For the third time in as many weeks, the leading candidates for California governor met on the debate stage Tuesday night.
The latest installment was a two-hour session, hosted and carried live from Monterey Park by CNN. The debate marked the first time the candidates appeared before a national audience and came as mail ballots have begun arriving in homes throughout the state.
Columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria took in all 120 minutes, absorbed every zinger — scripted and otherwise — and dutifully observed each parry and thrust. Here’s what they took away:
Arellano: Antonio Villaraigosa finally rises above his gubernatorial rivals. Is it too late?
I wrote my thoughts about this debate while writing my next columna on … something, stopping to pay attention only when issues in my bailiwick like immigration and the failure of the Democratic Party were the subject of discussion. The rest of the time, what the candidates said came off as one giant shout-fest straight out of the studios of the late, great Wally George, with everyone playing true to form.
Chad Bianco raged, Steve Hilton tried to mask his MAGA-ness with his British accent. Katie Porter scolded, Tom Steyer channeled Bernie. Xavier Becerra did his best impression of the old Bunsen character from “The Muppet Show.” Matt Mahan was just … there.
You know who sounded the best? Antonio Villaraigosa.
Anyone who really knows the former L.A. mayor has always seen him as Chicano Prince Hal, someone who doesn’t take himself as seriously as he should. His infidelities effectively killed his political career after his mayoral years; his consulting for the nutritional supplement company Herbalife made Villaraigosa a walking joke among too many Latinos I know.
He has spent the last decade effectively embodying Marlon Brando’s famous quote in “On the Waterfront”: He coulda been a contender. Even his gubernatorial run, announced way before many of his opponents, has mostly had the air of a has-been — that’s one of the reasons why Villaraigosa has polled so low through most of the race to the point he was excluded from many of the early debates.
But that hangdog Villaraigosa was nowhere to be seen tonight.
His wisecracks were kept to a minimum. He stayed mostly within his time limits and didn’t interrupt much. He hammered Hilton over his refusal to admit that President Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and his dismissal of illegal immigrants.
Villaraigosa especially went hard on his forever frenemy Xavier Becerra on everything from to his time as President Biden’s health secretary to how former staffers have been charged with stealing millions of dollars from his campaign funds. (Becerra has not been accused of any wrongdoing.)
When CNN co-moderator Elex Michaelson asked Villaraigosa if he would cancel California’s much-maligned high-speed rail project, the candidate’s emphatic “No” thundered down like a Lebron James dunk. He called out the waste on the multibillion-dollar project, said he revived L.A.’s subway to the sea, and spoke with a passionate gravitas that Becerra could only dream of doing.
“When I make a mistake, I’m accountable,” Villaraigosa said at the end of the debate. This sounded like a candidate who can win — and now he has a month to make a comeback worthy of his political mentor, the late, great Gloria Molina.
Four weeks to prove them wrong, Antonio.
Barabak: It was a no-hitter.
No startling breakthrough. No game-changing moment. No candidate so irresistibly charming he or she knocked the race akimbo and stamped themselves as the far-and-away front-runner in the slowly consolidating contest.
By now, the candidates are plowing well-furrowed ground.
To anyone who has watched each of the debates — and there may not be a great many of those viewers out there — it was all quite familiar.
What is new, and what may have been the draw for those just tuning in, is a sense the race is finally taking a coherent shape, with Xavier Becerra unexpectedly emerging as the candidate to beat.
A month ago, Eric Swalwell was a leading contender in the dozy contest and Becerra was an afterthought, being urged to quit for the sake of his dignity and the good of the Democratic Party. (Fears of a Democratic shutout in the June 2 primary have greatly receded.)
When Swalwell left the race, and vacated his congressional seat amid allegations of sexual assault and other potentially illegal misconduct, it was widely assumed much of his support would move to either Steyer or Katie Porter, the two other leading Democratic contenders.
But Becerra has been the clear-cut beneficiary and his new status was evident Tuesday night as he faced repeated attacks. He didn’t particularly dazzle, but that’s not his appeal. It’s his steadiness and seeming unflappability in a time of great upheaval and stress, and that was again evident.
With less than four weeks to election day — and voting already underway — time is waning for another dramatic shake-up like the one that took place between Swalwell’s implosion in April and Becerra’s surge in May.
It seems, however, as though little to nothing will change, with Becerra steadily gaining ground, Hilton consolidating GOP support and the remainder of the field looking for something — or someone — to drastically shake up the race one more time.
Chabria: I don’t know about a winner, but the debate definitely had a biggest loser: Chad Bianco. The Riverside County sheriff, to his credit I guess, didn’t try for a hot second to hide who he really is — a conspiracy-loving immigration hardliner with ties to an extremist group.
Bianco sort-of said he was a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right organization best known for some of its members participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. He threw out election fraud theories, even suggesting state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta could be involved. He made it clear that undocumented folks are breaking the law by existing in the state.
Maybe some MAGA voters will stick by that shtick, but I’m guessing independents and more moderate Republicans will find Steve Hilton, the Trump-endorsed Republican, even more appealing after Bianco’s ragey ramblings. Hilton may well be sending his opponent a thank you note and a bottle of bubbly for that performance.
As for winners, a couple of the Democrats had their moments. Former Rep. Katie Porter spoke with clarity and force on issues including single-payer healthcare (she supports it) and resisting Trump’s immigration policies in this state of immigrants.
But she also directly addressed the criticism of her having a bad temper in a way that I think may haunt her.
As her male opponents bickered back and forth, taking swipes at each other, Porter said that given all the “shouting” and “disrespect” onstage, she was shocked that “anyone wants to talk about my temperament.” It’s a pushback she tried out earlier in the week with a new advertisement that sought to make a punchline out of the criticism.
I get her point and I don’t think a male candidate would face the same scrutiny for yelling at a staffer that she has, but also — what’s more unappealing to voters than an angry woman? A complaining one. That moment of resistance against the narrative may not land the way she intends with voters.
I agree with Gustavo that Villaraigosa had a good night, and that Steyer had Bernie energy — which may be good.
Steyer was the most lively and direct he’s been in a debate, landing a few punches and making points with clarity (far less wonky than he’s been in the past). He’s owning his far-left politics, and labeling himself the “change-maker.”
Steyer has been trailing Becerra in the polls, but Becerra again had a steady if less-than-thrilling appearance. For fed-up Democrats, Steyer may be looking better all the time.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
