anger fuels – With Tuesday’s primaries set to decide who advances to November, frustration with California Democrats—on homelessness, public safety, and readiness for crises—has shaken both the race for governor and Los Angeles mayor, leaving both contests unusually uncerta
By the time primary voters in California walk into polling places Tuesday, two elections already feel less like routine Democratic dominance—and more like an argument with the last several years of leadership.
California’s governor’s race and Los Angeles’ mayoral contest are both wide open. with a new crop of candidates challenging what critics describe as a Democratic status quo that no longer feels responsive. The question now facing voters is whether “progress” can be proven on the ground—or whether anger is driving them toward outsiders and riskier choices.
In Sacramento, Democrats are still struggling to coalesce around a single successor to term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former Rep. Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign in April after allegations of sexual misconduct. leaving Xavier Becerra. a former Biden cabinet member. to inch ahead by positioning himself as the safe. experienced Democratic choice. Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, trail close behind.
In Los Angeles, the stakes are sharper because Mayor Karen Bass is already in office. She finds herself pushed from both directions—left and right—and fighting to make the runoff as the city’s top jobs and promises collide with voter frustration.
A recent UC Berkeley–L.A. Times poll shows Bass leading with just 26% of the vote. one point ahead of City Councilmember Nithya Raman and four points ahead of Republican Spencer Pratt. Bass. as the incumbent. is also running into a familiar political problem: for many voters. the reality of the city’s daily struggles is harder to square with campaigns that speak in charts. timelines. and incremental gains.
“There’s a clear sense of frustration with the Democratic Party,” said Sara Sadhwani, a professor of politics at Pomona College. She pointed to the appeal of conservative outsiders in a liberal state and said they are more willing to spell out the challenges Los Angeles and California face.
Sadhwani said Democrats have often been careful not to upset competing coalitions, and that the result is “politics as usual with many of the Democratic candidates.” She argued that Pratt disrupted that pattern by directly naming problems residents are “seeing and feeling on the ground.”
Homelessness is at the center of that tension. Sadhwani said many Angelenos believe Bass has not significantly moved the needle.
“We can point to facts and figures that might suggest that things have changed,” Sadhwani said. “But when you walk down the streets of Los Angeles, it doesn’t feel like it, so she hasn’t passed the field test. That’s the problem.”
A growing segment of residents is also frustrated by the city’s high cost of living. Others are angry about the Bass administration’s lack of preparation and response to the 2025 Palisades fire.
“The Democrats have to account for those challenges,” Sadhwani said. “They have been in power for all of this time.”
California remains strongly Democratic in general election terms, with polls showing state voters overwhelmingly opposed to President Trump. His second-term agenda—described here as including a sweeping immigration crackdown. tariffs and the war in Iran—has only reinforced California’s identity as a “resistance state.”.
But voter dissatisfaction, after years of Democratic dominance in Sacramento and Los Angeles City Hall, is now forcing candidates to answer for what people feel is not changing.
In both contests, the mechanics of the primary also matter. California’s top two vote-getters in the non-partisan primary will advance to the November runoff, unless one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.
Republicans turned out at higher rates than Democrats in early voting. Paul Mitchell. vice president of the Sacramento-based bipartisan firm Political Data Inc. said older Democrats who reliably turn out were slower to vote this year. likely because two Republicans were on the gubernatorial ballot and the Democratic field was fractured. Mitchell said that may have driven strategic voting: some Democrats appeared to wait to cast ballots for the Democrat they believed was most likely to move on.
That framing cuts both ways. For Republicans, securing a governor’s candidate in November is more than symbolic. A GOP win would bring more Republican turnout in the general election, improving the party’s chances down-ballot and potentially passing a GOP-led ballot initiative on voter ID.
For Democrats, the stakes are different. These races are described as the party’s first major chance in the midterm period to chart a new path.
As polls show Trump cratering in popularity. Democrats in California and beyond are still debating what went wrong after Kamala Harris’ bruising 2024 defeat. The Democratic National Committee’s long-awaited autopsy of that election said Harris “wrote off rural America. ” wrongly assumed identity politics would win over voters of color. and failed to develop “defined or consistent” strategy against Trump. Instead of closing the debate, the findings have deepened it.
“There is not a clear vision. there is not a clear policy agenda. and the Donald Trump presidency upended the policy world as we knew it. ” Sadhwani said. “It’s unclear how any Democrat. including any of the individuals in these two races. is going to navigate the waters into the future. One thing is for certain: We aren’t going back. So, which of these candidates is going to lead us into an uncertain future?”.
In Los Angeles, the election operates like a referendum on Bass. She pledged in 2022 to solve homelessness, cut crime and make the city more affordable.
Christian Grose, a professor of political science and public policy at USC, framed it bluntly: “How has L.A. changed in four years?” He said Bass’s campaign argues the city has improved and needs more time, while other candidates say it is worse than four years ago and calls for new leadership.
Bass told The Times she plans to win in November by highlighting her administration’s progress clearing homeless encampments and accelerating the building of affordable housing. She has also pointed to data showing homicides in the city are at their lowest since 1966.
Raman, challenging Bass from the left, was elected in 2020 as the first DSA-backed L.A. City Council member. She has accused Bass of not doing enough to make the city affordable and has criticized Bass’ spending on Inside Safe, the program Bass has used to move unhoused people into stable housing.
Though Raman positions herself as an outsider, Sadhwani said she is a former Bass ally who has chaired the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee for more than three years.
“She’s absolutely a part of the establishment,” Sadhwani said. “She’s been in City Hall longer than Karen Bass.”
As Raman tacked to the center during the campaign to appeal to more moderates and distanced herself from past calls to defund the police, she alienated some DSA members who complained they did not know what she stood for. Her three fellow DSA City Council members endorsed Bass.
Pratt is challenging Bass and, in broader terms, the Democratic status quo. A former star of “The Hills,” he lost his home in the Palisades fire. He has surprised political observers by attacking the city’s handling of the 2025 firestorms.
He has called unhoused people drug-addled “zombies” and argued that Los Angeles’ housing crisis requires heavy-handed policing.
Pratt has raised vastly more campaign contributions than Bass and Raman. He has also generated national online buzz by waging an aggressive social media campaign and inspiring supporters to post a stream of viral AI election campaign ads.
Still, most political experts agree Bass has the most viable path to victory. They point to her base among Black voters, a large share of Latino voters, and support from powerful unions.
Jim Newton. executive director of UCLA Blueprint magazine and a former political journalist for The Times. said. “Under normal circumstances. or at least under historic circumstances. that would be plenty to get her over the finish line.” He added that what makes the difference now is that “there are people who are angry with her.”.
For state-level voters, the election is also framed as a “reset.” Newsom emerged in recent years as the national face of Democratic resistance to Trump, boosting California’s status through a barrage of lawsuits and all-caps trolling against Trump.
However, the next phase—whoever replaces Newsom—is described here as different.
Becerra is described as an emerging front-runner, a safe-bet career politician who has served as California attorney general and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. Asked recently why he climbed in the polls, Becerra said he thought voters wanted experience, not “glitz and sizzle.”
Becerra has pledged to issue executive orders declaring California’s housing shortage a state of emergency and directing state agencies to maintain coverage for every Californian affected by federal or Medi-Cal cuts. He has also touted his record as the state’s attorney general of suing Trump 122 times.
Steyer calls himself “the most progressive candidate on the ballot.” He has pledged to build one million affordable homes. make the wealthy pay more taxes. and defend the environment—positions that could unsettle Sacramento lobbyists and test the limits of California’s progressivism. Grose said Steyer’s past investments in coal plants and ICE prisons raise questions for some voters.
Grose also said, “His wealth is in one way his Achilles heel in the election,” explaining that voters think of him as a billionaire more than a progressive.
Republicans appear to have rallied around Hilton, a British immigrant and former top strategist for conservative prime minister David Cameron, who has secured Trump’s backing. Hilton campaigns on a message that California is a failed state in need of radical reform.
Hilton has pledged to cut government spending, make housing more affordable, and bring gas prices down. To achieve those goals. he has said he would scale back public services and environmental regulations and ramp up domestic production of oil and natural gas—strategies that many Californians might hesitate to get behind.
Whichever candidates reach the runoff, the California Democratic Party will face pressure over strategy and vision. Less than two months ago, the party chair urged Becerra to drop out to make way for Swalwell.
Sadhwani said, “Clearly, the party itself has lost its way in California,” adding, “I would not be surprised if the California Democratic Party looks for new leadership after this election.”
The possibility of a Republican win hangs over the results timing. Because the top two spots are up for grabs, elections experts warn vote results may not be known for days.
If Republicans make it to the runoff, they face steep odds of being elected in November in a state where Democratic registered voters outnumber Republicans by more than 20 percentage points.
Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist, said neither Hilton nor Pratt was likely to win. But if they made the runoff, he said they could have a huge impact on the political environment by advancing “grievance issues that really put up a spotlight on what I call the blue state incompetence.”
Mitchell said Pratt, as an outsider adept at Instagram and TikTok, has the greatest opportunity to create a new surge electorate. But he also warned that Pratt is going after the hardest voters to get to turn out: disaffected voters who are upset at the system.
Mitchell said Pratt had more retweets and viral videos than any other candidate, but, “that doesn’t buy him the vote of the disaffected DoorDash driver who believes that the system is broken, and who hasn’t voted in the last five elections.”
If Republicans fail to advance past the primary, Mitchell said Democrats would likely hit the reset button.
Mitchell also said. “Pratt running has kind of obfuscated the differences between Raman and Bass. ” comparing the contrast between the candidates as “like a WWE match versus a chess match.” He said he believed Raman versus Bass would be more strategic and nuanced than Spencer Pratt trying to hit Karen Bass over the head with a chair.
California governor race Los Angeles mayor race Karen Bass Nithya Raman Spencer Pratt Xavier Becerra Tom Steyer Steve Hilton Eric Swalwell Gavin Newsom homelessness Palisades fire political primaries