The president’s intervention in the California gubernatorial race is almost certain to make it a less interesting one.
Unfortunately, the president violated one of the cardinal rules of combat: Never interrupt your opponent while he’s making a mistake. Even as Donald Trump competently prosecutes a war abroad, he might have fumbled a sector of the domestic conflict against his Democratic adversaries by weighing in on California’s gubernatorial race.
On Monday morning, Trump endorsed former Fox News personality Steve Hilton’s campaign over his toughest Republican competitor, onetime Riverside County, Calif., sheriff Chad Bianco.
Hilton needed the boost. For months, polling showed that Hilton and Bianco were neck and neck, both drawing support in the low double digits. But as the only two competitive Republicans in the race, both candidates exploited a quirk of California’s electoral system, which, had it been allowed to play out, might have produced the funniest of all possible results.
The Golden State’s blanket primary pits Democrats and Republicans against one another on the same ballot, with the top two candidates, irrespective of party affiliation, advancing to the general election. With Gavin Newsom moving on to bigger things, Democrats raced in droves to replace him. Soon enough, the ballot was glutted with relatively well-known Democrats: Representative Eric Swalwell, former Representative Katie Porter, onetime Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and the environmentalist and financier Tom Steyer, among others.
None of these candidates was a prohibitive favorite. Each polled competitively against their fellow Democrats. As a result, despite their paltry numbers, Republicans managed to consolidate around their two most popular candidates, while the Democratic vote was split among a range of candidates. The result: Hilton and Bianco with durable leads over all the Democrats, raising the unthinkable prospect that the general election for California governor could come down to two Republicans.
Although that outcome might have been unlikely, Democratic partisans were nevertheless increasingly panicked by the prospect.
“I admit, the large, low-polling Democratic field had me feeling anxious,” Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian confessed in a piece that asked why the Democratic field isn’t voluntarily winnowing itself down to prevent “a couple of extremists” from gracing the top of the ticket in November. “It’s actually the stuff of nightmares,” she wrote.
Writing for New York magazine, Ed Kilgore outlined a variety of courses of action California Democrats might take to stave off disaster. The party could attempt to “sideline lower-tier Democrats.” It could roll out “high-profile Democratic endorsements” in the attempt to starve the also-rans of oxygen. But given the degree of mistrust between party elites and the activist Democratic base, these approaches might not break the logjam.
But there was another way — one so Machiavellian that it could only be discussed privately, Kilgore posited: a surreptitious Democratic advertising campaign designed to boost one of the Republican candidates, pushing the GOP’s voters into one camp and allowing one of the Democratic candidates to snag second place.
It looks like the president has spared California Democrats the expense. His support for Hilton is likely to push enough Republicans in that candidate’s direction, scuttling Bianco’s campaign and giving Democrats the opportunity to retain the governor’s seat (Swalwell maintains a narrow lead over the Democratic field in the polling average).
The June 3 primary is still months away, and there will be plenty of campaigning yet. But the president’s intervention in this race is almost certain to make it a less interesting one.