Last updated: Feb. 24, 2026
At least nine Democrats are competing to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2026 general election, but first they’ll have to get through the June primary. The crowded field has raised fears among Democrats that they could be entirely locked out of the November election.
Polls have shown former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco leading the race, with the top Democrat — Bay Area Rep. Eric Swalwell — essentially tied.
With such a wide-open field, Democrats at the party’s February convention were unable to endorse a single candidate, meaning pressure is building on candidates with lower polling numbers and less ability to fundraise to drop out of the race.
The primary election is June 2. Here’s a look at the field right now:
Matt Mahan
Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, is the latest Democrat to enter the race after saying in the fall he wasn’t excited by the selection of candidates. Don’t expect him to join the other candidates’ jockeying to be the biggest opponent to president Donald Trump. A Silicon Valley moderate, he’s criticized Newsom for overly focusing on “resisting” Trump, especially on social media.
He says the state over-regulates businesses and fails to comprehensively address homelessness and crime. He broke with the party in 2024 to support Proposition 36, the ballot measure voters approved to increase penalties on some drug and theft charges. Mahan has honed in on reducing street homelessness with hundreds of tiny homes as well as a policy to arrest unhoused people who refuse repeated offers of shelter placements.
Xavier Becerra
If former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra was looking for attention for his campaign, he found it in the form of negative headlines.
Last month, federal prosecutors indicted a Sacramento powerbroker in an alleged corruption scandal that rocked the state’s Democratic establishment. At its center? A dormant campaign account held by Becerra, from which prosecutors allege Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff Dana Williamson conspired with other political consultants to steal $225,000. Williamson is charged with helping to divert the funds to the wife of Becerra’s longtime aide, Sean McCluskie, who has pleaded guilty in the alleged scheme.
Becerra was California’s first Latino attorney general before serving as a cabinet secretary for former President Joe Biden. He is running primarily on a platform of lowering health care costs.
He has not been accused of wrongdoing in the case and has said he was unaware of what was happening. But it’s still possible the association — and the implication he wasn’t paying attention — will taint his campaign, already polling at just 8% last fall.
The controversy is one of a few moments of intrigue in an otherwise quiet race.
Katie Porter
In October, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, a Democrat, was caught on camera trying to walk out of a TV interview with a reporter who pressed her on whether she needed Republican support in the race. A second video followed, showing Porter berating a staff member during a Zoom call. At the time considered the front-runner, she rode out the news cycle and later said she “could have done better” about the behavior in the videos, but they appeared to have dropped her approval ratings. She is essentially tied with the top Republican candidate.
Porter made a name for herself as one of a “blue wave” of female, Democratic lawmakers elected to Congress during the first Trump administration in 2018. A law professor at UC Irvine who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate last year, she gained attention for her tough questioning of corporate executives using her signature whiteboard.
Tom Steyer
Joining a wide field of other Democrats, billionaire investor and climate activist Tom Steyer announced in November he is jumping into the race.
Then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Tom Steyer addresses a crowd during a party in Columbia, South Carolina, on Feb. 29, 2020.
Sean Rayford
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Steyer, who made his fortune by founding a San Francisco hedge fund, has used his wealth to back liberal causes, including the environment. He’s never held public office before, but ran a short-lived campaign for president in 2020. He has honed in on reining in Californians’ second-highest-in-the-nation electricity bills, though some experts are skeptical of his proposals.
Chad Bianco
Pro-Trump Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is neck-and-neck with Porter in the polls, though he is unlikely to last near the top of the pack in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one and a GOP candidate hasn’t won a statewide seat in nearly 20 years.
The cowboy-hat-toting Bianco has heavily criticized Democratic governance. He argues for loosening regulations on businesses and says he wants to overturn California’s sanctuary law that restricts local police from cooperating with federal deportation officers.
Eric Swallwell
Other Democrats have focused on their biographies and experiences in government to try to distinguish themselves in a race where name recognition is low across the board. All have said they want to make California more affordable and push back on the Trump administration’s impact on the state.
Rep. Eric Swalwell speaks during a press conference after a rally in support of Proposition 50 at IBEW Local 6 in San Francisco on Nov. 3, 2025.
Swalwell, a former prosecutor and Bay Area congressman, will likely lean heavily on his anti-Trump bonafides. He was one of several members of Congress appointed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to help lead the second Trump impeachment after the attempted Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection and is now the latest Democrat under attack by the Trump administration over his mortgage.
Antonio Villaraigosa
Former Los Angeles mayor and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa is among the more moderate of the Democratic field. He boasts of his time running the state’s largest city, during which he boosted the police force. He ran for governor unsuccessfully in 2018.
Betty Yee
Former state Controller Betty Yee emphasizes her experience with the state budget and the tax system, having been a top finance office in ex-Gov. Gray Davis’ administration and having sat on the state Board of Equalization.
Tony Thurmond
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, a Democrat, is the only candidate currently in a statewide seat. He emphasizes his background as a social worker who grew up on public assistance programs in a low-income family. He has stated an ambitious goal of building two million housing units on surplus state land.
Ian Calderon
Ian Calderon, a former Democratic Assembly majority leader, is emphasizing his relative youth. He was the first millennial member of the state Assembly, and is part of a Los Angeles County political dynasty. He has some ties to the cryptocurrency industry and has name-dropped it in ads and debates.
Steve Hilton
Republican Steve Hilton, a Fox News contributor, was an adviser for British conservative Prime Minister David Cameron before pivoting to American politics. Before launching his campaign he released a book this year calling California “America’s worst-run state.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters, which is an LAist partner newsroom.
