California’s Blue Armageddon – The Atlantic
On a cold Saturday late final month, I met Eric Swalwell at a Little League diamond close to Capitol Hill, the place the Bay Area congressman and his spouse, Brittany, can be watching their 8-yr-outdated son. Swalwell, who was operating to succeed Gavin Newsom as the subsequent governor of California, had been steadily rising above a Lilliputian forged of candidates and had acquired a powerful scent of momentum within the race.
“Impeccable timing for you,” he’d texted me on my drive over. He hooked up a simply-printed Washington Post article reporting that FBI Director Kash Patel was searching for to launch information referring to a decade-outdated investigation into Swalwell that had turned up no proof of wrongdoing. If true, the Post story introduced a publicity godsend to Swalwell’s marketing campaign, additional elevating his standing as a nemesis of the vindictive president.
The household-man tableau of the Little League sport felt in line with the healthful picture that the marketing campaign had been straining to undertaking of late, for causes that may turn out to be clear quickly sufficient. Our interview occurred on the identical weekend that Swalwell launched a video of him and Brittany holding arms on a boardwalk stroll, whereas she referred to as him a “really great dad” and a “really good husband.”
As we sat collectively within the bleachers, Swalwell launched me to Brittany, dropped the names of his higher-identified endorsers, and referred to Nancy Pelosi as his “work mom.” He additionally talked about Adam Schiff, his former House colleague, whose trajectory into statewide workplace Swalwell had watched carefully. Like Schiff, Swalwell had turn out to be a ubiquitous antagonist of Donald Trump—about pretty much as good of a credential as any for main the de facto capital of Blue America.
“I am the only candidate whose name the president knows,” Swalwell advised me.
Just a few weeks later, much more folks know Eric Swalwell’s title, which has now been stained immeasurably. He is leaving Congress; his marketing campaign is over, most likely his political profession too; and the California governor’s race is even messier than the colossal fiasco it had been earlier than.
Swalwell’s collapse has been sudden and swift, if not shocking. Recurrent speak of unhealthy habits towards ladies had trailed him round Washington for years, and proliferated as he approached entrance-runner standing. Late final week, the rumors detonated: Multiple women, certainly one of them a former staffer, accused him of sexual misconduct, together with sexual assault, undesirable advances, and specific Snapchat messages. Swalwell admitted to “mistakes in judgment” however denied the allegations and vowed to “fight” them. In brief order, he has been met with multiple investigations, and prompt pariah standing. (I reached out to him after the accusations got here out however didn’t hear again.)
The indisputable fact that Swalwell was, till lately, the Democrats’ main candidate for governor is itself illustrative of the race writ massive. Or, so far as the folks nonetheless operating, writ small. The obvious lack of candidate expertise, political ability, and private enchantment—not to mention star energy—has been the defining high quality of the race. Bigger names, equivalent to Kamala Harris and Senator Alex Padilla, opted to not run. Newsom is time period-restricted. Jerry Brown is 88. George Clooney lives in France.
Beyond the perverse pull of watching such ineptitude on show, the principle attract of this marketing campaign is that it may produce the final word man-bites-canine political outcome: the election of a Trump-aligned Republican governor on this bluest of states, concurrent with a nationwide election that might produce the bluest of waves. Such a monumental upset wouldn’t happen as a result of the 2 GOP candidates—Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and the British-bred commentator and strategist Steve Hilton—remind anybody of Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or any of the opposite bigger-than-life Republicans within the get together’s wealthy (if not current) California custom. Rather, a Republican win would symbolize an act of Democratic self-immolation, spectacular even by Team Donkey requirements.
Here’s how the Democratic-lockout state of affairs may play out. California elections are winnowed via a so-referred to as jungle major, during which the highest two finishers—no matter get together—advance to the overall election in November. The present discipline has been crowded and stagnant for months, with eight main Democratic candidates (now seven). Until Swalwell dropped out, he, the billionaire investor Tom Steyer, and former Representative Katie Porter had every been polling within the low-to-mid teenagers. They had been adopted by a parade of single-digit laggards, together with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and former California Attorney General and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Hilton and Bianco, in the meantime, had been polling within the mid-to-excessive teenagers via the primary week of April. If no Democrat exceeds the others earlier than the June 2 major, the Republicans may end first and second, guaranteeing a GOP victory in November.
An enormous a part of the Democrats’ downside is that the get together’s high tier, equivalent to it’s, consists of deeply flawed candidates, every encumbered with distinct character impairments.
Steyer ran for president in 2020, burned via a ton of money, went nowhere, and is now trying to spend his solution to Sacramento. He has already saturated the state’s airwaves with greater than $130 million in advertisements, which can or will not be sufficient to purchase him a modicum of private enchantment. His one viral second of the marketing campaign up to now was not fairly: A neighborhood TV reporter requested him how he would grade Newsom’s two phrases, and Steyer grew to become flustered earlier than muttering forth with the worst potential clarification: “I haven’t followed it closely enough to give him a grade.” The Steyer marketing campaign declined to make him obtainable for an interview.
Porter, an financial-populist gadfly within the style of Elizabeth Warren, grew to become a social-media sensation throughout her years within the House. She wielded her signature whiteboard at congressional oversight committee hearings whereas making mush of CEOs and Trump-administration officers. Not all of her viral moments have been flattering, nonetheless. There was an notorious video final fall of Porter berating a information reporter whereas terminating a neighborhood tv interview, and one other from 2021 of her cursing out a employees member throughout a Zoom name (“get out of my fucking shot!”). Porter expressed remorse over the movies, saying that she “could have been better in those moments.” A Porter spokesperson didn’t reply to a number of requests to interview the candidate.
Then there’s—was—Swalwell, who at this level has graduated to his personal particular classification of toxicity. With his exit, the Democrats’ flailing discipline is perhaps narrowed barely, and maybe improved by subtraction, however very a lot stays a bottleneck of B-listers.
At the top of March, I headed out to Los Angeles to raised perceive this predicament. My arrival coincided with a scheduled major debate on the University of Southern California—which, naturally, would turn out to be a steaming debacle in its personal proper.
Not lengthy after the talk was supposed to start out, I discovered myself in a musty warehouse occasion area in Boyle Heights, simply east of the Los Angeles River. Republican Chad Bianco’s marketing campaign had determined to go forward with a watch get together, regardless that a slight wrench had been flung into the night: The debate had been abruptly canceled the evening earlier than.
I’d attended many debate watch events in my profession, however by no means one with no debate to observe. Not solely that, the candidate we had been presupposed to be watching was current on the get together.
“It’s very disheartening, very disheartening,” Bianco advised me as he mingled amongst roughly 60 visitors. Bianco described the whiplash of his final 24 hours: After being canceled, the talk had been briefly resurrected, canceled once more, and practically resuscitated one other time earlier than lastly being euthanized for good. He parked himself in a nook to speak with a couple of reporters. His spouse, Denise, stood subsequent to him.
“How are you supposed to do a watch party if there’s nothing to watch?” I requested Denise, as Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” blared within the background.
“We’re celebrating!” she exclaimed.
“What are we celebrating?” I requested. “What are we watching?”
“We are watching Chad,” she mentioned.
Chad seems to be just like the sheriff he’s: brief-cropped hair, studded belt buckle, six-pointed-star badge, and a very good mustache, which I complimented him on. “I know Steve wasn’t looking tough enough, so he grew a beard,” he mentioned, referring to Hilton, his Republican rival. “He dresses like me now too. It’s kind of weird.”
“Are you guys friends?” I requested.
“No, I will never be friends with him,” Bianco advised me. “He’s unethical and dishonest.” Bianco didn’t elaborate.
The non-debate debate no less than supplied a tidy distillation of this muddled marketing campaign. The hosts—the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, KABC-TV Los Angeles, and Univision—had invited the 5 high-polling candidates and likewise a sixth, Mahan, regardless that he had been polling decrease than lots of the uninvited additionally-rans. This didn’t go over properly amongst mentioned uninvited additionally-rans. Villaraigosa and others identified that the Latino, Black, and Asian American candidates had all been excluded. Various activists, teams, and state lawmakers piled on. USC lastly determined that the controversy was distracting “from the issues that matter to voters,” and the complainants declared victory. “We fought. We won! We stood up against an unfair candidate debate set-up,” Becerra wrote on X.
Another grievance concerning the debate was that Mike Murphy, the co-director of the Dornsife Center, is publicly supporting Mahan. Murphy advised me that he’s on depart from USC and had nothing to do with the occasion. The organizers, he defined, had confronted a easy problem: “How do you pare it down so it’s not a stupid circus?” Clumsily, on this case.
My fundamental method to spending 72 hours on this silly circus was to scramble round and go to with as many candidates and marketing campaign-adjoining characters as I may. That included Murphy, a longtime Republican media strategist and raconteur, certainly one of my all-time favourite marketing campaign-adjoining characters. Murphy moved to Los Angeles in 2003, went full Never Trump, and has dabbled in screenwriting, podcasting, and TV punditry, in addition to the odd Democratic marketing campaign—i.e., Mahan’s. He invited me to a divey Chinese joint within the Palms neighborhood, Hu’s Szechwan, the place he says he likes to maintain workplace hours, like an outdated-college mayor in a again sales space of a crimson-sauce Italian joint.
When I requested him to evaluate the candidates, Murphy needed to make the purpose that they’re all, figuratively, diminutive. But he was additionally conscious that language sensitivities have heightened since, say, the Eighties, when pundits dismissed the Michael Dukakis–led discipline of Democratic presidential candidates as “the Seven Dwarfs.”
“I want to do a little-person joke without losing my career,” Murphy advised me. “This thing is a Wizard of Oz wrap party,” he went on, not capable of assist himself.
He pivoted to safer rhetorical floor, noting that it’s close to-inconceivable for candidates with little statewide title recognition to get traction in California, which is bigger in dimension than Germany. “If you’re not famous or you don’t have a lot of money,” he mentioned, “you’re a margin of error.”
Murphy believes that the Blue Armageddon outcome—each Republicans within the runoff—won’t come to go, a view that loads of California politicos share. Their idea is that the Democrats idling within the margin-of-error lane will ultimately begin dropping out and rally round whoever the main non-Republican is. But aside from Swalwell, not one of the remaining candidates has give up but, and all of them make an analogous argument: Voters are nonetheless not “tuned in” to the race, and people who are skew closely to the undecided.
One candidate making that case is Murphy’s choose, Mahan, who in most polls sits within the low-to-mid-single digits. I met the boyish-wanting, Harvard-educated mayor of San Jose at a café in downtown L.A. as he snacked his manner via a plastic container of blueberries. Mahan, 43, entered the race late, on the finish of January, after rising “incredibly frustrated with what the field was offering,” he advised me. He has been making an attempt to place himself as a outcomes-oriented pragmatist who just isn’t afraid to defy the get together institution, progressive teams, or Newsom himself.
“What I’m suggesting—no, not suggesting—what I’m arguing with conviction is that we have to demand that our government do better,” Mahan mentioned. He has turn out to be an elegant alternative for Silicon Valley sorts, good-authorities centrists, and the nationwide media—California’s straight analogue to Pete Buttigieg. Like Mayor Pete, Mahan exudes excessive-minded, information-pushed sophistication, with that particular sprint of “aw shucks” they educate at Harvard.
“A Democrat who talks about math,” Mahan advised me. “Imagine that!”
Okay, let’s discuss math. As in, what occurs if the weeks go by and Mahan doesn’t see any important addition or multiplication in his polling? Would he drop out then to assist his get together? Mahan maintains that he likes his probabilities. Democrats will ultimately consolidate, he mentioned. Around him.
“I plan to be the one,” he mentioned.
Funnily sufficient, that’s what lots of the mathematics-challenged candidates say. This contains Villaraigosa, the previous Los Angeles mayor, whom I met at his workplace in a Wilshire Boulevard tower, a transparent view of the Hollywood signal out his image window.
Villaraigosa is undeniably credentialed; along with operating the nation’s second-largest metropolis for 2 phrases, he was speaker of the California Assembly within the Nineties. But he has not held any workplace since 2013. In the governor’s race—his second marketing campaign for the job—he has constantly polled within the single digits and struggled to achieve traction.
“Why do you want to do this?” I requested him.
Villaraigosa launched into his origin story (“Mark, this state’s given me more than I could have ever hoped for”), his litany of when-I-was-mayor promoting factors (“more housing, more schools, more community colleges”), and his clarification for why a 73-yr-outdated politician with a closely antiquated aura may turn out to be the subsequent governor.
People are hungry, he mentioned, for a pacesetter who can deliver this most numerous, dynamic, and populous state within the nation collectively. California, in spite of everything, has solely ever had one nonwhite governor—within the nineteenth century.
“I was everybody’s mayor,” mentioned Villaraigosa, who appears particularly keen on that trope of politicians claiming honorary standing in sure id teams (equivalent to when the author Toni Morrison referred to as Bill Clinton “the first Black president”).
“Jewish Journal called me the first Jewish mayor,” Villaraigosa boasted.
As greatest I can inform, this referred to a 2017 Jewish Journal article during which Villaraigosa recognized himself as being “the Jewish mayor,” along with “the Muslim mayor” and “the Korean mayor.”
“I get introduced in the African American communities a lot of times as the second Black mayor,” he additionally advised me.
I began to ask Villaraigosa whether or not he could possibly be thought-about an Asian or homosexual mayor of Los Angeles, however he shot me a glance, so I dropped it.
“You know the point I’m making,” he mentioned. “I was a uniter.”
Unfortunately for Villaraigora, few California voters appear to be uniting across the first Jewish and second Black mayor of Los Angeles.
From Villaraigosa’s lair, I headed to the patio of a elaborate-pants lodge in Pasadena for the subsequent cease of my tour de farce: a gathering with Steve Hilton earlier than he needed to head off to a fundraiser.
“I want to have a pee,” he introduced after he walked in and launched himself. Lots of visitors en route, very relatable. I used to be supportive.
Hilton returned a minute later, and appeared instantly amused by his circumstance: a Brit on an enormous journey throughout the pond, a Republican by some means atop the governor’s race in California. “I’ve been leading or second in most of the polls,” Hilton advised me. “There was one where I was fourth,” he added, guffawing, “which is obviously a fake poll.”
On this present day, Hilton was cheerfully aggravated by the canceled USC debate, which he blamed on the “inevitable whining” of what he referred to as “the LPDs.”
“The low-polling Democrats were jumping up and down, ‘Racism, racism!’” mentioned Hilton. “My line has been, they weren’t excluded because of race; they’re excluded because they weren’t doing better in the race.” He was clearly happy along with his cleverness.
Hilton is a distinct breed of American candidate. But he’s spent a lot of his life round politics, principally in England. He is an Oxford-educated provocateur who was a high aide to conservative U.Ok. Prime Minister David Cameron. He moved to the United States in 2012; his spouse, Rachel Whetstone, a British communications govt, has held high jobs at a Mount Rushmore of Silicon Valley corporations (Google, Netflix, Facebook, Uber). Still, Hilton has by no means held and even run for workplace.
I questioned aloud whether or not there had ever been a governor of a U.S. state with a British accent. “I don’t think so,” Hilton replied, although he invoked Schwarzenegger, who very a lot had an Austrian accent. Hilton additionally famous, for the document, that each of his mother and father are from Hungary. Therefore, he generally jokes that because the final Republican governor in California was from Austria, electing Hilton can be like California’s model of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
“So, I say, ‘You’ve had the Austrian, now the Hungarian.’”
“That’s a great message!” I assured Hilton.
Hilton calls himself “a pragmatic kind of person” and insists that his “whole campaign is positive and practical.” His major theme is that California is an object lesson in how Democratic extra can damage an in any other case wonderful state. “You’ve had 16 years of one-party rule,” he mentioned. “Are you happy with the way things are? The answer is going to be no.”
This could possibly be a stable technique, aside from one factor: Donald Trump stays the dominant determine in American politics, together with in California, the place he’s particularly loathed by the overall voters. If Democrats can keep away from the two-Republicans final result and Hilton winds up dealing with a Democrat in November, his opponent shall be relentless in making an attempt to tie him to Trump. Hilton generally shifts into the language of the Fox News host he was, for instance, promising to go “FULL DOGE” on California if given the prospect. I saved asking him concerning the president and the way MAGA Hilton considers himself to be. He saved ducking. “The whole Trump thing is just a ridiculous distraction from fixing California,” Hilton mentioned. “I truly am not ideological.”
Hilton’s dilemma is that if he’s too dismissive of the president pre-June, California Republicans and proper-leaning independents—which features a appreciable pro-Trump contingent—may favor Bianco, a way more unabashedly MAGA determine, with notes of extremism. Bianco was as soon as a member of the Oath Keepers, the far-proper anti-authorities group whose ranks had been closely represented on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. (After his affiliation grew to become public in 2021, Bianco said that he had left the group years earlier than.) More lately—March—he took the weird step of seizing 650,000 ballots from the state’s 2025 election in Riverside County, saying that he was going to “physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes reported.” California’s legal professional common referred to as Bianco’s gambit “unprecedented in both scope and scale,” and the state’s Supreme Court ultimately ordered Bianco to close it down.
The actual objective of Bianco’s “investigation” was prone to flutter his eyelashes at a sure connoisseur of bogus election fraud, the one sitting within the White House. But to no avail. Trump gave Hilton his “COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT” on Truth Social final week, calling him a “truly fine man.” Hilton dutifully went on X and mentioned he was “deeply honored.”
He was, in all probability, deeply ambivalent.
Against his get together’s curiosity, Trump had given Republican voters a motive to rally behind one candidate, and thus create a gap for a Democrat to advance to November. But though Hilton jumped into the lead in most polls taken afterward, Bianco stays near the entrance of the pack. California Republicans held their conference final weekend, and neither candidate had sufficient assist to earn the get together’s endorsement.
Hilton nonetheless having fun with the silly circus. If nothing else, he struck me as a uncommon sanguine Republican on a poll anyplace in America this yr.
In the times since Swalwell’s demise, no clear consensus has arisen about who will profit and who won’t. If there’s one space of settlement, it’s that the race stays an underwhelming hodgepodge of half-weights, has-beens, and, oh sure, a billionaire.
Steyer, largely on the power of his limitless advert finances, appears to have inherited no less than a number of the rising Swalwell momentum. He’s picked up a couple of endorsements (the California Teachers Association, for instance), drawn some huge crowds at marketing campaign occasions this week, and, for what it’s value, changed Swalwell because the darling of the prediction markets. Trump even attacked “SLEAZEBAG Tom Steyer” on Wednesday, which in 2026 might be the very best consideration {that a} Democrat, even a free-spending billionaire, should buy.
It doesn’t appear apparent, nonetheless, that extra publicity will make voters’ hearts develop fonder of a self-funded hedge-fund magnate whose final self-importance marketing campaign, for president, spent $345 million and gained zero delegates. Meanwhile, no less than one poll carried out after Swalwell’s exit confirmed a continued logjam on the high: Hilton at 17 %, with Bianco and Steyer tied at 14 %. Beyond that, the survey’s most important improvement was most likely Becerra climbing to 10 % (tied with Porter).
The job of California governor has modified considerably through the Trump years, changing into extra nationwide than ever. Trump’s repeated incursions into the state—sending the National Guard into Los Angeles, denying federal funding, even endorsing requires Newsom’s arrest—are prone to persist in some type. California voters will need their governor to be a “fighter-protector,” Swalwell had advised me, in higher days for him. “They’re asking, Who’s going to step in and fill the role?”
The final California governor’s race I wrote about was the 2010 marketing campaign to succeed Schwarzenegger. I bear in mind asking Jerry Brown, the eventual winner, how he would price Schwarzenegger’s efficiency. Brown stunned me along with his reply, crediting his predecessor with “making the job of governor bigger.” Reagan, Brown mentioned, had additionally “added size” to the place. His level—I feel—was that, in such a boundless and focused state, the character and perceived stature of the particular person in cost appeared to depend for greater than they’d elsewhere. That’s solely turn out to be extra true in Trump’s second time period.
On Friday, I requested Newsom himself what recommendation he would give the subsequent governor in coping with the president. “You know, it’s interpersonal with Trump, that’s how it starts,” Newsom advised me in a Zoom interview. He mentioned he would encourage his successor to fly to Washington, attempt to construct some rapport; Newsom guessed that Trump can be receptive, partly to spite the departed governor.
“So you take advantage of that, the fresh air,” Newsom mentioned, including that it gained’t final. “You’re dealing with an invasive species.” Inevitably, the president will attempt to bully the subsequent governor if he senses he can. “His superpower, from my perspective, is exploiting weakness,” Newsom mentioned.
I took a shot at getting Newsom to evaluate the race, and whether or not he believed any of the candidates was higher suited than the remaining to repelling the invasive species. But this he was reluctant to do. “I don’t want to get into the merits or demerits of people as individuals,” he mentioned. “I think all of them are remarkably qualified in their own unique ways”—aside from Hilton and Bianco (the latter of whom he referred to as “the guy who tried to take all those ballots”). The governor referred to the wannabe Democrats as “an extraordinarily well-versed group” and likewise “just an interesting field.”
Newsom insisted that he’s not getting concerned, or favoring anybody simply but. Nor does he appear to consider that the pileup of Democrats—and the prospect that it may lead to a Republican governor—constitutes an emergency simply but.
I requested Newsom if he would endorse a Democrat earlier than the first.
“Only in a break-the-glass scenario,” he mentioned, not elaborating on what that was, or whether or not it was getting shut.
*Illustration sources: Anjali Sharif-Paul / MediaNews Group / The Sun / Getty; Jeff Gentner / Getty; Kevin Dietsch / Getty; Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times / Getty; Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group / Los Angeles Daily News / Getty.