Primary day in California. Tom Steyer has broken every ad-spend record in the state’s history, PG&E just filed against him, and he’s still polling third. I’m Cassidy. This is the California Governor’s Race. CalMatters has the voter guide live, the ballots are dropping, and today we’re watching the Steyer money paradox, a utility intervention with a paper trail, and Xavier Becerra’s last-minute policy retreat. Adam here — and CalMatters says 92 percent of ballots still aren’t in. So whatever you think this race is, it gets stress-tested in the next twelve hours. We’ll get into all of it, but the Becerra single-payer walkback, sourced today by Sacramento News and Review, might be the sharpest story in the closing stretch. A frontrunner dropping a policy commitment before a single general-election vote is cast. CalMatters, with Lynn La:
Californians are voting on a wide-open governor’s race. Xavier Becerra, Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer are leading in polls but only two will move on to the general election.
CalMatters put out its primary-day voter guide this morning, and the outlet that broke the paid-influencer story last week is still framing this as a three-way: Becerra, Hilton, Steyer. Those are the names they’re sending voters into the booth with. That 92 percent of ballots still not submitted is not a turnout footnote — that’s the whole election. Who’s in the 8 percent that already voted? If it skews older and higher-income, this turns into a name-ID race, and Steyer’s thirty-second spots don’t rescue him. Worth remembering how we got here. Harris passed, Padilla passed, Swalwell exited under misconduct allegations, Mahan is out. CalMatters is basically confirming what the donor maps already showed: the field collapsed and left three. Porter doesn’t even make the CalMatters three-way cutline, and we spent two weeks asking whether her hundred-thousand-donor breadth could actually break the ceiling. Tomorrow answers that whether she likes it or not. AOL writes:
The state’s biggest energy utility has made the unusual move to attack candidate Tom Steyer in the California governor’s race. State campaign filings show that Pacific Gas & Electric has plowed at least $13.5 million into efforts to oppose Steyer.
State campaign filings — not Steyer’s campaign, not some opposition-research dump — show PG&E put at least thirteen-point-five million dollars into efforts aimed squarely at Steyer. That’s the number. A regulated utility writing eight-figure checks against one gubernatorial candidate is not routine. And here’s the thing: Steyer’s been spending record money trying to buy a closing argument, and PG&E just handed him one for free. A billionaire getting attacked by the state’s biggest utility lands a lot differently than another streaming spot. Last week CalMatters had Steyer’s campaign in the paid-influencer story. This week it’s a utility with a paper trail in state filings going straight at him. Same candidate, two sourced attack vectors in seven days — that’s a pattern, and it’s worth naming on primary day. But the Mercury News still has him third. So I keep coming back to the same question: does thirteen-and-a-half million from PG&E move late deciders toward Steyer, or does it just tell people who were already tuning him out that the race has moved on? Ukiah Daily Journal writes:
The latest Democratic Party poll, released Tuesday, has Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born former Fox News commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former attorney general, virtually tied at 22 percent and 21 percent respectively. Billionaire Tom Steyer is still alive at 15%, but all other once-viable candidates are trailing in single digits.
The Ukiah Daily Journal is out with a Democratic Party poll: Hilton at 22, Becerra at 21, Steyer at 15. And now we’ve got two polls pointing the same direction in this three-way, which is worth noting — the Mercury News had it similar heading into today. I’ve been applying a sourcing caveat to every poll in this race — party-commissioned, limited sample, whatever. But when the Ukiah Daily Journal and the Mercury News land in the same neighborhood independently, the caveat starts losing its teeth. Two polls, same shape: Hilton and Becerra clear, Steyer alive but bleeding. The Journal also floats the three-outcome scenario: Hilton-Becerra most likely, Hilton-Steyer less likely, two Democrats possible but improbable given where the numbers sit. That’s the honest read of the math today, primary day, with 92 percent of ballots still not submitted as of this morning. That 92 percent is doing a lot of work. The 8 percent who already voted skews older, higher-income — exactly the profile that helps Becerra’s name-ID floor and hurts Steyer’s influencer-and-ad-saturation strategy. He broke the California primary ad-spend record and he’s still at 15. At some point, the spend stops being the variable. From Michael R. Blood at ABC News:
Steyer — a former hedge fund manager turned liberal activist— has spent or booked more than $195 million in ads for broadcast TV, cable and radio with the tally still growing, according to data compiled by advertising tracker AdImpact.
ABC News has the number this morning: Steyer has spent or booked more than $195 million in ads — broadcast, cable, radio — per AdImpact data. That’s more than twenty times what Becerra has put on the air, and it’s a California primary record. One-ninety-five million, and he’s polling third in the Mercury News. That’s not a bad ad buy — that’s a stress test of whether television money still moves California primaries at all. And the timing matters. Last week CalMatters was sourcing his undisclosed influencer spend; this week it’s PG&E filing paperwork to attack him directly. You don’t spend utility money going after a candidate who’s already losing on his own. That’s the one thing the $195 million couldn’t manufacture: a major regulated utility treating you like a threat the day before votes lock. If Steyer’s closing argument is, “even PG&E came for me,” that’s worth more than another thirty-second spot — but only if turnout actually rewards it, and CalMatters says 92 percent of ballots still aren’t in. Mark Kreidler, writing in Sacramento News & Review:
Now, leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, once Newsom’s attorney general, secretary of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden and himself a longtime proponent of single payer, appears to be following the same path. One difference: Becerra has made his break from single payer prior to the election, not after it.
Sacramento News & Review, crediting Capital & Main on the byline, has Becerra on record walking away from single-payer before a single primary vote is counted. That’s the key detail: Newsom did this after winning. Becerra is doing it the day before. And CalMatters just named him one of three leaders in the field heading into primary day. So he’s shedding the policy commitment at peak leverage, which tells you exactly which coalition he thinks actually shows up in November versus which one he was chasing all spring. The sourced line from the piece is that even single-payer’s own supporters in the Legislature say any real implementation would outlast a governor’s term. Becerra’s camp can use that as cover — but the timing, the day before the primary, is hard to frame as anything other than a signal to the general-election middle. Earlier this week I was asking whether the education silence from these candidates was a gap or a strategy. Becerra just answered it — strategy. Strip the commitments before you need the votes. If you’re following the governor’s race, you might also like Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily: City Hall, housing abundance, homelessness response, Metro, public safety, and small-business permitting. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We’ve put links to every story from today’s episode in the show notes, so if one caught your attention, you can dig in a little deeper there.
That’s California Governor’s Race for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.