California Republicans spent months entertaining a fantasy: What if Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco both made the November runoff, and Democrats were shut out of the governor’s race?
Rather, the danger was always the opposite: Not two Republicans locking Democrats out, but two Democrats shutting Republicans out.
After all, the 2024 presidential results and 2025 Proposition 50 results show the conservative share of the vote in California tops out around 40%.
And in a crowded top-two primary, a divided 40% can disappear quickly if the Democratic vote consolidates behind two candidates.
Now, with ballots arriving at voters’ doors, that danger is no longer theoretical.
The latest public polling shows liberal support beginning to consolidate around billionaire Tom Steyer and former US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Becerra and Steyer are now the two Democrats with the clearest paths to the runoff. If that trend continues, the top two Republicans could perform well and still fail to qualify for the general election.
That is the brutal math of California’s top-two jungle primary.
There is no guaranteed Democratic slot. There is no guaranteed Republican slot. There are only two slots.
For Republicans, the question may no longer be whether Hilton and Bianco can both make the runoff. The question is whether either Republican makes it at all.
Which brings us to the strangest sentence in California politics: Katie Porter may be the person Republicans need right now.
The whiteboard-wielding progressive former congresswoman. The MSNBC-friendly Trump antagonist. The candidate Republicans would normally love to run against, not one they quietly hope catches fire.
The dislike is mutual: Porter’s infamous meltdown on CBS News came after the reporter asked her how she planned to appeal to Trump voters in the state. Her explosive temperament revealed her anti-Republican vitriol to be her greatest weakness.
But in this race, Porter’s weakness is becoming a Republican problem.
The latest public surveys place her between 8 and 10%. That is far from the top two, and down from where she was earlier in the race.
When Eric Swalwell was still in, the Democratic vote was chopped into enough pieces that Republicans could at least imagine a weird top-two scenario. Swalwell was polling in the mid-teens before his spectacular implosion. His presence helped split the field.
Now he is gone. The Democratic vote is sorting itself out.
If Porter keeps fading, her voters are not going to Hilton or Bianco. They are staying inside the Democratic family. Some go to Becerra. Some go to Steyer. Either way, that makes a Democratic one-two finish more plausible.
Republicans do not need Porter to win. They just need her to matter.
They need her to pull enough progressive, educated, coastal liberal voters away from Becerra and Steyer to keep the Democratic vote fractured. They need her to remind those voters why they once liked her. They need her fundraising uptick to turn into actual ballot strength, not just another consultant memo claiming momentum.Could “moderate” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan do the same thing? In theory, yes. But despite enormous spending on his behalf, he has not caught fire. He is still stuck in the mid-single digits in most polling.Porter, at least, has an identifiable base, name ID and a lane. She has voters who could plausibly come back if progressive Democrats decide they do not want a billionaire or a Sacramento insider.Regardless, California Republicans should stop talking about a two-Republican runoff as though politics is a motivational seminar. The immediate mission is survival.
A November governor’s race without a Republican would be a disaster for the entire GOP ticket — Congress, Legislature, county races, local races, ballot measures, everything.
A Republican nominee at the top gives voters a reason to show up. A Democrat-versus-Democrat runoff turns November into a family argument on the left.
So, yes, Republicans may now be reduced to hoping Katie Porter finds a second wind.
Politics is weird. California’s top-two primary is weirder.
And if Porter does not start taking votes away from Becerra and Steyer soon, Republicans may discover that the biggest threat in this race was never losing the governor’s race in November.
Tuesday night’s CNN debate may put the whole problem on display.
As a conservative, I’ll be cheering on the Republicans — but for once, I’ll also be hoping Katie Porter hits a home run with the liberals watching at home.
Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at www.SoDoesItMatter.com.
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