Six states held primary elections yesterday. Five states have reliable results. Gavin Newsom's state will wait weeks to close out voting, take even longer to count ballots, and keep everyone waiting to see who and what will be on the ballot in November.
California doesn't do efficient democracy. They don't do efficient anything, which is why Spencer Pratt ran for mayor of Los Angeles. After losing his house to a wildfire, compounded and amplified by Karen Bass' incompetence, he still can't begin rebuilding it due to bureaucratic obstruction. There is some level of irony in the fact that he now has to plan a general election campaign even though the results so far have not quite confirmed his place in the mayoral runoff:
Our partners at Decision Desk HQ feel comfortable calling one of the two runoff slots for Bass at this point. Bass does lead the current third-place holder, councilwoman Nithya Raman, by more than 60,000 votes, so that's probably a safe call – but it's not a safe result for Bass. As the incumbent mayor, she now faces an electorate in which 65% of voters wanted a change. Pratt and Raman alone combine for more than half of the votes counted so far. That's a terrible sign for an incumbent.
That doesn't mean all of those voters will get behind Pratt, assuming he's the runne-up, which DDHQ won't say at this point. Some of the Raman vote will go back to Bass, but how much depends on the case Pratt can make if he gets the ballot slot in November. Pratt has already hit the ground running:
Spencer Pratt has confidently claimed he’s already looking ahead to a November runoff as election results Tuesday night showed him comfortably in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
“She knows it’s on. I hope she’s ready,” Pratt said on Tuesday. “I literally could not be more excited.” ...
As election officials continued counting ballots, Pratt made clear he was already looking to the months ahead and a potential showdown with Bass.
“We can do debates every Friday if she’d like,” Pratt repeated. “As many debates as Mayor Bass would like.”
That number would be zero, most likely. Bass began ducking out of debates last month when it became obvious that she would not win in the first round and might not even come in first. Bass avoided that humiliation – so far, anyway – but now she faces a deeply skeptical electorate and a populist upstart with a real capacity to campaign effectively.
What else did we learn from yesterday's partial results? Republicans didn't get the two-GOP runoff for the gubernatorial race that once looked possible, but Democrats got a shock. At least so far, Republican Steve Hilton leads Xavier Becerra by more than two points and nearly 120,000 votes:
Interestingly, Republican Gloria Romero has a slight lead in the Lt Governor primary over Fiona Ma as well. (All results can be viewed in yesterday's post as well.) In the other two statewide races for AG and Secretary of State, Democrats lead, but they are also incumbents. Republicans have an edge in open-seat races, at least in the first round. The gubernatorial results put an effective end to the careers of Katie Porter and Tom Steyer, both of whom went into the race with some predictions of success.
Can Hilton beat Becerra in a head-to-head contest? I would have preferred that Chad Bianco take the second slot, but Hilton's clear strength is a sign that Californians are also unhappy with the status quo, even if perhaps not quite as urgently as Angelenos. Hilton is an engaging, media-savvy entrepreneur, while Becerra is mainly a political-machine functionary who isn't going to charm his way into office. California is a political-machine state, but even those can produce surprises. It's been a long time since Republicans won a statewide office, but the last time also involved a celebrity candidate who knew how to use the media to his advantage. I wonder if the Governator will weigh in on this race once the runoff is set ... sometime in mid- to late-July.
Perhaps that fact alone will convince California voters across the state as well as in Los Angeles that it's time for drastic change in the Golden State. Democrats have turned the election process into an absurd embarrassment, perhaps the worst in the nation, reflecting the incompetence of governance at all levels. It's time for a clean sweep in California, a state that can't count votes, keep reservoirs full, build anything new, or even keep its lights on. Voters at least have a choice between failure and opportunity in California.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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