California primary results: Who is advancing to November?

After Gov. Gavin Newsom overwhelmingly defeated a recall attempt last September by nearly the same margin that he won his first term in 2018, momentum dissipated for a serious challenge to the Democrat’s re-election.

Facing a field of candidates with little statewide name recognition and barely any money to change that, Newsom received 56% of the vote in the official results, positioning himself to cruise to victory again in November. He was declared one of the top two by the Associated Press within 15 minutes of the polls closing on June 7.

Newsom said on Twitter that California would be the “antidote” to Republican attacks on fundamental rights, “leading with compassion, common-sense and science. Treasuring diversity, defending democracy, and protecting our planet. Here’s to continuing that fight.”

He will face Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle of rural Lassen County, running a distant second with 18% of the vote. An unapologetic conservative, Dahle also pitched himself as someone who could get more done at the state Capitol than the “dictator” Newsom because of his close relationships with fellow legislators.

“Gavin Newsom, he’s an elitist Democrat. He’s not even well-liked in his own party,” Dahle told Nexstar Media after the race was called for him. “We’re going to be talking about things that are affecting Californians’ everyday life, and we’ll see what happens in November.”

Author and nuclear energy activist Michael Shellenberger, who shed his party affiliation and tried appealing to the ideological center of the electorate, was in third place with 4% of the vote, just ahead of Republican management consultant Jenny Rae Le Roux, who had 3.5%.

There was very little doubt that Attorney General Rob Bonta would come first in this primary. The big question was always which of his three right-of-center challengers would come in second, earning the right to challenge him in November.

Sure enough, the official returns put Bonta far ahead of the pack, with 54% of the vote. Republican Nathan Hochman finished second with 18.2%, ahead of Republican Eric Early at 16.5%. Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert trailed with 7.8%.

The Associated Press declared June 23 that Hochman has clinched second place. “The question before voters is a simple one: do you feel safer today than you did two, four, or six years ago?” he said in a statement.

The slim gap between Hochman and Early represents a familiar rift within the GOP. Hochman’s blue-chip resume, his seemingly moderate politics and his endorsement from the state GOP appeal to the pragmatically center-right. California voters haven’t elected a Republican statewide since 2006. If ever there was a GOP candidate who could appeal to independents and tired-as-hell Democrats to break that losing streak, the argument goes, it’s a guy like Hochman.

Early is well-known to red-meat Republican voters for his past electoral gambits. In 2018, he ran for attorney general; in 2020, he ran for Congress; and in 2021, he was one of the organizers behind the recall effort against Gov. Gavin Newsom. None of those efforts were successful, except that they helped the Los Angeles lawyer endear himself to the base. This time, the base wasn’t enough. 

It’s clear what Bonta thinks. His campaign and his backers spent more than $1 million to “oppose” Early, presumably their preferred candidate, while also elevating his profile with voters. That’s a familiar electoral ploy in California. 

What is clear is that Schubert won’t be getting a promotion to statewide prosecutor. Not this year, anyway. A former Republican who became a political independent in 2018, her campaign embodied the idea that center-right politics can still play in California — so long as it’s divorced from the deeply unpopular Republican brand. She isn’t the first “no party preference” candidate to try. Now, she appears likely to join the ranks of those who failed.

The conventional wisdom turned out to be true: Republican Lanhee Chen and one of four Democrats would advance to the general election for state controller — one of the more contested statewide races in the primary.

Chen, the sole Republican in the race, earned widespread support from the GOP, as well as endorsements from several major newspaper editorial boards. No Republican has won statewide office since 2006, but he had 37% of the vote in official returns.

In a statement, Chen said: “To win in November will require an effort that hasn’t been seen in our state for a long time.”

That left four Democrats vying for the second spot: State Board of Equalization Chairperson Malia Cohen, state Sen. Steve Glazer, Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin and Monterey Park City Councilmember Yvonne Yiu. 

On June 16, Cohen was declared the second-place finisher and will face off against Chen in November.

In the official count, Cohen had 23%, Yiu had 15%, Glazer had 11% and Galperin had 10%. 

Yiu, a former financial advisor, raised the most funds by far — but only because she put nearly $6 million of her own money into the campaign. The California Chamber of Commerce backed Glazer, while labor groups spent big for Cohen, who is seeking to become only the third Black woman elected statewide. 

An already nasty fight between incumbent Ricardo Lara and state Assemblymember Marc Levine to be insurance commissioner will not continue into the November general election after all.

On July 6, Levine conceded second place to Republican Robert Howell. In official returns, Lara placed well ahead in first with 36%. Levine had 18.0%, slightly behind Howell at 18.1%.

Lara came under fire during his term for accepting campaign donations from the insurance industry after pledging the opposite, and for renting a second residence in Sacramento at taxpayers’ expense. Levine, who has the support of major newspaper editorial boards, also accused Lara of not doing enough to protect homeowners in wildfire areas from losing their coverage. 

Despite all that, Lara, California’s first openly gay statewide elected official, has the endorsements of the state Democratic Party, its elected statewide leaders and Democratic-friendly groups, including firefighters, nurses and teachers. Lara’s campaign has criticized Levine’s voting record on labor issues. Their two campaigns raised far more than the other candidates.  

Even as the coronavirus pandemic unleashed a wave of parent frustration and political organizing over school closures, California’s top education official largely escaped their ire. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond ran a quiet campaign for re-election, with teachers’ unions spending heavily on his behalf and the charter school advocates who fiercely opposed him four years ago forgoing a rematch. In official results, Thurmond had 46% of the vote — just short of enough to win outright in the only nonpartisan statewide contest on the ballot. In the November runoff, he will face education policy executive Lance Christensen, who at nearly 12% of the vote narrowly defeated teacher Ainye E. Long and software architect George Yang.

Democratic incumbents in four other statewide offices remain well-positioned coming out of the primary:

• U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, who was appointed by Newsom in 2020 after Kamala Harris was elected vice president, is simultaneously running in a special election to finish her term and for a full six-year term. He was far ahead of the competition in both races in official returns — more than 54% of the vote in each — and will face Republican constitutional attorney Mark Meuser in runoffs for each in November.
• Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis won 53% in official results and will face Republican Angela Underwood Jacobs, a bank executive and Lancaster City Council member, who received 20%.
• Secretary of State Shirley Weber earned 59% in the official tally and will face Republican tech consulting firm executive Robert Bernosky, who won 19%.
• Treasurer Fiona Ma received more than 57% in the official returns and will face Republican certified public accountant Jack Guerrero, who finished second with 22%. Fellow Republican Andrew Do was in third with 17%.

Californians may not be used to hearing this, but our votes actually do matter for national politics this year. With Democrats desperate to hold on to their sliver-thin majority in the House of Representatives, some of the most competitive toss-up races in the country are to be found in the Central Valley, Orange County and the northern suburbs of both Los Angeles and San Diego. 

But most of the state’s districts are not toss-ups. While an incumbent lawmaker will be defending their turf in most of these races, it’s an open field by historic standards. This year, six members of California’s delegation either opted not to seek reelection or left early. That, along with new congressional districts, has injected even more uncertainty into a very uncertain election year.

Across California’s congressional races, it appears to be a good primary for current and former California Assembly members.

• In a Sacramento-area congressional district, Republican Assemblymember Kevin Kiley trounced Sacramento County Sheriff and fellow Republican Scott Jones for the right to take on the top vote-getter, Democrat Kermit Jones. (That Donald Trump endorsement probably helped Kiley). 
• Democratic Assemblymembers Adam Gray and Kevin Mullin comfortably advanced in their respective congressional bids. And Democrat Rudy Salas is the top vote-getter in his Central Valley race against Republican David Valadao — even if the combined vote share of the GOP candidates forecasts a difficult race for the Democrat in November.
• Rep. Young Kim, a former Assemblymember, came in second against Democratic opponent Asif Mahmood in her Orange County district. With a little help from GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy, she fended off a challenge from the right in Greg Raths. And Democrat Christy Smith, also a former Assemblymember, will once again challenge Republican Rep. Mike Garcia, among the most vulnerable incumbents in the country, for his northern Los Angeles County seat. Another Democratic candidate, Quaye Quartey, scored some high-profile endorsements, but won a mere 7%.
• An exception to the rule of lucky Assemblymembers: Cristina Garcia. The progressive legislator was hoping to face off against Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia (no relation) in November. But she finished third at 13%, well behind Mayor Garcia at 47% and Republican activist John Briscoe with 26%.
• Another potential surprise: Inland Empire Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who was redrawn into a much more Democratic-friendly district, won 48% of the vote — enough to put him in first place, but behind the combined vote total of the Democratic candidates. That’s a flashing warning sign for November when he will face off against Democratic prosecutor Will Rollins.

The California Legislature is in the middle of an exodus this year. The combination of term limits, new districts and electoral opportunities elsewhere has resulted in 26 members of the Assembly and Senate departing the state Capitol by year’s end. Not that any of this poses much of a threat to Democratic dominance of both chambers. Democrats control roughly three in four seats in both the Senate and Assembly.

But not all Democrats are alike. That’s why some of the most fiercely contested races are in solidly blue bastions in Sacramento, the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego, where labor-backed progressives are facing off against more business-friendly moderates. 

With legislative races getting whittled down to just the top two, many seemed to go as expected. Two Sacramento Democrats seeking a state Senate seat, Angelique Ashby and Dave Jones, the joint beneficiaries of more outside political spending than any other two candidates in the state, are set to face one another again in November. Likewise, the two well-financed Democrats Aisha Wahab and Lily Mei progressed to November in an East Bay Senate race. And across the state, incumbents and party-backed favorites tended to perform well.

But, with the vote count complete, there were a few big surprises as well:

• Possible Sierra shutout: In a Sierra state Senate district, one of the few “safe” seats for the GOP, the surplus of Republican candidates cannibalized the conservative vote, helping to hand the two spots to two Democrats, labor leader Tim Robertson and public school administrator Marie Alvarado-Gil.
• Hertzberg triumphant: Daniel Hertzberg, son of state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, was narrowly the top vote-getter in a San Fernando Valley Senate seat. His chief Democratic challenger, Caroline Menjivar, finished second, barely ahead of long-shot Republican Ely De La Cruz Ayao. 
• Realtors strike out: Democratic Socialist Alex Lee was among the top targets of opposition spending (virtually all it coming from the Realtors and the landlord lobby). It didn’t seem to hurt him much: the San Jose Assemblymember won 38.5% of the vote and clinched a spot in November.
• QAnon candidate: And while Diane Papan easily finished first in the Assembly race to take Kevin Mullin’s old seat, her progressive Democratic challenger Giselle Hale barely beat out Republican Mark Gilham for the second spot. The surprise? Gilham is a fan of the QAnon conspiracy theory. 
• San Diego and Inglewood, two ways: In two of the most sharply contested open Assembly seats, voters were asked to cast their ballots twice: First to serve out the rest of the absent legislator’s term, the second to join the Legislature in 2023. In San Diego, Democrat David Alvarez defeated his progressive challenger Georgette Gómez in the special runoff to serve out the remainder of the term following the departure of Lorena Gonzalez. In the contest to serve the full-term, Gómez leads Alvarez, plus two Republicans, but with only 36% of the total vote. That’s probably bad news for Gómez who will likely face Alvarez again, one-on-one, in November. The opposite happened in Inglewood, where progressive favorite Tina McKinnor finished second behind Robert Pullen-Miles in the five-candidate primary, but beat him one-on-one in the special.
• There can only be one: Republican Assemblymembers Tom Lackey and Thurston “Smitty” Smith caught some bad luck late last year when the state redistricting commission drew them both into the same High Desert district. The two finished neck-and-neck, setting up an intra-party head-to-head in November.

The most expensive race in California isn’t anywhere near the top of the ticket: It’s the mayoral contest in Los Angeles, where the billionaire developer Rick Caruso has poured nearly $40 million of his own money into a bid to lead the state’s largest city. Caruso is locked in a contentious campaign against Rep. Karen Bass, who would be the first woman and second Black mayor of Los Angeles, that has revolved around crime, homelessness and Caruso’s past registration as a Republican. The two Democrats are headed for a runoff in November, with Bass leading Caruso 43% to 36%.

Angelenos also sent Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva into a runoff to keep his job. After rallying Democratic voters four years ago to defeat the incumbent, Villanueva disappointed many by pivoting to become a brash, tough-on-crime conservative who makes frequent appearances on Fox News and has become enmeshed in numerous corruption scandals in his department. He seemed to pay for it, and will now compete head-to-head with former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna.

In San Francisco, District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled in another closely-watched race that could have broader implications for criminal justice policy in California. Elected in 2019, the former public defender promised to increase accountability for police misconduct and shift away from incarceration for low-level offenses. But rising anxiety over property crimes and anti-Asian American hate crimes, as well as major funding from conservative donors, fueled a campaign to remove Boudin from office before the end of his term. About 55% of voters ousted him. Two of Boudin’s allies in the “progressive prosecutor” movement, Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton and San Joaquin County District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar, also faced robust challenges to oust them backed by local law enforcement. While Becton survived, Salazar lost her job.