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Posted on 03/28/2026 1:33:52 PM PDT by Angelino97
Just when we thought the campaign for California’s governorship couldn’t get any weirder, it did.
A Tuesday night debate at the University of Southern California was cancelled late Monday amid allegations of racism because all the candidates invited to participate are white while the four Democrats who were left out are Latino, Black or Asian.
USC chose debaters on the basis of their standing in the polls or the amounts of money raised or being spent. It meant, for example, that San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan was included because of his heavy financial support from Silicon Valley, even though he is in the lower tier of candidates as measured by polling.
While the racial divide might have been a result of USC’s methodology, it is what political pros call “bad optics” for a party that embraces identification politics. Democratic leaders in the state Legislature had backed the four excluded candidates, saying in a letter, “The university’s selection process — built on a formula never before used for a debate of this scale — has delivered a result that is biased.”
USC had stoutly defended the selection formula, devised by USC Professor Christian Grose and based on research using data to project candidate viability. However, as criticism mounted, USC was compelled to backtrack.
“We recognize that concerns about the selection criteria for tomorrow’s gubernatorial debate have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” USC said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “Unfortunately, USC and KABC (the debate co-sponsor) have not been able to reach an agreement on expanding the number of candidates at tomorrow’s debate. As a result, USC has made the difficult decision to cancel tomorrow’s debate and will look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues.”
Former Congresswoman Katie Porter, billionaire Tom Steyer and Congressman Eric Stalwell were to have participated along with Mahan. They had joined in criticizing the selection methodology but none had pulled out prior to the cancellation announcement, even though those left out had asked them to boycott.
Directly and indirectly, Porter, Steyer and Stalwell had suggested that Mahan was invited to the debate despite his low standing in the polls due to intervention by Rick Caruso, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman who has been a major contributor to USC and is supporting Mahan after flirting with running himself. Caruso and USC flatly denied the allegation.
Cancellation was a rare bit of good news for those in the lower tier, former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee, all of whom had been mired in single-digit positions in the latest polls, along with Mahan.
Their euphoria was short-lived, however. Twelve hours after the debate cancellation, Democratic state chairman Rusty Hicks released a party-sponsored poll that confirmed what other surveys had shown. The two Republicans, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, are still leading the field at 16% and 14% respectively while Porter, Swalwell and Steyer are tied at 10% and every other Democrat is still mired in low single digits, from 3% to as low as 1%, with 24% undecided.
Hicks commissioned the series of polls after urging those in the lower tier to drop out, worrying aloud that the two Republicans could finish 1-2 in the June 2 primary, thus guaranteeing that one would win the governorship in November.
While that would seem to be nearly impossible in a state that’s utterly dominated by Democrats, voting by mail will begin in just six weeks, and so far the two Republicans are still on top and the eight Democrats are still failing to catch fire with voters.
How weird is that?
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If the two GOP candidates are the two finalists coming out of the jungle primary format, I guarantee the Legislature dumps this format as soon as possible.
The vote fraud is going to be epic! /S
CA demoncrats will do everything they can to keep Californians from listening to republican candidates……
The debate was cancelled because the debate organizers had failed to use DEI criteria instead of merit (potential of candidacy as measured in polling and resources) in selecting among at least ten candidates.
the rats have nothing to run on so they shut it all down and blamed it on racial non representation
This is the cover story.
The truth is they didn't want the exposure of the top two candidates being Republicans.
In reality, the people who were harmed the most were Eric Swalwell and Katie Porter, who lost the opportunity to reach a statewide audience on the same stage as Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, going head-to-head with the Republicans.
Instead, they now have to run ads to get their platforms out, and the ads become stale within a week of being aired.
-PJ
Let’s hope so. This is like threading the needle and luck will be involved. No democrat dropping out and Swalwell finishing 3rd. WE should be playing the race card loud for leaving out the people of color. USC loves to use their jocks for money until there’s no use for them.
It would need the gov’s signature.
CA needs to learn the IL way.
When there are many minor candidates/3d party candidates often, the majority party that controls the vote counting in a county counts most (but not all) of the votes of the minor candidates for the favored major candidate.
In IL the Libertarian Party would ask (if they looked at the count) How could that be? Nobody voted Libertarian in the precinct where our VP and Secretary live.
a racist college should have its property tax exemption cancelled, at the least
I don't think the eggheads at USC thought this through.
Expanding the debate roster for "people of color" would only further dilute the airtime for Swalwell and Porter, and perhaps split the polling further going into the primary election.
-PJ
You are correct. Winning for them is more important so they cast aside the deadwood. Call them on it.
Perhaps Trump is the only one that can do it in one or 2 sentences. Do it while bashing Mayor Bass.
Yeah, let each ethnicity with more than 1% of total voters get at least one candidate. The more the merrier. The DEI-minded votes will split as they would vote for their own, and probability of getting 2 top being Republicans will be higher.
I would not be shocked if California changed its Sore Loser law to somehow permit a Democrat to run in the general election. They’d likely have to do it before the primary, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Probably in the form of permitting write-ins.
BUT no one who appeared on the primary ballot is eligible to be a write in candidate in the general
“…. allegations of racism because all the candidates invited to participate are white while the four Democrats who were left out are Latino, Black or Asian”.
Why isn’t “White” capitalized? Or rather, shouldn’t they use Caucasian, or further tribalize their ethnic extraction to the same level of granularity? Maybe the candidate is a Finnish-American, or of Swiss stock, or whatever.
What a bunch of wankers to do this. I hope they die in a fire.
Are you sure? I thought California has a class of offices called "Voter Nominated Offices", and for those offices, write-in candidate are permitted at the primary stage only. That includes almost all state offices, including governor, but does exclude Prez and VP. For Voter Nominated Offices, there is no such thing as an authorized write-in candidate for the general election, and any write-in votes cast for someone in the general election are not tabulated.
In other words, if you're not one of the top two vote-getters at the primary, you cannot win in the general election.
https://vigarchive.sos.ca.gov/2024/primary/voter-info/elections-in-california.htm
I might have confused it with this, which is more about being a primary write-in candidate.
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