Editor’s Note: This is California, which means it’s still possible they will try to sneak Tom Steyer into the top two to replace Hilton with a convenient surge of Democrat mail-in ballots. But as of now it seems very likely Hilton has enough of a lead over Steyer that shenanigans won’t take him down. At least I hope. Here’s the article…
If you want a one-line indictment of California’s jungle primary, consider this: a man named Barack D. Obama Shaw pulled more than 8,700 votes for governor Tuesday night. He has no realistic claim on the office, no constituency, and no apparent qualification beyond a name that scrambles together two of the most recognizable words in Democrat politics. And yet he outpolled a dozen earnest candidates who actually wanted the job. Welcome to the ballot that Gavin Newsom built.
The serious result, buried beneath 61 names that filled the entire first page of the ballot, is that Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra led the field and appeared headed for a November runoff. With 76.1 percent of precincts partially reporting, Hilton held 26.9 percent to Becerra’s 25.7 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s office. The rest of the pack trailed well behind.
The two frontrunners could not be more different. Hilton made his name as a Fox News personality after years advising politicians in Britain. Becerra is the consummate insider, a former congressman who became California attorney general and then ran the federal Department of Health and Human Services under Joe Biden. One spent the last decade talking about government on television. The other spent it running large pieces of it.
The money, notably, did not buy a podium. Billionaire Tom Steyer, the Democrat who bankrolled the campaign to redraw California’s congressional maps, landed at 19.8 percent despite his bottomless wallet. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the second Republican of consequence, took 11.2 percent.
After that the drop-off was a cliff. Former Rep. Katie Porter, once the darling of the progressive small-dollar set, managed 4.9 percent. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan drew 4.5 percent. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who once seemed a fixture of the state’s Democratic future, scraped together 1.3 percent.
And then there were the others. Twenty-four Democrats and twelve Republicans filed for governor, along with a Libertarian, a Peace and Freedom candidate, and a long parade of no-party-preference hopefuls running on nothing but a filing fee and a dream. One candidate listed his name as “LivingForGod AndCountry DeMott.” Most of them finished at 0.0 percent. Shaw, with his borrowed presidential branding, beat nearly all of them.
That is not a triumph of his campaign. It is a confession about the system.
California’s top-two primary was sold as a reform that would reward moderation and broaden participation. What it has produced is a ballot so crowded that name recognition, however accidental, becomes a currency of its own.
A voter scanning 61 names for governor is not conducting a careful civic exercise. He is hunting for something familiar, and the ballot rewards whoever supplies the closest match. A man called Obama Shaw understood that better than the campaign consultants did.
The attorney general’s race offered a tidier picture. Democratic incumbent Rob Bonta led comfortably, while Republican Michael E. Gates, a former deputy U.S. attorney and onetime Huntington Beach city attorney, ran a credible second and looked set to advance. There were fewer names, and so there was less noise. The contrast is instructive. Clarity is possible. California has simply chosen a system that discourages it.
Two candidates advance. Fifty-nine do not. And the lasting lesson of this primary is not who finished first, but how many votes a borrowed name could harvest from a ballot designed to confuse.
