By Jeffrey Blehar
Wednesday, May 06, 2026
Some may ask why I’m following the race for California
governor as closely as I am, given that President Trump’s endorsement of former
Fox News host Steve Hilton effectively scotched the Impossible Dream: getting two Republicans
through the all-party primary into November, thus forcing a 60 percent
Democratic state to pick between quaffing two different flavors of conservative
GOP hemlock. It was a dream too far for those National Review readers
who remain locked behind the black gates of the Golden State — especially in
2026 — but alas.
No, the reason I’m invested in California is the comedy
potential. For all its vast wealth, beauty, population, and cultural cachet,
California feels like every bit as much of a failed state as Illinois or
Minnesota — and all while lacking the ineffable international glamour and
sparkling weather of Minneapolis or Chicago. Yet California’s political pistons
still power the national Democratic engine: Most of the worst ideas and
candidates you’re likely to encounter nationally still pump forth first from
the bilge-pipe of the Left Coast and spread from there, because that’s where so
many elite progressives still live.
California politics is inert, dense, yet also strangely
unavoidable. Think of all the random highlights we’ve had out of the Golden
State in the last calendar year alone, despite its solidly blue electoral
irrelevance: the “notice me, senpai!” antics of anonymous Senator Alex Padilla, the pathbreaking horror-fiction career of Kamala Harris, the oleaginous omnipresence of unannounced presidential
candidate Gavin Newsom — and all of this before we’ve even considered
the brewing race to replace Newsom in Sacramento.
Yet it is that gubernatorial race that has really fired
my coal-lump of a heart: Former Orange County Representative Katie Porter set
the pace for public humiliation early on, by being the first
to declare her candidacy, and also — fittingly enough — the first to
dynamite her own political career with multiple on-air gaffes, including what
must still rank as one of the worst major-media candidate interviews ever. But that was only
the beginning, as the crabs in the California bucket reached up to pull one
another down.
As the race drifted into the early months of 2026, it
seemed as if Eric Swalwell might be the Democrat to separate himself from the
pack to face off against Steve Hilton in November — that is, until Swalwell was
revealed to be a depraved sex pest, known as such to all for decades. Now,
the newly shaken-up field shows former California Attorney General (and
Biden-era secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services) Xavier
Becerra partially consolidating enough Democratic support to move forward to
November, more or less by default.
So CNN’s gubernatorial debate from last night — perhaps the
biggest forum these candidates will get before the June 2 vote — was a
surprisingly entertaining vision of foreordained doom, as Becerra fell flat on
his face after attacks from all sides, Tom Steyer ranted like the billionaire
lunatic he is, and none of the other candidates distinguished themselves in any
way. The reaction from the post-debate CNN panel was probably more entertaining than
the debate itself; as Democrats talking about Democrats for a Democratic
audience, their frank disappointment that these were the options on
offer to Californians was palpable, and that much more sincerely delicious for
it. (They seemed positively morose about the idea that Becerra would back his
way into Sacramento.)
But it was Katie Porter who once again had the Moment of
the Night, and hopefully placed the exclamation point on her failed career.
Porter — always a bludgeoning know-it-all whose origin in academia manifests
itself in condescending attempts at “let me tell you how it really works,
kid” rhetoric — did it once again last night.
And it’s impossible not to notice that CNN’s panel chose not
to highlight this moment, for Porter gave away far too much about the sorts
of private calculations Democrats make in the state. When questioned about
whether she would permit ICE to operate within the state as governor, Porter
began self-righteously speaking
down her nose to the audience:
It’s the job of the California
governor to protect every single Californian. The “sanctuary state” policy is
designed to make sure that our state resources, the taxpayer dollars, the
public servants that we have are focusing on doing their jobs – which is not
cooperating with the federal immigration authorities. These are Californians,
they contribute to our economy, they pay taxes, and they’re one of the only
ways our state has been growing in recent years. [Emphasis added.]
Just so. Leave it to Professor Katie to tell you what
policymakers and pundits have known for years now: California is bleeding
actual legal residents and becoming more dependent on illegal aliens — to
maintain their population in the census, to maintain political pressure on
other states, and to swing a bigger regulatory stick than their failing state
would otherwise deserve. I congratulate Porter for being the one California
politician to say the quiet part out loud about California’s changing focus —
on illegal residents as opposed to legal ones. I don’t doubt they vote as well.
But not for her.
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