Newsom, Cox top governor’s race poll

Villaraigosa among those lagging as Tuesday primary election nears

Days before Tuesday’s election, Democrat Gavin Newsom and Republican John Cox are on their way to a top-two finish in the governor’s race and a headto-head rematch in November, according to a new poll.

Newsom, the lieutenant governor, is at 33 percent among likely voters, with Cox, a San Diego-area businessman, at 20 percent, according to the poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.

Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa is at 13 percent, just ahead of Orange County GOP Assemblyman Travis Allen at 12 percent. Democratic state Treasurer John Chiang is at 7 percent and Delaine Eastin, a Democrat and former state schools chief, is at 4 percent.

While Newsom has led in every poll of the governor’s race, Cox’s rush into second place has been a surprise, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll.

“Newsom has moved up in every poll we’ve taken, and it’s pretty much a slam dunk that he’ll finish on top,” DiCamillo said Thursday. “But Cox was at 9 percent in the December poll, and now he’s at 20.”

Much of Cox’s surge is hooked to Republicans settling on a candidate, which came as President Trump endorsed him in a May 18 tweet. The president may have sealed the deal with his California supporters when he came back Monday with another tweeted endorsement:

“California has a rare opportunity to turn things around and solve its high crime, high tax, problems — along with so many others,” Trump tweeted.

“On June 5th, vote for GOP Gubernatorial Candidate JOHN COX, a really good and highly competent man. He’ll Make California Great Again!”

“The Trump endorsement accelerated the process” for Cox, DiCamillo said. “It likely also stopped the movement for Allen. If Trump had gone the other way and endorsed Allen, it might have been different.”

The poll is terrible news for Villaraigosa. The former Los Angeles mayor has spent more than $7 million on his campaign and wealthy charter school backers have kicked in another $20 million, but he’s running behind a littleknown Republican who has raised less than $6 million, more than $4 million of it from his own pocket.

“It seems like it’s Villaraigosa’s image that dragging him down,” DiCamillo said. “He’s well known, but for whatever reason, more people view him unfavorably than favorably.”

The new survey shows Villaraigosa on the short end of a 41 percent to 30 percent unfavorable/ favorable score. By contrast, Newsom has a positive rating, 45 percent to 36 percent, as does Cox, 26 percent to 23 percent.

Newsom also is crushing Villaraigosa among Democrats, 50 percent to 20 percent, and among independent voters, 33 percent to 9 percent. The former San Francisco mayor is even beating Villaraigosa on his home turf, with a 35 percent to 18 percent lead in Los Angeles County. In the Bay Area, it’s a 47 percent to 7 percent blowout for Newsom.

The poll magnifies the partisan split in California, DiCamillo said. Only 1 percent of Democrats surveyed back Cox, while Newsom has only 2 percent support among GOP voters.

That’s an ominous figure for a Republican in the general election, since Democrats far outnumber Republicans in California.

Almost a quarter of those surveyed are the likeliest of likely voters, since they already have cast their ballots. Among them, Newsom leads Cox, 38 percent to 23 percent, with Villaraigosa at 9 percent.

While the numbers tell the story, “it’s important to see the direction in a late poll like this,” DiCamillo said. “And it’s Newsom and Cox who are moving.”

Both Cox and Villaraigosa are making a final push for votes.

Cox has an abbreviated schedule leading up to election day, almost all of it near his home base of San Diego. He’s doing a news conference with GOP attorney general candidate Steven Bailey on Friday and is headlining a Republican get-outthe-vote event Saturday morning.

Villaraigosa is setting a much more frenetic pace, which began Thursday with a scheduled 24 straight hours of campaigning in and around Los Angeles, ending at 7 a.m. Friday and including a 3:20 a.m. appearance at Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood. From there, it’s San Diego on Saturday, Los Angeles on Sunday and Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area on Monday.

The poll was based on an online survey taken May 22-28 of a statewide random sample of 2,106 likely voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.