The candidates for California governor are a mystery

Michael Duncan was adjusting the screen on his front door when he paused recently to consider what he wants from California’s next governor. Duncan admittedly hadn’t given the matter much thought. But when you get down to it, he said, the answer is fairly straightforward: Do the basics. Fight crime. Fix the state’s washboard roads. Address the perennial homelessness problem. And do a better job, to the extent a governor can, preventing wildfires like the inferno that decimated wide swaths of Southern California. “I just roll my eyes,” said Duncan, who logs about 120 miles round trip from his home in Fairfield to his environmental analyst job in Livermore — and who knows exactly where to swerve to avoid the worst potholes along the way. “Why does it take so long to do simple things?” The answer is complicated, but that won’t necessarily mollify a California electorate that seems anxious, aggrieved and out of sorts— especially as regards the state’s current chief executive.

More than a half-dozen candidates are bidding to succeed Gavin Newsom. Some have pursued the job for well over a year now, eyeing the day, in January 2027, when term limits force the Democrat from office. You wouldn’t know that, however, talking to a wide assortment of Californians — many of whom hadn’t the slightest clue who’s running. In conversations last week with nearly three dozen voters, from the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area through Sacramento to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, not a handful could name a single one of the declared candidates. “That guy in Riverside, the sheriff,” said Zach House, 31, referring to Republican Chad Bianco. Outside his door, an 8-by-12-foot American flag snapped loudly in the wind whipping through his Dixon neighborhood, down streets named Songbird, Honeybee and Blossom. “Right now,” House said, “that’s the only person I know that interests me.” “The Mexican American gentleman,” Brenda Turley volunteered outside the post office in Rosemont, meaning Antonio Villaraigosa. “Wasn’t he the mayor of Los Angeles?” ( He was.) Admittedly, it’s relatively early in the gubernatorial contest. And it’s not as though events — the fiery apocalypse in Southern California, Hurricane Trump — haven’t been fairly all-consuming. But if voters seem to be paying little attention to the race, most echoed Duncan’s call for a focus on fundamentals, expressing a strong desire the next governor be wholly invested in the job and not view it as a mere placeholder or steppingstone to higher office.

“I feel like (Newsom) spent more time trying to campaign to be president for the next go-round than working on the state itself,” said Duncan, 37, who described himself as a moderate who tends to vote against whichever party holds the White House, to check their power. That all-in commitment is something Kamala Harris may wish to consider as she weighs a campaign for governor — and something she’ll no doubt have to address, in the event she does run. The former vice president, now dividing her time between an apartment in New York City and her home in Brentwood, remains every bit as polarising as she was during her truncated White House campaign. Turley, a retired state worker, said she’ll get behind Harris without question if she runs. “Go for it,” the 80-something Democrat urged. “Why not? She has the experience. Look at her political background. She was (California) attorney general. She worked in the Senate.”

Peter Kay, 75, a fellow Democrat, agreed. “She’s better qualified than about 90% of the people that run for any office in this country,” said Kay, who lives in Suisun City. (The retired insurance underwriter, just returned from the car wash, was buffing a few water spots off his black Tesla and had this to say about the company’s CEO: “If he wasn’t Elon Musk, he would be in some institution, probably sharing a wing with Trump.”) The conservative sentiment toward Harris was summed up by Lori Smith, 66, a dental hygienist in Gold River, who responded to the mention of her name with a combination wail and snort. “Oh, God! Oh, my God!” Smith exclaimed, vowing to leave California if Harris is elected governor. “I could never see her being president. We dodged a bullet there. I think she just needs to live her little life in some little town somewhere and go away.”

There is, of course, no pleasing everyone, even with the sky a brilliant blue and the hills a shimmering green, thanks to a blessedly wet Northern California winter. Some griped about overly stringent environmental regulations. Other said more needs to be done to protect fish and wildlife. Some said more water needs to go to farmers. Others said, no, city dwellers deserve a bigger share. Some complained about homeless people commandeering shared public spaces. Amanda Castillo, who lives in her car, called for greater compassion and understanding. The 26-year-old works full time at a retail job in Vacaville and still can’t afford a place of her own, so she beds down in a silver GMC Yukon with her boyfriend and his mother, who were inside the public library charging their electronic devices. “I consider myself to be lucky,” Castillo said, “because if I wasn’t sleeping in the car I’d either be on the street or in a cardboard box.”

Hanging over every conversation— like the big, puffy clouds above, but much less enchanting — was President Donald Trump. Most partisans differed, as one would expect, on how California should deal with the president and his battering-ram administration. “Anybody who has a platform should be speaking out,” fighting Trump in the courts and resisting any way possible, said Eunice Kim, 42, a Sacramento physician and professed liberal, who paused outside the library in El Dorado Hills as her boys, 5 and 8, roughhoused on the front lawn. Tanya Pavlus, a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom, disagreed. The Rancho Cordova Republican voted for Trump and cited a litany of ills plaguing the state, among them high gas prices and the steep cost of living. Anyone serving as California governor “could use all the advice [they] can get from the president,” Pavlus said, “because the situation speaks for itself.”

But not everyone retreated to the expected corners. Ray Charan, 39, a Sacramento Democrat who works for the state in information technology, said, like it or not, Trump is president,“so you have to come to some sort of professional arrangement. You may not agree with all the policies and everything, all the headlines and the personality stuff, but if you can somehow come together and work for the betterment of the state, then I’m all for it.” Sean Coley, a Trump voter, was similarly matter-of-fact.

“There’s no fighting Trump. We’ve seen that,” said the 36-year-old Rancho Cordova Republican, a background investigator and part-time wedding photographer. “If you want federal funding, if you want progress, you have to work with those who are on a different side of the table, especially when they’re as aggressive as Trump is.

“I would get a Venn diagram. Figure out what he’s for, what you’re for,” Coley suggested. “Figure out what’s in the middle, and tackle that hard.” Pragmatism of that sort may not summon great political passions. But practicality seems to be what many Californians are looking for in their next governor.