California – Donald Trump’s endorsement of Steve Hilton over Sheriff Chad Bianco was supposed to give California Republicans a clearer path in the governor’s race.
Instead, it appears to have exposed just how fragile and divided the party remains in a state where it has struggled for years to regain real statewide strength.
What might have been a straightforward show of support quickly turned into something more complicated, as Trump’s backing elevated Hilton while also sharpening internal tensions over who should lead the party and whether outside influence can truly rescue Republicans in a deeply Democratic state.
The fallout became even more visible at the California Republican convention, where despite the burst of momentum around Hilton, the party failed to unite behind any candidate.
That outcome underscored a deeper problem for Republicans: Trump may still be powerful enough to dominate the conversation, but not powerful enough to settle it.
With the GOP electorate nearly split, a crowded field, and California’s top-two primary system raising the risk of political self-sabotage, Trump’s intervention may have made the race louder, but not necessarily easier for Republicans to win.
However, California’s governor’s race has taken another sharp turn. The latest numbers suggest Republicans have regained a measure of control in a contest that only days ago looked far more favorable for Democrats.
A new Emerson College poll now places the two best-known Republican candidates at the top of California’s crowded jungle primary field, a shift that has reopened the possibility of a November showdown shaped more by Republican momentum than Democratic certainty.
Former Fox News host Steve Hilton led the latest survey with 17% support, while Sheriff Chad Bianco followed with 14%.
Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer also stood at 14%, leaving the field tightly packed and highly volatile. With 23% of likely voters still undecided and the poll carrying a 3-point margin of error, the race remains far from settled.
The topline numbers marked a notable reset in a campaign that had started to drift toward a Democratic recovery.
That reset comes in the immediate aftermath of former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s abrupt exit from the race.
Swalwell, a Democrat from California, resigned from Congress last week amid s**ual misconduct and rape allegations, removing a significant figure from an already fractured Democratic field.
His departure appears to have done more than simply erase one name from the ballot. It has reshuffled the Democratic vote in ways that may actually help Republicans hold their footing in the primary.
“In the first Emerson poll since Eric Swalwell’s departure from the race for Governor, Democrats now split their vote between Tom Steyer (20%), Xavier Becerra (19%), and Katie Porter (15%), with Becerra gaining 15 points among Democrats without Swalwell on the ballot,” the executive director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball said.
That fragmentation matters in California’s primary system, where all candidates run on the same ballot and only the top two, regardless of party, move on.
Instead of consolidating behind one clear Democratic alternative, the party now appears to be scattering support across multiple recognizable names. Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary under President Joe Biden, saw one of the biggest jumps in the Emerson polling, climbing from 3% in March to 10% in April among all voters. His rise signals that Swalwell’s exit did not simply remove competition; it created fresh competition inside the Democratic lane.
That shift is especially striking because just days earlier, another poll painted a very different picture.
SurveyUSA had shown Steyer leading with 21% and Hilton in second with 18%, a result that seemed to suggest Democrats were stabilizing around a stronger position. But that poll still included Swalwell, whose presence may have split the Democratic vote in a different way and altered the overall balance of the race. Once he was gone, the map changed again.
The recent turbulence also follows another major development: President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Hilton earlier this month.
Before that move, Hilton and Bianco had maintained relatively steady leads among Republicans. Trump’s backing appears to have strengthened Hilton, nudging him upward by a few points while undercutting some of Bianco’s support.
That shift briefly opened the door for Steyer, whose heavy advertising campaign has saturated the airwaves and helped elevate him into the top tier. For a moment, many observers saw the race as Steyer’s to lose if he could secure one of the two general-election spots alongside Hilton.
Now that assumption looks less secure. The Democratic field is broader, less settled, and more prone to internal vote-splitting than it did just a short time ago. Republicans, by contrast, have two candidates still sitting near the top, giving the party a clearer path than many expected in deep-blue California.
None of this means the outcome is locked in. The undecided vote remains large, the polling is close, and the differences between surveys show just how fluid the race still is.
But for now, the latest snapshot suggests that the battle for California’s governorship is no longer moving cleanly in one direction. Instead, it has become a chaotic contest shaped by scandal, endorsements, money, and timing, and at this moment, Republicans appear to have seized the advantage.
