Four days out, and California voters are not exactly stampeding to the mailbox. Turnout is lagging, there’s a single-payer promise nobody can price, and Tom Steyer just walked back the one line that was actually working. This is California Governor's Race. Today we're digging through the early returns by demographic, stress-testing every affordability promise at the pump and in the clinic, and trying to pin down what Steyer actually said at KQED. The LA Wave just gave us the first real slice of that turnout lag — Black voter mail-ballot return rates — and, yeah, it lands right where the coalition math gets uncomfortable for Becerra. And KFF Health News finally says out loud what the candidates keep sidestepping: single-payer still has no funding mechanism, and everybody is acting like that’s just a normal thing to leave hanging. That’s the story today. From Joe W. Bowers Jr. at Los Angeles Wave Newspaper Group:
LOS ANGELES — Black voters in California, like other voter groups, have been returning mail ballots at a slow pace as the state heads toward the June 2 primary election for governor, a race that has not yet generated the same level of voter excitement as some past statewide contests.
This one's from Sacramento News & Review:
But with no clear front-runner, they are sparring among themselves in debates and political ads over who is most committed to a government-run model. No candidate has outlined how California would fund comprehensive health coverage for its 40 million residents, leaving voters unable to discern which candidate has a concrete plan for the nation’s most populous state.
KFF Health News makes it plain: every leading Democrat is running on single-payer, and none of them has put a funding mechanism on the table. You’re being asked to grade a promise with no price tag — that’s a vibes auction, not a health plan. KFF is exactly the place to say that, because they’re the ones who actually run the numbers on state health spending. The fact that it took a health policy shop to say what political reporters have been skating around is its own story. And this is the same move we saw yesterday on education: everybody dodging the budget number, and now it’s happening again on healthcare. Two of the biggest line items in state government, both reduced to bumper stickers. That’s the pattern. What I want to know is whether any debate moderator has actually asked Steyer or Becerra to name a revenue source on the record. Because if you can endorse the California Nurses Association and still leave the financing blank, that is a very comfortable place to stand four days before the primary. From Jake Shriner at Bakersfield Now:
With affordability a major issue in the race for governor, eight candidates, two Republicans and six Democrats, are campaigning on competing plans to bring fuel costs down, exposing a sharp divide over what’s driving prices and what should be done about it.
Bakersfield Now, Jake Shriner byline — eight candidates, two Republicans and six Democrats, all pitching gas-price relief. Steve Hilton is closing with this 'three-dollar gas' line, which is either a bold promise or a bumper sticker with no math behind it. Yesterday I was saying candidates were pivoting to cost-of-living talk instead of touching the big budget lines — and now here it is again. Nobody’s explaining the mechanism on three-dollar gas any more than they’re explaining the funding mechanism on single-payer. It’s a vibes auction with a price tag attached to nothing. The 'Califordable' framing is doing a lot of work for a candidate who hasn’t shown up in the top tier of recent polling. Coining a word doesn’t move ballots, but it does buy you some earned media in Bakersfield four days out. Here's KQED:
Steyer, who made his fortune making bets on high-risk assets, said a company like PG&E is simply following the rules California has set up. But he said those rules have resulted in Californians paying double what residents in other states pay for their electricity. “I would start by not using the word ‘enemy,’” he said.
Yesterday I said the PG&E attack was Steyer’s best earned-media asset. Then he went on KQED and literally said, quote, 'I would start by not using the word enemy.' That’s not a pivot — that’s handing the weapon back. To be fair, what he replaced it with is actually a cleaner governing frame: PG&E isn’t evil, the rules are broken, and his opponent list — big oil, investor-owned utilities, tech — doubles as his closing argument. Guy Marzorati gave him the room to make that case on the record. The 'judge me by who opposes me' line works on paper, but it only lands if the voters who liked 'enemy' are still with him when he shifts to 'following their interests rigorously against working people.' And those are exactly the low-propensity younger voters the turnout data says are not returning ballots early. If you’re following the governor’s race, you might also like San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily — covering City Hall, Muni, housing abundance, public safety, schools, and small-business permitting. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We’ve put links to all the stories from today’s briefing in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can follow it there and read more.
That’s California Governor’s Race for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.