The NPR Politics Podcast - Where Swalwell’s exit leaves the California governor’s race

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

A crowded governor’s race in California got a little less crowded when Democrat Eric Swalwell ended his campaign — and resigned his seat in Congress — following allegations of sexual misconduct. We discuss where Swalwell’s exit leaves the race and how President Trump’s endorsement of a Republican candidate might be a boon to the Democrats running.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, KQED correspondent Guy Marzorati, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And we also have KQED's Guy's Guy's Guy joining us today. Hi, Guy. Hey, great to be with you all. Yeah, great to have you back. Today on the show, we are talking about the race for governor in America's most populous state, California. And, Guy, this is a race that looks very different than it did just a few days ago after now former Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race over the weekend. Can you get us up to speed on the allegations that led him to make that decision? Yeah, so these were allegations reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN that Swalwell had sexually assaulted a former staff member on multiple occasions. Also, I had other allegations of sexual misconduct against staff. And it did play out really quickly. You know, these reports came out on Friday. By Sunday, Swalwell had dropped out of the governor's race in which he was a Democratic frontrunner. and then resigned his East Bay House seat this week.

Yeah, and we should note that Swalwell has denied the allegations of misconduct and assault, but he has said some vague comments about how he's made mistakes. Also, NPR has not confirmed independently the reports that have come out over the last few days. But it does feel like reading those reports that rumors about Swalwell had been kind of swirling on Capitol Hill for a few years. Why do you think that this has come to such a pitch now? Yeah, so I should say about those rumors, you know, there had been stuff out there on social media about Swalwell and sexual misconduct. And he even took a kind of unique step last week of coming out before there was any substance of allegation and saying, you know, everything you've heard is not true and pushing back against that. I would say it really points to the work that the journalist did at the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN.

They built relationships. They heard these stories and vetted these claims. And I think there's a reason those rumors were not putting an end to Swalwell's run for governor. But obviously, these stories that came out absolutely did. You can argue that Democrats close to Swalwell certainly didn't go and try to figure out exactly what was going on. I mean, Senator Ruben Gallego, for example, from Arizona, said essentially that his friendship with Swalwell clouded his, you know, feeling like he did something wrong. He said that Swalwell lied to him about some of this. I think, though, when you get to a place where you run for a high office, that's when more of the

vetting and focus starts to take place. And more people are willing to come forward, by the way, and put their names on things. And we certainly saw that in this case, because Swalwell was running for governor. And a lot of these women who are alleging sexual misconduct against Swalwell. well, you know, said that they thought that they were alone, that they didn't realize that there were other women who were involved here as well. So they came forward. The journalism happened and all of that led to this downfall. I do think that there is a big difference, though, in what we've seen among Democratic voters and Democratic officials, now that this is out there and how the party responds and how voters in the party respond compared to Republicans when we're talking about. President Trump. I mean, there have been more than two dozen women who have accused President Trump of sexual misconduct. Many of them have put their names on it. When New York Republican Congresswoman Elise DeFonick, a Trump ally, was on CNN earlier today. She was asked about a potential double standard. And she said, one, the media is not holding Democrats to the same standard, meaning that they didn't investigate this earlier about Swalwell. And that there's lawfare, quote unquote, against the president. Think about Swallow leaving Congress also. Governor Gavin Newsom announced a special election to replace him in the House that's going to take place in August. What can you tell us about that process, Guy, and what we're looking at there? Yeah, so Newsom moved really quickly to get a special election in this East Bay congressional seat.

So there's going to be a primary for the seat in June, actually just like a couple weeks after voters are weighing in on our regularly scheduled primary. They'll vote in a special primary. If no candidate gets a majority, which I think is pretty unlikely, given there's a lot of candidates wanting to run in that district, then you'd have a special election in August. And so we already heard from a lot of Republicans in the last 24 hours since Newsom called the special election. Some outcry because Representative Doug Lamalfa, who was a Republican who passed away at the very beginning of the year, Newsom kind of scheduled that special election to fill his seat furthest away as possible versus in this case he really did rush to have a special election for Swalwell seat. I think that speaks to when you have a Congress and a House Representatives as closely divided as this. Newsom is very attuned to the vote counting politics of that. And so clearly moved with the expediency to get this special election on the books. I do want to focus on the political ramifications in California because this is a primary that's happening in something like seven weeks in June guy. And I'm curious if you can kind of lay out,

You mentioned that Swalovil was one of the front runners. Who were the top Democratic contenders? Yeah, it's another kind of shakeup of what's been kind of a wild race so far. Swalwell was among the frontrunners, along with two other Democrats, investor Tom Steyer and former Congressmember Katie Porter. So I think conventional wisdom would be, you know, those two would be best positioned now that Swalwell is out of the race. But it's hard to say. We haven't seen any public polling in the days since Swalwell. has dropped out of the race. And I think a lot of other Democrats who have stayed in this race,

despite low polling, I'm thinking about former Attorney General and Health and Human Services Secretary Javier Bacera, San Jose Mayor Matt Mayhan, former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villarigosa. I think they're all thinking they can be the undertaker from WW in that meme where he pops out of the coffin. Like, they all, they all think that's them now, given that there hasn't been a candidate that's run away with this thing. And yeah, we still do have a few weeks left until ballots go out. You could make an argument. This is the most high profile governorship in the country, but also one of the most sought after positions for a Democrat in national office right now. The fact that we don't have a clear frontrunner in this race, what do you guys make of that?

Well, and you had Kamala Harris, the former vice president, opt out of running for the seat, now hinting that she could potentially run for president again in 2028. And you had, You just have a lot of people in California who could be governor. I mean, it's a huge state. There are people in massively high-profile positions, whether it's politics or from Silicon Valley or even Hollywood. I mean, we saw that when the actors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan became governor. But you don't have that kind of high-profile person this time around.

And, you know, in a state that is, you know, one of the largest, you know, economy. in the world, never mind in the country, it's a bit perplexing that you don't have more high-profile people, you know, with a lot of name recognition running. Yeah. And I think part of it, too, is this race has completely kind of broken the molds of elections for California governor. Traditionally, if you go back 80 years, like basically since the end of World War II, it's always been, with the two Hollywood exceptions of Reagan and Schwarzenegger, it's been folks who have run and won in statewide elections who then use that as a launching pad for governor. So it's been lieutenant governors, attorney generals, and they've really like built that institutional

support at the state capital and relationships with labor, with business that have allowed them to kind of put forward a statewide platform. Because California, you are projecting a message through television, through the media, through advertisements. And so it's been so interesting in this race to not have that kind of candidate with statewide recognition, it was held statewide office after Harris said no, after Senator Alex Padilla said he wasn't running, after the Attorney General Rob Bonta said he wasn't running. It was these two Congress members, Swalwell and Porter, who had made their name largely in

Washington, largely on cable news, which really is a different dynamic than we've seen in the past. So yeah, Swalwell got a lot of the institutional support in this race before he dropped out. But part of me thinks that's almost like the calcification of the government. race, like these interest groups looking at this like a betting market, like who is going to be the candidate, let's try to get behind them, versus someone who has built those relationships over time and kind of built those coalitions over time. We haven't seen that. That's why I think in large part these candidates are unknown and the race is wide open. You know, but running for Congress or being a congressperson is very different than running a state as large as California

and having the connections internally politically to get things done, but to also understand how to manage something that large. And there aren't a lot of people who can do that. I mean, and you're talking about somebody like Katie Porter, a congresswoman who's also flawed. You know, she's faced allegations of creating toxic work environments on Capitol Hill. Swalwell clearly was flawed, not just for being a congressman, but also for these sexual assault allegations. You know, You have Tom Steyer who now seems to be a frontrunner in this race, who's a billionaire. And, you know, has run before. People may remember he ran in the 2020 presidential election, spent more than $300 million of his own money in that race, has spent more than $100 million in this race for TV ads in a very, very expensive state.

And he's still only polling, you know, if he's lucky, in the 20s. That's not enough to win. so bummed out if I spent that much money and I was only polling in the 20s. I got to admit it. I mean, isn't there some sort of record guy that he is going to break or has already broken in terms of the amount of money that's being spent in this race? So Meg Whitman, the former eBay executive, she ran for governor in 2010. I think she spent 140 million throughout the whole campaign. Steyer is at giving himself $121 million. And we're not even at the primary yet. Like, this could easily be $150 million to get out of.

of a primary, and it's why he's such a fascinating candidate. He's both like a billionaire, but also running a really progressive platform. I think the question for him with progressives is, are they looking at the person or are they looking kind of at the policy? All right. Well, let's take a quick break and more on this really fascinating governor's race in just a moment. And we're back. And Guy, California has become a pretty blue state over the last two decades since Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor in the 2000s, the state that went for Kamala Harris by 20 points in 2024. But there are a couple notable Republicans running for governor. What can you tell us about them? Yeah, so there is Steve Hilton. He's a conservative commentator. He actually is from

Britain. He spent years working in the British government as well. And then Chad Bianco, who is a conservative sheriff in Riverside County in Southern California. And those two, uh, have been the most notable Republican candidates. They'd been pretty close in all the polling. A big turn happened in the last week, though, when President Trump jumped in and endorsed Steve Hilton for the governorship. His approval in California is pretty low among all voters, but there's still three quarters of Republicans here think he's doing a good job. So I think there's a lot of expectation that might help Hilton consolidate the vote. But Bianco has honestly gone through a lot of pains. It seems to draw conservative voters. He, in recent months, seized ballots from the 2025 special election in

California, looking into what he called claims of fraud. He was sued over that from the state attorney general. There's been questions about what crime he was actually looking into that would have justified such an unprecedented step of seizing ballots. So that might have been an attempt to catch Trump's eye. It didn't work out. And I think what Bianco is relying on, this point is kind of the grassroots Republican support to see that can manifest into getting in the top two. But I think in all likelihood, if history is any guide, the Trump endorsement is a huge factor for Steve Hilton. It's certainly a big factor in Republican politics. And certainly to the point that, you know, most Republicans, overwhelming majority of

Republicans, you know, still approve of the job that the president is doing regardless of where they live in in the country. And that's certainly likely to help. Hilton in this case. But a lot of people wondering if it was a big strategic blunder on the part of the president because there have been so many Democrats in this race and the way the top two primary works, all the candidates run together and, you know, the top two finishers in that primary go on to face each other one-on-one in a general election regardless of party. So California, you're not going to have a Democratic primary and a Republican primary acting as a funnel to get to a D and R, you know, a face off in the fall, you could have, you know, and what has happened in California

quite a bit is Democrat on Democrat. You could have Republican on Republican if you have so many Democrats splitting the vote, which, you know, the math is unlikely for that, but it is not out of the realm of possibility was certainly more possible before Trump's endorsement of Hilton. Yeah, I feel like I have seen some handwringing from democracy experts in some cases, but definitely from a lot of Democrats that even the vague possibility. that, you know, a state as blue as California could potentially send two Republicans to the ballot in the general election. Is that a real possibility guy at this point? Or what are you hearing? Yeah, I think it was never an enormous possibility just because it really would have required

Hilton and Bianco to split the vote very evenly. And that would kind of assume that neither tried to separate from each other. That did not prevent absolute five alarm panic. within the state Democratic Party that this could happen. And I think, honestly, in large part, that's why you saw such a push to, oh, let's consolidate around one candidate when it comes to labor unions and business groups. And that ultimately became Swalwell. And I think there's a lot of recriminations because of those decisions. I think now, because of the Trump endorsement for Hilton, because Swalwell is out of the race, one less top Democrat to split the vote, I think it's less and less likely that you'd see the possibility of two Republicans making it into the general election. Honestly, at this point,

there's probably just as good of a chance that you get two Democrats in, which would be another wild twist given that the state Democratic Party has faced such withering criticism for supposedly not managing this open primary well, for not being able to get lower polling candidates to drop out. The state party chair pressured a lot of those candidates publicly. The party started paying for and releasing polls to kind of publicly shame those lower candidates. dropping out. None of that worked. And so for all the criticism, the state party has gotten, it kind of would be insane for this to end up with the ultimate democratic achievement of two candidates in a general election for governor, which we haven't seen before. I think in all likelihood,

you're going to see one Democrat and one Republican in the general, which even in the era of top two primaries in California is what we've always ended up with for governor. And there's been some pressure on Gavin Newsom, the California governor, who's got an eye on. in 2028 to put his thumb on the scale and endorse somebody. And he's refused to do that so far saying, you know, my position, I don't talk about this governor's race. It just feels very 2026 to me that even in a blue state in a governor's race that has nothing to do with the federal government, President Trump is still playing a huge role in terms of that endorsement, still having all of these ramifications on this very specific primary process. That's fascinating. But I'm curious

about how the president is playing otherwise into this race. I mean, Gavin Newsom, obviously, one of his chief jobs, it feels like, is to be a foil at this point to the president. Are the candidates talking about that? I guess how is, how is President Trump coming up on the campaign trail at this point, Guy? Yeah, I would say the candidates are certainly talking about that. And we did see kind of a shift in the rhetoric in this race from what started largely as a lot of Democrats talking about using whoever the next governor is to try to fix some of the long. time ills in the state, you know, housing prices, electricity prices, making government run better. Really, that shifted once you started to see this campaign for redistricting Prop 50 in California.

Newsom having so much success, as you mentioned, being a foil to Trump. You really started to see the Democrats who are running to succeed Newsom, try to pick up on that and say, well, actually, my main platform as well is to fight Trump. That almost seemed to become kind of table stakes for all these candidates as they got into the race. Rather than talking about what their platform was when they would be governor, they spent a lot of time talking about how they would fight Trump and why they're best positioned to be a Trump fighter. I wonder now, as we get down towards the final weeks of this election, if you will start to see more policy discussion and policy contrasts, especially because Tom Steyer, Katie Porter, two of these front-running Democrats, have actually put a lot of thought into what they would do as governor and have really articulated positions. on some issues. I mean, are there other issues? Is it really just affordability, affordability, as we keep hearing, we heard that all in the 2025 off-year elections? Is that going to be the main

issue other than Trump in this race? Or are there other issues that people who aren't living in California may not have heard about that might come up, guy? Well, I think it's a lot of things through the lens of affordability. And I do wonder if in the closing weeks of this campaign, a lot of what Tom Steyer has laid out kind of on the left flank of the party, becomes the focal point in terms of policy discussions because he's been really adamant about putting four division. He said, I'm going to go for single payer health care. He wants to call a special election in his first year as governor to increase property taxes on large businesses. He wants to tax oil companies for windfall profits on gas prices. He wants to tax AI companies

for token usage. So he has a really broad tax heavy platform. And I wonder if a lot of the groups, you know, businesses, industry groups, really try to tag team and sync his candidacy in the last few weeks. There's already some spending ramping up in that regard. But it's, it's certainly something unusual. Like, if he makes it out of this primary, he will have articulated the most progressive platform of a California nominee, probably since like Upton Sinclair, but he's also a billionaire. So it's going to be fascinating to see kind of how that plays out in the next few weeks and how the other Democrats, what they choose to disagree with him on, on those tax issues. Yeah, he's a billionaire who also faced some scrutiny and criticism for how he made his money during the 2020 presidential campaign in one respect about investing in coal-fired plants, for example, in a state that is a climate change leader. But this idea of a progressive left-wing populist campaign in a very bold sort of way, which I think is something that the Democratic base has been itching for does raise some potential warnings for Democrats,

more broadly, that if someone with that kind of platform were to win and were to try to make California a kind of left-wing populist experiment, and if that backfires what that could mean, not just in the state government, but in what the national message winds up being. All right. Well, we can leave it there for today. Guy, thank you so much for joining us on what I'm sure has been a very busy week for you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And tomorrow on the show, we are heading to the south to hear from swing, voters in Georgia. Don't miss it. Hit the follow button wherever you listen to your podcast and you can listen tomorrow. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and

correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.