Three decades of journalism experience, as a writer and editor with Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Lee newspapers, as a business journal editor and publisher and as a weekly newspaper editor in Scotts Valley and Gilroy; with the Weeklys group since 2017. Recipient of several first-place writing and editing awards, California News Publishers Association.
Tom Steyer wrote a concession letter to his supporters, which he posted on X, saying it was clear he lacked the votes needed to make the runoff in November.
The Associated Press determined that Hilton had a big enough lead over Steyer to move on, predicting that Hilton would join Becerra on the Nov. 3 General Election ballot. The AP on Friday declared that Becerra had enough votes to move forward.
The ballot count is barely two-thirds complete, but that didn’t stop President Trump from jumping in to stir controversy and challenge the outcome, prompting multiple U.S. Department of Justice investigations in Los Angeles.
The June 4 totals, with an estimated 60% of the ballot counted, offered no mathematical or statistical reason to believe that third-place candidate Tom Steyer will be on the November runoff ballot.
As the counting progressed, the Becerra-Hilton battle settled into a steady pattern, as the pair widened their gap over Tom Steyer to nearly 300,000 votes.
The independent Emerson College poll of likely voters showed that Becerra, who was among the also-rans at 4% in early April, is now clearly leading the race for governor at 28%.
Democrat Tom Steyer faded and candidates Chad Bianco, Katie Porter and Matt Mahan were left in the dust in what the California Democratic Party called its final tracking poll from the California VOTER Index.
The men were indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco for conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, attempted robbery, and attempted kidnapping.
Polls released earlier this week showed some separation of three candidates – Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer and Republican Steve Hilton – from the others, and the trio were on the receiving end of most of the barbs at the May 14 debate.
The debate comes at a pivotal moment in the top-two primary campaign – as mail ballots are returned and new polls show the number of undecided voters are dwindling with less than three weeks until the official June 2 Election Day.
Santa Clara County is going after Menlo Park-based Meta Platforms Inc., accusing the social media giant of facilitating 15 billion scam ads daily on Facebook and Instagram, accounting for $7 billion in revenues per year.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who was still polling at single digits last week, was spared most of the vitriol, but didn’t hesitate to criticize each of the other candidates at every opportunity.
His favorite debate target was Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra.
Primary ballots are in the mail to nearly 23 million registered California voters and the most recent statewide poll shows that 27 percent of the electorate are still undecided.
The statewide debate was more rough-and-tumble than last Wednesday’s event in San Francisco, but again, no governor candidate broke away from the scrum, and the playing field just got muddier.
