Loading summary
Transcript23 lines
- [00:02]
SpinQuest Advertiser
Forget everything you had planned for this weekend because you are sitting on your couch and winning from the comfort of your own home. I'm here with spinquest where you can play hundreds of slot games, all the table games you love, and you could even win real cash prizes. New users 30 coin packs are on sale for 10@Spinquest.com SpinQuest is a free
- [00:24]
SpinQuest Disclaimer Announcer
to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Hey everyone. Sarah Longwell here with my State of the Race. Our new segment on Bulwark Takes. I want to break down the California governor's race. They had a debate last night and I caught some of it and it just gave me an opportunity to break down one of the weirdest races of the cycle. There's a lot to get into, so let's do it. So the debate yesterday in California was between the top six candidates on the ticket. But I want to tell you There are 61 people who are running in the June 2 primary. 61 people in California. It's important to note that not all of the candidates on the stage would have qualified to be there before. Eric Swalwell dropped out. Javier Becerra, who had been polling around 4 and 5%, but Swalwell was gone, obviously had a big sex scandal and so Becerra was on the stage. So the candidates on the scene were Katie Porter, Tom Steyer, Steve Hilton, Chad Bianco, Matt Mahon, and Javier Becerra. So let's set the scene for the Republicans. You've got Steve Hilton, who, I gotta tell you, until he started talking in this debate, I had not realized he was British. He is the former advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron. He is the guy that Trump has endorsed. Weirdly though, the California Republican Party has not necessarily followed Trump's lead and they haven't endorsed anyone in the race. He's also a Fox News host of a show called the Next Revolution, which I don't tune into, which is why I didn't know this guy was British. I do get his emails, though, but the British accent doesn't come through in those. The other Republican in this race is Chad Bianco. He is the sheriff of Riverside county, which Trump won in 2024 and which no Republican had done since George W. Bush. I wouldn't usually start with the Republicans when we're talking about California, but the massive democr was keeping both of these guys in the ball game because all the Democrats, many of whom are familiar faces, were kind of creating this fractured field that was allowing the two Republicans to kind of be up top, which in a jungle primary, which is what they have in California, was getting a little dangerous for Democrats. So let's talk about the Dems. Javier Becerra. So he was in Congress. He was the California Attorney General and he was Joe Biden's HHS secretary. But he's also kind of like a boring, normal guy. And so he wasn't doing much in the polls. In fact, I had kind of forgotten he was in this race until Swalwell dropped out, who was kind of the presumptive nominee. And everybody started going, isn't there somebody else in this big field of candidates we can look to? Turns out everybody's like, oh, Javier Becerra is running, maybe him. And so he has been seeing a bump in the polls, which we'll talk about in a second. The next is Katie Porter. She was in Congress for several years. Everyone remembers her with her whiteboard. This was kind of her signature thing. She'd sit there and explain stuff to you. She was a professor in a previous lifetime. So she's good at kind of explicating complicated issues and breaking them down. She ran for Senate in 2024 and lost in the jungle primary to Adam Schiff. Schiff. She, she was kind of a resistance darling, as you remember. And then she's had sort of a reputational decline, I guess you could say. She has yelled at her staff. Much of it's caught on camera. She lost it on local TV in a very viral clip. She, you know, has had some, some accusations from her ex husband. There's just, you know, there was a lot going on there, but she's still being endorsed by a lot of sort of the mainstream progressive types like Elizabeth Warren, et cetera. And then we've got Tom Steyer, who I think was not necessarily being taken super seriously until Swalwell dropped out. And because Steyer is a billionaire, he spent a lot more money on paid advertising. And so suddenly he was kind of moving to the top of the field. He actually ran for president in 2020. You may remember a hedge fund guy. He's interesting because he's sort of become also a darling of people who hate billionaires, of which he is one. One of his top advisors is Rebecca Katz, whose firm, Fight Agency, also worked with Zoran Mamdani and Graham Platner. And our own Lauren Egan has written a piece that's worth checking out about how Steyer has kind of won some of these more progressive anti billionaire types over. But, you know, he does have a couple things that Got dicey for him in the debate last night. He's invested in both coal mines and min. More tough for the moment in prisons that are now being used as ICE detention centers. He is calling to jail all ICE agents. So I think that's how he's trying to respond to that. And Trump is been mad at Fox News for increasing the visibility of Stier. He complains about him on his bleach sometimes. And then last, but I don't know if least or not, there's this guy Matt Mahan who is sort of a moderate, well moneyed mayor of San Jose. Matt Ma is he's kind of like well behind in the polls, but he is well funded, which you know, as Tom Stier can tell you, ain't nothing in California because you need a lot of money to compete there. Okay, so I just want to play you a little clip from last night that I guess it's kind of low lights but it gives you a flavor. Look, it wasn't the most stimulating debate and I'm not sure anybody did themselves an enormous amount of harm. But I'm also not sure anybody super broke out, but let's watch.
- [06:16]
California Governor Candidate
It is a deep honor for me to be endorsed by the president of the United States. My plan to make our state cal affordable is real and serious.
- [06:26]
California Governor Candidate Challenger
I'm like you, a mom fighting for a better future.
- [06:29]
California Governor Candidate
We could reduce the price of that war in Iraq that Donald Trump started. The best resistance to Donald Trump is delivering results in people's lives. We need a partnership and we need to find common ground with this administration on certain issues.
- [06:42]
SpinQuest Disclaimer Announcer
Me paying more taxes is not the answer.
- [06:45]
California Governor Candidate
I've said I believe people say that again. Tom, let's stop with this whole racism thing and racial profiling and all of this garbage. We have to get over this.
- [06:56]
California Governor Candidate Challenger
I am stunned that Mr. Bianco would say to black and brown Californians and immigrants who are being terrorized and racially profiled that you have to to get over racism. It's not something that you get over, it's something that you fight.
- [07:11]
California Governor Candidate
Californians are absolutely sick and tired of our politicians making race the basis of everything. It is not. It's interesting to watch someone who has served as a talking head on a Fox News program telling us how government should run when he never has run any government in his life. It's worth keeping in mind, you know, the only housing Tom Stier's built has been private prisons and ICE detention centers.
- [07:33]
California Governor Candidate Challenger
Mr. Steyer likes to talk about his giving pledge, but what he's done with his own money is more. Give me an opportunity to be the governor.
- [07:41]
California Governor Candidate
We don't need a billionaire who made his money in private prisons and oil and gas that he's now supposedly against. If San Jose is the template for housing affordability in California, God help us. Matt Mahan talks about his record in San Jose. Actually homelessness and crime are going up. Javier Becerra talks about his time in government. He thought it was a good idea to put masks on two year olds.
- [08:05]
California Governor Candidate Challenger
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.
- [08:15]
California Governor Candidate
It's very rich to hear from someone who's never had to actually run a government. You made that assumption that that's why this happened. That is. That is absolutely horrific that you, you basically said that I did that because of how I felt. This is ridiculous. This is an absolute ridiculous question. This is a ridiculous topic because we have an allegation of voter fraud and Californians are sick of voter fraud.
- [08:39]
SpinQuest Disclaimer Announcer
Mr. Becerra, you were chair of the Democratic Caucus when Eric Swalwell was elected to Congress. What rumors did you hear? And should you have pursued the rumors? As a member of Democratic leadership, you
- [08:51]
California Governor Candidate
hear rumors all the time about all sorts of things. Rumors are not facts. And the caucus, the Democratic caucus, is not a place that adjudicates those things. Ms. Porter, you've acknowledged that your interactions
- [09:03]
SpinQuest Disclaimer Announcer
with an aide and with a reporter,
- [09:05]
California Governor Candidate
captured on videos which went viral, were, in your words, a bad look.
- [09:10]
California Governor Candidate Challenger
I apologized that day to that staffer four years ago.
- [09:15]
SpinQuest Disclaimer Announcer
So there you have it, you know, not. Not anyone sort of covering themselves in glory. And there have been quite a few polls fielded and released since Swalwell departed from the race. So a lot of these polls have seen Becera jump from the 5% range up into the 10 to 20% range since Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race. But a lot of the other polls, interestingly, have the. The two Republicans, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, as the two top candidates, which, like I said, in this jungle primary in November, could have Republicans competing against each other. If there's still this many Democrats and no one consolidated a lead because ideally for Democrats, somebody consolidates enough of the votes and then you have a Republican running against a Democrat, in which case, assuming the Democrat isn't, you know, there's not something else terrible out there, you likely end up electing the Democrat. Very strong chances. Now, jungle primaries are convoluted and confusing, and obviously this Democratic field is A bit of a clown car. And the existence of multiple, relatively strong candidates in this race creates more murkiness where one of them really needs to break out in the next few weeks. And by breakout, I mean, like, crack 20%. So people are both overwhelmed by the slew of Democratic candidates presented before them and don't seem particularly loyal to Porter or Stier. So I think Javier Becerra is rising on their list because he's, like, a safe bet. Becerra has a history in elected office. He served in an executive role as the secretary of hhs, making him a known quantity and an established leader. The kinds of things that I think voters reach to when things are really chaotic. Right. I mean, you can go back to Eisenhower right after World War II, or you can go to Biden after Trump's first term. Right. There's just something after a lot of chaos where people are like, yeah, you can give me the boring guy. And I think Becerra might really fit that bill at this moment. I will say, though, Becerra, for all his rising in the polls, he had a pretty lackluster debate performance, which I guess generously could be. Maybe that's part of his strategy to remain the most unassuming candidate. As you saw there, he did have a little snafu where he said that Trump's war was with Iraq. But again, I still think if I had to put my money on anybody, I think I would put it on him. The focus of the attacks, though, in the debate really centered on Stier, because right after Swalwell dropped out, Steyer was the guy that people saw as the presumptive nominee before Becerra really started to take off. Didn't hurt that the other candidates on the stage wanted to be seen as attacking the billionaire who was on the stage, not the least of which a guy who's made his money off of private prisons currently being used as ICE detention centers. And while California is in the middle of an affordability crisis, just seems like that was tough. I will say also for Steyer, who, you know, he seems. You know, he has. He's nice. He's been around a long time. And so I think at a moment when people are really leaning away from older candidates, that was notable to me during the debate. He looked. He looked old. And the voters are not feeling that right now. So here's the thing. Final take debates for local office, they're not like presidential debates. They. They don't have the same meaning. They don't carry the same. Wait. People aren't usually watching them. Not a lot happens during them. Unless there's a particularly newsy clip or something goes super viral, good or bad, the effect is often no. There were no real standouts in the debate. A few stumbles, but no glaring viral moments. So I suspect this will fade away. I guess the one thing I would say is that Katie Porter, who like I said earlier, has had a really bad run reputationally, lots of videos coming out of her kind of, you know, berating people and, and just not being seen in her best light. She's good at the debates. Like this is her element. This is where she does shine, is kind of breaking down issues and explaining things to people. And so like if I was grading just on points, I probably give them to her. I just, I'm not sure we're in points territory anymore. I think this debate, yeah, probably fades away. It's too early to tell how these dynamics could shift in the final months before the election. But. But those occurring shifts, they're likely not going to be decided because of these debates. So that is the breakdown of California. That is the state of the race there. Don't forget to hit subscribe. I'm going to keep doing these state of the race takes to talk to you about every primary that's going on. And before you go, don't forget we are doing California shows me Tim Samstein. We are coming to California to see you coming to San Diego on May 20th. We are coming to LA on May 21st. Go to the bulwark.com events and go get your tickets now. See you guys soon.
- [14:24]
SpinQuest Advertiser
I'm here with spinquest where you can play and win from the comfort of your own home with hundreds of slot games and all of the table games you love with real cash flow prizes. Right now, $30 coin packs are on sale for $10 for new users it's all at spinquest.
- [14:42]
California Governor Candidate
Com.
- [14:42]
SpinQuest Advertiser
That's S P I n Q u E S t Com.
- [14:46]
SpinQuest Disclaimer Announcer
Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.