“WHAT PADILLA’S OPT-OUT MEANS IN THE RUN FOR GOVERNOR”

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WHAT PADILLA’S OPT-OUT MEANS IN THE RUN FOR GOVERNOR”

 

By next year, it will have been 28 years since California has had a race for governor as wide-open as what has begun to happen here.

 

It didn’t have to be that way. Had he chosen to run, the unbeaten, unscarred and un-scandaled Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla could have taken over the race like a giant over a gaggle of pygmies.

 

Every election since 1998 has had a similar look to that, with clear favorites from the start, from Gray Davis to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jerry Brown to Gavin Newsom.

 

Without Padilla, this year’s race has no clear-cut favorite – yet.

 

Had he entered the race, every poll showed he would have been the instant leader, by a wide margin. He could have politically dwarfed the rest of the field, which now includes (among Democrats) former Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter, former state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state Controller Betty Yee, state schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and former state Assembly majority leader Ian Calderon. There are a few others, but none has made a dent in the polls, currently led by Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco with about 13 percent voter support and Porter with slightly less backing than that.

 

Almost all Bianco’s support comes from Republican voters, which means he would not have much chance against the primary’s leading Democrat, whoever that turns out to be. Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, who led one poll for awhile, also has almost exclusively Republican support.

 

Dropouts so far include former state Senate president Toni Atkins and current Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, both Democrats, and former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who left before ever formally entering the race. There will be more, unless Democrats want to enable their nightmare, a GOP-on-GOP race caused by extreme splintering like today’s among the field of ideologically similar Democrats, leaving the top two Republicans alone in the November runoff.

 

Perhaps all these folks thought Padilla would run. But he said it’s more important to him to remain in Washington and “focus on countering President Trump’s agenda in Congress. I choose to stay in this fight because the Constitution is worth fighting for. Our fundamental rights are worth fighting for.”

 

Padilla could have assured those battles would be carried on anyway by whoever he appointed to replace him in the Senate, had he become governor.

 

Padilla was a fairly low-profile senator from 2020, when he was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to replace Harris, a senator before she became vice president. But while national guardsmen and federal troops patrolled parts of Los Angeles in early June, he entered a Homeland Security press conference by Secretary Kristi Noem and attempted to ask a question.

 

Padilla was thrown to the floor and handcuffed before being released a short time later. His profile and name recognition quickly skyrocketed.

 

Now he says "There's a lot of important work to do (in California), whether it’s economic opportunity, the future of health care, future of the education system and on and on and on.” He will let someone else do all that work.

 

Padilla said he had to “think through where I can be most impactful. Is it from here, or from there?” Clearly, his answer was there, where he now is.

 

But there is no doubt Padilla could have had more impact as governor than as senator. Newsom has shown this, with his opposition to many Trump Administration actions and threats playing a far larger role in today’s political world than any Democratic senator’s.

 

Other senators have realized the same thing before. Before he ran for governor in 1990, for example, ex-Gov. Pete Wilson, then a Republican senator, remarked there are 100 senators but only one governor of California.

 

 

Had Padilla gotten in, there likely would have been a much greater exodus from this race than we have so far seen. There is no one now in the race to match his stature.

 

Perhaps a new entrant will appear (actor George Clooney?), or perhaps one of the remaining candidates will emerge as a stronger candidate than anyone now appears to be. For now, the possibilities appear almost endless and unprecedented in the modern era.

 

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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

 

Suggested pull-out quote: “There are 100 senators but only one governor of California.”