Candidates for California governor hurl insults at each other during televised debate

For a race that’s at times been described as lackluster, a debate among the top eight candidates for California governor Tuesday evening was anything but boring.

Candidates — once again seeking to set themselves apart from the rest of the field in a race lacking a clear frontrunner — fielded questions for 90 minutes from debate moderators, and each other, with topics ranging from housing and homelessness to health care and gas prices.

With eight of the leading candidates participating, the April 28 debate was billed as the “most inclusive” thus far in this election cycle.

Less than a week ago, six of the candidates — former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, former Fox News host Steve Hilton, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer — debated at KRON4’s studio in San Francisco. Two more Democrats were added to Tuesday’s debate hosted by CBS and Asian Pacific American Public Affairs and held at Pomona College’s historic Bridges Auditorium: Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Although candidates did take a few shots at each other during the last debate, more gloves came off Tuesday as the candidates lobbed fresh insults and accusations at each other.

Becerra fired an early shot at Hilton, who was recently endorsed by President Donald Trump, by referring to the president as “Steve Hilton’s daddy.”

Hilton, later in the debate, questioned one of Becerra’s proposals to freeze home insurance rates by declaring a state of emergency if he were to become governor, claiming he would not have the authority to do that.

“We can’t have a governor who doesn’t understand how the government works,” Hilton said.

Porter, meanwhile, went after Steyer, saying the billionaire paid the lowest tax rate of any of the candidates on stage and was self-funding his campaign using money he made off investments in the fossil fuel industry.

Steyer responded that large corporations, including oil companies, were spending millions to run an anti-campaign against him “because I’m the only person on this stage who’s the change agent.”

Thurmond also attacked Bianco, accusing him of “stealing ballots,” a reference to an investigation his Sheriff’s department launched to recount ballots from last November’s special redistricting election.

At one point, the candidates were interrupting each other and trading barbs so much that Porter quipped, “This is worse than my teenagers at dinner,” drawing laughs from the audience.

Many of the top candidates are separated by just a few percentage points in recent polls.

And for Thurmond and Villaraigosa, especially, whose polling numbers have been stuck in the low single-digits and who do not have as large a campaign war chest for advertising as some of the other candidates, their inclusion in Tuesday debate was a critical opportunity to get in front of the camera to try and pick up more votes.

A recent Emerson College poll, conducted in mid-April, showed that 23% of likely voters were undecided about which candidate they would support. Another poll commissioned by the California Democratic Party, released last week, had the number of undecided voters at 20%.

This means there were plenty of voters for the candidates to try to woo Tuesday night.

With just five weeks to go before the June 2 primary election — and just days from when ballots will start landing in voters’ mailboxes — the candidates sought to break out from the crowded field: 61 people in all have qualified for the primary election ballot to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The next gubernatorial debate will take place next Tuesday, May 5, starting at 6 p.m. Seven of the eight candidates who participated in this week’s debate also qualified for next week’s two-hour CNN debate; Thurmond did not qualify.

Candidates had to have raised, contributed or loaned at least $1 million for their campaign and received at least 3% support among likely primary voters in two polls or an average of 3% in two polls with methodology that meets CNN’s standards for reporting to qualify for the debate.