California’s Future—Hilton and Bianco: Mutually Assured GOP Destruction?

In an orgy of phony panic, progressive prognosticators across California fret over what in reality is an extremely implausible scenario. Their doomsday calculations go something like this: If GOP candidates routinely attract 40 percent of the vote in statewide elections, and the current GOP candidates for governor, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, end up in a dead heat when the primary votes are finally counted, that would give them 20 percent each. Meanwhile, eight determined Democrat candidates are fighting for the nomination, and what if they split the remaining 60 percent into eight different pieces? The horror!

Republicans in California, needless to say, are delighted with this scenario. But California didn’t become a one-party state because the unions and oligarchs who call the shots are incompetent. The chances they’re going to allow eight Democrat candidates to stay in this race as strong contenders are next to none. Well in advance of the primary on June 2, California’s major political power brokers are going to determine which two or three candidates are most competitive and most compliant, and the other five or six candidates are then going to experience political pressure to drop out, pressure that will intensify with every objection they raise. If they resist and persist with their candidacy after the powers that be tell them they are to be excluded, the price they pay will be permanent political oblivion. It happens all the time.

A far more plausible scenario is the opposite. When one Republican gubernatorial candidate dominates the field, they end up on the November ballot, where, if history is any guide, they collect their predictable 40 percent of the total votes cast, acknowledge defeat, and turn the state over to yet another Democrat governor. But when two Republican gubernatorial candidates contend for the nomination, attracting roughly equal support, neither of them is likely to get more than 20 percent. Against a field of Democrats that is almost certainly bound to be winnowed down to two or three candidates, there is a good chance, in fact, the biggest chance ever, that come November, Californians will be picking between two Democrats for governor.