S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman. On today's show , we're talking about California's gubernatorial race , along with the 48th Congressional District. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Ready or not ? Within a few weeks , ballots for California's June primary election will be in your mailbox. A lot of people are watching California's gubernatorial race , and there's interesting speculation about how that race , along with others , may shake out. Joining us is Carl Luna. He is a political science professor at Mesa College and director of University of San Diego's Institute for Civil Civic Engagement. Carl. Welcome back to the show.
S2: Thanks for having me back , Jade.
S1: Always glad to have you here. So Governor Gavin Newsom is finishing up his second and final term as governor , and voters will begin choosing his successor in the June primary.
S2: I mean , you've got ten candidates trying to parse things up. Two Republicans , eight Democrats. None of them are particularly household names. So it creates a possibility for Republicans to maybe when the governorship for the first time since Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right.
S1: Right.
S2: If you remember on that one , we had a child star , a porn star , and a hundred other people running against poor Cruz Bustamante , the lieutenant governor , who was defeated and then a Hollywood star won. So in a race where people don't know who's running uh , edges like that , having a social media presence , having an ability to , uh , to generate some buzz , replaces doing the old work of having served in different levels of office.
S1: All right. So you're not seeing any superstars in this race so far. But , you know , tell me about some of the leading candidates on the Democratic side if you can.
S2: Well , typically when you run for governor , you go for a first start like lieutenant governor or something before that and before that , you were a mayor and you got a couple of those. You've got a few statewide office holders Tony Thurmond , Betty Yee and Xavier Becerra , who is also former Health and Human Services under Obama. I got a couple of mayors , uh , mayor of San Jose from the north , former mayor of Los Angeles from the South , a couple of House members , and then a billionaire. Uh , so that's almost like the cast of Gilligan's Island. For all the different people that are running on , none of them are polling above 30% right now. Uh , Republicans of both their candidates collectively are somewhere around 35%. Democrats are 65 , but you divide that 65 up eight ways and you could end up with none of them getting more than the two Republican candidates. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well , you mentioned a billionaire. Um , and that's Tom Steyer. Uh , what is his , uh , what's what's his deal ? Tell me about him.
S2: Well , Steyer is one in a long line of people who've run for Senate or governorship in California who thought self-funding their campaign was a great way to be able to say , I'm an independent , I'm going to do the right thing. He's kind of a moderate Democrat , a senator left to have a strong business sense with things. The problem is , when you self-fund your campaign , you're guaranteed one vote your own. When people fund your campaign , it means other people are going to go out and support you. So Steyer is buying a lot of social media , a lot of streaming service ads. He's hoping that will be able to to to move him forward. Uh , right now , he's probably , uh , maybe second in the Democratic field , but I don't think it's going to be enough to get him into the into the runoff in November.
S1: Yeah , that's a real interesting point you make there. Uh , some may be surprised , but the leading candidate right now , according to many polls , is actually a Republican , Steve Hilton.
S2: He's got a lot of powerful Republicans behind him. He's Fox News. He made his career in England as an adviser for the Tory party , the Conservative Party there. And this is interesting. You have a fellow who is a transplant from England and an expat who's come over here now , who has never run for elected office in California , and he's using media and social media to move them forward. And Republicans are kind of gravitating toward him because he has that kind of what would the kids call it today , risk factor that can allow him to maybe pull together enough Republican votes to make it to the runoff and maybe even win in November. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. You know , I want to dig into this a little more because you mentioned President Trump endorsed Hilton.
S2: I mean , Hilton was historically kind of more on the moderate conservative side of things. But when he advised Cameron , the British prime minister. But since his stint over with Fox News in 2020 , he joined the election denial group. And if you're in that group , you need to get a lot of support from the president and from the people who support him. That may well play against them , though , should he be the banner holder when it comes to November , when you're going to have a much bigger Democratic base out , unless the Democrats nominate somebody who just doesn't prove to be a good candidate.
S1:
S2: A choice he supported in Georgia just won , though by a much narrower margin than typically the Republicans win the district. So it's helpful for the Republican vote. I don't think it's helpful for the average Californian vote , though. Don't forget , Donald Trump got more votes in California than any other state of the union with such a big state. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. Well , you know , Hilton is not the only Republican in the race. So tell us about Chad Bianco. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. Riverside County Sheriff again looking at election conspiracies. He's more of kind of like the media sheriff figure we've seen in California , Arizona , uh , other states. And if you didn't have Hilton in the race , he would have been the guy you would have seen as getting the Trump endorsement. But Trump liked Hilton's connections to the British Conservative politics and his connections to election denialism. So , uh , Bianca is he's not going to really be able to make the first place. But if you end up with the the two Republicans getting , say , 34% between them and none of the Democrats clear the 15% mark now , we could have an interesting runoff in November. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. I mean , this primary election is an open primary. And and to your point , this could really end up we could end up with really two Republican candidates here. So can you remind us what that means , that this this is a primary open election.
S2: And Democrats have pushed that through because the thought was , if you do that and you have two Democrats , it will help to bring people toward the center. The more moderate Democrat would have a better chance of winning. Well , guess what this time ? Eight Democrats are running , and it's a sign that the Democratic Party in California doesn't really have a good , strong identity. It's been fractured into lots of little power centers. In the days past , the leaders of the party would have called everybody into the room and said , we need to make a decision. And of the eight of you. Five of you have no chance. So go do something else. And now we can rally around our candidates and support them to win. So the simple fact you have so many Democrats running is a sign that while Democrats have control of California , they're not sure what they want to do with it. And they're not sure what the party stands for in the state. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Well , so there has been you know , there's California has has redrawn congressional maps to counter redistricting efforts in Texas.
S2: But the one district , of course , Darrell Issa is the district got redistricted out from under him. The new 48th district and Omar campaign is trying again to to win in that area. And then Jim Desmond , who was going to run against Mike Levin , switched over when Issa pulled out of the race. The new district is an area that neither a camp in Ajah or Desmond have run across the entire district. Oh , and Marni von Wolpert , San Diego City Council. She doesn't have a lot of truck in the northern part of the district. It breaks a little bit more to the Democrats. Question becomes turnout. Given how badly the Republican brand seems to be doing these days , it should be camping two jars to win , with two caveats. One , he's lost a couple of races , and usually when you've lost , you don't come back and make a big comeback. And Jim Desmond is more of a moderate Republican to what a classic old fashioned conservative , uh , fiscally responsible Republican. Which always makes me wonder why he wants to go into a Congress where his own party is so much farther to the right than he is. But political ambition is what it is. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S2: And also in November , it could well simply be a red blue vote for a lot of people. And if Democrats are mad and turn out in mass , this would be their chance to flip the district. I think the biggest tell that the district is going to flip is the fact that Darrell Issa didn't stay in the race. If he thought he could win it. He probably would have stayed in and not gone into early. Well , second retirement that he's taken.
S1:
S2: Midterm election of a president's second year when they did their second term when they become a lame duck , typically doesn't go well for the president's party. Exception being Bill Clinton in his second term when Democrats were mad at the impeachment of him , and turned out to give the Republican Democrats more power in the Congress. So under normal times , that's what should happen. The economy is not doing particularly great. Look at all the problems with gas prices. If gas is 6 or 7 bucks a gallon , Republicans are toast. Then the question becomes how fair and free will the elections be ? The president has made a lot of noise with executive orders to try to restrict the ability of people to register to vote , the mechanisms by which they can vote. He has his Save America Act , which some Democrats call the Steal America Act , which the president said would so restrict the voting power of Democrats would guarantee Republicans the midterms. If you see machinations like that , then we got a bigger problem of who wins or loses. The constitutional system becomes under stress. In normal times , though , Republicans take their licking. Democrats take control of the House , maybe the Senate. And you know what ? There's another election in two years. You can sort things out then.
S1: Well , what kind of impact do you think the Trump administration's efforts to pass the Save act will have on the future of elections here in the US.
S2: If one of the things that's playing out in the Senate , Senate leadership has been loath to follow what the president wants is to get rid of the filibuster. If the Republicans were to push that through , getting rid of the filibuster. I mean , the House Republicans have already voted for it. It would be a substantial change to how we do voting. Yeah , grandma's going to have to go in to the the to her voter register and not the DMV , not online. She's going to have to have a birth certificate that shows her original name , because if she was married , she's got a married name that we will not necessarily qualify for the votes. And one of the real purposes of the Save act is to throw so much confusion onto who is legitimate registered voter. What means the voting by mail and person is legitimate , that the administration could step in after the voting and say , we're going to discard a whole bunch of ballots for whatever reason we're giving it this time under the Save act. And then you've got the whole problem of adjudication and you're in a constitutional crisis. It would be kind of nice if we could just have a regular , normal midterm. Wow.
S1: Wow. Everything is so consequential right now , and this is something we'll continue to watch and have you back on to talk about. I've been speaking with Carl Luna. He's a political science professor at Mesa College and director of the Institute for Civil Civic Engagement at the University of San Diego. Karl , thank you so much for being here.
S2: Thank you for having me.
S1: That's our show for today.
S3: I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
