Matt Mahan is out — San José Spotlight confirmed it — and CalMatters drops Tom Steyer in the same news cycle over paid influencers. So the Democratic field gets smaller and messier at the same time. This is California Governor's Race. Today we’re following where Mahan’s donors go, whether Steyer’s influencer spend is bigger than the FEC filings suggest, and Bianco on stage at the Republican debate. Now we’ve got a record, not a guess. And Porter just put a number on the no-corporate-money pitch — 100,000 individual contributors, per City Times. I just want to know if that actually moves votes or if it’s a very polished bumper sticker. All right. Let’s get into it. This one's from KMPH FOX26 NEWS:
We are in a position right now where we absolutely absolutely California dream is being dangled in front of our face and we have to grab it and hold it close and never let it go again. We can't step back and let the Democrat party run with it. Especially because they're in shambles. The most important part is we have to decide who we're going to send to November.
The Republican debate on KMPH aired Friday — ninety minutes, 2,400 views. We’d already flagged Bianco’s Trump-relationship moment as the thing to watch, and now we have an actual record of how he played the room, not just our read going in. 2,400 views, 89 likes — that’s not a debate audience, that’s a niche livestream. Whatever Bianco said up there, he said it to about the population of a high school gym. The crossover-Democrat pitch is right there in the transcript. Bianco flat-out says he’s the one Republican who can pull Democrats over on public safety, and that’s the same line he used at KQED on the water crisis framing: 'I'm the exception.' At some point, you need a poll cross-tab, not a self-assessment. He’s not wrong that the Democratic field is in shambles — Mahan just proved that by exiting — but 'the other side is a mess' is not a coalition. Show me the decline-to-state numbers in Fresno and Bakersfield before I buy the crossover story. From Brandon Pho at San José Spotlight:
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan’s bid for governor appears to be stalling. An outside committee set up to support Mahan’s campaign, Deliver for Mahan, has filed papers to shut down while another, California Back to Basics, has refunded a $1 million donation from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, as first reported by the Mercury News.
San José Spotlight — Brandon Pho’s byline — confirms what the donor moves already hinted at: Deliver for Mahan filed to shut down, and California Back to Basics sent Reed Hastings a million dollars back. That’s not a rough patch. That’s the machinery coming apart. Reed Hastings wanted his million back. That’s the number that ends the conversation. You don’t claw back a seven-figure check unless you’ve already done the math, and the math is ugly. There’s also an FPPC complaint sitting there — illegal coordination between the campaign and California Back to Basics, with potential penalties up to five million dollars. So Mahan isn’t just out of runway. He’s got a legal overhang on top of the cash problem. His San Jose tech-donor coalition now has no home — Hastings is liquid again, and whoever picks up that network in the next week moves up in the jungle math. That’s the real story: where does that money go before June? From Nadia Lavin at City Times:
California gubernatorial candidate and Democrat Katie Porter is a consumer protection attorney who began her political career in 2017, following the election of President Donald Trump. Porter was a key part of the Democratic Party’s national strategy to regain control of the United States House of Representatives in 2018. She successfully flipped California’s 45th Congressional District, which covers Orange County, from red to blue, becoming the first Democrat to represent the area in 75 years.
City Times has the Porter piece — Nadia Lavin byline, May 22nd — and the headline number is 100,000-plus individual contributors. That’s the first sourced floor under her no-corporate-money pledge, which means this is a money argument now, not just a message one. Fine, 100K donors is a real number. But in a California June primary with Steyer dropping nine figures and a likely-voter screen that skews older and higher-income, does grassroots breadth actually move turnout? Or is Porter just holding a very clean receipt while somebody else buys the election? That’s the live question. She flipped CA-45 in 2018 running the same playbook in hostile territory, so there’s a track record. Whether it scales to a statewide jungle primary against self-funded candidates is a different test. CalMatters writes:
Steyer, who has poured nearly $200 million into the most expensive primary campaign in state history, is under scrutiny for using paid social media influencers to post favorable things about him. Is that legal? Gov. Gavin Newsom three years ago signed a law meant to bring transparency to the increasingly intertwined world of politics and content creators, enacting a law requiring influencers to be upfront in their posts about being paid by a political campaign.
CalMatters has Steyer’s campaign by name now — not just an enforcement-gap story, but a Pennsylvania-based TikTok creator posting thirty-four times in ten days for a California race, paid and undisclosed. That takes it from abstract to specific. Thirty-four posts in ten days from one account, and the $200 million number was already the headline. If paid influencer content isn’t showing up in official disclosure totals, Steyer’s real spend is bigger than what’s on the books — and nobody can tell voters by how much. The question we’ve been sitting on all week — whether public pressure alone closes the penalty gap — just got a named campaign attached to it. The FTC and California’s disclosure rules both exist; the question is whether either one moves before June. They won’t. And a 'so-cal girlypop' who’s actually based in Pennsylvania is a gift to every Becerra tracker who wants to frame Steyer’s grassroots pitch as a purchased aesthetic. FOX26 News writes:
FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) — Riverside County Sheriff and Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco is making a final push across California, pitching himself as a political outsider. In an exclusive one-on-one interview with FOX26 anchor Madison Macay during a Fresno campaign stop Friday, Sheriff Bianco said Californians are increasingly frustrated with the state’s high cost of living, ongoing water issues, and what he called a “government-created” water crisis after years of Democratic leadership.
FOX26 has Bianco on the record in Fresno Friday. His specific claim is that California is not in a drought and that 70% of the state’s water is, quote, 'forced out to the ocean' every year. That’s a testable number, and it’s a harder claim to walk back than the broader state-blame frame he used at KQED on PBS. He used the KMPH debate stage to sharpen a message that 2,400 people watched, and now he’s doubling down on the same water frame for a Fresno audience where Central Valley ag frustration is real. The question is whether 'government-caused water crisis' is a closing argument or just the one lane where he has a credible geographic base. Worth noting: at KQED, he was pressing the state-mismanagement angle more broadly. FOX26’s Madison Macay gets him to put a specific percentage on it — 70% to the ocean — which is the kind of claim that invites an immediate fact-check from the Newsom team or any Democrat who wants to take a swing at it. If you’re tracking California politics, try San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily — covering City Hall, Muni, housing abundance, public safety, schools, and small-business permitting. It’s a sharp local lens on the issues shaping the state. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, take a minute to read a little deeper.
That’s California Governor’s Race for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.