NEW FIGURES ADD PIZZAZZ TO THE RUN FOR GOVERNOR

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEW FIGURES ADD PIZZAZZ TO THE RUN FOR GOVERNOR”

 

It was only a matter of time before major new figures began to people California’s next run for governor, with its primary election coming up on June 2, 2026.

 

Until very recently, the race looked to become the most canned and staid major California contest in decades: A former state Senate president in Toni Atkins of San Diego, a termed out state schools superintendent in Tony Thurmond and a former Los Angeles mayor in Antonio Villaraigosa.

 

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, sure to be well funded by her mega-developer dad, was not going to liven things up. Nor was ex-Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter, a failed U.S. Senate candidate. It looked even duller when state Attorney General Rob Bonta opted to stay put, choosing untold numbers of legal battles with President Trump over a run for governor.

 

None of these folks ever set themselves apart despite myriad opportunities. That made this race a natural to be livened up, and now it’s happening.

 

First, Kamala Harris began floating rumors of a campaign.  A former U.S. senator and onetime California state attorney general who as vice president barely failed (by 1.6 percent) in her 2024 run for president, she revived memories of another former vice president who ran for governor after failing in a presidential bid, but then lost – Richard Nixon in 1962.

 

His defeat prompted one of Nixon’s most bitter lines, directed originally at political reporter Richard Bergholz, a persistent critic: “You won’t have me to kick around anymore.” That turned out incorrect when Nixon ran for president again in 1968 and won.

 

So far, Harris is not a formal candidate, content for awhile to let others talk about her chances. But she’s acted very candidate-ish since her return home after leaving office, visiting disaster areas and glad-handing local elected officials.

 

Without any measurable effort, Harris stunned the field by pulling 57 percent in a February Emerson College poll where Porter ran a very distant second at 9 percent. Villaraigosa and Kounalakis tied for third, each with an almost invisible 4 percent.

 

That led San Diego Republican Richard Grenell, a longtime aide to President Trump now carrying out “special missions” like attaching conditions to federal disaster aid for California, to announce he “just might” join this race if Harris does. The next entrant was Chad Bianco, the always vocal ultra-conservative sheriff of Riverside County.

 

Given California’s top two “jungle primary” system, if two Republicans stay in the race, they could split the state’s relatively small GOP vote and allow a second Democrat into the November 2026 runoff election along with Harris.

 

This may be the real primary election contest next year. For example, it was only after all other significant Republicans left the U.S. Senate campaign last year that Republican former baseball star Steve Garvey could make the runoff over Porter and then get pasted by current Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.

 

Sidelights may also pop up during the primary season, which will place no constraints on the celebrity publicity hounds who occasionally run in California. That could mean a run by the transgender Caitlyn Jenner, formerly named Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion once thought to rival the late Jim Thorpe as possibly the greatest athlete of all time.

 

Jenner came out as transgender in 2015 and seemingly has not stopped talking about herself since. She announced her new name soon after coming out, and then starred in her own short-lived TV show, “I am Cait.”

 

The show may not have lasted, but Jenner seemingly never stopped talking about herself. She tried politics, too, pulling 1 percent of the vote to replace current Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2021 recall election, which Newsom easily stymied.

 

Early this winter, she began ranting on social media about taking on Harris, even bragging that “If I ran…against Harris, I would destroy her.”

 

Harris, Bianco and possibly Jenner are already livening up what began as the dullest major California campaign in decades, a contest where no early entrant had even appeared on a reality show.

 

But no race including Bianco or Jenner should ever be dull, and this one likely won’t be either.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net