California's Democratic Party just did something extraordinary: it held a news conference to announce that it's losing.
Internal polling released Tuesday by state Democratic Party officials shows two Republicans, former Fox News host Steve Hilton at 16% and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco at 14%, leading the entire field in the June 2 gubernatorial primary.
The three top Democrats, Rep. Eric Swalwell, progressive billionaire Tom Steyer, and former congresswoman Katie Porter, are tied at 10% each. Everyone else is in the low single digits, the Post reported.
If two Republicans finish in the top two of California's jungle primary, Democrats would be locked out of the November general election entirely. That would make way for the first Republican governor of California since Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011.
In a state where Democrats hold every statewide office, every lever of institutional power, and overwhelming voter registration advantages, this is not supposed to happen.
The problem isn't that Democrats can't win California. It's that too many of them think they can win it at the same time. The field is so bloated with ambitious Democrats that the party's vote share is being sliced into slivers while Republicans consolidate behind two candidates.
Among self-identified Republicans in the survey, Hilton pulls 41% and Bianco takes 34%. That's consolidation. Among self-identified Democrats, Porter leads with just 17%, followed by Swalwell at 16%. That's a food fight.
Larry Geraston, professor emeritus of political science at San José State University, did not mince words:
"What you're looking at is a party with the total capability to self-destruct. They don't understand how easy it is for that divisiveness to lead to two Republicans running in November."
Below the top three Democrats, the wreckage gets worse. Former U.S. Secretary of Health Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan each registered 3%. Former state controller Betty Yee pulled 2%. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond managed 1%.
Every one of them is still running.
State Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks used the news conference to do something party chairs almost never do publicly: beg his own candidates to quit. He stopped short of naming names, but the message was unmistakable.
"These results confirm the possibility, albeit a low one, the possibility of Democrats being locked out of the general election."
Hicks acknowledged the awkwardness of releasing a poll that shows his own party trailing. When asked about it directly, he conceded the obvious:
"Would I prefer not to put forward a survey that showed two Republicans leading? Of course."
But the clock forced his hand. As Hicks put it, there are 70 days until election day and just 40 until ballots land in voters' hands. He said the party is "prepared to do what is required to ensure that we elect a governor in November of 2026," though what exactly that entails remains unclear.
Notably, the survey of 2,000 likely voters conducted in mid-March found that 52% of respondents said California is headed in the wrong direction. Only about a third said the state is on the right track. For a state that has been governed exclusively by Democrats for over a decade, that number alone should be the headline.
One figure conspicuously absent from the drama: Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has yet to endorse anyone in the race. When asked whether Newsom should pressure low-polling candidates to clear the field, Hicks offered a diplomatic non-answer. "I think that's a decision for the governor. And as far as the timing, only time will tell."
That's a remarkable amount of deference to a governor whose own party is staring at the possibility of losing his mansion. Newsom's silence is itself a kind of statement: either he doesn't believe the situation is as dire as his party chair says, or he's unwilling to spend political capital on a race that has become a circular firing squad.
Meanwhile, the left-leaning podcast host Tommy Vietor called the situation a "mess" on social media Tuesday and proposed a concrete triage plan:
"The CA Democratic Party needs to get together ASAP and put a tent on this circus. The primary is in June. Ballots start getting mailed May 4th. Candidates who aren't above 5% in the polls by April 15th need to drop out and endorse someone else to narrow the field."
It's a sensible suggestion. It also has zero enforcement mechanism. No party apparatus can force a candidate off the ballot. And candidates polling at 1% and 3% rarely drop out because they've been asked nicely.
As if the polling weren't damaging enough, a gubernatorial debate scheduled for Tuesday night at USC was canceled after Democratic legislators and candidates of color expressed outrage about a perceived lack of diversity in the lineup. The debate had been set to feature six candidates, including San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, whose campaign reportedly has substantial financial backing from big tech players, despite polling lower than Becerra.
So instead of using a debate stage to distinguish themselves and consolidate support with the clock ticking, Democrats torpedoed their own platform over identity grievances. The party that needs voters to coalesce around fewer candidates just eliminated one of the few remaining opportunities for voters to compare them side by side.
This is the California Democratic Party in miniature: so consumed by internal litmus tests that it cannot execute basic political strategy even when its own data says the house is on fire.
For conservatives, the California numbers represent something that would have been unthinkable five years ago. Not just competitiveness, but a plausible path to the governor's office in the bluest major state in the country.
The math is straightforward. Republicans have two candidates consolidating a unified base. Democrats have at least seven candidates, dividing a fractured one. California's top-two primary system, which Democrats championed as a way to marginalize Republicans, could now be the mechanism that locks Democrats out entirely.
The irony is structural. The jungle primary was designed to ensure that ideological extremes couldn't survive into the general elections. It was supposed to help Democrats. Instead, it punishes exactly the kind of undisciplined, ego-driven candidate glut that the California Democratic Party has produced.
Fifty-two percent of likely voters say the state is headed in the wrong direction. Homelessness, cost of living, crime, regulatory overreach: these are not abstract grievances. They are lived experiences for millions of Californians who have watched one-party rule deliver a declining quality of life.
Democrats built this problem over the years. They may not be able to fix it in 40 days.