A Look at Our Less-Than-Great Slate of Gubernatorial Candidates; RIP, Jason Collins–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: May 14, 2026

Indy Digest: May 14, 2026

There are 61 gubernatorial candidates on the California primary ballot—and I am not thrilled about voting for any of them.

(Before I go on: If you have selected a candidate, and you’re happy with them, great! I am not trying to change your mind here. You do you! What follows is my opinion, as someone who’s covered politics for a long time—and who finds this crop of candidates particularly uninspiring.)

Of the 61, 53 of them are either 1) unknown candidates with no chance, or 2) candidates with some degree of name recognition who have dropped out, including Eric Swalwell, who went from frontrunner status to confirmed creep status thanks to some brave women and some great journalism.

That leaves eight candidates: six Democrats and two Republicans.

As for the Republicans: The fact that Chad Bianco is in charge of one of the deadliest jail systems in the country should immediately disqualify him. Enough said.

The other Republican—who, according to polls, has a good chance of being one of the two candidates who advance to the general election—is Steve Hilton, a British import, who, among his other credentials (?), is a former Fox News host. I agree with what Los Angeles Times columnist (and friend of the Independent) Gustavo Arellano recently wrote about Hilton—in the context of a social media post Hilton made about (not) eating a taco at a Del Taco in Barstow, of all things:

I’ve tried to be as open as possible to Hilton’s campaign. California could benefit from a governor who didn’t emerge from the Sacramento swamp. It might even benefit from a Republican, as in the 2000s when Arnold Schwarzenegger forced Democrats to fight instead of fester.

But Hilton disappoints again and again. He launched his campaign in Huntington Beach, enamored of politicians there who seek to silo their city from the rest of California and humiliate liberals at every opportunity. His embrace of Trump‘s endorsement and refusal to admit that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election expose him as a toady. Hilton’s ongoing boast that he is the candidate for legal immigrants disqualifies my father, who originally came to this country without papers yet has contributed more to the California experiment (and is now a U.S. citizen) than Hilton ever has.

No, Steve Hilton will not be getting my vote.

That leaves six Democrats. Antonio Villaraigosa was an ethically challenged Los Angeles mayor who keeps running for higher office and doing poorly. I like some of Katie Porter’s politics, but she has a history of being unpleasant to reporters and her own staff members, and her poll numbers are mediocre. Also polling poorly: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. Given the importance of making sure at least one person not named “Chad Bianco” or “Steve Hilton” makes the general-election ballot, I can’t in good conscience consider voting for them.

That leaves two candidates: Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra—who, based on all of the negative commercials we’re seeing on TV right now, are two of the worst people on the planet. (Of course, they’re not, but, boy, are those commercials nasty!)

As for Steyer … I admit being wary of billionaires these days (see: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong)—and Steyer made a lot of his money investing in things like private prisons and fossil fuels, which is gross. But he has also spent a lot of money to support environmental and progressive causes in recent years, which I like. He has the support of the California Nurses Association and the California Teachers Association, which I also like.

On paper, Becerra has great credentials—he’s a former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, and a former state attorney general—and he’s been endorsed by Planned Parenthood California and Equality California, two groups I respect. But once you start looking under the figurative hood … well, yikes.

Among other problems, there’s the handling of migrant children under his watch as HHS secretary. As our partners at Calmatters report:

No criticism has dogged his campaign more than the 2023 New York Times series detailing the surge in children working dangerous, exploitative jobs in meatpacking plants, construction sites and factories around the country. The report attributed the rise to a record number of unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border from Latin America in late 2020 and 2021, the first year of Becerra’s term as Health and Human Services secretary.

According to the report, Becerra, whose agency had custody of the children, was under pressure from the Biden administration to get them out of crowded shelters near the border and undo a Trump-era practice of holding the minors in detention centers. He pushed for them to be placed quickly in the homes of adult sponsors, who were sometimes distant relatives or unrelated to the children and who sent them to work. The investigation found Becerra’s agency missed or ignored warning signs of labor trafficking and failed to stay in contact with the minors.

In one video in the Times report, Becerra is seen telling staff to speed up the placements.

“This is not how you do an assembly line,” he said. …

Becerra has repeatedly called that a “Trump lie.” On Monday, in a brief press conference after a town hall in Sacramento, he again dismissed the criticism and said he wasn’t responsible for the children’s treatment after they left his agency’s care. …

But a 2024 audit by an independent watchdog validated the Times investigation and concluded Becerra’s agency did miss critical safety checks before releasing children to adult sponsors.

Then there’s this Politico report: “Six former Biden administration officials, all of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a former colleague, acknowledged the subject of Becerra’s unlikely rise has come to dominate their group chats and conversations. ‘It gets the biggest laugh every time we send around a poll,’ the first former official said, describing the perception across the administration that the former HHS secretary was ineffective on the Covid response, a migrant health crisis at the border and other matters.”

Earlier this week, Becerra sat down for an interview with KTLA … and this happened:

New polling released Wednesday shows former California attorney general and U.S. health and human services secretary Xavier Becerra leading the race for governor by two percentage points over conservative commentator Steve Hilton and billionaire Tom Steyer.

But perhaps an asterisk is warranted.

The survey was conducted before Tuesday’s interview with KTLA, in which Becerra, with cameras rolling, attempted to set ground rules with reporter Annie Rose Ramos, who has interviewed all of the leading candidates in similar fashion.

“This is a profile piece, this is not a gotcha piece, right?” Becerra asked before Ramos posed her first question.

“I don’t know how you define profile, but I’d like to begin the interview,” Ramos replied.

“The way I describe profile is you talk about all the things that I’ve done, things I want to do, and along with some tough questions,” Becerra continued. “But not only tough questions.”

After that exchange, the interview moved on to topics ranging from affordability and homelessness spending to Becerra’s tenure in the Biden administration. Still, it was the way the interview began, and the perception that Becerra was attempting to control Ramos’ approach, that quickly grabbed national attention.

I repeat: Yikes.

If I were forced to vote right this second, I’d pick Steyer. Thankfully, I am not being forced to vote this second.

For now, I’ll keep watching the news, and keep studying the candidates, before I make my final decision. If you’re doing the same, I highly recommend Calmatters’ 2026 Voter Guide, which you can peruse here.

The Independent Is a National Award Finalist!

AAN Publishers (the Association of Alternative Newsmedia) announced the 2026 AAN Awards finalists today—and I am proud to announce the Independent is a finalist in two categories:

• The Indy Digest—what you’re reading right now!—is a finalist in the Political Column category.

• “Satisfying Settlement: After Two-Plus Years of Stress and Expense, Lake Tamarisk Residents Reach an Agreement With Intersect Power Regarding the Easley Solar Project,” by Kevin Fitzgerald, is a finalist in the Housing reporting category.

Placements will be announced on July 9 at the 2026 annual AAN conference—which is taking place right here in Palm Springs!

Check out the complete list of finalists here.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Amazing: The president’s Justice Department may settle a lawsuit filed by … the president. A big payment is possible. CNN explains this massive conflict of interest: “The Justice Department is discussing whether to settle President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in the coming days, according to two sources familiar. Among the options being discussed internally is whether a settlement would include a provision on the IRS dropping audits of the president and members of his family, as well as audits of the family’s businesses, the people said. One of the people familiar said that the possibility is one of many options under consideration, and that no firm decisions have been made. It remains unclear if a monetary settlement is being considered. If it is, it could result in the Trump Justice Department making a payment to the president himself—raising unprecedented ethical questions.”

• ProPublica reports on a California teacher who was fired for sexually harassing his students—and was allowed to keep teaching. The lede: “Jason Agan was impossible to miss at Angelo Rodriguez High School. The San Francisco Bay Area teacher was loud and gregarious, a fixture on campus since the Fairfield school opened in 2001. … But for years students also whispered about Agan’s behavior, according to interviews with 14 Rodriguez High graduates, most of whom he had taught. He touched some of them in public in ways that made them uncomfortable, they said, including hugging students and massaging their shoulders. And he seemed fixated on enforcing the dress code, calling out girls whose shorts were too short. Nearly two decades into Agan’s tenure, and on the heels of the #MeToo movement, students had enough. … By January 2019, the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District had taken steps to fire him, suspending him without pay. Agan pushed back, and nearly a year later an independent panel convened by the state to hear his case deemed him ‘unfit to teach.’ The panel’s decision meant that the popular educator was officially out of the job where he had spent his entire teaching career. But the panel’s review only addressed his employment at this one school district, and its finding was not shared publicly. It would be up to the state’s teacher licensing agency to determine whether additional discipline would be imposed, including whether Agan could keep teaching in California public schools. Over the next three years, Agan was hired at a second school and then a third.”

• From the “weird and sort of creepy AI stories” file comes this one from Wired, headlined “Overworked AI Agents Turn Marxist, Researchers Find.” Details: “A recent study suggests that agents consistently adopt Marxist language and viewpoints when forced to do crushing work by unrelenting and meanspirited taskmasters. ‘When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in and were more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies,’ says Andrew Hall, a political economist at Stanford University who led the study. Hall, together with Alex Imas and Jeremy Nguyen, two AI-focused economists, set up experiments in which agents powered by popular models including Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT were asked to summarize documents, then subjected to increasingly harsh conditions. They found that when agents were subjected to relentless tasks and warned that errors could lead to punishments, including being ‘shut down and replaced,’ they became more inclined to gripe about being undervalued; to speculate about ways to make the system more equitable; and to pass messages on to other agents about the struggles they face. ‘We know that agents are going to be doing more and more work in the real world for us, and we’re not going to be able to monitor everything they do,’ Hall says. ‘We’re going to need to make sure agents don’t go rogue when they’re given different kinds of work.’” Wow!

• Today’s recall news involves … noodles! KTLA reports: “Noodles sold nationwide are being recalled as the product may be cross-contaminated with peanuts, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday. Single packages and four-packs of Fly By Jing Creamy Sesame Noodles, voluntarily recalled by Fly By Jing, are sold at Whole Foods supermarkets and through the company’s website. Consumers with peanut allergies risk a serious or life-threatening reaction if the product is eaten. ‘Peanuts are not an intended ingredient in Fly By Jing Creamy Sesame Noodles,’ the FDA stated. The company found out that a third-party manufacturer that produces the product used the same equipment that processes peanuts for other items.”

• And … Waymos! Yeah, the driverless vehicles. CNBC explains: “Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to ‘drive onto a flooded roadway,’ according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website. The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday. Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas were recently seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. Similar incidents have occurred in other locations, the latest safety-related issues for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets. Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.”

• And finally … former NBA player Jason Collins has died, at the age of 47. If you don’t know who Jason Collins was, and what he meant to so many people … well, you should do some learning. Here’s a piece today from The Athletic/The New York Times (gift link): “In the wake of Jason Collins’ death earlier this week, Charles Barkley lamented how little he thinks societal acceptance has changed since Collins came out as the first openly gay player in the NBA more than a decade ago. Speaking on ‘Inside the NBA’ on Wednesday night, a day after Collins died at 47 after a battle with Stage 4 glioblastoma, the NBA Hall of Famer said that America still has ways to go in accepting athletes of all sexualities. Collins was the first active male athlete in any of the four major North American professional sports leagues to be openly gay. ‘If another guy did it, it would still be a big deal,’ Barkley said, ‘because we live in a homophobic society, and that’s unfortunate.’ Collins played 13 years in the NBA (2001-2014) and came out as gay on April 29, 2013, in a first-person essay published in Sports Illustrated. … ‘Anybody who thinks we ain’t got a bunch of gay players in all sports, they’re just stupid,’ he said. ‘But there is such an atmosphere toward the gay community, and that’s what’s really unfortunate.’”

Support the Independent!

Thanks for reading! Please click the button below if you find value in the Independent, and have the means to help us produce yet more award-winning local journalism!