The 2026 race for governor is now underway
Can't they leave us alone until next year? The Nov 5, 2024 presidential election remains nine months away. Yet Democratic candidates already are jockeying for the 2026 race for California governor. Gov. Gavin will be termed out ahead of a long-telegraphed presidential run.
Toni Atkins, the president pro tem of the state Senate, is the latest to throw her hat into the ring. She joined three other announced candidates, Lt.
Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Controller Betty Yee. Attorney General Rob Bonta said he is “seriously considering” aiming for the job.
“One reason for the early announcements is just fundraising,” Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, told us. “It takes a lot of money to run for governor of California. And so you have to start early.”
Kounalakis so far has an advantage on that front, reportedly raising $3.7 million already and garnering endorsements from Hillary Clinton and former Sen. Barbara Boxer. She also was an executive at her family's construction firm in Sacramento and comes from money.
“You shouldn't have to be a millionaire to make it in California,” Atkins said at her announcement in San Diego, her home turf. She's right, though for what it's worth the last three governors have been millionaires: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown and Newsom.
Money, and the ability to raise lots of it, is part of the reason we're seeing so many early announcements.
Pitney adds there's a “generational shift to a new group of gubernatorial contenders.” Brown was first elected governor way back in 1974. His father was elected governor in 1958. Newsom was elected lieutenant governor in 2010, then governor in 2018.
So maybe the candidates need the time to make their names known. Even though they're all elected officials and ostensibly have important posts, let's be honest, most Californians wouldn't know who any of the aforementioned Democratic gubernatorial candidates were if they met them on the street.
To be sure, many of the candidates are pretty bad.
For example, Tony Thurmond has been a disaster for education, practically vanishing during the pandemic only to suspiciously pop up at school board meetings to basically promote his gubernatorial ambitions. And Betty Yee left office in January two years behind on compiling the state government's Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, which reflects poor management on her part.
Pitney suggests 2026 also could be a ripe time for a Republican to make a major challenge for the job, arguing that “Republicans have lots and lots of issues” they can use against the Democrats: homelessness, high housing costs, the highest poverty rate in the country according to the U.S. Census Bureau and record high taxes on the middle class.
True, though every Republican gubernatorial candidate in recent memory hoped enough Californians were bothered by all of that to vote GOP. GOP Sen. Brian Dahle managed 41% of the vote in 2022; John Cox 38% in 2018; Neel Kashkari 40% in 2014; and Meg Whitman 41% in 2010. We know a pattern when we see one.
What we're looking for from these candidates as they aim for the governor's chair is innovative ideas for solving those and other problems, and independence from the lock-grip the public-employee unions hold on Democratic candidates. Needless to say, we haven't seen any evidence that any of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates have any interest in shaking up the status quo.