The race for California governor is on track for a two-person runoff in November between veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born television personality endorsed by President Donald Trump. Bloomberg's Jon Herskovitz reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
The race for California governor is on track for a two-person runoff in November between veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born television personality endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Election officials are “crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked," Trump told a reporter.
Former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) and former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, are projected to advance to the general election for governor of California, according to Decision Desk HQ. Hilton had coalesced GOP support with the help of President Trump’s endorsement, while the Democratic field remained divided over a crowded field…
Republican candidate Steve Hilton won the second of two spots in the California Governor's Primary race on Monday evening, nearly a week after election day. The post BREAKING: Republican Candidate Steve Hilton Advances in California Governor’s Primary Race appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The California bespoke ballot process is unique in the nation and developed with a previous legal partnership between California politicians and former Attorney General Eric Holder. It has been one week since election day and there are likely many more days of ballot curation ahead. As a consequence, the republican candidate, Steve Hilton, who carries […] The post President Trump Notes California Ballot Curation Likely to Eliminate Steve Hilton appeared first on The Last Refuge.
What does California have to hide? After all, if the voting process were as fair, accurate and secure as Gov. Gavin Newsom and others have claimed, why not allow federal investigators to examine it? The rest of the country is, understandably, alarmed as it watches results come in from the June 2 primary — not...
Democrats avoided the worst outcome in the California governor’s race. While it will take several more days for the state’s mail-in ballots to be counted, former congressman, California attorney general, and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will finish among the top two candidates and therefore advance to the general election. What’s not yet clear is whether Republican Steve Hilton or billionaire Tom Steyer, another Democrat, will be the second candidate. With at least one Democrat in the general election, the most important governorship in the country will almost certainly stay out of Republican hands this November. Thank goodness. But Democrats shouldn’t take much comfort in avoiding a catastrophe. The political party that’s supposed to stop fascism in America is so disorganized and divided that it struggled to secure victory in a state where a clear majority of voters are left-leaning. This Democratic debacle in California makes me deeply concerned about the upcoming presidential primary and general election. For months, there was a very real possibility that only Republican candidates would make it to the general election, because the California Democratic vote would be split among a field of a myriad of candidates. Then the media and Donald Trump saved California Democrats. Journalists at the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN reported numerous accusations of sexual misconduct by then-Representative Eric Swalwell, who was one of the leading Democratic candidates. That helped the party’s voters consolidate around Becerra and Steyer. Meanwhile, Trump endorsed Hilton, a Brit and a former Fox News personality, effectively dooming Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other prominent (and more conventionally qualified) Republican. I’m glad we have investigative journalists and strong news organizations, but a well-functioning political party should be vetting candidates on its own and ensuring it doesn’t nominate alleged sexual harassers. Swalwell’s improper behavior around women wasn’t a secret in Democratic circles in Washington or California, and yet party insiders did little to prevent him from becoming one of the front-runners for a hugely important post. I don’t praise Trump very often, but I respect that he is willing to actively lead the voters in his party by urging them to back particular candidates in primaries. It would have been nice if Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and all of the California Democratic politicians who write books about their courage and wisdom had actually shown some of that by endorsing someone in the governor’s race and making sure Swalwell never became a top contender. Instead, California Democratic Party leaders seemed to go out of their way not to help voters sort through a field without a clear front-runner. Newsom’s aides leaked to reporters his misgivings about all of the candidates. When the University of Southern California tried to host a debate and include only the candidates with decent poll numbers, some Democratic state legislators blasted the process as racist because low-polling candidates of color would be excluded. As Becerra started rising in the polls, people in the Biden administration started slamming him, usually via anonymous quotes, as ineffective as HHS secretary. Who then should California Democrats vote for? These people never said. It was almost as if Democratic Party leaders were intentionally trying to create a chaotic primary. Steyer or Becerra will almost certainly be elected in November, so what’s the problem? Well, the party’s struggle to land on a candidate in California isn’t an isolated incident. The 2020 and 2024 presidential primaries illustrated the same problems. In 2020, there was a massive field of Democratic candidates. Primary voters couldn’t easily sort among them. Many Democratic groups and politicians stayed on the sidelines instead of endorsing anyone. The result was a haphazard process that selected Joe Biden, a bad choice because his age ensured Democrats would again have a presidential quandary in 2024. By mid-2023, it was obvious that a clear majority of Americans were wary of giving Biden a second term. But the party waited a full year to coordinate around sidelining Biden, leading to another haphazard process that produced a candidate (Kamala Harris) who wasn’t one of the party’s strongest politicians and didn’t have time to run a full campaign. Why can’t the Democratic Party effectively choose candidates for the most important races? For three reasons. First, there is a real and growing divide between the party’s progressive wing and its center-left—and many prominent Democrats don’t want to seem too aligned with either camp. It’s not surprising that politicians, whose job is to be popular, want to appeal to as many people as possible.
Los Angeles’s registered Democrats waited until “the last minute” to cast their ballots in the June 2 primary election as they sorted out their options for California governor. And that down-to-the-wire vote had consequences in how the mayoral race results were reported, according to Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). On Sunday, DDHQ projected Los Angeles City Council member…