The Race to Replace Gavin Newsom Is Crowded—and Still Wide Open. Here’s What to Know

Another Democrat has entered the increasingly crowded race to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom. California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who was part of the team that coordinated the 2021 impeachment case against President Donald Trump, launched his campaign on Thursday.  Swalwell is the second Democrat to announce plans to enter the race just this week: Tom Steyer, a billionaire philanthropist and climate activist who unsuccessfully ran for president in the 2020 election, kicked off his campaign on Tuesday.  The two join an already packed field in the 2026 race, with 10 Democrats and two Republicans now running. But while the group includes some big names—including a former member of Congress, a former Cabinet member, and another billionaire—it still lacks a clear front-runner. Newsom, who has served as the state’s governor since 2019 and is flirting with a presidential bid in 2028, can’t run again because of term limits. Others who have served in leadership positions in the state have already dropped out of the race, and a couple prominent Democrats who many speculated would enter the race have announced they won’t be joining it. Here’s what to know about the competitive race. Who’s running to replace Newsom? In addition to Swalwell and Steyer, the other Democrats in the race include former California Congresswoman Katie Porter, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Former state Controller Betty Yee and Stephen Cloobeck, a real estate developer and billionaire, have also launched campaigns, as has state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, are the two Republican candidates. Who has decided not to run—or dropped out? For months, there was speculation that former Vice President Kamala Harris would launch a gubernatorial bid in her home state. But the former presidential candidate announced in July that she wouldn’t enter the race. California Sen. Alex Padilla, another influential Democratic politician, said earlier this month that he wouldn’t run for the office either—a move that came as a shock to many in the state. Some candidates who had previously planned to run—such as Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and former state Senate leader Toni Atkins—have dropped out of the race in recent months. What do the polls show? Polling shows that there’s no clear front-runner in the crowded field.  A poll from the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley that was released earlier this month revealed that 44% of the state’s registered voters haven’t decided on a candidate to support. Bianco received the most support in the poll, at 13%, and Porter followed with 11%.  Porter has been the subject of some controversy in recent months, after videos were shared online in the fall that showed her threatening to walk out of an interview after a tense exchange with a reporter and berating a staffer. Porter responded to criticism over the videos at a public forum last month, saying she “could have handled that interview better” and that she had apologized to the staffer at the time. “I apologized in real time when that happened because it was inappropriate—right then and there, and I knew it,” she said. “I could have done better in that situation, I know that. I really want my staff to understand that I value them.” An Emerson College poll that was conducted after the videos were released last month, though, also showed Porter with the most backing among the Democratic candidates in the race at 15%, while Hilton led overall with the support of 16% of voters. Just one other candidate, Bianco, broke into the double-digits with 11%. Nearly 40% of voters were still undecided, however. The primary election, set for June 2026, is less than seven months away. The state has top-two primaries, meaning that whichever two candidates get the most votes in the primary will advance to the general election, regardless of their party.