In California governor's race, Bay Area voters choose strategy over philosophy in casting primary ballots

SAN JOSE, Calif. - After casting his ballot at a Baptist church in Oakland Tuesday morning, Charles Wagner said he normally would have voted weeks before Election Day.

But like so many Bay Area voters, Wagner opted to hold his vote and watch how the close race for governor shaped up – particularly on the Democratic side, where a throng of candidates competed fiercely for voters and resisted the calls of party leaders to drop out.

Wagner settled on one of the two Democratic front-runners, according to polls: Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist and former hedge fund manager who has spent $213 million of his own fortune in his bid to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Wagner was among thousands of voters who took to the polls in the Bay Area Tuesday to cast their ballots in the statewide primary election, donning "I voted" stickers at community centers, libraries and places of worship.

A number of other races and initiatives were on the minds of Bay Area voters, from statewide offices to local tax increases, including a proposed parcel tax to fund open space in Santa Clara County and another in Oakland for city services.

But the governor's race packed with Democrats became so unwieldy that some strategists once feared that in this bright blue state the top two vote-getters moving to November's midterm election would be Republicans.

That appeared unlikely on Tuesday. Recent polling suggests former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra has pulled ahead in the crowded field. Trailing him in a "toss-up" for second place, pollsters wrote, were former Fox host and California newcomer Steve Hilton, who won President Trump's endorsement, and Steyer. In California's "jungle primary," the two lead candidates will advance to the general election in November.

The trio is just a slice of the 61 gubernatorial candidates complicating voters' choices, including former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell whose name remained on the ballot despite withdrawing from the race six weeks ago amid a sexual assault and misconduct scandal. His exit left no clear Democratic frontrunner - and efforts by party leaders to winnow the field went unheeded.

"There's just so many governor candidates," said Jo Jones, a longtime West Oakland resident who cast her ballot Tuesday at the historic Greater St. John Missionary Baptist Church.

Jones said she plowed through the long list of candidates, "exhausted," and also decided to vote for Steyer. But she wasn't enthusiastic about the billionaire climate activist.

"All of them are crooked," she said.

In Santa Clara County, local Republican Party officials playfully urged members to trick their Democratic neighbors into voting for the disgraced Swalwell, who also resigned from Congress and set off an intense race to replace him in the East Bay.

"He's still on the ballot," the Silicon Valley GOP wrote to members in an email.

Like Wagner from Oakland, Michael Hurlston - a 59-year-old Saratoga resident who works in high tech - also made a strategic decision when he dropped off his ballot at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Tuesday morning.

"Actually I kind of like Steve Hilton, but I felt that Steyer would be a more viable candidate against Becerra, and I think Becerra is a little bit too left-wing," Hurlston said. "The state needs to be pulled a bit to the center."

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who raised millions from tech executives drawn to his moderate politics, would have been his first choice, he said. Hurlston is a "huge supporter" and Mahan "is exactly what the state needs."

"Unfortunately, he fell behind a little bit and didn't really have a decent shot here at the end," Hurlston said.

Jim Posey, who works in sales in San Jose, also cast a tepid vote for Steyer.

"I think that the field was huge and weak. There wasn't much meat there at all," Posey, 64, said.

He was put off by Steyer's "throwing a lot of money around and that's going to be my axe to wield," Posey said. "The upside of that is that it apparently works. If I have to vote for a billionaire, he's a billionaire that I don't have the most problems with."

Local election officials made clear that, whatever the result, voters could expect a long wait for official vote tallies. California's vote-by-mail system is famous for slow election counts, which have stretched for weeks or months as election workers wade through millions of ballots received after Election Day. Under California law, mailed-in ballots must be counted if post-marked by Election Day and received at a county vote center within a week.

In Santa Clara County, which has hired two thousand election workers to process ballots, spokesperson Michael Borja said certified election results will be available by the legal deadline on July 2. Starting Tuesday night, officials will release vote results in batches throughout the Bay Area.

_____

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.

This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 2:18 PM.