In California governor's race, Bay Area voters choose strategy over philosophy in casting primary ballots
Casting his ballot on election day, Michael Hurlston made a strategic decision in the crowded race for California governor: instead of voting for San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a moderate Democrat he believes is “exactly what the state needs,” Hurlston chose billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer.
“Unfortunately,” Hurlston said, Mahan “didn’t really have a decent shot here at the end.”
Hurlston had carefully analyzed the field. The 59-year-old Saratoga resident who works in high tech thought Democratic frontrunner former Attorney General Xavier Becerra is “too left-wing.” But while Republican and former Fox News host Steve Hilton has moderate qualities, Hurlston believed he had little chance at winning in November’s general election. Steyer, he said, “would be a more viable candidate against Becerra.”
Hurlston’s decision is the kind of calculation voters around the Bay Area were making Tuesday as they grappled with an unwieldy slate of candidates vying for one of the two top spots moving on to the general election to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Becerra, Steyer, Hilton and Mahan are just four 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. Swalwell’s 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.
"All of them are crooked," she said.
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 uncertain that some party leaders worried in this reliably blue state the top two vote-getters moving to November's general election would be Republicans.
That appeared unlikely on Tuesday. Recent polling suggests Becerra has pulled ahead in the crowded field. Trailing him in a "toss-up" for second place, pollsters wrote, were Hilton, who won President Trump's endorsement, and Steyer.
Not among the front-runners, per the polls? Mahan of San Jose, who was enthusiastically supported by deep-pocketed tech executives but struggled to break through with voters.
Santa Clara County 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.
After casting his ballot at a Baptist church in Oakland Tuesday morning, Charles Wagner said he normally would have voted weeks before Election Day.
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: Steyer, the former hedge fund manager who has spent $213 million of his own fortune in his bid for governor.
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."
For Javier Gonzalez, a community college teacher in San Jose, the economy was his most important consideration in voting for governor - and to him, that meant a vote for Becerra.
“We just need to find out how we’re going to subsidize a lot of the services that we’re providing to our residents,” Gonzalez said. “We just need someone who understands how to balance our budget, how to really maintain companies and employment, and also jobs generating jobs.”
Becerra is homegrown, he said, and “understands California, he understands the community we serve, and he definitely knows a lot about managing budgets.”
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.
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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 10:10 AM.