Candidates for California governor square off for first time. Here's how they fared

San Francisco Chronicle​

19-05-2025

SACRAMENTO — The message former Vice President Kamala Harris should take from Monday's first gathering of Democratic candidates for governor should be very clear: Relax and enjoy your time off. You can win this thing no matter when you decide to jump into the race.
None of the seven candidates who participated in Monday's 'salon' — not a debate, organizers insisted — before top California labor leaders stood out. Certainly not as a major threat to Harris.
Harris has said that she would make a decision by the end of the summer whether to run for governor in 2026, but she is also weighing another run for the White House in 2028. She would have the overwhelming edge in name recognition in her home state where she's won statewide office three times and could easily raise big money should she run to lead the world's fourth-largest economy.
If she doesn't run, this will be a Democratic demolition derby between seven candidates who set few hearts aflutter Monday. (Two Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Atherton entrepreneur and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, are also running. But a Republican hasn't won statewide office in California since 2006.)
On Monday, none of the candidates rose above the rest as they sat onstage together before the annual Joint Legislative Conference, hosted by the California Federation of Labor Unions and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.
The room was filled with labor leaders — a key constituency for any Democrat running for higher office, especially governor. Labor unions not only contribute millions to campaigns, but their members also do much of the grunt work of talking to voters door-to-door.
The governor's job will be open without a clear front-runner for the first time in decades, as Gov. Gavin Newsom is termed out next year and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis is not a shoo-in to take his place. In fact, if Harris decides to get in the race, Kounalakis won't run, nor likely would some of the other candidates.
So each did their best to suck up to key labor leaders in a room where many of the women dressed like the iconic Rosie the Riveter. There was a pitcher of beer on every table, and everybody had a 'Campaign Bingo' card to play. If a candidate mentioned a word on their card, like 'film tax credit,' 'picket line,' 'Trump' or 'tech bros,' audience members could yell 'bingo!' at any time during the hourlong salon.
Those ingredients made for a livelier crowd than most political forums, especially this far (18 months) from Election Day and almost a year before the California Labor Federation decides which candidate to endorse.
Few of the candidates expressed opinions that crossed union orthodoxy. Each of the seven who attended — former Rep. Katie Porter, Kounalakis, former state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state Controller Betty Yee, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — has won with union support and has been a friend to the 'house of labor' over their careers.
Nonetheless, moderators Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, and Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, asked the candidates to raise a green (yes) or red (no) flag to a series of questions.
The candidates largely voted in lockstep with organized labor positions with few exceptions. One came in response to an audience member who asked: 'As governor, would you be pragmatic to stop targeting California's oil and gas industry in ways that jeopardize union jobs and force us to rely on dirt or imported energy?'
It is a challenging question for Democrats in California, where candidates often feel torn between the state's environmental and labor priorities. Newsom has spent much of his terms bashing the fossil fuel industry in the name of fighting climate change. But with the imminent closure of two refineries in California, including one in Benicia, Californians may not only be facing skyrocketing gasoline prices that will likely disproportionately hurt working-class voters who have to commute farther to work, but will also see many union refinery workers lose jobs.
Villaraigosa expressed a position that would be at home in some parts of the Republican Party, especially as it has tried to court more working-class voters. 'We can't continue to be a party of just people that drive a Tesla, not a Toyota pickup, or ride a bus like my mother did,' Villaraigosa said. 'We're putting this notion of just renewables on the backs of working people. We have the highest gas prices in the United States of America. We have the second-highest utility costs. They've gone up 66%.'
Villaraigosa said the state needs an 'an all-of-the-above strategy to take on climate change. Why? Because we're talking about closing down refineries, and that's why we have the toughest, highest gas price in the United States of America. The next governor has got to challenge that.'
Kounalakis, who has stressed her environmental support in previous campaigns, said, 'We have to make sure that the refineries stay open until we're ready to transition (to renewable energy). We keep costs down for consumers, and we keep jobs until we're ready for the transition.'
Yee said, 'We all want a clean environment going forward. But it cannot be on the backs of workers, the workers who have expertise on these facilities, who know how to transform them for the renewable economy.'
Villaraigosa also departed from union orthodoxy when the candidates were asked if they would sign a bill to grant unemployment benefits for striking workers, a measure that Newsom has vetoed previously.
'I said no, and I'll tell you why: You have to balance budgets,' said Villaraigosa, who earlier in the evening had boasted that when he served as Assembly speaker, labor knew 'they had a chief steward in Sacramento.' But in this case, with the state likely facing a budget deficit this year, Villaraigosa said, 'When you're governor, you got to balance.'
None of those onstage Monday flashed any of the outsize personalities of California governors of the past half century who have been more than comfortable on the national stage, governors like Ronald Reagan, Jerry Brown and whether you like it or not, Newsom. Standing tall in the bully pulpit will be part of the job, as President Donald Trump and California will likely continue to be mortal enemies for the last two years of Trump's term after California's new governor takes office.
Trump's name was invoked about a dozen times, but as reflexively as Democratic candidates have invoked it in similar forums over the past decade. As Villaraigosa said, 'We can't just focus on (Trump), because the best way to fight him is to improve the quality of life for more people in California, to address the fact that we have the highest cost of living in the United States of America.'
Several candidates cited building more housing as a top priority, as have many Democrats nationwide, echoing the 'Democrats need to build more' mantra popularized by the bestselling book 'Abundance' by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
Gonzalez and Hannan pushed the candidates to describe how they would uphold working standards for unionized workers as they were building homes, to little avail.
'It's easy to talk about housing,' Gonzalez said. 'Everybody wants more housing, of course, but the difference between the labor movement and this so-called Abundance movement is we actually think when you build things, you actually have to take care of the workers who are building it as well.'