For more than 80 years, the best launching pad for aspiring governors of California has been a statewide office.
With the Hollywood-sized exceptions of Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, every winning gubernatorial candidate in California since 1942 held an office elected by voters statewide.
By first serving as attorney general, lieutenant governor or U.S. senator, politicians from Pat Brown to Gavin Newsom built resumes and rolodexes that would help them win the state’s top job.
But in this year’s wide-open governor’s race, the Democratic frontrunners are forging a new path.
The top-polling Democrats (Republicans face little prospect of winning a general election in this reliably blue state) are Rep. Eric Swalwell, former Rep. Katie Porter and investor Tom Steyer — none of whom has ever won a statewide election.
Meanwhile, former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, former state Controller Betty Yee and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond have lagged in the polls — and other statewide officeholders have either quit the race or decided against running.
“I think the stepping stone process has changed,” said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic strategist. “There are a lot of people that are in a hurry to get to higher ranks in the political circles, and they bypass the usual [process of] building on their experience and building up their support because they can go directly to the voters.”
While Steyer has tapped his own vast wealth to air TV ads across the state, the potential path for Swalwell and Porter would be unique in recent California history.
Instead of spending years building experience on state issues and cultivating relationships with powerful interest groups in Sacramento, Swalwell and Porter established their reputations in the House of Representatives as outspoken critics of President Donald Trump — and then sought higher office: Swalwell briefly ran for president in 2020, and Porter lost her bid for the U.S. Senate in 2024.
The pair took advantage of an increasingly nationalized political media environment to parlay cable news hits and social media followers into a network of small-dollar donors.
“Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell both have national followings — they weren’t just a local congressperson bringing home the bacon,” Maviglio said. “They went after national figures, got national attention, were very vocal on some of the Trump-related issues…so their name recognition and their mailing list go far beyond their constituency in their respective districts.”
The path from statewide office to the governor’s mansion has been a constant across disparate eras of California politics. Newsom, Gray Davis and Goodwin Knight were lieutenant governors; Pete Wilson was a U.S. senator; Jerry Brown was California’s secretary of state.
No position has served as a more reliable stepping stone to the pinnacle of state office than attorney general — a job often referred to as “Aspiring Governor.”
In 1934, an ambitious Oakland prosecutor named Earl Warren convinced California voters to bestow new powers on the office — transforming the attorney general from the state’s legal advocate to top cop: a crime fighter and consumer advocate who could bust gangs one day and sue banks the next.
Warren later vaulted from the AG’s office he had refashioned to become governor, as did Pat Brown in 1958, George Deukmejian in 1982 and Jerry Brown in 2010.
But so far, 2026 has been a different story.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis ended her campaign for governor in August to pivot to a run for state treasurer. U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla said he would pass on a run in November.
And after months of speculation, and amid polls showing he had not yet broken through the field, Attorney General Rob Bonta said he would not enter the race either. Becerra, Yee and Thurmond have each won millions of votes in previous runs for statewide office.
But recent polls conducted by campaigns have found the three remain unknown to large swaths of voters — even Democrats — leaving them with the challenge of making an introduction with just two months until voting begins.
A survey conducted by EMC Research for the Swalwell campaign found that 30% of registered Democrats had no opinion of or had never heard of Becerra, and nearly half were unfamiliar with Thurmond and Yee. Meanwhile, the share of Democrats unfamiliar with Swalwell stood at 21% — and just 12% for Porter.
Becerra’s campaign attempted to frame his relative political anonymity as a positive when it released a poll from Tavern Research last month showing nearly half of voters who planned to vote for a Democrat were unfamiliar with the former attorney general — compared to 43% for Swalwell and 30% for Porter.
“As the remaining 49% unfamiliar voters learn about him, the data points towards substantial growth,” wrote Emma Harris, Becerra’s campaign manager, in a memo accompanying the poll.
Swalwell and Porter’s ability to build name identification with voters beyond the boundaries of their congressional districts is in part a product of the nationalization of political media, said Danielle Vinson, a professor of politics and international affairs at Furman University and author of “Congress and the Media.”
For most of the last century, members of Congress — particularly those outside of House leadership — weren’t interested in attention from national outlets and tended to focus on local press, Vinson said.
But the decline of local news and the rise of cable television and social media changed that equation — and made House members like Porter, Swalwell, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene some of the most famous politicians in their home states.
“Ten years ago, Nancy Mace is going to have to work a whole lot harder to get people in South Carolina to know who she is, Katie Porter is going to have to work a whole lot harder, Swalwell would have to work a whole lot harder to get that statewide attention,” Vinson said.
“But now they’ve already made a name for themselves in the national press — and the reality is most people these days are getting their news either from social media or national media.”
Viral moments have served as catalysts for members of Congress to become regular guests on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC (now MS NOW) and attract donors from across the country.
Swalwell was an impeachment manager during Trump’s 2021 impeachment trial and in 2025 clashed dramatically with FBI Director Kash Patel over the Epstein files.
For her part, Porter grilled JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon about worker pay and became synonymous with a whiteboard she wielded during questioning of pharmaceutical executives and Trump administration officials.
“Members of Congress in the last 10 years have gotten really good at learning how to get those viral moments and Swalwell and Porter are excellent examples of that,” Vinson said. “You pick fights with the right people, you pick fights with Donald Trump, you pick fights with his appointees.”
Simultaneously, coverage of state capitols has endured a decadeslong decline.
In California’s old Capitol press room, known as 1190, rows of desks were adorned with placards carrying the names of dozens of local newspapers, radio and television stations.
By the time the room was demolished amid an ongoing renovation, many of those outlets no longer maintained a bureau — or even existed.
“The decline of local journalism can be directly tied to the way office-seekers and elected officials are now seeking to get their name out,” said Maviglio, who served as press secretary for then-Gov. Gray Davis.
While the shifting dynamics of political media have boosted Swalwell and Porter, their advantage in the governor’s race is hardly insurmountable.
After all, Porter had enough notoriety to be instantly competitive in her 2024 run for U.S. Senate, but she struggled to eclipse 20% support in most public polling and ultimately finished in third place with 15% of the vote, behind Republican Steve Garvey and fellow Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.
Marisol Samayoa, a Democratic strategist who worked for Schiff during that campaign, agreed that building a national profile and talking about Trump “gets you in the door” with voters.
“But really, what is going to be important is how you continue to introduce yourself to Californians across the state,” Samayoa said. “Yes, they may know you for being a household name on cable or national outlets, but how are you using that airtime to talk about the issues that really matter to Californians?”
Already well known to California Democrats as a leading Trump opponent in the House, Samayoa said Schiff used much of his Senate campaign to talk about affordability and the cost of living.
She drew a parallel to two other former congressmembers who made their names in the Trump era — Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger.
Last year, the pair were elected as governor of New Jersey and Virginia, respectively, after campaigns that focused on the price of housing and electricity.
“Yes, those are members of the House that went on to be governors, but they talked about what they were going to do and deliver for their constituents across New Jersey and Virginia,” Samayoa said.
But at the very least, Swalwell and Porter’s national political fame has bought them time to make that affirmative case.
That luxury may be dwindling for Becerra, Thurmond, Yee and other Democrats polling in single digits: this week, California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks urged candidates without a “viable path” to the general election to make plans to end their campaigns.
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