Steyer and Hilton tied for 2nd place in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary

As Californians head to the polls ahead of Tuesday’s election, the leading candidates hoping to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom went all over the country closing their arguments to the voters.

With former Biden Cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra surging in recent polls, the two candidates to win second place in this week’s primaries and advance to the November election are highlighting strategic reasons why they believe voters should support them.

Republican Steve Hilton – a former conservative analyst who outranked his main GOP rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, after President Trump endorsed him in April – urged voters to support him to avoid the possibility of two Democrats facing off in November.

“I want us to fight like we’re third. We’re not going to let this slide,” Hilton told a few hundred people at the Santa Monica Hilton Hotel & Suites on Sunday morning.

The former British political strategist once led the polls, but fell slightly behind Becerra. Not far behind Hilton is billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate change activist Tom Steyer, a Democrat.

During his hour-and-a-half appearance, Hilton veered between his repeated criticisms of nearly 16 years of Democrat-led government in California to take a dig at the top Democrats in the race.

Steyer’s relentless marketing is “just one more reason to win,” while Becerra is “the living embodiment of the same.”

“Our secret weapon? Democratic candidates,” Hilton said with a laugh.

Asked why voters should not support Bianco, Hilton said it’s simple math. Only the first and second place finishers in the June 2 primary election will advance to the national election, regardless of party affiliation.

“Every vote for Chad Bianco is a vote for two of the top two Democrats,” he said.

If the GOP candidate fails to get on the ballot in November, it will reduce the Republican vote, hurt lower-party voters, and cripple a Republican-led ballot initiative that would require voters to show a government-issued ID to vote.

California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer poses for a photo with a volunteer during a Get Out the Vote rally at Los Angeles Trade Technical College on Sunday.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Steyer, who spent a record $216 million of his fortune in his gubernatorial bid, has argued that he is the only candidate in the race who is not looking for special offers. He credited Becerra with the support he’s received from companies including Meta, Airbnb, Uber and Chevron. Steyer argued that Becerra, if elected governor, would be more responsive to special interests than fiscally strapped Californians.

“We’ve seen it in this race. Chevron cuts you a check and you look the other way when they raise pump prices. Meta gives you money and your AI system starts sounding like ChatGPT,” Steyer, wearing a self-proclaimed “class traitor” ball cap, told more than 500 fans at a community college near downtown Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon. “That’s the story of Xavier Becerra.”

Corporations, as well as labor unions and interest groups including the California Assn. Realtors have spent more than $18.7 million to promote Becerra as of Sunday, according to campaign spending tracker California Target Book.

“These companies may be selfish, but they’re not stupid. They don’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get someone elected unless they know they’re going to be on their side,” Steyer said.

Although Steyer made his fortune in part through past investments in private prisons, fossil fuels and private equity, his supporters describe him as a reformed billionaire who left those industries more than a decade ago.

Francesca Fiorentini, a comedian and podcaster, compared Steyer to Charles Dickens’ fictional Ebenezer Scrooge.

“At the end of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ no one turns to Ebenezer and says, ‘No, I will not accept your presents.’ No, they accept him. They may play him a little bit, but we need to accept someone like Tom Steyer,” said Fiorentini. “Tom Steyer is actually listening, he really cares, he’s changing his beliefs and doing the right thing.”

Although he has gone after Becerra a lot, Steyer has made sure to criticize Hilton.

“You’re not voting for who’s on the ballot, you’re voting for California to come next,” Steyer said. “The California where Steve Hilton works sounds like what Trump wants: higher prices, lower wages, and less freedom.”

His campaign emphasized his attack on Becerra by having a number of supporters dressed as zombies speak outside Becerra’s Sunday evening rally in Long Beach. Moving signs naming businesses that have supported Becerra, they wore ribbons describing “Big Oil,” “Big Tech” and other corporate sectors as Becerra’s “wagons.”

At the raucous rally, elected officials, labor leaders and reproductive rights advocates were among the speakers who introduced Becerra, who attacked Steyer and Hilton, though he did not name them.

“We’re not going to let a billionaire or a Trump nominee take over this state,” he told more than 1,000 people at the city’s convention center. “We’re not going to let them eat Medicaid while Californians are working hard to build a future. We’re not going to let them buy elections…. Not here, not in this state, not on our watch.”

Becerra looked nervous as he stood in front of the packed room.

“Look in this room. One of our opponents has a billion dollars in his checkbook,” he said. “We have something better… We don’t have money, but we have movement. We don’t have money, but we have momentum. And in this situation, if you have momentum, you run across the finish line, and you succeed, baby, you succeed.”

Becerra also released a new video attacking Hilton as “Trump’s favorite” – a concerted effort by Republicans to help Hilton finish ahead of Steyer in the primary. Given that Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1, Becerra would rather face Hilton than Steyer in the general election.

The Newsom campaign used this strategy to boost GOP businessman John Cox in the 2018 presidential election, as did Rep. Adam Schiff vs. Republican Steve Garvey in Schiff’s successful 2024 US Senate race.

Billionaire Tom Steyer has argued that he is the only person not beholden to special interests.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Steyer launched an ad this weekend with the headline “Risky” suggesting Becerra could face criminal charges related to the actions of two former advisers who pleaded guilty to stealing campaign funds from Becerra’s defunct campaign account.

Becerra’s campaign called the ad offensive in a cease-and-desist letter sent to the Steyer campaign on Saturday.

Becerra, Hilton and Steyer, the frontrunners in the race, swept the state in the final days before the June 2 primary. They have devoted much of their attention to voters in Southern California, home to the state’s 23.2 million registered voters. Minority voters also frustrated in Southland – San José Mayor Matt Mahan greeted diners at Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles, and former Orange County District Attorney Katie Porter kicked off a union campaign event in Orange on Saturday.

Unlike recent contests to lead the populous country, this year’s gubernatorial contest failed to energize the electorate. Despite a crowded field of candidates with notable careers, and record spending by Steyer and independent spending committees. Californians just got in.

Political experts of both parties believe that voters are powerless due to fatigue about the country’s political fragmentation, as well as the Trump administration’s policies such as federal taxes that raise prices everywhere and others that have disproportionately affected California, such as immigration raids. Southern Californians have also been reeling from the devastating wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena and last year’s special election to redraw the state’s federal boundaries.

Earlier this year, Democratic leaders worried that their voters would split between candidates, creating a situation where two Republicans advanced to the general election. They urged the candidates of their party to check if they are working, and they urged the candidates with low votes to leave the race.

The emergence of democracy has also caused concern. As of May 22, mail-in ballots returned by Democrats were down 9.2% compared to the 2022 state primary, while ballots returned by Republicans were up 11.6%, according to Political Data Intelligence. But the return rates are changing — as of Friday, Democrats were behind their 2022 return average by 7%, while Republicans were ahead at 6.8%.

The most recent polls suggest that the prospect of two Republicans advancing to the general election is nil, and it is now unlikely that two Democrats will win the top two seats in the June 2 primary election.