It was only a matter of time before major new figures began to people California’s next election for governor, with its primary coming up on June 2, 2026.
Until very recently, the race looked to become the most canned and staid major California contest in decades: A former state Senate president in San Diego’s Toni Atkins, a termed-out state schools superintendent in Tony Thurmond, a former Los Angeles mayor in Antonio Villaraigosa and Orange County’s former federal Rep. Katie Porter, a failed U.S. Senate candidate.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, sure to be well funded by her mega-developer dad, was not going to liven things up. It looked even duller when state Attorney General Rob Bonta opted to stay put, choosing untold numbers of legal battles with President Trump over a run for governor. None of these folks ever set themselves apart despite myriad opportunities. That made this race a natural to be livened up, and now it’s happening.
First, Kamala Harris began floating rumors of a campaign. A former U.S. senator and onetime California state attorney general who as vice president barely failed (by 1.6%) in her 2024 run for president, she revived memories of another former vice president who ran for governor after failing in a presidential bid but then lost again — Richard Nixon in 1962.
His defeat prompted one of Nixon’s most bitter lines, directed originally at political reporter Richard Bergholz, a persistent critic: “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” That turned out incorrect when Nixon ran for president again in 1968 and won.
So far Harris is not a formal candidate, content for awhile to let others talk about her chances. She’s acted very much like a candidate, though, since her return home after leaving office, visiting disaster areas and glad-handing local elected officials.
Without any measurable effort, Harris stunned the field by pulling 57% in a February Emerson College poll in which Porter ran a very distant second at 9%. Villaraigosa and Kounalakis tied for third, each with an almost invisible 4%.
That led San Diego Republican Richard Grenell, a longtime aide to President Trump now carrying out “special missions” like attaching conditions to federal disaster aid for California, to announce he “just might” join this race if Harris does. The next entrant was Chad Bianco, Riverside County’s always-vocal ultra-conservative sheriff.
Given California’s top-two “jungle primary” system, if two Republicans stay in the race, they could split the state’s relatively small GOP vote and allow a second Democrat into the November 2026 runoff election along with Harris. This may be the real primary election contest next year.
For example, it was only after all other significant Republicans left the U.S. Senate campaign last year that Republican former baseball star Steve Garvey could make the runoff over Porter and then get clobbered by current Democratic U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff.
Sidelights may also pop up during the primary season, which will place no constraints on the celebrity publicity hounds who occasionally run in California. That could mean a run by the transgender Caitlyn Jenner, formerly named Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion once thought to rival the late Jim Thorpe as possibly the greatest athlete of all time.
Jenner announced her new name soon after coming out as transgender in 2015 and then starred in her own short-lived TV show, “I am Cait.”
The show may not have lasted, but Jenner seemingly never stopped talking about herself. She tried politics too, pulling 1% of the vote to replace current Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2021 recall election, which Newsom easily stymied. Early this winter, Jenner began ranting on social media about taking on Harris, even bragging that “If I ran … against Harris, I would destroy her.”
Harris, Bianco and possibly Jenner are already livening up what began as the dullest major California campaign in decades, a contest in which no early entrant had even appeared on a reality show. No race including Bianco or Jenner should ever be dull, though, and this one likely won’t be either.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.