Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are leading the pack in California governor race polls, raising the prospect that Democrats could be shut out of the general election in a state where they dominate the voter rolls. The latest surveys have put the former host and the Riverside County sheriff at or near the top of a crowded field, even as no fewer than 24 Democrats are on the ballot to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.
That makes this race unusual even by California standards, and it is why voters are suddenly paying close attention. In a March poll, Hilton had 17 percent support and Bianco had 16 percent, a narrow edge that matters because California’s non-partisan primary sends only the top two vote-getters to November, no matter their party.
Rusty Hicks, the state Democratic Party chair, warned that the system could leave as many as half of California’s registered voters without a candidate of their choosing in the general election. “That seems like a system that needs to be revisited, revised, and potentially repealed,” he said. His concern lands hard in a state with more than 10.3 million registered Democrats, who outnumber Republicans nearly two to one and would normally expect to set the tone in a governor’s race.
Instead, California’s primary rules create the opening for a result that would have been hard to imagine when the current system was adopted in 2010 as part of a bipartisan ballot initiative. Moderate Republicans, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, backed the jungle primary concept, and the state has used it ever since, with only Washington employing a similar setup.
That is why the question now is not whether Democrats have candidates on the ballot, but whether any of them can break into the top two once ballots are counted. California has not elected a Republican governor since 2011, yet the field and the polling point to a general election that could feature two Republicans and no Democrat at all.
For Hicks and other Democrats, that possibility is more than an oddity. It is a warning that a crowded primary, a splintered field and a system designed to widen competition could end up closing the door on the state’s dominant party when it matters most.
