Ten weeks before the primary election, California Democrats still haven’t narrowed down the field of candidates enough to reduce the chances of splitting the vote so much that two Republicans make it to the ballot in November.
That’s what polling released by the Democratic Party on Tuesday showed, with the two GOP candidates — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton — tied for the lead, and Democrats Rep. Eric Swalwell, billionaire Tom Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter roughly tied behind them. The results mirrored other recent polls in the race.
It was the first of several polls party chairperson Rusty Hicks intends to release in an effort to nudge some of the candidates to drop out.
- Hicks: “If you’re polling at 1 to 2 percent, do you have a path to get to 20? That’s the question. Do you have a path to put you in a position to win the primary election?”
But the lower-polling candidates remain unlikely to bow out. Former controller Betty Yee, polling at 1 to 2 percent, told reporters Tuesday afternoon that she’s “staying the course.” Yee is the former vice chairperson of the party and placed second in a tally of party delegates’ support last month.
- Yee: “We’ve had this unprecedented effort to try to limit choice for voters, sidelining candidates and frankly pushing them out of the race. I’m not going to let that happen.”
The primary is June 2. About a quarter of likely voters remain undecided.
A Tuesday debate hosted by the University of Southern California and ABC7 might have been a chance for voters to pick a favorite. But USC canceled it at the last minute over an uproar from candidates who were excluded. All those who failed to make the cut, based on a “viability” formula devised by USC professors, were candidates of color.
Meanwhile, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, polling at just 2 to 3 percent, was included because he’s raised millions of dollars, much of it from Silicon Valley, in a short time — boosting him beyond his polling numbers under USC’s formula.
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