Becerra vs. Hilton: California's 2026 Governor Race, LA Mayor Primary & CA-48 Results

[00:00:00] Becerra vs. Hilton, Pratt vs. Bass, and Prop 50 is not going the way Democrats are hoping. We're going to cover all of that and more of the election results from last night. We're going to break it all down for the primary election on this episode of California Underground starting right now.

[00:00:34] What's going on, everybody? Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the California Underground. I am your host, Phil. We have a lot to get to tonight in terms of the primary election results. First off, let me bring in my trusted co-host, the best of fastest researcher in the West, Camille. How are you doing tonight? We got a lot to break down. You're excited for election results. Yeah, I'm really excited for this episode. Like, this is fun. This is where we get to just kind of like really chat about our opinions, you know?

[00:01:00] Yeah, there's a lot of stuff we can nerd out about last night. I want to thank NBC for having me on last night to do their election result coverage, NBC7. They've been very nice and having me on a lot recently. So, yeah, it was fun. We were able to report on it live as the results are coming in and we were watching. So I'm pretty talked up about primaries, but it's exciting 24 hours later to see where the numbers have landed and where they are. Spoiler alert, they haven't really changed that much.

[00:01:31] Contrary to what you've seen maybe on X or maybe on Instagram, people are trying to rage bait you and get you all crazy. Numbers haven't changed that much. So there's some people out there who have said there's been these big dumps of mail ballots and all of a sudden they're trying to get Hilton out and dropping them for Steyer. And the truth is you have to look at reputable sources. I'm going to say this, that you have to look at reputable sources.

[00:01:59] Now, I'm sure there's plenty of people who are going to say, well, what's a reputable source, Phil? Decision Desk is one. That's what I was looking at last night. They have up to the minute information. You can look at the Secretary of State website right there. You can look at your registrar of voters. You can go to your county registrar of voters and they're going to report what they're seeing. So if you're in L.A., you can go to the Los Angeles registrar of voters. They usually publish their election results. They do. So look at the reputable sources.

[00:02:26] Don't look at some guy who's just trying to rage bait you and gain followers. Eric Doherty. On X. So because that's what everyone's going to be doing. Everyone is going to be, excuse my language, they're all going to be trying to crap on California. They're all going to jump on the bandwagon of crapping on California and saying, oh, the elections are rigged and it's mail-in ballots. And they're all cheating and there's stuff in the box and stuff like that.

[00:02:54] So everyone just, and that to me is so, that gets me so angry. And I'm going to, let's just start off the episode with this. It gets me so upset because these are a lot of people who don't even live in California and they're crapping on California. Like I heard Tim Poole did his episode this morning about California and his whole first five minutes was talking about how, oh, California that, you know, they're known for cheating. They're known for cheating and rigging. That's all that, you know, so they're a crap hole of elections and they're the worst.

[00:03:23] And you're just talking down the electorate to basically make people feel like there's no way to change their state. So all those people who don't live in California and want to crap on California on our elections, don't. Here's my simple advice. Don't do that. If you don't live here in California and you want to crap on California's election system, just don't.

[00:03:47] And you have a big platform because it really demoralizes people who want to go out and cheat. And you and I, Camille, I'm sure you see it a lot in your comments and DMs. I see it all the time. I posted something this morning about just a quick two minute primary election. And it was filled with comments of people talking about rigging and cheating and all of this stuff.

[00:04:12] And it just makes you feel like you've demoralized the population where they believe they can't make any meaningful change here in California. And that gets us upset because you can make meaningful change in California. And I think last night showed that if you were a California Republican and you were looking for good news, there was a lot of good news last night. And if you were a California Democrat, there was not a lot of good news for you last night.

[00:04:35] So to all those people who are not Californians, who are just looking to get clicks and views and whatever and repost and all that stuff, and you don't live here in California and you just want to crap on California, just shut up. Nobody needs to hear from you and nobody needs to hear your fear mongering or your conspiracy theories. Rant over. What are your thoughts? I know you have thoughts on this.

[00:04:57] I don't want to rage for time purposes, but yeah, I know we're going to get into a lot of that of what the proof in, you know, the proof is in the pudding. The proof is in the results. And yes, I do like what you said at the beginning of, you know, when you read these rage bait posts and you're like, oh, I trust this source because they have posted X, Y, and Z before. Please just go to the source. And again, the source is the Secretary of State as well as the county registrar offices.

[00:05:25] And I understand that you cannot open up 58 county where it's like nobody has time for that. But check your county and maybe a few local counties because like for me personally, I am in a congressional district that is part of Orange County and mostly L.A. County. So I have had both of those windows open and been refreshing it for updates. And that is the source. News is not necessarily the source because news tends to have an opinion.

[00:05:53] And so they might say, oh, this is the current outcome and that might be accurate. But then they're going to give an opinion on that view. You know, they're going to say, but da, da, da, da, da, it could change. And, you know, again, they usually have a party bias in their opinions. And so they're going to try to, oh, this is looking great for the Democrats and bad for the Republicans. Oh, this is looking great for the Republicans and bad for the Democrats.

[00:06:18] And so you have to weed out the opinion from the fact and check the fact. And the source, the source is the source, you guys. If they say the White House did X, Y, and Z, what did the White House actually say about that? You know, like, it's just, and yeah, and what you said, it's so discouraging for us when we see people saying, I'm not going to vote in California anymore. There's just no point. Nothing changes. Well, guess what? A few things did change, and we're going to get into that.

[00:06:48] So I'll stop my opinions now. All right. With that, I wanted to get that off my chest because we were sending stuff back and forth. You sent me something about Polymarket and this Eric Doherty guy, and I'm just like, we're here to break numbers down for you. So we're here to cut through and give you the numbers and our actual factual opinions about what is going on. So let's start with probably the most important that everybody is looking at. Let me pull this up.

[00:07:17] Pull this up. This is Decision Desk. So I'm a fan of Decision Desk. This is what I was using yesterday on NBC. This is the 2026 California governor. This is what we're all looking at. These are the numbers as of right now. So this has shown that it's 27.57. It's still basically the same as of yesterday. We're still waiting for some dumps here and there.

[00:07:46] But as of June 3rd, today is June 3rd, 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, which would be as of two minutes ago, these are the numbers. So nothing's changed. There wasn't some huge swing. There wasn't some huge mail-in dump. Steve Hilton is winning the state. And let me say that again. A Republican is winning the state by two percentage points. Emphasis on the state.

[00:08:15] The whole state. Not just like, oh, he's winning in red counties. He is winning the state. So by two points, it's kind of been stuck this way ever since. It's been 27, 28. Tom Steyer actually looks like he's losing ground as of last night or this morning. I saw it was 20%. So we have 57.98% has been reported. If there's any other, you want to look at other candidates. So who did not do well?

[00:08:45] Chad Bianco, I'm just going to say, I know there's a lot of people. I'm sorry. Chad Bianco? I think, I know there's a lot of people who love Chad Bianco who listen to the show. There's a lot of people who are big fans. We were graciously invited to Chad Bianco's kickoff party to cover it. He really faded towards the end. And it almost kind of seems like it doesn't really make a big difference now with Steve Hilton kind of doing as well as he is.

[00:09:15] Probably maybe should have dropped out, but there's a lot of Chad Bianco supporters who didn't want him to drop out. Katie Porter barely did not even break 5%. So Katie Porter, Ms. Mashed Potatoes on head. Bye, bye, Ms. American Pie. I mean, what? She's gone. So this makes how many races? Senate race and this. Now she's lost. And not, like not even close. Like she just got blown out.

[00:09:44] I think the, well, we can get into our opinions about why everyone landed the way they did. Matt Mahan, 4%. He was the first one to concede last night pretty quickly, almost like right after 8 o'clock. He was like, yeah. All right. Thanks, guys. I'll see you in the next one. He's probably going to take all his tech money and save it for the next gubernatorial race he has. Yeah, he's young. He's good. He's very young. He's got a lot of opportunity left. I think he's like young 40.

[00:10:09] So Eric Swalwell got 18,000 votes. Just think of that. People check the box for a man who is being investigated and under criminal investigation for sexual assault. 18,000, almost 20,000 people voted for Eric Swalwell. Point three. Well, we know those people do not pay attention to the news. I mean, he was still on the ballot because he dropped out or not dropped out, but suspended

[00:10:37] his campaign within like it was already too late to remove his name from the ballot. But clearly those people either really loved him or just had no idea he wasn't even a ballot candidate. 18,000 people just have not paid attention and they just went in. And Tom Woodward, guest of the show, got 5,900. Leo Zaki, 10,000 votes. Pretty incredible showing for him.

[00:11:05] Barack, they don't show his full name. He changed his name legally to Barack D. Obama Shaw. He got 11,000. This was a running joke on set last night, NBC, of how many votes did Barack Obama get? He got 11,000. And that's basically the whole gist of it. Everybody else after this is just way down there. So the numbers I really want to get into, if you look at this map, we're really going to be wonky and get into the numbers here again, because we want to show you the numbers.

[00:11:35] We don't want to just show you tweets and all these conspiracy theories. This was something that I saw that was really, really interesting last night. I brought it up on NBC, is how much Hilton was running up the numbers in the counties that he was winning. So let's take a look at some of these redder counties. Okay. So this was Inyo County. He won by 12 points or he's winning by 12 points. Kern County, 36 to 22.

[00:12:05] So what is that? That's 14 points. He's up by 14 points. You just go through these counties, these dark red counties, and you see where he's really racking up a lot of these votes. And in campaigns and elections, this is the strategy. You have to win and start racking up votes in strong areas where your voters are, if you're going to win.

[00:12:28] And this is probably why we're seeing the numbers that we are for Steve Hilton and why he's leading the state is because of the fact that he ran up his numbers. Now, Bianco is only ahead in two out of all these counties. Lassen County by 10 points and Riverside County, which not surprising that he is doing well in Riverside County. But that's it. Like that's all you see for Bianco.

[00:12:58] So Hilton is winning in San Diego? As of right now, yes. Hilton is up in San Diego by what is that? So there's eight points? Yeah, eight points. Yeah. So even in San Diego, he's up. And then let's see. Can you break down really quickly what exactly points mean? Yeah. Sorry. I'm saying points as in percentage points.

[00:13:25] So if you look at this one, like Shasta County, Hilton is at 41.45%. Bianco is behind him at 22. So I'm saying it's a plus. What is that? Plus 19. Okay. Yeah. Plus 19 points. So yeah, you can just go up and down the state. Hilton did really well. Bacera. Bacera, some of the counties you can see Bacera won. Alameda, you know, 29.

[00:13:53] He's barely beating Tom Steyer. Tom, Tom Steyer needed to do well in these races or in these counties, like right here in Alameda County. If he was going for the progressive votes, he needed to do really well here. And Bacera's beating him by two points. Santa Clara, Bacera's beating, Hilton's beating Steyer in Santa Clara. San Mateo, Bacera and Hilton.

[00:14:19] And Steyer just, if he, if Steyer can't beat Hilton in these deep blue counties like this, he doesn't have a really good shot of cracking the top two. Yeah, I would just want to add really quickly. Yeah, go ahead. Because obviously Democrats are in the second and third place. And so there is that, okay, we'll add up their percentage because those people are going to likely then vote for the Democrat come the general. Understandable.

[00:14:47] But you have to recognize whether or not you wanted Steve Hilton or voted for him. But if you are a more Republican leaning person, Steve Hilton has run an excellent campaign. I mean, he has really gotten out there every day, every county, all over California, getting his name out, talking to people. You know, he has a very large team and he's got obviously a lot of supporters.

[00:15:17] And I think his track record has proven that he's not going anywhere and he's going to campaign hard these next five months. Like he's really going to probably in a lot of these counties where he did lesser, he's probably really going to try to get his name out. And so don't discount him yet. Like don't add up the percentages of the two Democrats and say, well, we're still going to lose. And, you know, because don't give up hope, you guys, and show up for the general. I mean, what we just already did our rant.

[00:15:44] The only vote that's not going to count is the one you don't cast, you know, or the one anybody doesn't cast. But that's the only vote that won't count. And so your vote is going to count. General is going to be whatever the date is. I don't know. November 2nd, November 3rd, somewhere that first Tuesday of November, five months. No, excellent point. And, you know, the general is a whole different beast because, yeah, you can say Democrats

[00:16:12] are going to come home and vote for whoever they are. And yeah, there'll be plenty of they're going to attach Trump to Hilton from here until November. For sure. It didn't seem to hurt Steve Hilton. Maybe it helped him with the primary. There's other races that the Trump endorsement or the Trump effect didn't really have any matter to it. But I guess the point is here.

[00:16:40] So the people who are freaking out about whether Tom Steyer can crack into the top two at this point, you have to look at different counties that would be indicative of where he needs to get votes. And this is why people way smarter than me at this stuff can predict who's winning a county and who's not going to win a county. Or they can project and say, OK, there's this many votes out based on the percentages we're seeing coming back.

[00:17:08] Like there's no there's no mathematical way for them to come back and get that many votes. It's just not possible. Here in Los Angeles, I think this is interesting that, again, Steyer is coming behind Hilton. Now, granted, it's not by a lot. But if you're Tom Steyer and you're going head to head with Becerra, you got to win some of these counties or at least be competitive with Becerra. And you're not.

[00:17:36] You're you're seven points behind here. You know, let's look up at here. You're not. This is showing how much math I do. Eight up here. Like you're just not keeping pace with Becerra, who's racking up votes. There are a couple of counties that went for him, surprisingly. Humboldt County. OK. Humboldt, I believe, is a big cannabis county. I think they grow a lot of cannabis up in Humboldt. Do with that what you will.

[00:18:06] But Steyer and Hilton. Hilton is just in the middle of all of it. Does that show that he has maybe a marketability or appeal to those kind of voters in the general? We're going to see how he positions himself going into the general now and how he pivots. It will be interesting to see Hilton versus Becerra one on one.

[00:18:31] Because I don't think from what I saw, Becerra is not a good debater. Being a lawyer, he's not very good at arguing. It seems odd that for a guy who brags about being an attorney and going to the Supreme Court and all this stuff, he doesn't seem to do really well in debates. I think Hilton's a little bit better at debates than Becerra. So watching those are going to be really interesting. How do you think they're going to stack up when they have to go head to head in debates?

[00:19:03] You know, I don't know. But like you said, Becerra is not necessarily the best at debating. And Hilton's very well spoken. But I want to remind everybody that there is kind of a possibility of Becerra being dragged into some corruption scandals, which we've discussed on previous podcasts. And a lot of information can come out. Oh, I was going to have you look at something before you clicked out of there. I'm going to bring it back up. And so who knows what's going to come out?

[00:19:31] I mean, like we know they're going to, you know, try to Steve Hilton is the Trump. He's a Trumper. He's, you know, MAGA. They're going to try to use that, of course. But I do wonder what dirt they're going to start presenting on Becerra in these next few months. What I wanted to ask real quick, if Katie Porter even placed in Orange County, which is, of course, where she was a Congress member. Um, no. Okay. Not in the top three, at least.

[00:19:58] I just would like to also quickly remind everyone of when she turned to the camera and said, why would I need any Trump supporters, ma'am? And kind of laughed about getting the Republican support. So there you go. Well, it seems to, well, there's your answer. Because you're not going to do very well. Um, so that's, that's the breakdown of the gubernatorial race.

[00:20:22] We're going to go into a couple other races, but before we do, um, thoughts from you, Camille, about this election going forward. Or, or I'll give you an alternative. What do you think went wrong for other candidates like a Matt Mahan or a Katie Porter or a Villaraigosa? Why were they unable to gain traction? Well, each one, I would say it's going to be an individual, uh, you know, opinion.

[00:20:51] And so like with Chad Bianco, like you said, he just kind of faltered at the end. Um, I, and Republicans were really calling for him to drop out and unite around Hilton. And so Hilton definitely had that support. And a lot of Republicans do, well, a lot of people, I shouldn't say Republicans, they do listen to what they see on social media. And so it's like, well, he's obviously like, and they, they might have that concern if they're on the fence between Bianco and Hilton and they're being told, we can't split this vote.

[00:21:19] We need to make sure one goes into the general. And the only way is if Chad Bianco drops out and everyone unites around, unites around Hilton. So there was definitely huge campaigns on social media about that. And, um, I was personally against him dropping out because I just thought there's, there's enough people that do love him. And he obviously in the end didn't end up hurting Hilton's chances, but, um, you know, I just, I feel like Republic, like the point of a primary is to give us a choice of candidates

[00:21:49] to send to the general and the majority spoke and it wasn't Bianco. Um, as far as real quick, just Mahan, Mahan and Porter, um, Porter, obviously we saw just, I mean that what I just mentioned with the reporter. And then of course people kept bringing up her mashed potatoes, um, which is where she allegedly dumped steaming hot potatoes over her now ex-husband at some point. And then the videos came out where she was screaming at the staffers.

[00:22:18] We all remember get out of my shot. That was probably the third shot heard around the world. And so, you know, that obviously just kind of like at that point people were done with her. And then she also, her only thing was, I'm a single mom. I'm a single mom. I push a grocery cart and drive a minivan. Like that was like literally her, her only, you know, I don't need Republicans. I don't need Trumpers. And I'm a single mom.

[00:22:42] And it's like, okay, okay, but, and then Mahan, again, I think it's just a lot of name recognition and experience. Like he's, while San Jose is a very large city, it's a very small city in the grand scheme of things. And that's not necessarily a ton of experience. And so like we talked about, he has plenty of opportunities in front of him. And he could potentially run for governor down the road, you know, 10, well, not 10 years,

[00:23:10] but 10, 12, 14, whatever, however many years, like there is that possibility we'll see him run for governor again, but he'll probably try to get into the state Senate at some point in Congress or something, you know, and get that experience and then come back. And so I don't need to go anywhere else. It's interesting that the mayors continue to not do well in California. Mayors just, you would think that mayors would have a better selling point to run the state

[00:23:40] of California. They've worked in the state. They've had to manage a budget. They've had to budgets, city council. They've worked with all that stuff. Um, they've, they basically have handled California issues on a microcosm, like a smaller scale in their city. How did they handle it? Um, but yeah, the mayors did not do well. Somebody asked a really interesting question. I'm going to put it back on the screen real quick. If Becerra and Hilton go to the runoff and by chance Becerra is indicted, does Hilton walk

[00:24:09] right into the governorship? Um, I think because I would have to double check this. I think if he's indicted, his name remains on the ballot because I think it's too late for anybody else to get into the race. So you're kind of stuck with a guy who's on the ballot, who's been indicted. Um, so there's another one. Let me pull this up. Somebody made a really good point.

[00:24:36] And, um, well, this is a great point from American Gazette. I saw this and it's like, tell them to do their part. Even if we lose, make the left earn it. Yeah. Well said. And, and I say this, that we, we say this on the program so much about elections and turning a state around doesn't happen overnight. It's not going to be, everybody wants it to go. We're going to flip it red overnight.

[00:25:05] It takes a long time to flip a state from one color to another, to be solidly red to solidly blue. It takes several election cycles. It takes different wins. And I think if nothing else, Brian Dolly, who ran against Gavin Newsom, did the best of any Republican gubernatorial candidate since Arnold Schwarzenegger against Gavin Newsom. He gained from John Cox. Now, does Steve Hilton do better than that?

[00:25:35] Even if he loses, does he bring it within five points? Imagine a Republican gubernatorial candidate bringing it within five points of the gubernatorial election. What is that signal to the rest of the state? What is that signal to the electorate? Which is this isn't completely sewn up. This isn't as solid blue. There are cracks in the armor. There are there's weaknesses here and people are changing their minds.

[00:26:02] And it's going to get really interesting now that we have Becerra and Hilton going up against each other. And looking forward. There's also going to be some propositions on the ballot, which we'll get in. I don't want to talk about them tonight as much, but I want to just kind of mention them. We have two big ballot measures coming up that are going to be a ton of money thrown at them and get people out to vote.

[00:26:26] One is the billionaire's tax and the other is voter ID, which I imagine will get a ton of Republicans or right-leaning independents and libertarians and all of that to come out and vote for voter ID. So that adds a whole nother element to this race of you have Hilton on the ballot and I have the down ballot races, your voter ID on the ballot. This is a huge election. I can't understand. Like I can't I don't think I can overstate this enough.

[00:26:54] Like for California, this might be one of the biggest consequential gubernatorial elections we've had. The most dramatic episode yet. The most dramatic yet. It could be the most dramatic. There's just a lot riding on the line for California. It kind of is. I mean, imagine a scenario, if you will. I'm just thinking out loud here. Imagine a scenario where voter ID passes in California. There's a real possibility it does.

[00:27:23] 80% of I think California 70 or 80% of Californians, independents, Democrats and Republicans of plurality or a majority believe voter ID should be enacted. So it's not cut and dry. A Republican governor gets within shooting distance of winning the gubernatorial house within five points. What does that send to the rest of the nation that you could get a Republican governor? Assuming Becerra wins. He's not that great of a candidate. He's kind of lackluster.

[00:27:52] He's kind of boring. We'll see how he does in his first four years. He'll probably just be Newsom 2.0, but less charming. Who knows? Maybe in 2030, next gubernatorial election. Now you really have a shot. So there's another ballot measure as well that I learned of today, which is called the safe Prop 13 ballot measure. Also going to be on the ballot, which restrengthens Prop 13 and basically makes it so if there's

[00:28:20] any backdoor efforts to try and knock down Prop 13, you can't do that. All tax increases have to be put to a two thirds vote. So we're making it very hard to increase taxes in California. A lot riding here in California. So any other final thoughts? Two final thoughts on this, which kind of aren't exactly this topic. But again, for those who are like, my vote doesn't matter. Voting doesn't matter. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.

[00:28:49] L.A. County shot down a tax raise. L.A. County. Los Angeles County shot down a tax raise. So that's huge. And then regarding money, throwing money at things, I think the reason that Tom Steyer is doing as well as he's doing is just because he threw so much money at his campaign, because he has it, that he was actually able to get his name out.

[00:29:14] You know, he could pay for all these news, radio, TV ads. Like he, you know, was able to get his name. He was able, he could afford to get his name everywhere. And so people often do just go with name recognition. Again, that's why Barack D. Obama probably got the votes that he did is because people showed up not necessarily knowing who they're going to vote for. And then they see that name and they think the, I didn't know the Obama was running, you know?

[00:29:43] And so they vote for him or they just don't really care. And they did a mail in ballot and they were like, oh, that's funny. I don't take voting seriously anyway. You know? But anyway, I do believe that's the only reason why Tom Steyer has done as well as he's done, because I don't think he ran the best campaign outside of getting his name out there. To your point down here in San Diego, it was last I checked, it was 58% to 42, 58% no on a second home tax in San Diego.

[00:30:12] So to echo your point, I think there is a strain of anti-new taxes happening here in California. In fact, a Public Policy Institute of California survey that just was released last month, May of 2026, showed that a majority of Californians when polled want smaller government and less taxes. I have one more point, because I don't think we were going to talk about this and I just want to mention it really quick.

[00:30:41] In 2022, Lance Christensen ran for superintendent of public education. And I think he was a great candidate. I think he ran a great campaign. And he did make an effort to get his name out there. And then you and I, of course, got to know him personally. We had him on the podcast and stuff, but we got to know him like in person. And he's a great man. He's a great man. Now, I don't know how everyone else's ballot looked, but I know that my ballot, he was

[00:31:07] literally at the very bottom, right below the judges section. And a lot of people don't pay attention to judges. They don't even know we vote for judges. They get there and they're like, I don't know. And they dismiss it. And so I believe that he didn't do as well as he should have just based on that alone. I could be wrong. But in this 2026 election, Sonia Shaw, who is on the board of education for Chino Valley

[00:31:36] public school district, and I'm probably saying that incorrectly, but she has actually like, I mean, okay, first of all, she went national based on a lot of things she did. And she was very controversial with some of the things that she established. People hated her. Tony Thurmond, who is the current superintendent of public education and ran for governor and lost, he went down and showed up at one of her school board meetings and tried to disrupt it. And she shut him down. Like, we have a code here.

[00:32:04] You don't get to behave like this. I can have you thrown out. I can have you removed. This is my space, not yours. So sit down and wait your turn, you know? And she blew everyone out of the water with like, I mean, again, winning the state. And now it's a top two, but she has done so well. And so, yes, your vote literally matters. I'm sorry, I'm going to overemphasize that.

[00:32:35] Like just, she's running the state. Look at all these counties that she's picking up. Like just, are the deep greenish blue hers? Are they? Yeah, the deep green. Barrera is the other one. Barrera, who's from San Diego. Let me put it this way. Barrera, who is the superintendent down here in San Diego, is not. Large district. Huge district. Large county. A lot of people. He is losing by seven points to Sonia Shaw.

[00:33:01] So, again, do with that what you will, but your vote does matter in these primaries. And that makes a big difference because it shows, it signals to the fundraisers and people who want to put money behind this, whether they are a viable candidate. And Sonia Shaw is running away with it. Okay. Next race that everybody is talking about and that the whole world is talking about has got to be the LA mayoral race. Um, so let's pull that up real quick.

[00:33:28] Uh, as of a couple minutes ago, this is from again, decision desk, 1 50 AM on June 30th, Eastern standard time. Karen Bass is locked in. She's going to go to a runoff. That was the big question. Just as a disclaimer in LA, the mayoral race is 50% plus one vote.

[00:33:54] So if you get 50% plus one vote, you don't have to go to a general election. You've won. Karen Bass fell short of that by 15 points or so. Spencer Pratt is hanging on in the second slot at basically 30%. Nithya Raman, uh, sputtered out 22%. You could make the argument her being in the race, open the lane for Spencer Pratt. Uh, sure.

[00:34:23] But you run the race that's there. You don't worry about, uh, you know, you can't make excuses now. Um, all right. There's some other people who are running Ray Chen Huang, who was actually running as a, uh, avowed democratic socialist. She was actually talking about being a democratic socialist. Uh, she did not really do that well. So this is the race as of right now. Karen Bass is going to be moving on. They're waiting to see who is going to face off against her. Spencer Pratt or Nithya Raman.

[00:34:53] My guess is it's definitely going to be Spencer Pratt as he holds on. Um, there's no like individual breakdown, unfortunately here because it's, it's not by like little areas. So here's the math here. And I was listening to John Fleischman's podcast this morning with Lance Christensen, who was on it as well this morning. And they were talking about the math of how Nithya Raman would have to overcome this.

[00:35:20] And mathematically it's almost impossible for her to do so because she has to overcome a seven point deficit. And not only does she have to overcome a seven point deficit, she has to start winning above what she's been winning. Again, coming back to this, there are certain percentages of votes that come in and you can start to gather how much of who's winning what. And if this is the breakdown and this is how many votes Spencer Pratt is getting, and this is how many votes Nithya Raman is getting.

[00:35:50] She's every time there's a vote dump, she's not getting a hundred percent. This isn't, you know, 2020 where Biden was taking a hundred percent of the mail-in ballots that were dumped at three o'clock in the morning. Whole different story. We're not getting into that tonight. But she would have to outperform by a lot every single dump from here on out. So put that in perspective. She would have to outperform both Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt going forward by a lot.

[00:36:18] And I think last night, if you caught any of her, it's not concession speech, it was basically almost a concession speech where she was crying and she said, she's going to keep working. It sounded like she knew, she saw the writing on the wall that this was over and that Spencer Pratt isn't going on to face Karen Bass. So that is the race in LA. Spencer Pratt. I had sent you an, it was Polymarket X post where they did a rage bait thing.

[00:36:46] The mail-in ballots and now they put her in second with like 37% and Karen Bass existed. Pratt has nothing. I don't even remember the exact numbers, but, um, and I sent it to you and you read through it and you were like, this is so misleading and, and rage bait. And I, I, I, it makes me just want to unfollow Polymarket now. Like, I'm just like, what? Maybe I don't follow them. Maybe it was just all my suggestion. I don't know. But yeah. A lot of people in the comments were talking about how this is, this is not great to make

[00:37:15] it look like they're, they're leaning on the races a little bit. Um, there was some race they were involved in and they contributed and also pumped up. Was it Becerra? They, Kalshi donated like $10,000 to Becerra and also put him as the winner. So people were like, how is that not like a conflict of interest that you're putting money towards the guy who's winning anyway? Not the point. Um, so Nithya Rahman fading fast.

[00:37:45] My guess it's not official, but I think we can feel pretty confident that it's going to be Karen Bass versus Spencer Pratt. Uh, do you want to start with your thoughts on what we're going to see Karen Bass versus Spencer Pratt leading into November? I don't know if I have again, opinions yet, because again, we know that the Democrats that voted for Rahman are going to turn around and vote for Bass, maybe most likely. However, Spencer Pratt has challenged her to, uh, weekly debates from now until the general,

[00:38:15] which, okay. If Karen Bass is actually running the city of LA, she doesn't have time for that, but I do hope that she will accept a few debates. And I think that if she runs away from any from now until then, you know, and he's obviously going to really go hard on the, probably with the Palisades victims and, um, and just other, the things that he's been going hard on, his supporters are going to continue to put out those amazing AI ads that are hilarious.

[00:38:43] You guys, regardless of what you think about Spencer Pratt, his support group is amazing. And, um, I think he's put in a really, he's got a really good team behind him. And then just the people that are creating those AI ads. It's, it's so funny. It's the most entertaining thing to ever happen. And people can't help, but watch them. I mean, if you, if you like hate him and don't want to watch them, whatever, I think you're still drawn to them. It's just, it's so funny. And that is going to start to teach you stuff.

[00:39:12] And so five months is short, but it's a long time. Anything can happen. Um, and of course, yes, I, I do believe it's going to be a bass purse, purse Pratt, Pratt come November. Uh, just want to thank everybody who's hanging out with here, us here in the chat. Let us know your questions, comments, stuff like that. We love to read them on the air. That's why we do this show live is because we love seeing you guys chat and it's very active chat. Obviously everyone's all amped up for the primary bunch of political nerds, just like us figuring out what's going on. I love it.

[00:39:41] This is, like I said, I'm very excited for this topic just because of that. Like, it's like, yeah, this is really good to get into a few things and like, and with this, the chat and everything is so fun. So yes. Thank you, chat. Well, it's kind of like, we talk about this so much leading up to races. We always talk about, well, what's going to happen. This is going to happen. Now we have results and it's exciting because we get to see like the concrete evidence of what happened and it's, it's exciting. Um, if you're like us, like political nerds.

[00:40:11] So let us know your thoughts in the comments. If you have any comments or questions, uh, I, I am going to be interested because a couple things about Spencer Pratt, Spencer Pratt, I've said this before is he went from a guy who launched his campaign and it kind of, uh, I don't know. It kind of was like, it looked to me like it wasn't really well organized. I mean, he did the whole outside thing he did in the Palisades. Say what you will.

[00:40:40] Um, he's been unconventional, but unconventional is working for him. And I'm glad that he's taking these big swings, but he's also controlling the anger that people feel towards Karen Bass and LA. And that's really been his winning formula. Let's see how he handles it going forward. Um, I wonder how many of Nithya Rahman's people are going to vote for Spencer Pratt or abstain.

[00:41:07] Again, you can't just presume that Nithya Rahman's people are all of a sudden going to rush in and vote for Spencer Pratt, or they're going to rush in and vote for Karen Bass. There's probably going to be a spattering voting for both. There's probably gonna be a good amount that just don't vote because they don't like either of them. They hate Karen Bass and they hate Spencer Pratt. So this could turn up to be pretty interesting. Keep in mind, wasn't that long ago. It was a couple of years ago that, uh, LA elected a Republican district attorney.

[00:41:37] Now it's nonpartisan. I will give you it. It's nonpartisan district attorney, but he was a former Republican turned independent. So a conservative district attorney and Nathan Hockman, Hawk, Hawkman. You always get his name screwed up. Hawk man. Hawk man. Sorry. Apologies to the district attorney. We always screw up his name. Um, so who knows?

[00:42:01] I think it, it'll be interesting because it seems like he's getting better at campaigning as this goes on. Um, also he actually doesn't get controversial for the most part. He's just like, look, I just want to enforce the laws. The laws are on the books. I'm not trying to change the laws. I'm not trying to do anything crazy. I just want to enforce the law. Here's the laws.

[00:42:30] Let let's follow them. Yeah. Okay. And I think, I mean, how is that not like very rational and logical? And isn't that what we all kind of want? I mean, law and order, right? He was, I think he was on Bill Maher and he said something to the effect of, you're not going to get a Spencer Pratt 15 point plan for homelessness. You're not going to get like all these, this is what we're going to do. And you're not going to get like wonky policy from Spencer Pratt.

[00:42:58] You're going to get the real talk of, you know, homelessness. What do we got to do? We got to get people off the streets. They don't want to go into treatment. We got to force people into treatment. We got to get the needles and the poop cleaned up. Like we got to be able to take our kids to parks and stuff like that. And I think that resonates with Los Angelinos because they're like, yeah, like this is all we've been asking of our government is just clean it up. Like that's all we want.

[00:43:24] We give you millions of dollars, billions of dollars in tax revenue and you can't solve homelessness. So like what's going on here? And I guess to your point, it's these common sense, straightforward answers of we should make sure our streets are clean and they don't have needles and poop and we should enforce laws and we should make sure that our communities are safe and we can take our kids to the park. It's safe for businesses. Like these are things that are common sense.

[00:43:53] That's what our government should be doing. And it's resonating. It's resonating because a guy who, for a lack of a better term, was viewed as a joke going into this election by a lot of people. I'm not saying I viewed him as a joke. A lot of people viewed it as a joke that a reality TV star from the hills, a show from 20 plus years ago, is running as an LA mayoral in the LA mayoral race is doing so well, just

[00:44:21] goes to show like he's got a good campaign behind him. He's got good people behind him advising him. I think he's going to get better. And now it's him and Karen Bass, mono e mono. Karen Bass can't hide behind Nithya Raman. Karen Bass has got to stand up and face Spencer Pratt one-on-one, which I think is what Spencer Pratt wanted all along, which is for him to face her one-on-one. Any other... Oh, somebody said, thank you. This channel should have thousands of followers. This channel does have thousands of followers.

[00:44:51] We're getting there. I mean, we have... Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're very close to 30 kids. I guess maybe you should have... Thank you to Mary Jane Tolbert who said this. I'm going to put it on the screen. Yeah, thank you. But you guys can all help if you share with like five people. We just need, I think, one just a little over a thousand to get 30K. And we like those milestones, you know? So we're... Yeah, we always get a little happy when we break a milestone like 30,000. We're getting close to 30,000. So... It's free to share. I mean, you always go into the end, but it's free to share this.

[00:45:20] Just, you know, send an episode or the link to three, five friends, family members in California. Hey. Yeah. Anyway, we are... We're really getting up there with time. And I'm really excited to dive into this next topic. So should we... Let's see. Somebody asked real quick. Okay. Yeah. Somebody asked real quick. I want to get this because I did say, give me your questions about Rob Bonta right now.

[00:45:49] He is leading Michael Gates by 10 points, but they're both... They were pretty well established into the night that they were going to be facing off against each other. So... We did an episode with Michael Gates. Check that out. Yeah. Michael Gates was on the show a couple weeks ago. So go check it out if you want to learn more about him. Rob Bonta basically did well in all of the coastal states or coastal counties. And Michael Gates did well in all the inland places. So... All right.

[00:46:19] Final story of the night. And this is probably the most interesting if you are someone like us who wants to read the tea leaves of what's happening in California. Oh, my bad. Meant to say millions. Oh, thank you. That's even better. We'd love to have millions. Yeah. Yeah. And we can get there if you guys share this show with everybody and join us every Tuesday night. And check out our new deep dives that we're doing every Thursday. Deep dives into California topics. All right.

[00:46:46] The last topic I want to get to, which is really kind of reading the tea leaves. I want to bring up this one race. Let me see if we can pull it up. All right. Hold on one second. Hold, please. Again, still waiting for that producer who can help us with this. Yeah, that's another thing. Somebody else. Some people have been messaging me about this. So, all right. The 48th district.

[00:47:15] Why are we focused on the 48th congressional district? Yeah, why? Because it wasn't that long ago, Gavin Newsom and the Democrats had this idea that they were going to redistrict California because they are going to fight back against Trump. And this whole idea was they're going to redistrict. They're going to redistrict Republicans out of their districts. They're going to flip all these seats. They're going to fight back against Trump.

[00:47:41] Now, one of those districts was California U.S. House Representatives District 48. Which was 49. And then that's where Jim Desmond was running. And the current district, 48, that had Daryl Issa was redistricted. And Daryl Issa resigned. He's retired from Congress.

[00:48:04] This was one of those districts that the Democrats and Paul Mitchell gerrymandered to the hilt to make sure that they got a four-point Democratic lead. That it was a lean Democrat district. And I just want to point out what I have up on screen here.

[00:48:25] Jim Desmond, the Republican candidate, is currently winning this race 41% to the Democrat 19.5%. Wow. Wow. So, I don't know if you're looking at the screen, if you're listening on audio or whatever, but if you're looking at the screen with us right now, it's pretty darn red. Very. Very red. Again, San Diego County.

[00:48:56] Again, San Diego County, Oceanside, parts of Palm Springs. Which tend to be very Democrat areas. Yeah. Yeah. And a little bit of Palm Desert. So, yeah, out in the desert area, Temecula up there. Not all those areas are blue. Just sorry. But, I mean, yes. So, real quick, just in case you guys are kind of confused. Prop 50, which was a special election that we voted on and it won.

[00:49:25] And that was to establish these new maps. And so, the point was they were trying to remove five Republican seats from Congress. Yeah. And this is one of them. This is one of the five. This was one of them that they were banking on. They were banking on because they were so confident that the way they wrote or drew this. Paul Mitchell was so excited about this one district.

[00:49:52] Paul Mitchell was the husband of the CEO of Planned Parenthood PAC, Jody Hicks. I always like to throw that out as a disclaimer if it gives you any idea. He was paid by the Democrats to redraw all these districts. And he came up with this one and it ends up being a deep red district. I don't know if that's a combination of it actually is a deep red district. That they underestimated how many people would vote for Republicans in this district.

[00:50:21] I think it's also Marnie Wilpert who is a former city councilwoman from San Diego. Not a great city councilwoman. Not a lot of star power. Just not that exciting. Amar Kampanajara who is the perennial candidate. Also boyfriend of Sarah Jacobs of the Qualcomm family, Jacobs. They dumped money into this race.

[00:50:45] And the interesting thing about this to me is it's not like, oh, Jim Desmond's winning by 10 points. And he's way outperforming the two Democrats behind him. I mean, look at those numbers. Even if you combine Marnie and Amar Kampanajara, he's still winning by over 10,000 votes. Like he's crushing it right now.

[00:51:13] And these are probably even closer to accurate than like the statewide things because obviously it's a much smaller area to count. Yeah. So it's easier and faster to count all of these. So this is, we don't want to go through every single race. But a lot of the races that they redistrict. So they tried to redistrict Kevin Kiley out of a seat because he's one of the biggest Gavin Newsom antagonizers.

[00:51:40] One of the most well-spoken politicians that come out of California in a while. Very smart. They redistrict him. And I think he's now running as an independent district three. And he's winning. Yes. So that's another district they thought they were going to flip and get rid of somebody. But it looks like Kevin Kiley's pulling through on that one.

[00:52:02] So if you go up and down the state of these redrawn districts that they thought they were going to get, David Valdeo, Central Valley, also performed better than people were expecting. They thought they were going to be able to redistrict him out of his seat. You just go down the line. James Gallagher up there running in district. Oh my gosh. One, I think it is. One, I think, yeah. Doug LaMalfa. He's crushing it.

[00:52:28] But moral of the story here is that the Democrats and Gavin Newsom tried to redistrict and get all these seats. And in the end. District 40. I was going to ask you to bring that one up. Just that one's near and dear to my heart because I was 40. And I was, I was gerrymandered out of 40. I'm in 38 now, which has combined parts of Orange County with mostly very blue LA County. But anyway, 40, same thing.

[00:52:55] They wanted to get rid of Republican Young Kim. And it's a very red district where it's usually two Republicans. Not always, but it generally is two Republicans who make it to the general. Or if a Democrat does, the Republican still just outperforms. So this was one that they tried to take over. And it's now Ken Calver is hugely in the lead. But it looks like it's Calver and Young Kim going up in the general, both Republicans.

[00:53:26] And Esther Kimberet is in third place. She's the Democrat. And while I would say that she ran a pretty good campaign, and I didn't do anything to hurt her campaign, but I exposed a few things that I didn't like about her. I really didn't like her. She's from LA County. Her home is there. She rented a home in Orange County just to move here and try to establish herself to run. And then she was just obnoxious.

[00:53:54] She was one of those people that got rid of her Tesla because she hates Trump and Elon Musk and Republicans. And then her husband, it just had a weird pact that I think is actually illegal and I need to do more investigation than that. Anyway, I was very anti-Esther Kimberet. And again, they didn't win here. And so, chat, do you think Prop 50 worked?

[00:54:23] Like, were you in a Prop 50 gerrymandered county? Like, or, you know, did your current place of residence change? And how is it doing? It's just, it's so fascinating to me, but it looks like it didn't do anything. And as someone who did vote against Prop 50, you know, we were obviously feeling a little defeated when it passed. And then it was like, okay, well, our only hope now is that it doesn't work.

[00:54:52] And it looks like it's not working. This is amazing. And that just kind of, how much poll do Democrats and Newsom have anymore in California, you guys? Like, people are opening their eyes. And I'm not saying they're all going like Republican or conservative or far, but they're starting to say, and they're starting to question, is my Democrat leader really, my representative, are they really working for me, for the state?

[00:55:21] Are they improving anything? And some of them are, you know, but are the majority improving anything for our lives, for our state? They, you know, the gas tax, you guys, it goes up two cents a gallon come July 1st, very soon. And the Democrat majority has had the power to spend that, to stop it, to delay it, all the things.

[00:55:47] And instead, they're just like, oh, Trump's war is, and I'm not going to get into my side of Trump's war, but Trump's war is the reason that we have high gas prices. No, it's not. Sure, they're a little bit higher, but it's not. It's not the reason why California has high gas prices, and it hasn't been the reason for the last eight-plus years. It's our Democrats and their love of taxes. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that this looks like Prop 50 is blowing up in their face.

[00:56:17] I think it's hilarious. And these districts that they thought they were going to flip, that they thought for sure that they were going to pick up five seats, even the fact that Republicans hold on to some of these seats, you hold out a three out of five, you've only picked up two. Which is also incredible, considering that historically, the incumbent party in midterms does not do well in the House.

[00:56:41] So if Trump is not as popular as he used to be, his approval ratings are wherever you want to say they are, whether you believe that or not, especially in California, he's not popular. But the fact that Republicans are still winning these districts that were gerrymandered to the hilt to be Democratic districts, and they're winning by a lot, and you're getting a lockout in U.S. House 40, and 48 is winning by over 20 points.

[00:57:11] It just goes to show you it didn't work. And we had talked about this way back when they proposed Prop 50. Again, this is why you got to tune into our show, because we bring up stuff, and it comes to fruition later. So it's kind of like it's a continuing story. You just got to keep tuning in to us, because all of our thoughts do interconnect eventually.

[00:57:34] We had said that Prop 50 was a backhanded way to push back on the results they saw in 2024, because they saw how many counties went red. It was 10 counties flipped red for President Trump in 2024.

[00:57:51] And I think they saw that and freaked out, and they saw Prop 50 as a way to tilt it back in their favor, because they saw how red California was getting in certain areas, and how many Latino voters were moving over to Republicans and supporting President Trump. And we're not supporting Democrats anymore, which was a reliable voting bloc for Democrats for a long time in California.

[00:58:17] And now it seems to be shifting, and even a couple percentage points here and there makes a big difference in a lot of these congressional districts. And I think they saw that and said, this is our opportunity to say we're doing it because we're fighting Trump. We're fighting Trump. That's why. You went through all of this machinations to redistrict, but the voters from 2024 in those counties that went red, are still there. It's only been two years. Like you didn't really change those voters.

[00:58:47] So even if you think, well, we're going to grab a couple people here, we're going to grab more Latinos over here. It didn't change the overall population, voting population, which further, I think, supports our argument that California, yes, is getting more conservative, is moving a little bit more. I guess you can say red. Purple. If not more purple, maybe more purple, more towards the middle.

[00:59:15] And it doesn't matter how you draw a lot of these districts because those voters are still there. And you can draw 48 to think that it's going to be a four-point Democratic lead. Voters are still there. And they're voting, and they are blowing away the Democrats. So 40, they thought they were going to be able to get young Kim out. It looks like it's going to be Republican versus Republican. Lost that race. Okay, what's next? You know, you thought you were going to get Kevin Kiley out. Kevin Kiley, still winning his race, still ahead in his race.

[00:59:46] So Prop 50 looks like, as of right now, if I were California Democrats and Gavin Newsom, it looks like a failure. No other way to put it. It looks like a colossal failure. You spent hundreds of millions of dollars on it. You had a stupid special election that we, as the taxpayers, had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for. All for that to maybe pick up one or two seats. I don't even think they're going to pick those up because the numbers aren't extreme.

[01:00:16] I could be wrong. I don't even remember what the other two districts are, but it's looking like, and I was asking AI a bunch of these questions too. Like, there's not necessarily like anything's looking like it's going to flip extremely. It's sort of like Prop 50 just didn't work at all. So, I mean, I could be wrong on that, but it's clearly thus majority isn't working so far.

[01:00:44] I know where I live in Orange County, we definitely did have a few wins. Again, there's still a general election, but we had Diane Dixon, who's current Assembly member we had on the show back a while back. Spitfire woman, amazing. She gets a lot done in the Assembly, but she decided to run for an Orange County Board of Supervisor position that had opened up in her area.

[01:01:08] And it was a very extreme, extreme liberal who was actually voted into that position. And Diane Dixon's like doing way well in that race. And I believe all the leaders, like the five Orange County Board of Supervisor leads are all Republican. And Orange County has been, it was historically pretty red, and it definitely has moved purple.

[01:01:35] Some areas very blue in the last years. But now, so Katrina Foley was in extreme, and she is going to the general thus far. But Diane Dixon's doing, like, really well. And so I think this does, our point, our point, our point, keep voting. It is working, even if it's slow, even if everything that we just discussed doesn't work out in the favor of the right or the moderates.

[01:02:04] It's, we are moving the needle, regardless. We're moving the needle. We are moving the needle for sure. Yeah, perfect way to put it. Thank you to everybody in California who showed up and voted. Last thing I want to hop off in a couple minutes. Yeah, sorry. Wrap up. No, it's fine. We got, I said we had a lot to cover tonight. This is a very exciting episode. This is the race with Kevin Kiley, U.S. House 6. Okay, he was in 3. That was redistricted.

[01:02:33] And then it kind of redistricted Kevin Kiley out. So now he's running in 6. Kevin Kiley has won this primary. Basically 99%, this is the poly market that says he's won as an independent. And it looks like it's going to be Kevin Kiley. Could be him versus Richard Pan. Hopefully it's not Richard Pan. There's some areas. Yes, I definitely wanted to talk about that.

[01:02:59] But, um, so yeah, there's, there's, you got, he did pretty well. Um, it'll be interesting. He picked up a lot of votes up here in Roseville where he's from. But again, this could be a house race where Kevin Kiley pulls it out. And that's another house race that they, they didn't do well. Um, real quick, what are your thoughts? I do want to get to some of the comments in the chat before we hop off. There was something else I wanted to discuss and I'm going to throw it out as a question to and make my point really quickly.

[01:03:29] So I, I'm curious how you guys feel about do endorsements really matter? And I, the reason why I ask this and say this is because like we talked about at the beginning, Steve Hilton did get the Trump endorsement and in California that can typically hurt somebody. And it doesn't obviously seem to have had a negative effect on Steve Hilton's race. So did it matter?

[01:03:54] I mean, it could maybe because like, we'd also talked about that, uh, even though Trump did not win California, we did see it go more red in California. And so perhaps like there was enough of the Trump supporters that, you know, um, got him ahead. And then the other race, which we didn't discuss because it didn't matter, but, um, Scott Wiener, our favorite ran for Nancy Pelosi seat. Nancy Pelosi has finally decided to retire.

[01:04:22] Now she previously talked about possibly retiring, uh, last term. And so Scott Wiener started to throw his name in, but then he was like, but if she's going to stay in the race, I'm going to back off. And she did stay in. And so he immediately backed off. And if you know anything about Scott Wiener, he loves Nancy Pelosi and it takes every opportunity to mention how she is the most amazing, amazing woman. Well, she turned around and endorsed, um, other Democrat, Connie Chen.

[01:04:51] So Nancy Pelosi, obviously former speaker of the house, huge name recognition. California is a huge state. She's been in Congress since, um, before America was even established. And so, you know, everybody knows who she is. Her name has been out there forever and ever. And, um, she turned around and endorsed Connie Chen. Scott Wiener blew Connie Chen out of the water in the race.

[01:05:17] It's going to be them two going up in the general, but I think he is performing with over 40%. So it looks like gold, anti Nancy Pelosi, her endorsement didn't seem to sway voters. So I just am curious what, you know, chat do endorsements, big endorsements, Trump's big endorsement, Nancy Pelosi is a big endorsement. Do they really matter? Do you think, do they have an effect on voters?

[01:05:44] Um, did Trump have an effect on you or maybe you're a favorite politician that may have endorsed somebody. You don't have to say who or whatever, but did they have an effect on you or did seeing endorsements actually sway you to vote for the other candidate? I'm, I'm just curious on people's opinions. Someone brought up drum roll for 20 said AOC's campaign guy got smoked in San Francisco. So he was the third place, uh, Chuck Reed or whatever his name was.

[01:06:11] Uh, somebody asked, uh, Sally Delgado. Uh, I just want to clarify. No, Steve Hilton is very much in first place. Don't believe what any rage bait people are saying or sensationalists or people trying to get you to freak out. We showed up at the top of the episode. You should definitely watch those first few minutes. Cause we need to go into that. Yeah. The numbers are, he's still solidly in first place. Um, it's Becerra and Hilton right now. It doesn't look like Tom Steyer will come up.

[01:06:42] Um, so I'm trying to look at other comments. Uh, if it comes down to Steve versus Xavier, I'm voting Steve regardless of Trump. Um, so there's some people, there's somebody in here who said they were a former Democrat. I put up their thing up that they were, uh, the former Democrat frustrated. Now they're independent. So people are switching. People are switching. I think there is a lot of frustration in California of people just going, look, I don't, Trump's not on the ballot. End of the day. Trump's not on the ballot. Yeah.

[01:07:11] I want affordability. I want to be able to, you know, afford things. I want to be able to pay for gas. I want to be able to buy a house. I wanted to be able to do all these things. I don't want to have to go to the park and deal with homelessness and, uh, you know, homeless poop and stuff like that. Like people, you can use the Trump thing all you want, but it seems like people are just going, I just want to live in a better California. So very interesting. A lot of stuff to break down.

[01:07:38] We did our best to break down some of the highlights for you. Um, any final thoughts, Camille, before we sign off for the night? Nope. Thank you. We can chat and anyone else who watches later and, you know, comments, we appreciate, we, we actually tried to get to most of the comments later too. We do, um, obviously they can, sometimes some episodes will have a ton. Um, and we, we try to read everything. We try to respond to what we can. And, um, I guess I'll, so I said it and have final thoughts, but I'm gonna have final thoughts again.

[01:08:06] I keep shouting out our telegram where we're discussing these things throughout the day, throughout the week. Um, you know, as we can check in there and we like to share articles of different things going on that we don't necessarily get to discuss on here, or we might discuss more in-depth things from the episode. So we do have that telegram channel and I know that there's a link in the, uh, the, um, what do you call it? The, the section of this podcast, the description. Yes. That's the word I'm looking for.

[01:08:33] And, um, so yeah, I, and just again, thank you for anyone tuning in. You know, I love you guys. We too. Yeah. Thank you everyone for tuning in and make sure you always tune in on Tuesday nights at 8 PM. We always go live tonight was a different night because I was on NBC last night, a little pat on the back, but you know, we weren't going to deprive you of an episode. We wanted to break down all of this is actually better that we got to break it down. I think this is more fun to be honest. This is actually fun to break it down this way to see everything as the dust settled 24

[01:09:02] hours later, what is going on. But we'll be back next Tuesday, 8 PM. Also check out our deep dives that are coming up every Thursday at 8 PM as well. If you don't already make sure you subscribe, like share all of that stuff helps with the algorithm and the best thing you can do to support this show, to get to a million supporters or followers like Mary Jane said, is you can share it with somebody, share it with a couple of people. This is it. This is a big year, big general election coming up. We're just getting started.

[01:09:32] General election is going to be wild. There are big propositions. If you think this is exciting, we've only just begun. So there's going to be a lot coming up. We're going to cover every proposition that is out there. Uh, we do it every year. We go through all the propositions or at least pretty much all the propositions I think we cover. Um, so we got a lot of stuff coming up. We'll probably have candidates on and stuff like that. So keep it tuned to California underground and we will see you on the next one. Let me say this. Let me just. Yeah, go ahead.

[01:10:03] Am I still on? Yeah, you're still on. Go ahead. So, okay. I just want to say this really quickly because, so I've always been interested in politics. I mean, like always, but I would say that I was very, very ignorant and yes, I did just vote with my party and didn't pay attention to primaries. And then of course, as I got older and started paying more attention, politics actually became far more interesting than I realized as I paid more attention. And then it was Phil.

[01:10:28] Phil was doing these coffee and politics Wednesday morning on Instagram live. And somehow I had found him and I started tuning into his show and I'm like, wow, I'm actually learning a lot here, which I'm not going to get into like our friendship, but we did become real life friends. And, um, but it was, it literally, I'm only here because I started tuning in and really started caring.

[01:10:55] And I think that's again, why we ask you to share the show is because we try to do our best to educate people and not tell them how to vote, just let them know what's going on and, you know, doing our deep dives and stuff. And so it's just like, like I said, politics get more interesting the more you get into them and they really, really do matter. And especially in a state like California. So I, that's why we encourage you to share the show.

[01:11:21] Not because we think that we're just the most amazing experts out there by any means, but we just, we want people to come in. We learn things from you guys, you know, people comment and tell us stories. They send us stories and it's like, wow, I had no idea this was going on. So that's a way to end it. Tune in, share all that stuff. We'll see you on the next one. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.