For the sixth and final time before the votes are counted, California's leading gubernatorial candidates met Thursday night for a televised debate, this time a 90-minute session in San Francisco.
Times columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria absorbed the rhetorical blows, followed the heated back-and-forth and absorbed each and every one of the candidates' countless policy prescriptions. Here is his evaluation:
arellano: Near the end of the debate, co-moderator and San Francisco Examiner editor-in-chief Schuyler Hudak Prionas groaned as the candidates talked over each other while trying to answer a question that was supposed to elicit a yes or no.
That's pretty much how California voters have reacted to this primary.
In an era when politics too often focuses on choosing the least bad option, voters in this election are left with the political version of the Angels baseball team.
No candidate has polled more than 20 percent, a testament to how many are in the race, but also an indication that none of them have truly captured the zeitgeist of today's California.
This year's debates have done little to catapult anyone to the top, and tonight was more of the same. I still don't know who I'm going to vote for and no one inspired me to side with them. No one offered a clear vision of how they would lift Californians out of a spiritual malaise that has many of us leaving the state or considering doing so.
Instead, what I heard many of the candidates evoke were the glories of the past: his past.
Antonio Villaraigosa's closing comments made a mantra of “Dream with me,” a slogan he used when he was mayor of Los Angeles, that was 13 years ago.
Xavier Becerra bragged about how he stood up to President Trump as California Attorney General, that was five years ago.
Katie Porter pulled out a white notebook with something written on it and directly challenged Becerra to answer a question — a reminder of her time as a congressman grilling people on Capitol Hill with a whiteboard and marker, something she first made famous seven years ago.
The two Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, spoke of a happy California destroyed by irresponsible Democrats and promised to return to those days.
The only candidates who didn't live in the past were San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, but they seemed particularly out of their league, with Steyer too often staring at notes rather than speaking spontaneously with his well-rehearsed populist grit.
The word “nostalgia” first emerged to describe what doctors at the time considered an illness, as they considered it imprudent to long for the past. It's a concept historically opposed to California, long pushed as the land of today and tomorrow by everyone from the Mission fathers to the orange barons, from developers to politicians. In fact, nostalgia has sometimes been a dangerous factor in California politics, unleashing the fantastic Spanish heritage movement, Proposition 13, Proposition 187, and all sorts of other nonsense.
The two candidates who advance to the general election would do well to offer Californians hope for the future that doesn't remind us of our yesterdays. For now, the only real winners are the political consultants, and the only real losers are the Californians, because we still don't know for sure whether any of the candidates will be able to make things better.
The only thing we can hope for is that things get worse.
Barabac: A popular expression, which Steyer mentioned, defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
By that measure, was the crowd at Thursday night's showdown crazy? Masochistic? Or a group of altruistic, obedient and quite conscientious Californian voters?
The leading gubernatorial candidates have been at this so long that they are like actors in a theater group, performing well-rehearsed lines, or an old band getting together to play their greatest hits, although much less melodious.
Among those reprising familiar roles were Steyer as the boastful billionaire; Bianco as the angry white avenger; Hilton as the cheerful pessimist; Mahan as the younger brother who insinuates himself into the conversation; Porter as the leftist tribune who promises a progressive Valhalla; and Villaraigosa as the old political war horse.
Once again, Becerra was the focus of the attacks, in line with his newly acquired status as a candidate to win. “This is what happens when you take a lead in the polls,” he rightly noted.
And so, once again, rivals attacked Becerra's performance as state attorney general and secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration. They accused him of being an accomplice of big oil companies. They attempted, implying guilt by association, to implicate Becerra in the scandal involving his former aides who embezzled a dormant campaign account.
(Becerra, sharper and more animated than before, noted that prosecutors in the case have described him as a victim and not a perpetrator or accomplice in the conspiracy.)
It's hard to see that all the pushing and nudging makes much of a difference. The promises made and the attacks scattered like buckshot on the San Francisco scene seem much less important than the numbers appearing in opinion polls between now and Election Day.
Many Democrats, spooked by the prospect of their party being shut out of the June primary, have held on to their votes, planning to vote at the last minute for the Democrat who appears most likely to finish first.
In that way, the race seems to be shaping up less as a competition and more like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And Thursday night's performance, while not entirely irrelevant, was simply another television rerun broadcast to a non-mass audience.
chabria: Here's what I'll say about Thursday night: It was a debate. The old-school kind, where everyone is well-behaved and polite, and the audience is scrolling through their phones to stay awake.
The candidates themselves seemed low on energy, even with their attacks, which were largely directed at Becerra, as Mark said.
But no sparks also means we have more clarity. Barring an Eric Swalwell-style explosion, the top three (Becerra, Steyer and Hilton) are really the only true contenders.
But I will give a shout out to Porter, who had his best performance to date with clear answers and laying out the policy in detail. Still, I fear it's too little, too late.
Becerra, on the other hand, seemed subdued to the point of being flat (sorry, Mark, he seemed crispy like a week-old apple to me), often relying on the claim that he sued Trump more than a hundred times as California attorney general during Trump's first term. I'm not sure that's inspiring, although it did lead to some court victories.
Of course, Becerra has had a rough week, with a gaffe with a reporter going viral and a plea deal from a former aide in that case of money embezzled from his dormant campaign account. It's not yet clear whether voters care about any of those rulings, but if they remain in people's minds, that could open a path for Steyer to achieve the small margin he needs to get through the primary.
But Thursday night didn't help Steyer's cause much, nor did it hurt it. He made some clear and compelling points that positioned him as the progressive change-maker, especially around his policies to move away from fossil fuels. He also had some complicated answers that didn't come. He didn't give undecided voters much to work with.
I'll end with a response from Hilton that women should pay attention to: He said that, if elected, he would allow California abortion providers to be extradited to states like Louisiana to face criminal charges for mailing abortion medications.
Women across the United States must now rely on states like California to access abortion services. Hilton's position is not only bad for California but presents a risk to women around the world.
To me, that answer should disqualify him from the highest office in our pro-choice state.
