California gubernatorial candidates talk fast, float big ideas in debate

(CN) — Eight candidates vying to be the next governor of California squared off in a televised debate Tuesday night that featured rapid-fire 30-to-60-second answers.

One of the candidates, Chad Bianco, a Republican sheriff, called it an “hour and a half you’re never going to get back.”

It was perhaps an unfair description for a debate that was, as one student questioner put it, “a bit of a mess,” but one that also showcased a panoply of ideas, policy prescriptions and political viewpoints, to say nothing of stylistic differences.

Tom Steyer, a hedge fund manager turned progressive activist in the Bernie Sanders mold, who has spent over $132 million of his own money on the race, promised to cut a corporate tax loophole and use the money to increase funding for education and create a single-payer healthcare system. Longtime elected official Xavier Becerra, who served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden, said he would declare a state of emergency and freeze home insurance rates. One of the moderators pointed out the state supreme court has already ruled such a tactic unconstitutional.

“I will try,” insisted Becerra, one of the Democratic front-runners in the race, who previously served as the state’s attorney general.

“We can’t have a governor who doesn’t understand how the government works,” said Steve Hilton, the leading Republican in the race, a British-born political commentator who has never held public office and has only lived in the state since 2012.

“And we don’t need a talking head from Fox News to tell us how the government works,” Becerra shot back.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, the youngest candidate on stage at 43 who has marketed himself as a centrist, said Becerra’s plan wouldn’t work, and that the only way to fix the home insurance system in the state was to allow companies to raise rates and “appropriately price risk.”

Later, Mahan made an even more direct attack on Becerra, saying the “secretary has never met a crisis he couldn’t ignore,” pointing in particular to his job during the Covid pandemic.

“You’re not wearing a mask, are you Matt?” Becerra said with a grin. “We got out of these crises. We made sure that 700 million Covid vaccines went into the arms of Americans.”

“And poisoned them,” interjected Bianco, off-camera.

The campaign to replace Gavin Newsom has been an odd journey. The race was flooded with Democrats, but bereft of a big-name favorite like Kamala Harris, who opted not to run. Since the California primary is “top two,” in which the two highest vote-getters, regardless of their political party, advance to the general election, the two major Republican candidates in the race, Hilton and Bianco, were actually favored to both make the runoff — a bizarre outcome in a state as heavily Democratic as California. This prompted a near-panic amongst Democratic party insiders, who urged second-tier candidates to drop out, to no avail.

Two events upended the race. Trump endorsed Hilton, a rather less extreme candidate than Bianco who, for at least one year in 2014, was a dues-paying member of extremist militia the Oath Keepers. Ironically, the endorsement made it far less likely that both Hilton and Bianco would make the runoff, since most Republicans now appear to favor Hilton, pushing Bianco further down the pecking order.

Trump’s intervention may help Hilton in the primary but is likely to hurt him in the general election.

“We need someone who’s going to fight Donald Trump, not agree with him,” Becerra told the debate audience at Pomona College, referring to Trump as Hilton’s “daddy.”

Hilton said the state’s problems were the making of Democratic politicians. “We’ve had the same people in charge for 16 years now. It’s been such a disaster … they can’t do anything except blame Donald Trump.” He claimed California has the highest poverty rate and the highest unemployment rate — wrong on both counts, as it turns out, although the Golden State is tied for the second highest unemployment rate, bested only by Washington, D.C. and tied with Delaware.

Last month, the race was hit with a bombshell when the leading Democratic candidate, U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, was accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, at least one of which used to work for him. More and more women came forward, and within days, Swalwell had pulled out of the race, resigned from Congress, and is the subject of criminal investigations in both California and New York.

And so the remaining Democrats have rushed to fill the vacuum. Polls show Steyer and Becerra leading the pack of Democrats seeking to join Hilton in the runoff. Just behind them is Congresswoman Katie Porter, known for her viral videos interrogating public officials and CEOs using a whiteboard as a visual aide. She also became known for a less-than flattering viral video in which she could be seen berating a staff member. She tried to bolster her image as an Elizabeth Warren-esque policy wonk, as well as a “single mom of three teenagers.”

Porter took aim at Steyer, criticizing him for investing in the same fossil fuel companies he now pledged to hold accountable, and telling him: “You pay the lowest tax rate on this stage.”

Steyer didn’t respond to the gibe, but insisted, “I’m the change agent.”

The debate also featured two long-shot candidates: the now 73-year-old former mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, both of whom struggled for airtime.

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