On Nov. 3, California will elect their new governor. The incumbent, Gavin Newsom, will not be able to run due to a limit of two terms. The primary election ends on June 2.
California is a largely democratic state, without a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. In the 2022 re-election, Gavin Newsom won with 59% of the popular vote over Republican Brian Dahle’s 41%.
“Ever since Ronald Reagan’s term as president, California has become more and more deep blue,” said freshman Jerry Sun. “However, the deep blue divide isn’t as big as people think, instead being more of a 60% and 40% divide.”
Three major California Democrats who were posed as possible frontrunners for this election, Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and Kamala Harris, all didn’t enter the race for governor, leaving the race without a clear frontrunner.
“I’m looking for a candidate who’s very progressive, who cares about making life better for Californians, someone who cares about making things more affordable,” said senior Hayden Ha. “Most importantly, they aren’t politically corrupt. [For example], they avoid taking corporate [Political Action Committee] donations, or from the Israel lobby.”
Currently, there are 61 total candidates on the ballot in contention with 24 being Democratic, 12 being Republican and 25 being unaffiliated or in a minor party. There are nine viable candidates in the race including Democrats Antonio Villaraigosa, a former LA mayor, former congresswoman Katie Porter, businessman Tom Steyer, San Jose mayor Matt Mahan, state superintendent of public instruction Tony Thurmond, former state Controller Betty Yee and former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra. The main Republican candidates are former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Sheriff Chad Bianco.
California’s primary system operates differently than most states, in which each party nominates a candidate to represent them, but in California, all candidates run against each other in the primaries, and the two candidates with the most votes regardless of party affiliation advance to the general election. Because seven democrats can split up the votes, the two republicans could potentially advance to the Nov. general elections.
“There’s a very crowded Democratic field,” Ha said. “What’s really interesting is that there’s a chance that there could be a Republican governor … For Democrats, this is very worrying, because a lot of the candidates aren’t dropping out, especially because there’s like 10 Democrats running. And because it’s split across all these fields, their approval numbers or their polling is very low.”
One issue that is common among both parties is an emphasis on affordability, though they take different approaches to the same issue. Democrats including Steyer, Porter and Mahan support more social security and welfare funding, such as low income housing that is cheap to build and maintain. The Republican candidates are more focused on reducing taxes. Mahan also breaks with party lines to oppose increasing taxes, stating that cutting down on “waste, fraud, and abuse,” was more important.
“I would definitely support the more Republican-leaning candidates,” Sun said. “In each gallon of gas alone, I know there’s already over a dollar of just taxes, which is a huge amount of tax for gas … The Republicans can make it cheaper by removing these taxes.”
Some believe regulating Immigrations Control and Enforcement is an important policy point.
“I support Chad Bianco [because] he has a very forward idea,” said freshman Warren Yao. “He’s very straightforward, he has ideas planned for ICE and he’s going to be strict, but he’s going to let the illegal immigrants who didn’t do anything wrong stay, which is good.”
On April 12, Rep. Eric Swalwell, leading democratic candidate, announced his governor campaign suspension due to alleged sexual misconduct. According to CNN, Reports came in from four women so far, three of them stating Swalwell’s inappropriate intimacy, “sending unsolicited messages or nude photos.” One of his former staffers claimed that Swalwell raped her twice when she was heavily intoxicated, once in 2019 and the other in 2024. She recalled saying “no” and pushing him away but to no avail, and left with multiple injuries. Swalwell has since indicated that he will resign his seat in Congress.
