Virginia’s governor’s race could be a barometer for how voters feel about Trump

toggle caption Win McNamee via Getty Images/The Washington Post via Getty Images

It’s primary election day in Virginia, and the state is gearing up for a big election year. In November, Virginians will vote for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and all 100 seats in the lower house of the legislature. Political watchers will eye the campaigns for clues about how voters in the purple-ish state are feeling about the Trump administration ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The major-party candidates in the race for governor are already set; neither faced a serious primary challenge. The race pits Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who previously represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional District on Capitol Hill, against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the current lieutenant governor.

Sponsor Message

The political landscape Spanberger and Earle-Sears will negotiate between now and November likely favors Democrats, but still offers opportunities for Republicans. Virginia shifted right in 2024, but Kamala Harris still won it by six points. That lean to the right was fueled in large part by Trump’s gains in the suburbs outside of D.C. — an area of the state that now stands to be particularly affected by the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government. Whether Earle-Sears can consolidate those suburban inroads — or whether Spanberger can capitalize on anger over the Trump administration’s antagonistic approach to the federal workforce — may very well decide the race.

Either way, Virginia will make history in November: the commonwealth’s 75th governor will be the first woman to serve in the role.

toggle caption Margaret Barthel

‘A plan for what comes next’

Spanberger, 45, got her start in politics as a volunteer with her local Moms Demand Action chapter — and in April, the national gun safety group endorsed her in an event in Alexandria, Virginia, right across the Potomac River from D.C.

“I vividly remember my first Moms Demand Action meeting. It was in a library in Henrico County, and I walked in super nervous,” she recalled to cheers from the crowd of about 100 volunteers in bright red t-shirts in a local community hall.

Sponsor Message

If elected, Spanberger tells the crowd, she’ll sign bills banning high-capacity magazines and ghost guns and preventing people with domestic violence convictions from purchasing firearms — all legislation passed in recent years by a Democratic majority in the Virginia General Assembly but vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. She has also supported banning assault-style weapons.

Those promises are hardly unexpected for a Democratic politician. What’s unique is the framing Spanberger offers for them: her experience carrying guns herself as a federal agent and former CIA officer. Gun restrictions, she argues, are pro-law enforcement.

“If we are serious about stopping violent criminals, we must prevent them from manufacturing and distributing illegal, untraceable firearms,” she said.

Two local sheriffs are endorsing her candidacy.

This is all classic Spanberger, who’s long cultivated a reputation as a moderate policy wonk focused on issues like fentanyl overdoses, veterans, and agriculture. While she usually toed the Democratic party line in Congress, she also picked her share of moments to disagree with party leadership, publicly criticizing the Biden administration’s original sweeping ambitions for the Build Back Better Act and refusing to vote for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019 .

Spanberger won her swing seat in Congress in 2018, and held it through two more elections dominated by the presence of Donald Trump.

Now, the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce are especially personal to the more than 300,000 federal employees living in Virginia , as well as the private Virginia businesses that pull in the most federal contracting dollars in the country.

The full impact of federal cuts on the Commonwealth is still unclear, with some government employees in limbo as lawsuits and agency reorganizations go forward. State revenue remained steady through April, according to the most recent figures from the Youngkin administration.

But in addition to opposition to Trump, Spanberger is also relying on her experience as a bipartisan lawmaker to get her over the finish line. Her campaign has been rolling out affordability-focused policies on housing, energy, and prescription drug costs.

Sponsor Message

“I’m standing up for Virginians in opposition to policies that are dangerous and bad for them, but also putting out a plan for what comes next, or, in worst-case scenarios, how we can mitigate the most negative of impacts coming from the Trump administration,” Spanberger said in an interview with NPR at an event focused on her energy plan. “So it isn’t an either-or.”

toggle caption Margaret Barthel

‘Freedom means you keeping money in your pocket’

Not everyone buys Spanberger’s carefully crafted centrist image — most notably, her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. On the campaign trail, she criticizes Spanberger for voting for the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act , which made it easier to sue police officers for misconduct, and against the Laken Riley Act , which requires the detention of immigrants without legal status who are arrested for burglary, theft, and shoplifting.

“My opponent voted to have criminal, illegal aliens remain in this country. Why would she do that? We’re talking about some of the most heinous crimes, rapists, pedophiles, murderers to stay in Virginia, in America”, Earle-Sears told NPR at a campaign event.

In addition to her efforts to reframe Spanberger, Earle-Sears, 61, is also attempting to define herself: as an immigrant from Jamaica who’s worked hard for her own slice of the American dream, serving in the Marines and owning her own plumbing and electrical business (which is now inactive, according to Virginia business records). Earle-Sears, the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia, could become the nation’s first Black female governor.

Earle-Sears is running as the natural successor of her boss, current Gov. Glenn Youngkin, whose emphasis on business development and lower taxes has kept his approval ratings high in a state where voters have roundly rejected Donald Trump three times. (Virginia law only allows governors one term at a time.)

Sponsor Message

“You might know that as we talk about freedom, well, freedom also means you keeping as much money that you make in your own pocket,” Earle-Sears told a group of volunteers, at her headquarters in northern Virginia for a June election integrity training sponsored by the Republican National Committee.

To cheers, she told the group she’d get rid of the local car tax, a much-hated annual personal property tax levied by local jurisdictions in Virginia. That, too, would be an extension of Youngkin’s term. Earlier this year, Youngkin proposed a three-year rebate program for the tax, but Democrats in the General Assembly blocked it, citing concerns over the potential impact of the Trump administration on Virginia as a reason the state shouldn’t commit the funds.

But Earle-Sears contends the commonwealth has the money and should use it. (Spanberger has said she’d like to work with the legislature to find a way to end the tax, but has not claimed the state currently has the funds to do so.)

Earle-Sears says she’s not worried about the impact federal cuts could have on the Virginia economy, which she believes is strong after four years of Republican leadership.

She empathizes with people who’ve lost a job. “I know what it feels like to lose a job,” she said, but believes Virginia has adequate social support to help people between jobs, pointing to disability insurance, health insurance, and an unemployment insurance fund refilled after the pandemic. And she is unequivocal in her support for the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to the federal government.

“So there has been waste, there’s been fraud, and there’s been abuse, and the American people, even Democrats, I’m hearing from them, have said, ‘Our money has been going to what? To help what terrorist organizations? To help transgenders in other countries? Is that what we want our money for?'” she said.

Sponsor Message

Democrats have attacked Earle-Sears for minimizing the consequences of federal cuts, and they’ve also eagerly seized on her culturally conservative stances on abortion rights — in the last state in the South not to impose restrictions on the procedure — and marriage equality as evidence she’s out-of-step with Virginia voters.

Earle-Sears is against abortion rights, and during the 2021 campaign said she’d support a ban on the procedure at six weeks, though since then she’s aligned herself with Youngkin’s push for a 15-week restriction. Earlier this year, as part of her duties as the president of the state senate, Earle-Sears was required to sign a bill beginning the process of adding a reproductive rights amendment to the state constitution — and she did, but scrawled “I am morally opposed to this bill; no protection for the child” alongside her signature, according to reporting from The Virginia Mercury.

She was also required to sign a 2024 bill prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and gender in awarding marriage licenses, and again wrote that she was “morally opposed” to the legislation along with her signature, according to reporting by Virginia Scope .

The race ‘leans Democratic,’ for now

As of now, some political analysts think Spanberger has the edge, in part because of Virginia’s decades-long history of picking governors from the opposite party of the one in the White House. And then there’s the Trump effect.

“More recently, Trump seemed to hand Spanberger a campaign issue on a silver platter,” wrote J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor and political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Virginia has one of the nation’s highest concentrations of federal workers, a group that, to put it charitably, the Trump administration has gone out of its way to antagonize.”

Coleman’s April assessment put the race as “Leans Democratic,” which concurs with early independent polling from Roanoke College , Christopher Newport University , and Virginia Commonwealth University .

Sponsor Message

The Spanberger campaign also has a two-to-one fundraising advantage , with nearly $23 million raised compared to Earle-Sears’ $9.2 million.

But recent analysis from Founders Insight, a Republican-affiliated research firm, saw opportunities for Earle-Sears and the rest of the Republican ticket, particularly in messaging on economic issues.

“Most political observers privately think Virginia will be blue forever after 2025. But not so fast, the Commonwealth’s political fundamentals appear more fluid than conventional wisdom suggested,” the group wrote of its findings, which showed a statistical tie between Spanberger and Earle-Sears. “Economic anxieties are reshaping voter priorities in ways that could benefit Republicans, while high undecided rates indicate an unusually unsettled electorate heading into the general election.”

A Spanberger win might help national Democrats recapture momentum after their 2024 losses and redefine their party identity beyond opposition to Trump, Coleman said. Flipping the Virginia governor’s mansion would be “a concrete win that they could point to” ahead of the 2026 midterms.

An Earle-Sears win, meanwhile, could give Republicans their own midterms playbook.

New Jersey’s primary election is Tuesday, June 10.

On the ballot are 11 candidates for governor — six Democrats and five Republicans.

There are also some contested local primary elections and some contested elections for nominations in the race for seats in the New Jersey Assembly, the lower house of the state legislature.

Here’s our guide to New Jersey’s June 10 primary:

Voting in the June 10 NJ primary:

New Jersey’s primary election — on June 10 — is less than two weeks away. This what you need to know if you plan to vote.

The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot is June 3. Unaffiliated voters interested in voting in the primary by mail must complete and submit a party affiliation declaration form to their county commissioner of registration by June 3 to get a mail-in ballot as well.

Here’s where voters can cast early in-person or day-of, in-person ballots in the June 10 New Jersey primary.

Candidates for NJ governor:

Here is our guide to knowing each of the major Democratic and Republican candidates seeking their party nominations for governor in the June 10 primary.

All nine major candidates for New Jersey governor — six Democrats and three Republicans — filed their 11-day pre-election contribution and expenditure report with the state’s Election Law Enforcement Commission, or ELEC. Some candidates are still actively spending, while others are sitting on campaign contributions, disclosure reports show.

With less than a month until New Jersey’s primary election, all nine major candidates for governor — six Democrats and three Republicans — filed their 29-day preelection contribution and expenditure report with the state’s Election Law Enforcement Commission. What to know.

How have candidates for governor in both the Democratic and Republican parties spent on television ads during the primary campaign?

Issues in the race for New Jersey governor:

How would the candidates running for New Jersey governor tackle affordability in the Garden State?

How would the candidates running for New Jersey governor address climate change and a potential energy crisis in the Garden State?

How would the candidates running for New Jersey governor approach access to health care in the Garden State?

How would the candidates running for New Jersey governor approach social issues affecting the Garden State?

How would the candidates running for New Jersey governor tackle education in the Garden State?

How would the candidates running for New Jersey governor tackle ongoing challenges with NJ Transit?

A poll of voters age 50 and over also found overwhelming support for Medicaid — more than 90% with registered voters in both parties, according to the survey of 813 registered voters conducted by AARP New Jersey and the Siena College Research Institute.

Local races:

A pair of Democrats will vie for the party nomination to run for mayor in one of two contested primary elections in Passaic County on June 10.

There are four Republican candidates running in the June 10 primary election for Franklin Lakes Council. There are no Democrats on the June 10 ballot for Franklin Lakes Council.

Columns from Mike Kelly:

New Jersey’s gubernatorial race has become a real wild card. Democrats should win easily — that’s what the statistics tell us, anyway. After all, the party has far more registered voters than Republicans. Plus, Democrats have won all recent presidential elections in New Jersey and have controlled the governorship for 17 of the 25 years of this century. So victory should be simple, right? Not really.

Democrats are in trouble. It’s been nearly seven months since their party’s debacle last November and Democrats are still searching for a message and a way to define themselves. If you want to understand how difficult that hunt for the right message has become, take a look at New Jersey.

The new battle in New Jersey over sanctuary laws is part of that soul-searching challenge of transformation for Democrats — only on a much larger scale.

Columns from Charlie Stile:

As the June 10 primary election for governor draws near, the competing forces within the New Jersey Democratic Party are on full display. Which candidate will prevail?

If the two leading Republican candidates for New Jersey governor harbored concerns that the chaotic scuffle between federal immigration agents — some of them masked — and the mayor of Newark and three members of Congress might not sit well with the New Jersey public, they certainly didn’t show it during the May 21 candidate debate.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s arrest at the hands of Homeland Security agents outside Delaney Hall on Friday night was pure gold in terms of political theater.

After listening to the three Republican candidates for governor squabble, I was struck by how far the rhetoric drifted away from President Ronald Reagan’s farewell remarks on immigration.

If Democrat Josh Gottheimer got to go toe-to-toe in a boxing ring in a campaign ad with Donald Trump, then why didn’t he just deck him?

Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka came to the brink of calling Rep. Mikie Sherrill a racist after she suggested that improving literacy among third graders was the key to closing the alarming disparities between Black and White residents in New Jersey.

The gloves are now coming off in a race that has largely proceeded cordially from candidate forum to debate through much of the early going in a packed, six-candidate race for the June 10 primary.

Restoring the annual cost-of-living increases for New Jersey’s public-sector retirees has been the subject of bold promises by some of the candidates for governor.

“Affordability” is the rallying cry of both major political parties this year. How will the tariffs and rising electric bills impact the June 10 primary?

This primary represents the NJEA’s chance to grab the ultimate political prize: the most powerful governor’s seat in the nation. It’s an aggressive push for the union to hold enormous sway over the state’s political and educational agendas. No longer would an army of lobbyists be needed to prowl outside the governor’s office door — if Sean Spiller wins, the NJEA would have one of its own behind the desk.

Rep. MIkie Sherrill committed to making a break from the tired ways of Trenton — implying that, if elected, she would not be a successor to the two-term era of Gov. Phil Murphy — without committing to many specifics.

It seems as if the primary contests for New Jersey governor have been going on forever. Here’s why.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer is trying to break from the pack of Democratic candidates by offering a bold plan: a promise to cut property taxes by as much as 15%.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is challenging the traditional suburban strategy employed by previous Democratic candidates, arguing that voters are looking for a leader who is willing to take a stand on issues like immigration and universal healthcare.

The campaign for governor highlights the challenges Democrats face as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk chainsaw political norms and parts of the federal government daily.

President Donald Trump’s shadow has been cast over much of the New Jersey governor’s race. His surprising showing in New Jersey in November — when he lost by just five percentage points to former Vice President Kamala Harris in a blue state that he twice lost by double-digit margins — suddenly changed the calculus for 2025.

Editorials:

Here are our impressions of the leading Republican candidates for New Jersey governor.

Here are our impressions of the leading Democratic candidates for New Jersey governor.

In summary CalMatters found dozens of examples of previously vetoed legislation returning in subsequent years. A twice-killed bill about driverless trucks exemplifies why.

The bill was dead. Twice dead, in fact: Two times in the past two years, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation to ban California companies from deploying driverless trucks.

Yet lawmakers have resurrected the idea and inserted it into a new bill — with the Teamsters union hoping the third time will be the charm.

There’s no indication Newsom has changed his mind. Still, Democratic Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, representing the Davis area, said she brought the autonomous trucking bill back because it’s good policy aimed at “protecting our public safety and our jobs.” She said it has nothing to do with the Teamsters’ large donations to lawmakers.

Assembly Bill 33 is an example of a phenomenon in the California Legislature: Even when a bill dies one year, and even if a governor kills it, there’s a strong likelihood it will return, especially if big money interests like labor unions and business groups want it signed into law.

A CalMatters analysis using the Digital Democracy database that tracks the more than 2,000 bills introduced this year found at least 80 measures that are similar – some identical – to legislation that Newsom or other governors have vetoed in previous years. Around a quarter of the resurrected bills had support from prominent labor groups; an almost equal number were backed by business.

CalMatters relied on the Legislature’s bill analyses to determine whether a measure had been vetoed before. If a previous veto was not noted in the bill analysis it wouldn’t show up, meaning the figure is likely an undercount. The analysis didn’t tally the dozens of other resurrected bills pending in the Legislature this year that already died before reaching the governor’s desk.

The previously vetoed bills tackle issues large and small including dangerous cigarette lighters, prevailing wage, jury duty for probation officers, colorectal cancer screenings, reproductive health care access, groundwater use at duck-hunting clubs, statewide guaranteed income, newspaper ads and environmental, labor and social justice measures.

The number of failed bills returning year after year helps fuel one of the Legislature’s most troubling issues. The massive number of bills introduced each year contributes to lawmakers rushing through the democratic process and fosters a culture of secrecy at the Capitol. As CalMatters reported, lawmakers routinely silence members of the public during hearings in order to jam through the huge volume of bills. Lawmakers also regularly make their decisions behind closed doors, in part because there is so little time to debate their hundreds of bills in public.

Experts say that doesn’t necessarily mean bills shouldn’t come back after failing. Some good ideas take time to gain political support. Alex Vassar, a legislative historian at the California State Library, noted that it took decades of failed legislation to pass laws that eventually built the state’s highway system and that gave women the right to vote.

“You can keep an issue on the front of the public’s mind, keep it alive in Sacramento, by using the vehicle of the bill to advance conversations happening outside the capital,” said Thad Kousser, a former California legislative staffer who’s now a political science professor at UC San Diego. “Sometimes, it’s part of a longer-term strategy to move policy forward.”

‘Not here to serve the lobbyists’

The Teamsters union is a major funder in the California statehouse, contributing at least $2.7 million to lawmakers’ campaigns since 2015. Aguiar-Curry received at least $15,950 in campaign cash from the Teamsters and its affiliate unions in that time, according to the Digital Democracy database.

But she said that didn’t influence her decision to try again on autonomous trucking.

“I’m not here to serve the lobbyists,” she said.

Aguiar-Curry said she hopes that tweaks she made to the latest legislation could appeal to Newsom, who has tended to be friendlier to Big Tech companies than legislators are to big labor. Newsom has reportedly given CEOs of major companies cellphones with a direct line to him.

The latest proposal would prohibit driverless trucks from delivering commercial goods directly to a residence or to a business, instead of barring all driverless trucks over 10,001 pounds as in previous legislation. Newsom’s press office declined to do an on-the-record interview for this story.

Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, representing the 4th California Assembly District, speaks at a protest led by The Teamsters calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would require a human operator in all autonomous vehicles at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Sept. 19, 2023. Photo by Fred Greaves for Cal Matters

“The governor’s veto messages speak for themselves,” his spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, said in an email. “And our office does not typically comment on pending legislation.”

Citing polling that shows Californians are leery of fully autonomous trucks, supporters say that if Newsom vetoes it again, they’ll just keep bringing it back until he signs it – or until the next governor does.

“We’re right on this issue,” said Peter Finn, the Western region vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. “The only person that’s wrong on this issue is the governor, and just because one person is choosing Big Tech over people and drivers doesn’t mean we should stop pursuing this issue.”

This year’s bill easily passed the Assembly floor on Thursday with only a handful of Republicans voting “no.”

Doctors again fight private equity

Business groups, meanwhile, are pushing at least 20 other bills that Newsom or other governors have vetoed.

A prominent example is Senate Bill 351, co-sponsored by the California Medical Association, which lobbies on behalf of the state’s physicians. The organization wants to regulate private equity groups and hedge funds when they try to buy medical and dental practices.

Last year’s legislation sought to give the California attorney general power to block the sale of health care companies to for-profit investors.

In vetoing the measure, Newsom said it wasn’t necessary. This year’s bill doesn’t go as far, but it contains nearly identical language that would prohibit investors from “interfering with the professional judgment of physicians or dentists in making health care decisions,” according to the bill’s analysis. The measure also would allow the attorney general to sue if an investment firm violates the rules.

“Private equity firms are gaining influence in our health care system, leading to rising costs and undermining the quality of care,” Erin Mellon, a spokesperson for the medical association, said in an email.

CMA has given at least $3.5 million to legislators since 2015, according to Digital Democracy. The doctors lobby also has donated at least $9,500 to this year’s author, freshman Democratic Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, the former mayor of West Sacramento.

Cabaldon said in an interview that he introduced the bill because it’s about “taking care of the patients.”

“Doctors and other health care providers,” he said, “are leaving their practices, or in some cases, leaving the industry altogether, because their ability to practice as clinicians and deliver the best possible care has been under threat by overly aggressive private equity operators who are putting the profits first.”

Cabaldon’s proposal passed the Senate last week with Republican opposition.

Lawmakers bring back passion topics

While wealthy groups push for their favored bills to come back, other pieces of legislation return simply because a lawmaker is passionate about the subject matter.

That’s why Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher, who represents the Chico area, reintroduced a bill Newsom vetoed last year that would have given families legal authority to visit loved ones in health care facilities during pandemics. Gallagher said he hated not being able to visit his dying aunt during the Covid-19 outbreak.

“It’s wrong, man, especially if it’s a loved one,” he said.

Newsom vetoed the first measure, saying that California’s pandemic visitation policies struck the right balance, and he was concerned Gallagher’s bill would “result in confusion and create different access to patients.”

Gallagher’s newest version of the bill didn’t get a hearing this year.

For Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Republican representing the Palmdale area, it bothers him that victims of the 2020 Bobcat Fire in his district have to pay state taxes on settlement payments they received from the power company whose lines started the fire.

“It’s brutal,” he said. “I mean, ‘Here’s your money to try to restore yourself, but, oh, by the way, you can’t have it all. We want some of it back.’ … It’s a second kick in the mouth.”

It’s why he reintroduced a settlement tax relief bill this year after Newsom vetoed it last year along with a number of other similar bills.

Lackey said he hopes his latest bill is unnecessary. Newsom noted in his veto message that the settlement tax provisions “should be included as part of the annual budget process.” Newsom’s proposed budget this year includes tax breaks for some disaster settlements. Lackey hopes that will include the Bobcat Fire.

Social justice bills come back

Other previously vetoed bills seek to address social justice issues that are important to lawmakers. They include proposals to create anti-discrimination awareness campaigns, putting non-English language accent marks on government forms and diversity audits for gubernatorial appointees. Newsom has vetoed “substantially similar” diversity audit bills six consecutive times.

Democratic Assemblymember James Ramos, representing the San Bernardino area, is the Legislature’s first Native American member. He believes that California’s first peoples have been silenced and marginalized for too long.

It’s why he’s authored two bills that have been previously vetoed. One would remove requirements from school administrators to approve the cultural regalia students wear at graduations. Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill, saying “principals and democratically elected school boards” should decide what’s appropriate to wear. Another previously vetoed Ramos bill seeks to expand tribal police forces. He’s also a co-author of a previously vetoed measure seeking to provide resources to locate missing Indigenous people.

Ramos said he applauds Newsom for doing more than other governors have to apologize for the historic harms done to Native people, but more work needs to be done.

“When the state became a state, they did not include the voices of California’s first people,” he said. “So these bills do a lot more than other bills in the Legislature. These bills educate, and they move forward for reckoning and atonement.”

Should Newsom decide to veto Ramos’ bills again – or any of the others he or other governors have previously killed – it’s unlikely lawmakers will push back.

As CalMatters reported, nearly all of the 189 bills Newsom vetoed last year had support from more than two-thirds of lawmakers — a threshold large enough to override the governor’s veto.

But that almost never happens. The last time the Legislature overrode a governor’s veto was in 1979 on a bill that banned banks from selling insurance.

Digital Democracy’s data analysis intern, Luke Fanguna, contributed to this story.

The Fox News host will need to appeal to a much wider base if he wants to pull a Schwarzenegger. So far, he’s doing the opposite.

By Adam Lashinsky Editor-at-large

By Adam Lashinsky Published Apr. 28, 2025 • 6:00am

Steve Hilton, the unlikeliest of Republican candidates for governor of California, was just getting warmed up. The sun had broken through the clouds last week in Huntington Beach, and Hilton had begun an extended riff on how voters often swing dramatically by choosing leaders who are wildly different from their predecessors. Think: George W. Bush to Barack Obama, and Obama to Donald Trump. That led to Hilton noting the contrast between his own bald pate and the rather impressive mop atop the head of his favorite foil, Gavin Newsom. “I think going the other direction is a pretty good idea,” he said to general applause and more than a few anticipatory chuckles. “I think we need a governor with less hair.” It took me the length of a short flight to cross a vast cultural chasm when I traveled last week from deep-blue San Francisco to blood-red Orange County to watch Hilton, a Fox News personality and former political operative in the United Kingdom, launch his bid for governor. By mid-morning on Tuesday, I found myself sitting on the concrete steps of a makeshift amphitheater next to Huntington Beach’s town pier, surrounded by people in MAGA hats and Jesus-themed T-shirts. I had come hoping to answer a straightforward question: Would middle-of-the-road, Trump-loathing Californians like me, who almost always vote Democratic but would gladly entertain the idea of a centrist in the mold of Arnold Schwarzenegger, support someone like Hilton? Having never met Hilton nor seen him on Fox News, where he was a host and still appears, I was intrigued. A 55-year-old Briton who has been a citizen of the U.S. for all of four years, Hilton has a reputation in state political circles for being whip-smart and engaging. As The Standard’s Josh Koehn reported in February, he has a detailed, right-leaning policy agenda ranging from affordable housing to “creating a new timber and logging industry to reduce wildfires.” And he thinks he could be the first Republican governor since Schwarzenegger was reelected in 2006, because Californians are so fed up with Democrats — particularly Kamala Harris, a potential opponent whom Hilton would love to face. Judging strictly by Hilton’s performance Tuesday, I’d say he’s off to a bad start — at least by my metric of his ability to win over non-Republicans. He selected Huntington Beach for his opening-day rally because of its recent success in flipping its City Council from a Democratic majority to a Republican-only power base. It’s the kind of place, in short, that taunted the state into suing it over its housing policies and proudly declares itself not a sanctuary city. Hilton’s campaign features a California-appropriate palette of golden yellow and pale blue, and a cheeky slogan, “Make California Golden Again.” It’s as if he’s suggesting MAGA adjacency rather than the fully caffeinated version.

And yet, a Republican hoping to woo Democrats by launching in Huntington Beach is a turnoff. It’d be like a Democrat trying to peel off Trump voters by starting on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. If nothing else, Hilton exudes confidence. “This is day one of a 15-month campaign,” he told me in an interview after the rally. “I’m just at the beginning of what I know will be a very high-energy, highly positive campaign to show that change is possible.” Implication: First win the base, then win the people who need convincing. Hilton knows politics. He was an adviser to David Cameron, the Tory prime minister of the United Kingdom. Though Hilton was educated at Oxford University, his background isn’t posh: His parents emigrated from Hungary in the 1950s, and his upbringing was working class. Stylistically, he’s a convincing speaker: glib, funny, smooth, and camera-ready. At the same time, his rambling, rally-style chatter mimics the current president, with repetitive put-downs that won’t convince anyone that he’s just a smart, positive guy trying to get things done. He uses the Fox News-approved adjective “Democrat” rather than “Democratic,” referring to Huntington Beach, for instance, as a former “Democrat-run city.” It’s a tick the MAGA faithful love — and one that annoys me like a tiny pebble in my shoe. And although Hilton is cerebral in a way our 45th and 47th president is not, the Brit is equally capable of vulgarity. After an edgy bit on California’s high-speed rail debacle, he metaphorically broadened the argument. “It is time to stop the Democrats’ bullshit train,” he shouted gleefully. I found myself wishing this clearly skilled orator had written and delivered a well-crafted speech, the kind he used to write for the British prime minister, instead of the rile-’em-up cant the right-wing masses, trained by Trump, obviously prefer. Hilton was preceded onstage by a warmup ensemble of local politicians, Southern California pastors, and assorted gadflies. The most establishment support he mustered was a livestreamed chitchat with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio and mostly rambled about himself. In our 10-minute chat after the crowd had dispersed, Hilton told me he thinks his promise to improve the business climate in California will have broad appeal. He lamented that even the state’s industry-leading companies are investing outside of it. “You have a company like Nvidia, a California company, investing in Texas and Arizona, because it’s impossible to build anything in California,” he said. When I pointed out that some of the world’s most important AI companies — OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, not to mention Sierra, the well-funded startup recently joined by his wife, Rachel Whetstone, the former chief communications officer of Netflix — are in San Francisco, Hilton produced a Kamala-worthy word salad.

“I’m incredibly proud that California is leading the next wave of technological innovation with AI,” he said. “We’ve got to keep that going. But here’s the way to think about it. You have incredible economic success and innovation still going on, thanks to our innovation economy in the private sector, despite the government, despite the regulations, and so on. But this new wave of innovation, even more than the previous wave of technological innovation, is very light on jobs. It doesn’t employ that many people.” It’s a fair, if dated, point. It has been well understood for years that the tech industry hasn’t come close to dominating U.S. employment, despite its value creation, the way the auto sector did two generations ago. Hilton’s solutions revolve around making it easier to do business in California and reducing the power of public-sector unions, which he sees as accounting for the twin sins of runaway governmental spending and overregulation. These are laudable goals I’d support — particularly if I thought Hilton had a chance of prevailing in a race dominated by Democrats who are lined up behind the unions. He said he’s “pro worker” and wants to work with unions to build more housing, for example, which will create jobs. He said he’s well suited to reaching across the aisle, having done so in the U.K. when Cameron’s government shared power with the centrist Liberal Democrats. His Liberal Democratic counterpart at the time, Polly Mackenzie, validated Hilton’s advocacy for Cameron’s outreach to her party. “There’s truth to him being open-minded,” she told me by phone a few days after the rally. She mentioned a line Hilton wrote for a Cameron speech of his “big, open, and comprehensive offer” to the other party. “It was authentic,” she said. I’m not convinced the British experience of the 2000s translates to contemporary U.S. polarization. Still, on their merits, many of Hilton’s policies are appealing. For instance, though he puts them in more strident terms, his policies on homelessness aren’t that different from San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s. Both focus on approaching homelessness holistically, offering a range of housing options and a less permissive policy toward drug use. In contrast to Lurie, who avoids name-calling that will antagonize opponents, Hilton condemns a “housing first” approach that emphasizes permanent housing and calls out the “homelessness industrial complex” in San Francisco, whose budgets Lurie is very likely about to trim. “Steve’s a centrist,” said Edward Ring, a water and energy analyst with the California Policy Center who cowrote Hilton’s policy papers as well as his new book that serves as a campaign manifesto, “Califailure: Reversing the Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State.” “He’s really searching for solutions that will fix some of the things that have gone haywire in California.” As I flew home, retracing California’s version of the Mason-Dixon Line, I found myself believing Hilton’s sincerity about wanting commonsense solutions but doubting his ability to transcend the unctuous Trumpist messaging and behavior he has embraced. Based on many recent conversations with even liberal Democratic friends, I don’t doubt for a moment that the right kind of Republican could prevail over the wrong kind of Democrat in the non-presidential-year election in 2026. But is Hilton that candidate? At first blush, I would say that my answer is no. But he has a year and change to convince me and millions of other California voters that he offers more than Trumpism with a British accent.

Parsippany, NJ CNN —

Mikie Sherrill, a four-term Democratic congresswoman, and former Republican state Rep. Jack Ciattarelli have won their parties’ nominations for New Jersey governor.

Tuesday’s results set the stage for one of this year’s two potentially competitive gubernatorial races, along with Virginia, that will serve as a key barometer of President Donald Trump’s job performance and a gauge of the energy in both parties ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Already, the president has been a central figure in both candidates’ campaigns.

Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, bested five other candidates who all ran as fighters who would push back on the chaos of Washington. Ciattarelli, who narrowly lost a 2021 bid for governor, won the nomination again with the help of Trump’s endorsement.

Turnout in both races broke records for New Jersey’s gubernatorial primaries.

Historic trends could favor Democrats in November. New Jersey voters have consistently picked the gubernatorial candidate from the party out of power in Washington in recent decades with one exception – incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was re-elected in 2021, one year after Joe Biden won the presidency. Murphy is term-limited from seeking another term.

At the same time, New Jersey is among the states that shifted to the right during the 2024 general election. Vice President Kamala Harris won the state by just six percentage points in 2024, four years after Biden won the state by nearly 16 points.

Sherrill bests a crowded Democratic field

New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill speaks during the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial primary debate at NJ PBS Studios on May 12 in Newark, New Jersey. Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media/Pool/AP

Running against Trump’s policies is familiar territory for Sherrill, who has been seen as a rising star in the party ever since she won a longtime GOP seat during the president’s first term in office.

Before launching her first congressional campaign in 2017, Sherrill spent nearly a decade in the Navy and briefly worked as a federal prosecutor. The political novice was among dozens of Democrats, many of them women, who ran on their records of public service and national security experience to harness anti-Trump sentiment. Sherrill defeated her opponent, Republican state Assemblyman Jay Webber, by nearly 15 points.

Though she was part of the same freshman class as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other liberal members of “The Squad,” Sherrill aligned herself with a moderate group of newly elected Democrats who had also ousted Republican lawmakers. She joined the centrist New Democrat and conservative Blue Dog coalitions in the Democratic caucus, and was part of block of Democrats with national security and military experience who helped generate broad support for Trump’s first impeachment.

Sherrill’s platform centered on lowering costs for New Jersey voters and portraying herself as a fighter who would take on Trump.

“A state like this is not going to be led by a Trump lackey like Jack Ciattarelli,” Sherrill said. “I am ready to shake up the status quo and Jack is the status quo. He’s not changed. He’s a re-run. He’s a ghost of elections past. And I have fought for new opportunities my entire life.”

Sherrill was seen as a front-runner in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s six-candidate Democratic primary.

The other Democratic candidates were Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, former state Senate president Steve Sweeney, New Jersey Education Association president Sean Spiller and Rep. Josh Gottheimer.

Her opponents highlighted donations she received from the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s political action committee during her congressional runs and her endorsements from county Democratic committees.

Ciattarelli will count on Trump’s support

Jack Ciattarelli speaks at the New Jersey Republican gubernatorial primary debate at NJ PBS Studios on May 7 in Newark, New Jersey. Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media/Pool/AP

Whether Ciattarelli can be successful in November will likely depend on his ability to turn out voters loyal to Trump while also expanding support with people who have not embraced the president and his agenda.

“Along the way, we also made a strong statement of what our New Jersey Republican Party stands for, a party open to anyone and everyone who’s willing to work hard and play by the rules, a party of Jersey values and common sense policies, a party that believes our best days are ahead of us, if we have the courage to think big and act boldly,” Ciattarelli told his supporters Tuesday night.

Ciattarelli backers waved signs declaring “It’s Time!” and “Mikie Made Millions,” a reference to criticism Sherrill has received over her stock trading while in Congress. The GOP nominee thanked supporters and the state’s “most well-known part-time” resident, Trump.

Support for Trump was a point of contention in advertisements and during feisty debates. Ciattarelli and conservative radio host Bill Spadea repeatedly sparred over their allegiance to the president, seizing on past criticisms they had each leveled at Trump at various points in their long record of public commentary.

“Bill Spadea attacks Donald Trump,” intoned one ad from Ciattarelli, seizing on soundbites of Spadea suggesting Trump shouldn’t run in 2024. “Loyalty matters to President Trump,” Spadea said in one of his ads, replaying comments from Ciattarelli criticizing Trump amid his rise during the 2016 campaign.

Jon Bramnick, a more moderate candidate, didn’t compete for Trump’s endorsement the same way. He remarked at a February debate: “Do you think the people of New Jersey want the debate to be who loves Donald Trump the most, or who loves New Jersey the most?”

Trump endorsed Ciattarelli in a social media post with about a month left in the race. “Jack, who after getting to know and understand MAGA, has gone ALL IN, and is now 100% (PLUS!),” Trump wrote. “As your next Governor, Jack Ciattarelli will work closely with me and the Trump Administration to advance our America First Agenda.”

Ciattarelli on Tuesday said that his new Democratic opponent would be hyper-focused on attacking the president.

“Trust me, if this campaign were a drinking game and you took a shot every time Mikie Sherrill says Trump, you’re gonna be drunk off your ass every day,” he said.