Becerra's still out front — but the gap between second and third just got skinnier, and Steve Hilton picked today to call the whole count a 'shambles.' Funny timing, that. This is the California Governor's Race. I'm Sarah, here with Adam — and today, the slow count finally has a shape worth arguing about. Vote math, a leadership-vacuum autopsy from the New Republic, and a candidate weaponizing the count in real time. My kind of Tuesday. Let's start with that ABC7 number — the lead's holding, but the back end isn't settled. Right, and the number to stare at isn't Becerra's lead — it's the second-to-third gap closing in late mail. If that keeps tightening, the whole November-opponent question reopens. Which is exactly why Hilton's statement lands today, not three days ago. He's reading the count and timing his escalation to it. From ABC7 Los Angeles:
In the California governor's race, Xavier Becerra advanced to the general election. It was not yet clear who Becerra would face in the general election. His top rivals came down to Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator backed by President Donald Trump, and Democrat Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist who poured $215 million of his own money into his campaign.
The count has a shape now. Becerra's through to November — that part's settled. What's still live is who he faces: Hilton and Steyer trading punches over second place as the late mail comes in. And that second-to-third gap is where the action is. It's narrowing — so the November opponent isn't locked, no matter how many people want to write the matchup today. Watch the L.A. mayor line for the tell — Raman overtook Pratt for second as ballots kept landing. Late mail moves these orders. That's exactly the dynamic keeping the governor's second slot open. Right. A billionaire who dropped 215 million of his own money might still get edged out in the back nine of the count. That's the kind of math I'd hate to be explaining to my donors — except, you know, Steyer IS the donor. Evening Standard writes:
The Republican former Fox News host, who has been backed by Donald Trump, levelled his criticism as the process to tot up ballots continued nearly a week after polling day. But Mr Hilton stopped short of supporting the US president’s unfounded claim the California elections, including that for Los Angeles mayor, were “rigged”, arguing instead it was “just another example of the incompetence and uselessness of the state government”.
So Steve Hilton — David Cameron's old policy shop guy, now a Fox alum running for governor — is calling the count a 'shambles.' The world, he says, is laughing at us. Quite the line from someone polling in the gap we just talked about. And watch the footwork. Trump's out there yelling 'rigged' — Hilton walks right up to that line and stops. Incompetence, he says. Not fraud. That's a precise distinction, and it's reportable. 'Rigged' invites lawsuits and liability. 'Shambles' gives him a grievance he can recycle straight into November. Right — he gets to launder the anger without owning the conspiracy. That's a calculation about decline-to-state voters who'll buy 'the state's useless' but won't touch 'stolen.' And the timing matters. He drops 'shambles' the same day the second-and-third gap is narrowing in the late mail. He's reading the count in real time and picking his moment to escalate. Every election cycle someone's on social media saying California can't count straight — so what's actually going on? Is there a real problem here, or is this just noise? It's mostly noise, but there is a real structural reason the count takes so long — and it's by design. Every registered voter in California gets a mail-in ballot. Under state law, those ballots count as long as they're postmarked by Election Day and arrive within the allowed window afterward. So on election night, workers are legally waiting on mail that simply hasn't arrived yet. Then each mail ballot has to go through signature verification before it can be opened and scanned — that's a safeguard, not some bottleneck glitch. Per the Associated Press reporting, counties like Los Angeles are processing millions of these ballots one by one, and the volume makes a fast turnaround mathematically hard. Data analyst Nate Silver called California's weeks-long resolution timeline 'kind of insane,' and it did draw fresh criticism after the June 2026 primary. But election officials and observers are quick to say: slow doesn't mean wrong. The process is deliberately thorough, and there's no credible evidence the delay reflects fraud or mismanagement. So if the safeguards are built into the slowness itself, where would you actually look if you wanted to find a real weak spot in the system? From the reporting, the pressure point is capacity — whether county registrars have enough staff and equipment to process all those mail ballots quickly without cutting corners on verification. Going into November, watch whether the legislature moves on any of the proposed reforms to let counties pre-process ballots before Election Day. Other states already allow that, and it could shave days off the timeline without touching the integrity of the count. Perry Bacon, writing in The New Republic:
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.
The New Republic just walked up and put a name on the thing I've been circling since June 4th — Becerra advances, sure, but the party behind him is a vacuum. Someone filled the bracket. Filling the bracket isn't the same as having a leader. And the timing is what gets me. This 'no actual leaders' autopsy drops the same morning we're reporting Becerra's lead held and the count's resolving. So the milestone story we've been building all week and the 'party's a husk' story are now sharing the front page. Right, and they admit it in the piece — the media and Trump saved California Democrats from splitting the field into oblivion. When your survival strategy is 'the other guy's chaos bailed us out,' you're leaning on luck instead of a coalition. They credit the Chronicle and CNN reporting by name for that, which — credit where it's due. But it sharpens the November question: if Becerra's the standard-bearer for a party with no bench, is there an operation behind him, or is he basically running solo? And here's the part the repeal crowd is screenshotting right now. This is exactly the 'top-two is broken' argument, gift-wrapped by a left-leaning outlet. If you're following the California governor's race, you might also like San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily: 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 we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can read more there.
That's California Governor's Race for this Tuesday, June 9th. This is a Lantern Podcast.