2026 Primary Election: California governor race explainer

What does a California governor do?
Meet the candidates
Campaign finance
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This explainer was originally published by our news partners CalMatters. Be prepared for California’s primary: Sign up for CalMatters' free election newsletter and be the first to know when they update the CalMatters 2026 Voter Guide with information on key primary races.

What does a California governor do?

The California governor is the most powerful elected official in the nation’s most populous state, commanding a $300 billion budget. The governor shapes policy for 39 million residents, signs or vetoes legislation, appoints judges and members of regulatory agencies and leads crisis response from wildfires to pandemics. California’s governor wields outsized national influence, making the office a launching pad for presidential ambitions. This year, a crowded Democratic field has split likely voters, allowing two Republican candidates to consistently poll near the top. The top two candidates, regardless of party, will advance to the November election.

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The candidates

Xavier Becerra

Party: Democratic
Professional background: Former U.S. Health secretary, former state attorney general

Becerra represented Los Angeles in Congress for more than two decades before being appointed California’s attorney general in 2017. He led the state’s numerous lawsuits against the first Trump administration and Republican states. He was U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under Biden, steering the administration through the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and receiving criticism for the agency’s care of migrant children in its custody. Becerra says he’s open to revising the state’s climate goals to keep fuel affordable for middle-class Californians and wants to declare a state of emergency to freeze utility and insurance rates.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. They said Xavier Becerra canceled a scheduled interview, and asked to reschedule but no date has been confirmed. The invitation remains open.

Chad Bianco

Party: Republican
Professional background: Riverside County sheriff

Bianco has a three-decade career in the Riverside County sheriff’s office and was elected sheriff in 2018 with the support of the union that represents deputies. He has past ties to far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers militia and has faced criticism, lawsuits and a state investigation over deaths and conditions in his jails. Bianco is pushing to suspend numerous state regulations, particularly environmental ones, and says as governor he would overturn the state’s sanctuary law. He also wants to boost oil and gas production and eliminate the income tax and the gas tax.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. Here's their conversation with Chad Bianco.

Steve Hilton

Party: Republican
Professional Background: Former adviser to UK prime minister, former Fox News host

Hilton, who is British American, was senior adviser for former conservative Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2012 before moving to California, where he co-founded a political crowdfunding platform in Silicon Valley. He has written books on decentralizing power in large, bureaucratic institutions from government to the food and health care systems. From 2017 to 2023 he hosted a weekly show on Fox News. Hilton wants to lower the price of gas by suspending environmental regulations, cut income taxes for middle-class earners and wealthier Californians and open natural spaces for housing, particularly suburban single-family homes.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. Here's their conversation with Steve Hilton.

Matt Mahan

Party: Democratic
Professional Background: Mayor of San Jose

Mahan worked on voter engagement platforms in Silicon Valley before joining the San Jose city council in 2021 and becoming mayor in 2023. He has focused his term on reducing street homelessness by opening numerous tiny homes as a more palatable alternative to traditional temporary shelters, sometimes at the expense of using city funds to develop permanent affordable housing. A moderate, he opposes new taxes and wants to temporarily suspend the gas tax and tie government leaders’ pay to performance to force improvements.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. Here's their conversation with Matt Mahan.

Katie Porter

Party: Democratic
Professional Background: Professor of law at UC Irvine, former congressmember from Orange County

Porter flipped a longtime Republican congressional seat in Orange County in 2018 and held it through 2024. She is a law professor focused on consumer protection, was mentored by Elizabeth Warren and is known for grilling corporate and health care executives while pointing at a whiteboard. Porter wants to cut income taxes for middle-income earners and raise corporate taxes on large businesses. She supports developing denser housing in urban areas and near transit stations.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. Here's their conversation with Katie Porter.

Tom Steyer

Party: Democratic
Professional Background: Environmental advocate and investor

Steyer is a billionaire who made his fortune at a hedge fund where he invested in such industries as private prisons and fossil fuels. After selling off those holdings, he founded a firm investing in environmental technology and became a climate change activist, sometimes bankrolling ballot measures on other liberal causes. He wants to challenge the monopoly status of the state’s investor-owned utilities, raise property taxes on business-owned properties and collect a fee on AI usage to support displaced workers.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. They said Tom Steyer’s team has declined multiple requests for an interview, instead offering supporters to speak on his behalf. The invitation remains open.

Tony Thurmond

Party: Democratic
Professional Background: Superintendent of Public Instruction

Thurmond, a former social worker, is head of the California Department of Education which oversees the state’s public K-12 schools. He previously served four years in the state Assembly. Further to the left than most of his fellow Democratic candidates, Thurmond is the only gubernatorial contender who supports a proposed one-time tax on billionaires’ assets to backfill federal cuts to Medi-Cal. He wants to give a tax credit to lower-income working families, open up spare land owned by school districts to develop housing and commit more public funding to building affordable housing.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. Here's their conversation with Tony Thurmond.

Antonio Villaraigosa

Party: Democratic
Professional Background: Former mayor of Los Angeles and Assembly speaker

Villaraigosa was speaker of the state Assembly in the late 1990s and mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 to 2013, during which he significantly expanded the size of the police force and pushed a local sales tax ballot measure to pay for public transportation expansions. Villaraigosa is one of the more moderate Democrats in the race. He is more skeptical of the state’s climate goals, believes in using oil and gas as a “transition” fuel and wants a moratorium on climate regulations.

Our partner Capradio is interviewing the top candidates for governor. Here's their conversation with Antonio Villaraigosa.

More candidates

Candidates who suspended their campaigns after ballots were printed will still appear, including Eric Swalwell and Betty Yee.

Meet the candidates for California governor

What does a California governor do?