Barely a month before mail-in voting begins, Democratic leaders in California are confronting a scenario they haven't faced in twenty years: the real possibility of losing a statewide election. With more than 50 candidates on the ballot for the June 2 gubernatorial primary, including 24 Democrats, party officials fear their own numbers could sink them under the state's top-two primary system, Newsmax reported.
The math is straightforward and unforgiving. California puts every candidate on one ballot regardless of party. Only the top two vote-getters advance to November. Democrats hold every statewide office and outnumber registered Republicans by nearly two-to-one. But with eight established Democrats splitting the left-of-center vote into small fractions, two Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, both supporters of President Donald Trump, could claim the only two spots on the general-election ballot.
That prospect has state Democratic Chair Rusty Hicks pleading publicly with lagging candidates to drop out. He warned that a vacancy at the top of the ticket could "imperil Democrats' chances to retake the House," a concern that extends well beyond Sacramento.
The internal dysfunction goes beyond crowded ballots. A major televised debate scheduled at the University of Southern California was canceled after disputes erupted over the selection criteria. Six white candidates qualified for the stage. Black, Latino, and Asian candidates were not invited. The backlash was swift, and USC pulled the plug, saying the dispute had "created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters."
What matters to voters, of course, is not who gets a podium slot. It's gas prices, groceries, housing costs, and utility bills, the everyday pressures that define life in a state where seven-figure home prices are commonplace and the economy, the world's fourth-largest, hasn't insulated working families from inflation. The debate fight offered a portrait of a party arguing about process while the electorate worries about paychecks.
Kim Nalder, director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at California State University, Sacramento, put it bluntly in an email:
"Squabbles about debates or other inside baseball politics are likely under the radar for most voters and seem almost absurd, given what's facing us."
The observation lands harder when you consider that AP News reported the same dynamic: a party struggling with canceled debates, pleas for candidates to exit, and concerns that a weak showing at the top of the ticket could ripple into congressional races nationwide.
Early February polling from the Public Policy Institute of California found Bianco, Hilton, Rep. Eric Swalwell, former Rep. Katie Porter, and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer in close competition, with other candidates trailing. No one has broken away from the pack.
Veteran Democratic consultant Dan Newman, who is not involved in the race, captured the uncertainty plainly:
"I have no idea and anybody who tells you they do, they don't know either."
Newman added that the campaign has been "in slow motion", a remarkable admission in a contest to lead the nation's most populous state. "Normally people would paying attention," he said. They aren't. The race to succeed outgoing Governor Gavin Newsom has failed to generate the kind of energy or clarity that a state of California's size demands.
That sluggishness compounds the Democrats' structural problem. The more candidates who stay in, the thinner each slice of the Democratic vote becomes. And as recent polling has shown, two Republicans already sit near the top of the field while Democrats remain fractured.
The leading Democratic candidates have spent as much time attacking each other as building a case for the general election. Swalwell accused President Trump of trying to influence the contest after reports that administration officials ordered FBI agents to gather documents about a decade-old investigation into Swalwell's ties to a suspected Chinese spy. That investigation never resulted in criminal charges, but the political damage lingers.
Swalwell's defensive posture on the matter has been a recurring feature of the race. He has framed the FBI document request as political interference, a claim that he has pressed repeatedly even as the underlying facts remain unflattering for a candidate seeking the governorship of a state that styles itself as the capital of the anti-Trump resistance.
Meanwhile, the Democratic field has been marked by the kind of candidate-on-candidate attacks that usually benefit the opposition. The Washington Times noted that the race has featured infighting over debate eligibility, identity politics, and ballot-counting controversies rather than the affordability concerns dominating voters' lives.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire activist, has added his own wrinkle. He and Swalwell have clashed, and Steyer has even challenged Swalwell's residency in the state, a sign that the Democratic primary has devolved into personal grievance rather than a contest of ideas.
On the Republican side, the two leading candidates present a sharp contrast to the Democratic chaos. Sheriff Chad Bianco made national headlines after seizing more than half a million 2025 election ballots in Riverside County as part of an election fraud probe. Earlier this week, Bianco said he paused that investigation, citing mounting legal challenges from the state and a voting rights group. The move drew attention, but it also reinforced Bianco's brand as a law-enforcement figure willing to act on election integrity, a message that resonates with Republican primary voters.
Steve Hilton, the conservative commentator, brings a different profile but the same alignment with Trump. Together, Bianco and Hilton occupy a lane that benefits enormously from the Democratic pile-up. If Democrats cannot consolidate behind one or two candidates, both Republicans could advance to November, and California's general electorate would face a choice between two candidates from a party that holds no statewide office.
The last time California saw a truly wide-open governor's race was 1998. That year, Gray Davis, an underdog Democrat, surged past two leading Democrats in the primary and went on to win in November. The parallel is instructive: crowded fields produce unpredictable results. But in 1998, Democrats weren't facing a structural trap where their own primary rules could lock them out entirely.
California's predicament doesn't exist in a vacuum. Democrats have been showing signs of weakness even in their deepest strongholds. The party's grip on voter loyalty has loosened in places where it was once taken for granted, and recent California polling has reflected that erosion in striking ways.
Former Governor Jerry Brown and outgoing Governor Newsom both coasted through their elections. The expectation in Sacramento was that the next Democratic nominee would do the same. Instead, the party is scrambling to avoid a historic embarrassment, losing the governorship in a state where it controls everything.
Democrats were heartened by recent victories even on what the party considers Trump's home turf. But those wins haven't translated into confidence in California. The midterm cycle, the crowded primary, and the top-two system have created a perfect storm of Democratic vulnerability in a state that was supposed to be immune to it.
Mail-in voting begins within weeks. The June 2 primary will determine whether Democrats can hold the governorship or whether two Trump-aligned Republicans will face each other in November. Hicks's plea for candidates to drop out has so far gone unheeded. The debate is canceled. The polling is muddled. The consultant class is admitting, on the record, that nobody knows what happens next.
The open questions are significant. Will enough Democratic candidates exit to consolidate the vote? Will Swalwell's Chinese spy baggage drag him down? Can Steyer or Porter break through the noise? And will voters in a state defined by affordability crises reward a party that spent its primary season arguing about debate invitations and identity quotas?
California Democrats built a fortress over two decades of one-party dominance. Now they're discovering that the biggest threat to that fortress isn't the opposition, it's the fifty-car pileup inside their own gates.
