Eric Swalwell has swallowed a humiliating exit from California’s governor race, but his suspension solves only one part of the state’s bigger problem: the field is still crowded, the June 2 primary is still unforgiving, and Democrats still risk splitting their vote badly enough to let two Republicans advance.
The Democrat representative announced on Sunday that he was suspending his campaign while he fights what he called “serious, false allegations,” ending a candidacy that had previously been described as one of the leading Democratic bids in the contest to replace term-limited Governor Gavin Newsom.
Swalwell, a US congressman since 2013, flatly denied sexual assault allegations by a former congressional staffer, calling them “absolutely false.” But by Sunday, he had suspended his campaign, writing that he would fight the allegations personally and that the battle was “my fight, not a campaign’s.”
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His fall was fast. Reported allegations became public on April 10, and within roughly 48 hours the campaign was over.
That exit reshuffles, but does not simplify, the race. The race for California’s next leader is filled with the most competitive cluster involving Democrats Katie Porter and Tom Steyer, alongside Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. With Swalwell gone, Porter and Steyer become the most obvious Democratic beneficiaries in the upper tier, while Hilton and Bianco remain the two Republicans best positioned to exploit Democratic fragmentation.
Porter enters the new phase with the clearest mainstream profile among the remaining Democrats as the former US representative is known for grilling corporate executives in Congress, while Steyer remains the self-funded billionaire activist who has already poured tens of millions of dollars into his campaign.
The Democratic field further widens as Reuters also listed Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, as a contender, and separately named Xavier Becerra, Antonio Villaraigosa, Tony Thurmond, and Betty Yee. Reuters said more than a dozen Democrats had declared by early March.
California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks had already urged candidates to “assess” their campaigns because too many Democrats running at once could create a self-inflicted disaster.
The Republican side is much cleaner. Hilton, the former Fox News host endorsed by President Donald Trump, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco are the two leading Republican contenders. Because California uses an open primary in which the top two finishers advance regardless of party, Republicans do not need to win statewide outright. They only need Democrats to keep slicing the electorate into enough pieces that Hilton and Bianco can slip into the top two.
Reuters reported that as many as one in four voters were still undecided in late March, which means the race remains highly fluid. California’s economy is roughly $4 trillion, enough to rank fourth globally on its own.
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