the recent departure of former Rep. Eric Swalwell, after an early downfall when video surfaced of her berating a staffer.
The debate, hosted by Nexstar, was the first since Swalwell, the top Democratic contender, exited the race after a series of sexual misconduct accusations. Swalwell’s departure could have produced a shift in voters to a new Democratic leader in the race. Instead, support has splintered with each candidate receiving influential endorsements over the last week and no one yet emerging as the consensus party choice.
Despite Swalwell’s exit, his name will remain on the ballot for the June 2 primary and will undoubtedly siphon off a small percentage of votes from the other Democrats in the race, making the scramble for support even more urgent for the top Democratic contenders.
The top two vote-getters regardless of party will advance to a head-to-head contest in the fall, and Democrats are deeply concerned about the possibility of getting shut out by Hilton and Bianco. The two Republicans have consistently led the race for months but likely will have a harder time holding onto their leads when more Democratic voters start paying attention to the race. California elections are conducted mostly by mail with ballots going out to voters on May 4.
With such high stakes, each Democratic candidate could capitalize on an endorsement from Gavin Newsom, though the sitting governor has yet to signal whether and when he will wade into the still crowded race and anoint a successor. Of all the candidates, he’s least likely to endorse Mahan, given how critical the mayor has been on Newsom’s record.
The reluctance to blame Newsom for the state’s myriad problems – the highest homelessness in the country, high gas prices, taxes, insurance rates, and sky-high cost of living – produced some of the most contorted political positions of the night, especially when the debate hosts asked the Democratic candidates to grade the governor’s record on curbing homelessness.
Becerra, who has surged in the polls since Swalwell dropped out, gave Newsom an “A for effort” despite the number of homeless people increasing on his watch while spending $24 billion in efforts to fix the problem. Steyer said he deserved a B-, while Porter raised it to a solid B. Mahan provided the most nuanced assessment: Newsom deserved a B for his “care court” initiative to address mental health and addiction-related homelessness but a D on implementation of all of his homeless plans.
Hilton predictably wasn’t so charitable.
“My goodness, of course it’s an F,” he said. “We have about 10% of the U.S. population and around 50% of the country’s homeless population. And as for Xavier praising Gavin Newsom for the photo op where he tried to pretend he was cleaning up a homeless encampment, literally, Gavin Newsom did that three times in a row, nothing changed, and nothing will change.”
Bianco also had nothing good to say.
“Everything has taken us in the wrong direction” under Newsom, Bianco argued. “The state auditor found $24 billion of our money spent on homelessness. They have no idea where it went because it’s going into these nonprofit developers that are, instead of solving the problem, they are profiting.”
“If you have one of these Democrats in power, it will be more of the same,” Hilton asserted.
Less than halfway through the debate, Hilton also proudly touted his President Trump endorsement, calling it a “deep honor” and touting it as proof he could work with the current administration to get results for Californians.
“And here’s the thing that’s going to help every Californian when I’m governor,” he said. “We will have a constructive relationship and partnership with the federal government.”
Becerra stuck to a safe Democratic party line. Asked whether he would support testing in English language proficiency and knowledge of basic road signs for foreign-born truckers, Becerra denounced such an approach as illegal racial profiling. Several fatal crashes last year involved illegal immigrants who were allowed to operate commercial trucks even if they didn’t understand the basic rules of the road.
“I would definitely push back on the Trump administration’s reckless policy,” Becerra said. “I would make sure that that [police] officer understands that he cannot discriminate against any driver without having a basis to do so.”
Porter, trying to blunt Becerra’s surge, sparred with him over their resumes and policy plans, especially on repeated questions on housing and affordability.
“Mr. Becerra, you have all these lovely plans, but there are never any numbers, any revenue plan, any details, anything that pushes on the status quo,” Porter said. “But the how, the why and how much, it’s all missing.”
Becerra responded with a quick retort, arguing that it is “rich to hear from someone who has never had to actually run a government.”
When it comes to curbing homelessness, Mahan had this zinger for Steyer: “The only housing Tom Steyer has built has been private prisons and ICE detention centers.”
Steyer, who has spent more than $133 of his own money on his campaign, has come under fire for his former hedge fund’s investment in roughly $90 million in the Corrections Corporation of American, now known as CoreCivic, which operates federal immigrant detention facilities for ICE. Steyer has recently acknowledged the investment as a “mistake” – but it’s hard to erase his enormous profits from the venture.
Later in the debate, Steyer hit Mahan, saying he may be the only billionaire on stage, but he’s not the only wealthy person or corporation trying to influence the race – a not-so-thinly veiled reference the funders of an independent expenditure committee backing Mahan. Silicon Valley tech leaders are pouring money into Mahan’s race.
But it was Steyer who stumbled the most when it came to squaring his billionaire status and pledge to be a “change agent” with progressive Democrats’ support for a one-time billionaire tax in California.
“I’m the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires. I’m the billionaire who’s taking on the electric monopolies and trying to break up their power. I’m the billionaire who wants to tax the oil companies and make polluters pay.”
Steyer noted that he and his wife “have said that we will give the bulk of our money away while we’re alive, and we’re in the process of doing that.”
Then he quickly added that “my paying more taxes is not the answer,” even though he has professed willingness to pay more.
Steyer also backed a measure that would impose a vehicle mileage tax on California drivers. Steyer said he supports it even though he believes tripling tax credits for electric vehicles would be a more effective approach to battling climate change. Porter said the mileage tax is too regressive but also supported laws mandating only electric vehicle sales in the future.
Hilton, for his part, said he would veto a vehicle mileage tax if it passed the legislature.
“No, we cannot keep going in this direction with Democrats constantly going for their insatiable appetite for more and more taxes, for their bottomless money pit,” he remarked.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.
