The Daily Signal - Pomona Debate 2026: The California Dream is Dying—Clear Winners, Clear Losers | Drew Allen

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

In a chaotic Pomona College debate marked by constant interruptions and deep voter frustration, Steve Hilton delivered the strongest performance by confronting Sacramento’s failures head-on, Matt Mahan stood out as the most pragmatic Democrat, while Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer turned in the weakest, most disconnected showings as 64% of Californians now believe the California Dream is no longer attainable, Drew Allen, The Daily Signal’s California Contributor, argues on today’s edition commentary. 👉For more videos like this, subscribe to The Daily Signal’s YouTube channel and enable notifications to be alerted the second a new video drops: https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Sky 7 over the scene of what police are now calling a double homicide. For the first time, California governor Gavin Newsom has publicly acknowledged that he is open to a run for the White House. In L.A., homelessness has jumped 16% in a year. Half of Americans living on the streets. are in California. Well, I watched the second California gubernatorial debate last night on April 28th. And eight candidates, they crammed onto the stage at Pomona College's Bridges Auditorium

for what organizers kept calling the most inclusive gubernatorial debate of the entire 26 cycle. And that's because they insisted on having some of the lowest polling individuals in the Democrat Party on that stage, adding Villa Ragoza and adding Thurmond. And it was kind of bizarre because, I mean, it was a bit of a disaster. And the moderators seemed to have self-awareness even before the debate started, basically telling you, you know, there's too many people up there and, you know, this is, it was like they knew it was a bad idea, that it was going to go south,

and it wasn't really going to work, and it didn't really work. But just a bizarre way to introduce, like, here's this wonderful, inclusive debate. It's going to be bad, but, you know, here we are. We're doing this anyway for inclusivity. And the inclusivity is about the fact that there was a bunch of hullabaloo for the canceled debate that was supposed to take place at USC a little while back. And, you know, the quote-unquote minority candidates and the Democrat Party were throwing a fit saying, we're being excluded, you know, playing race cards or something like that. there were two Republicans on the stage, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco again. They were up against six Democrats this time instead of four.

As I said, with the addition of Tony Thurmond and Antonio Villargoza, the L.A. Mayor. But look, the whole thing, it was messy from the start. Moderators were constantly cutting mics or threatening to cut mics. People were talking over each other pretty consistently, complaining about their time and so on and so forth. I think it was the first student that asked a question in the audience. that effectively said that was a mess, and that was kind of how this thing went. He wasn't wrong. But even with all that chaos, I mean, I think that something important still came through loud and clear.

So there was a brand new CBSUGov poll just before the debate that showed that 64% of California is no longer believe the California dream is even attainable anymore. 70% say the cost of living is completely unmanageable. And that was the heavy feeling of disappointment that was hanging over every single question, on housing, on gas prices, on insurance, on homelessness, healthcare, education, you name it. But anyway, I'm going to give you straight from the room rank of my straight from the room ranking of who actually won and who lost. So this isn't spin room talk. It's not cable pundit nonsense.

This is based on real-time notes that I took there, watching the debate on my computer. And so, you know, here's what really went down. And I want to do this by just going through who the clear winners were, the clear losers. Winner, number one, hands down, I believe, was Steve Hilton. Hilton was the strongest. He was the most consistent person on the stage all night. And his best moment, I think, came when Bcerra kept trying to blame everything on Donald Trump. And Hilton looked him dead in the eye and said, I think, you know, something to be the effective. That's what's wrong with politics in California. These are problems caused by Democrats here. And of course, that's true. And then when Bissera, which was another highlight for Hilton,

Bacera wanted to declare a state of emergency to freeze insurance rates, talking about, you know, the issues with home insurance in the state. And Hilton asked him, have you even read the emergency power statute? You can't do what you're proposing. And Bacera, I'll get to him in a minute, but he was so dictatorial. I mean, no king's protest. I mean, this guy fancies himself a king, but Hilton just got it. He understood the actual rules better than anyone else up there, I thought.

And on homelessness, he was tough, but he was humane, enforced the law against sleeping on streets, mandate treatment for addiction and mental illness and treat people like we treat our own loved ones. And I think that resonates with people. And on gas prices and the rush to electric cars, he kept calling for common sense instead of ideology. He stayed calm.

He was focused on Sacramento's failures, and he never really had a weak moment. So I think he clearly won the night. I mean, from my perspective, if he had a weak moment, it was related to some of the questions that were forced about, you know, it operated from this presumption that we have a climate change problem, which is not true. But he didn't really reject that premise completely. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't, you know, bungle his answer.

But, you know, he sort of accepted that premise by not really combating the underlying falsehood that we need to solve climate change in California. But anyway, you know, number two was Matt Mahan, the Democrat. He was easily the best Democrat on stage, I thought. him. His strongest moment was being the only Democrat willing to pledge to suspend and reform the gas tax, calling it regressive and brutal on working families in rural Californians. He got into a little bit more of the, you know, equity aspect again, but, you know, he's a lib, so progressive, so what can you expect? But he kept coming back to his working class roots. On education, he talked to real reforms. He talks about cutting the administrative bloat, bringing back phonics, setting high expectations,

rewarding good teachers. So there was a meritocracy aspect to that. He didn't get a ton of time, but he came across pragmatic and solution focused. And, you know, to be clear, both Republicans also strongly supported suspending the gas tax. And this was consistent with the last debate. Antonio Villarigosa, he was actually pretty solid. Unlike Thurman, who was also added to the stage, Thurman was pretty much invisible. If he hadn't been there, you wouldn't have missed him. But Antonio added something to it. His best moment was admitting, showing some accountability, that we've spent Democrats 24 billion on homelessness and it hasn't worked. His consistent thing was, you know, we need to do all these different things.

And he reminded people about, you know, his record building housing. He said he brought, you know, he talked, you know, he talked about how he was able to buy a home at 25. dream wasn't here anymore. The downside for Villa Ramos is that he still kept falling back on blaming Trump even while admitting local failure. So he had a little TDS there. Tony Thurman, I mean, I guess maybe he had some more moments. He talked about his panamanian, immigrant mom. He talks about working overnight jobs to put his kids through college. I mean, I assume he's working those jobs now. I mean, that's what he seemed to claim that he's working overnight jobs right now. He's the superintendent. I mean, I don't know what he gets paid.

exactly. I would imagine 200,000 plus. But anyway, he pushed downpayment assistant grants to help people buy homes. And I mean, but, but his weakest thing is that, you know, education came up. That's literally his job as state superintendent. And he mentioned declining enrollment, but he never explained why it's happening on his watch. He just defaulted to pay it forward free college. So, you know, Thurman was was pretty weak. He didn't add anything. Katie Porter, I guess she played well to her base. She leaned hard into this theme, right? She's the single mom of three teenagers with a minivan. So she's one of us is what she wants to claim. She was proudly saying, you know, she doesn't have any corporate donations coming in. She's the only candidate to reject those corporate donations. And, you know, her line that the debate was worse than her teenagers or something along those lines. It got a decent laugh. But on policy, none surprisingly, she struggled. She opposed, suspending the gas tax. And this was probably her worst moment.

She claimed that refinery workers are dying from pollution, which felt very tone-deaf when families are getting crushed by the highest gas prices in the country. And so she's this green energy nut. Chad Bianco's in the lower middle of the pack, unfortunately. He had some strong lines. One of the most memorable came out of nowhere, which was a little bit odd,

but he said the only thing he fears is a Democrat on the stage becoming governor. He was citing some interview he gave before going into the auditorium about, you know, do you fear anything or something like that? He said, no, I don't fear anything. And then he got on the stage and he opened with this line and said, no, actually the only thing I fear is a Democrat on the stage becoming governor. And that was good. It was raw.

You know, I think his strongest moment in terms of giving something to the California voter, was he correctly tied the homelessness explosion to post-2014 democratic decisions that basically decriminalized theft and open drug use. And he called all the Trump blaming ridiculous. But that was also a double-edged sword for him because that same intensity and prosecutorial tone, especially on that that unprompted fear comment, it often came across as overly hostile. So, I mean, it was understandable, but it probably turned off some moderates looking for solutions. instead of confrontation. He was very defensive. He came in there just with this kind of attitude.

He seemed angry. Now, the clear losers were Xavier Bacera. Bacera had no strong moments. His whole night was weak. It was defensive. And at times, it was really disturbing. He kept pivoting everything back to stop Donald Trump. That's his thing. He bragged that he was the only person who's actually run a health care system, the largest system in the world, he says. And he wanted to use those emergency powers to freeze insurance rates, an idea that was immediately called out as legally, actually unconstitutional. And when he was challenged, he just doubled down. And his experience claims fell completely flat.

Democrats even called him out a couple times. This is the same guy whose time with the HHS, which he constantly referred to, drew heavy criticism over COVID and the monkeypox response. Bizarrely, but Sarah even took credit during one exchange. He said, essentially, you're not worried about catching monkey pox, right? We dealt with these crises, and he boasted that, you know, nobody was about COVID anymore because we made sure everybody got the jab. And it was, it was defensive, it was out of touch the whole way through.

But dead last, number eight, you know, was Tom Steyer. Steyer had zero strong moments. His performance was extreme. It was disconnected. It was constantly fact-checked, actually, and full of sharp hostility. In the gas prices section, he went after oil companies, he already claimed they were jacking up prices. He blamed Trump and the war in Iran again.

and he pushed for outsourcing all the refineries. The moderator fact-checked him on the spot about California's refining capacity and pricing realities, and he got called disrespectful. Porter, she's the one who called out his hypocrisy for having made money off fossil fuels himself, which of course is an elephant in the room. And he kept repeating that he's the change agent

while pushing single payer, polluter pays, and these radical green ideas. He's the most hostile person to corporations. He's a big government, nuts. And, you know, Steyer had this aggressive, hostile tone and it made him the Democrat version of Bianco that night. He was really off-putting. He came across like a completely disconnected radical green lunatic while regular Californians are just trying to afford gas and rent. So here's the bottom line from the room in Pomona. You know, I'm sure there

are media folks already out there spinning that this was a good night for Baceres base or, you know, Thurman's warmth, and that's typical post-debate spin. But my notes from watching this, I think, tell the real story. Steve Hilton won the night with composure and by actually diagnosing Sacramento's failures. Mahan was the strongest Democrat with real relief ideas. Bianco had good substance, but the tone heard him. And Bacera and Steyer had the worst nights by far. All blame, all overreach, and all ideas disconnected from reality.

And California doesn't need more scapegoats. We don't need more taxes. we don't need more free stuff. You know, a lot of these Democrats up on the stage were just about free, free, free, we need more free stuff without acknowledging the fact that, you know, we have this budget crisis. And of course, with every, you know, Steyer's solution is just to keep taxing people, taxing people, taxing people. It's insane.

But, you know, we need leaders in California that are willing to admit that the one-party super majority rule has broken the California dream. And then actually fix it with gas tax relief, real house, permitting reform enforcing laws while mandating treatment for homelessness and basic accountability. The June primary is coming up really fast. And from what we saw in Pomona last night, the second debate, I think the choice is very clear again between more of the same and real change. I think that choice has never been clear. This is Drew Allen with the Daily Signal.