Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:00:00] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted. Democratic voters in the Bay Area were starting to throw their support behind East Bay representative Eric Swalwell for governor. That was until last week, when he suddenly dropped out of the race and left Congress after reports of sexual assault allegations. Now, the remaining Democratic candidates are trying to catch those voters ahead of the June primary.
Guy Marzorati: [00:00:38] And I actually think now we’re in a place where, yeah, it’s a huge win for voters to have this wide open field and have these candidates actually try to win over voters because these are very different visions for democratic leadership.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:00:53] Today, a vibe check with Bay Area voters on California’s governor’s race.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:01:05] It’s been a week now since East Bay congressman Eric Swalwell has dropped out and also resigned from Congress. We also had Betty Yee drop out of the race earlier this week. And Swalwall was a front-runner in this race before he dropped out, right? So I guess how much has him dropping out of this race really changed the shape of thing.
Guy Marzorati: [00:01:27] I would say the state of the governor’s race right now is completely wide open.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:01:34] Guy Marzorati is a politics and government correspondent for KQED.
Guy Marzorati: [00:01:40] Swalwell was one of the Democratic frontrunners. I think most of the public polling had him kind of bunched up with investor Tom Steyer and former Congress member Katie Porter, but he definitely had momentum in terms of consolidating a lot of establishment support. Big labor unions in California, big business groups in California kind of all coalescing around his candidacy. So he did seem to have that kind of momentum. And certainly here locally in the Bay Area, he had a lot of support. There was a survey released by the Public Policy Institute of California. 28% of likely voters in the Bay Area said that they were planning to vote. First of all, that was more than double the support of Steyer, of Porter, of Republican Steve Hilton, even more than doubled San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:02:34] Anyone at this point risen to the top or does the race still feel super crowded at this point?
Guy Marzorati: [00:02:43] Well, it still feels very crowded, but the biggest change and dynamic that we’ve seen since Swalwell exited the race was this huge rise from former Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Really an incredible turnaround for someone whose campaign seemed kind of like on life support just a few weeks ago, like he wasn’t moving at all in the polls. He has suddenly risen up the ranks in a lot of recent polling since Swalwell dropped out.
Xavier Becerra: [00:03:14] I am not the shiny object. I am the flamethrower. You know, I go back to what I said about my parents. They just wanted me to get my work done.
Guy Marzorati: [00:03:22] The things that seem to be working against him are now suddenly working for him, right? He had the resume, attorney general, health and human services secretary, but he was never really seen as someone who was maybe that exciting or change agent given how long he’s been in government. Well now suddenly like after this Swalwell scandal, his argument is I’m the steady hand.
Xavier Becerra: [00:03:43] I am politically the son of those hardworking parents who recognizes that I have to open the same doors for that next generation of kids so that the next generation of construction workers and clerical workers who are married together will have the chance to do what my parents did.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:04:01] Yeah. It’s so crazy to see how quickly things are changing in this race. And I guess at this point, you mentioned Katie Porter, Xavier Becerra, San Jose mayor, Matt Mahan, and Tom Steyer. How are they all at this point trying to distinguish themselves at this stage in the race?
Guy Marzorati: [00:04:23] Right. So I think starting with Steyer, who now appears, you know, about even with Becerra and a lot of polling, he’s been by far the most progressive candidate just in terms of the policy agenda that he’s putting forward.
Tom Steyer: [00:04:36] Working people built this state. The idea that you can come here from all over the world, which we want people to do, to create the future, to build the businesses of the future. We want that. That’s great for California. But you don’t come here to rip us off.
Guy Marzorati: [00:04:48] Steyer is a billionaire former hedge fund manager who has basically unlimited resources. Like he’s been on the airwaves with ads constantly. Bernie Sanders’ political group, Our Revolution is supporting him. So a fascinating paradox in Steyer’s candidacy. Porter probably operating somewhere between Becerra and Steyer. Yes, she has worked in government. She served in Congress representing Orange County. Um, but she’s also promised to bring in more independence and kind of more oversight, uh, shake up state government.
Katie Porter: [00:05:23] I want Californians to understand that when I make a decision, it’s because it’s what I think is best for California. It is not about who my donors are. And there’s kind of an established path in California. You do the assembly, you do the Senate. And I was part of a group of people who had never been in office before.
Guy Marzorati: [00:05:41] And then Mahan, I would describe as like, furthest to the center of all these Democrats. Like, he’s running, yes, on his record in San Jose, reducing unsheltered homelessness, but he’s also running a very like, centrist campaign. He opposes tax increases. He’s instead focusing on rooting out waste, making government more efficient.
Matt Mahan: [00:06:03] The best resistance is delivering results for people. And to do that, we have to be radically more focused. So I’m really focused on execution, implementation of policy. How do we make people’s lives better with the limited resources we have and grow trust in government?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:06:29] Coming up, how Bay Area Democratic voters are feeling at this point in the governor’s race. We’ll be right back.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:06:51] So Guy, we’re heading, it feels really quickly towards the June primary at this point. And I know you checked in with some Bay Area voters about how they’re feeling at this in the race. What would you say is like the range of feelings that you heard from voters about the governor’s race as it stands now?
Guy Marzorati: [00:07:12] At KQED we had a town hall scheduled with Eric Swalwell where he was going to get to take questions from voters. Obviously that got scrapped after he dropped out of the race. So I called up some folks who would register to come to that town hall and hear from Swalwell to kind of get a sense of how they were feeling about the election for governor. And I heard a wide variety of opinions. But one thing that kind of… I felt like I heard from across the board was folks, even if they had decided which candidates they liked and which candidates they were leaning towards, an overall sense of like people have not really started paying attention yet really diving in on the candidates.
Shekhar Sakhalkar: [00:07:52] Okay, so to be honest, I have not been paying that much of a close attention.
Guy Marzorati: [00:08:00] Shekhar Sakhalkar, who’s a San Jose resident, he told me that he likes Tom Steyer because of Steyr’s early moves to try to push towards the impeachment of President Trump. But he also said, like, he wants to start seeing these candidates debate. He wants to see more contrast between them and maybe learn more about the candidates before making his choice.
Shekhar Sakhalkar: [00:08:20] I mean, I have litany of complaints against Democratic Party, but, you know, the complaints that I have with Republican Party are much, much more grave.
Guy Marzorati: [00:08:34] Heard something similar from Cindy Robbins-Roth, a San Mateo resident. She likes a lot of the candidates based on their past experience and kind of has considered herself open to learning more. Ultimately with Swalwell out of the race, she says she’s with Katie Porter.
Cindy Robbins-Roth: [00:08:50] I mean, I think she’s amazing. I followed her career in Congress, you know, was pretty familiar with what she’d been doing, many academic and otherwise with Elizabeth Warren, you know, I don’t want to hear a bunch of stuff about how she’s going to deal with Trump. I want to here what she’s gonna do for the state and how does she, how is she going to build the coalitions that must be built?
Guy Marzorati: [00:09:14] Susanna Porte, I talked to from Berkeley. She was supporting Betty Yee and Tom Steyer. Now Betty Ye recently dropped out of the election this week. Her issue was mainly around the management of utilities. She felt like those two candidates would bring the most reform to investor-owned utilities.
Susanna Porte: [00:09:32] I don’t want to support a billionaire, but my top two issues are the environment and economic justice, and I think Betty Yee, Tom Steyer, are the only ones who’ve decided to challenge PG&E.
Guy Marzorati: [00:09:49] The last voter I’ll mention is Dion Coakley in San Francisco, who initially supported Becerra and found himself kind of coming around to Swalwell because of fears that two Republicans could make the general election.
Dion Coakley: [00:10:03] You know, if there was a candidate, democratic candidate, that was sort of leading the field, then I might be supporting them, which is kind of how I was coming to Swalwell. I mean, thank God this didn’t come out six weeks from now.
Guy Marzorati: [00:10:19] Now he says he’s giving Xavier Becerra a second chance and a second look, which I think seems to be what a lot of voters are doing in the wake of Swalwell leaving the race.
Dion Coakley: [00:10:28] I mean, I like Xavier Becerra’s experience. I’ve listened to him and I’ve listen to some of the other candidates on political breakdowns. So, you know, I feel like I’ve had to go to them to hear about what their position is, as opposed to them coming to me.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:10:51] It seems like folks are really still shopping around for their choice at this point. And I guess, like, do you feel like maybe people aren’t paying so much attention to this governor’s race still because there hasn’t really been a standout star among the Democrats?
[00:11:12] Yeah, I mean, I think that has certainly contributed perhaps to voters not being super attuned. There’s also just a lot going on in the news and in the world that I think it makes sense that maybe people haven’t totally focused in on this election. I do think the Swalwell scandal and the allegations reported about the Chronicle and CNN that led to his leaving the race and led to him resigning, I think that caught a lot of folks’ attention and maybe as a byproduct. People will start focusing on the governor’s race, like, ‘Oh, Swalwell’s leaving the race. Okay, where does that leave me as a voter? Maybe let me start tuning in.’
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:11:52] I know there’s actually a debate happening later today. What are you going to be watching for in that debate, Guy? And what are you gonna be watching for in this race moving forward?
Guy Marzorati: [00:12:05] I think in the debate, I would expect a lot of heat to come at Tom Steyer, given his position in the polls, given kind of his personal wealth. I would probably expect him to take a lot of incoming about being a progressive billionaire and former hedge fund manager. I’d be interested to see Becerra now that he’s kind of moved up in this race. What’s the vision that he puts for? What would he do as governor? What’s his kind of vision for leading the state? It’s a huge win for voters to have this wide open field and have these candidates actually try to win over voters because these are very different visions for democratic leadership from Steyer, Becerra, from Porter, from Mahan, like very different vision of what it means to be a democrat in a leadership position and it makes sense. Voters in the nation’s largest democratic state are going to get to make their pick.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:13:01] Guy Marzorati, thanks so much, as always.
