RCP national correspondent Susan Crabtree discussed the June 2 open jungle primary for California governor, ahead of the first debate scheduled for March 24, on Friday’s edition of the RealClearPolitics podcast. RCP’s average of polls for the 2026 California governor race shows Republican Steve Hilton in the lead, followed by Republican Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff, ahead of a divided batch of Democrats. California uses a top-two “jungle primary” system in which all candidates compete on the same ballot, and the two highest vote-getters advance to the general election. “There’s been some panic on the Democratic side that the two candidates who could emerge are Republicans, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, because they have actually been the most active in this race so far,” Crabtree said. “But now we see Eric Swalwell emerging. He’s the leader with 17% of the vote, according to a recent Emerson poll. So now you see Katie Porter hitting him, but her campaign has pretty much imploded. She’s down at 9%.” “Tom Steyer is trying to break out; he is a billionaire, with these multimillion-dollar ads that are actually pretty good, but he can’t break through.” “It’s odd that the most activity we’ve seen – and honestly the most robust campaign – has been Steve Hilton’s campaign,” she said. “It’s been going on for a year now, crisscrossing the state, just a great media blitz.” “Steve Hilton is the only one who’s really putting out policy papers. He’s launched this CAL DOGE effort that’s exposing all kinds of fraud left and right. He’s collecting whistleblowers. He’s been really strong so far,” Crabtree said. “So strong, in fact, that Paul Mitchell – who actually made the gerrymandered Prop. 50 maps – said there’s an 18% or 20% chance that two Republicans will emerge from this primary,” Crabtree commented. “Rusty Hicks, who’s the Democratic Party chairman out here, is trying to get other Democrats to get out of the race,” she explained. “They want to get a debate out there because they’re deeply concerned about Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton.” More specifically about Bianco, she said: “I don’t think he’s great on the stump. I’ve seen him speak several times. He also has a problem with the MAGA base because he came out and said he took a knee with BLM a couple of years ago, and he said that there needs to be a path to citizenship for all illegal immigrants. So he’s kind of stumbled a little bit with Republicans. But his name recognition is high in Riverside County.” “I think it’s funny that Eric Swalwell – we are seeing now Adam Schiff endorse Eric Swalwell, and there has been a new ad, I heard it on the radio yesterday, saying, ‘I’m with Eric,’ with all these people, but it’s narrated by Adam Schiff.”
RealClearPolitics Videos