The California Governor’s Race is a Train Wreck (and Trump Should Make It Worse)

It would be difficult to overstate what a train wreck the California governor’s race has become for Democrats. You may remember there was a brief moment when Kamala Harris flirted with getting into the race. She’s a terrible candidate but thanks to her run for president and her serving as VP for four years, she had name recognition that no one in the state could match. If she had gotten in, lots of other candidates would have stayed out.

But Harris clearly had her sights set on a bigger prize. She wanted to run for President again and so she bypassed the governor’s race. And that meant that a whole collection of second tier candidates got into the race. The best known of the bunch were Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell, both of whom were known for their frequent attacks on President Trump as opposed to having accomplished anything themselves.

Notably, to the degree that any Democratic candidates in the governor’s race have achieved any level of renown it has been mostly as opposition figures to Mr. Trump, rather than for their own achievements.

For Mr. Swalwell, that meant years of cable news appearances and social media attacks on the president.

For Ms. Porter, it was wielding a white board and grilling Mr. Trump’s allies back when she was in Congress during his first term.

For Mr. Steyer, it was funding millions of dollars of television ads calling for Mr. Trump’s impeachment in his first term — and spending hundreds of millions more on a failed run for president in 2020.

“Trump himself occupies so much of the political conversation that the only way for anyone at the state or local level to break through that noise is to position themselves as an anti-Trump figure,” said Brian Brokaw, a Democratic strategist based in Sacramento who has served as a past adviser to Mr. Newsom and Ms. Harris.

As of the start of this month, none of the second tier democrats was really taking a lead, which meant the Dem vote was split about 10 ways while Republicans only had two candidates to split their vote between. So, as unlikely as it seemed, both Republicans were outpolling all the Democrats.

And that was a real problem because of the “jungle primary” system California uses. Under this system, the two candidates with the most support advance to the general election, regardless of party. So, most of the time that means two Democrats advance and no Republican has a shot in the general election. But in this train wreck of a race, it meant that two Republicans were threatening to leave all of the Democrats behind in a deep blue state.

Democrats were starting to get pretty nervous about this possibility and the party was calling for all of the non-viable candidates (those polling at the bottom) to drop out of the race so that they could ensure at least one Democrat would have a chance in the general election.

Finally, over the last week or so, it looked like the situation would resolve itself because polls showed that Eric Swalwell was starting to pull away from the other Dems in the race. If that continued, other Dems would eventually drop out and Swalwell would eventually outpoll at least one of the Republicans, giving him a clear shot at the general election win.

And then Swalwell’s campaign exploded amid allegations of sexual misconduct. As of today, the leading Democrats is out of the race. And that leaves the party with a bunch of unappealing alternatives.

“Now it’s pretty much back to ground zero,” said Garry South, a longtime California Democratic strategist. “I don’t know how this works out.”…

The list of other potentially viable Democrats in the race includes billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who has blanketed the television airwaves by pumping at least $110 million into advertising; progressive former Rep. Katie Porter; former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan; California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond; and former state controller Betty Yee.

“None of these candidates really have a lane,” South said.

Porter, he said, has not locked down the support of women. Villaraigosa and Becerra both are battling for Latino support. And Mahan has sought to offer himself as a more moderate alternative to outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s management of the state but has not broken out.

Steyer is wearing out his welcome with television ads, South said. But none of the other candidates have enough money to even compete in the advertising war.

“I’m sure that there are conversations going on in these other camps about, ‘How do we take advantage of the Swalwell self-immolation?’ But in order to make that case for themselves, they have to have money, and none of them do,” South said.

What any of these candidates would kill for right now is a direct attack on them from President Trump. That would get their name in the news in the only way that really matters to California Democrats. But Trump is otherwise occupied with Iran. But don’t be surprised if several Dems try to draw such an attack by loudly attacking Trump first. Katie Porter in particular seems liable to say anything on MSNOW in order to get his attention.

Of the remaining candidate, it’s probably either Porter or Tom Steyer who will benefit. She has the shrill temperment and he has the bank account. Plus, they are the only two Dems still in the race who were polling in double digits. No one else seems to have a real chance at this moment.

If Trump’s team wanted to play some 11-dimentional chess here, they could think about further damaging this already disastrous governor’s race by raising the profile of some of the other Dems in the race. Don’t given Steyer or Porter any of the oxygen they crave, but a critical tweet about Xavier Becerra and Anonio Villaraigosa would probably ensure neither one of them drops out for a couple more weeks, making it harder for Porter or Steyer to rise. Again, if Dems want to make this whole race about opposition to Trump, why not have some fun with that?

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