A crowded field of seven would-be California governors gathered Tuesday night in the Bayview for the first televised debate of the season.
But speaking to a crowd of 300 people at the Bayview Opera House, the six Democrats struggled to differentiate themselves.
Tony Thurmond, California state superintendent of education, said he would work to abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Local billionaire and climate activist Tom Steyer, who ran for president in 2020, emphasized affordability. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said he would focus on government transparency.
Former mayor of Los Angeles and speaker of the California assembly Antonio Villaraigosa mentioned his past as a civil rights leader and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said that he’d sued President Donald Trump 120 times. Former state controller Betty Yee played to the local audience by repeatedly defining herself as a born-and-raised San Franciscan.
Several candidates mentioned growing up in poverty and coming from immigrant families.
“I want to say to our immigrant communities: I see you, I know you, and I hear you,” said Yee. “We’re going to do everything we can to keep you safe. We’re going to be sure that our communities are standing up for you.”
“If you’re a hard-working immigrant, we welcome you,” said Becerra. “That was my parents. They came to this state with $12 in their pocket.”
As far as the crowd was concerned, Becerra was a frontrunner. His answers were often met with cheers, as when he committed to protect California immigrants from ICE. “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are,” he said, translating a common Spanish phrase.
The lone Republican, Steve Hilton, did not have to try nearly as hard to stand out.
When the other candidates decried the Trump administration’s deployment of ICE agents, uninvited, to U.S. cities, Hilton picked on current California Gov. Gavin Newsom instead. Newsom’s record on homelessness is “shameful,” Hilton said, and his handling of the Palisades fires “outrageous.”
The event was hosted by the Black Action Alliance, an Oakland-based political group co-founded a year ago by venture capitalist Malcolm Goodwin. It was held at the historic Ruth Williams Opera House in Bayview and televised on local Fox stations across the state, reaching around eight million California residents.
Notable candidates who did not appear at the debate included former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, MAGA supporter and Riverside County sheriff Chad Bianco, and former state assemblymember Ian Calderon.
Much of the night was civil and focused on the issues, particularly immigration, education and the high cost of living.
The Democratic candidates appeared to speak from the same talking points: They promised, if elected, to deliver more government accountability, to tackle the housing crisis, and to protect immigrant communities in the state from federal overreach.
As an immigrant himself (from England), Hilton agreed with the Democrats on the importance of immigrant labor for the state’s economy. But, he added, “We have to enforce the law in California.” Both Hilton and Mahan said that the state needed a better legal path to immigration but also a stronger border.
“It makes sense to have a secure border, and know who and what comes into the country — to have orderly immigration,” Mahan told the audience. “But we should not be demonizing people who are here to do the most American thing, which is work hard and create a better future for their kids.”
Hilton criticized prison closure programs, saying they release “tens of thousands of dangerous, violent criminals into the community or transferred to county jails that are completely overwhelmed.” This last statement led to boos from the crowd.
Not so, said Steyer. “We come from a place of mass incarceration.” Since 1965, Steyer said, the state has built 24 state prisons, and only four new public universities. “We’re coming back from a place where we were absolutely in the wrong.”
The overlap between candidates began to fall apart as the conversation moved on to the high cost of living.
Hilton and Villaraigosa found common ground on their platform that California needs to stop importing gas from countries like Iraq and Ecuador to decrease the price for consumers and decrease carbon emissions.
Others disagreed, citing environmental issues. Yee and Thurmond said that the state needed to continue its shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.
Steyer, who is a critic of PG&E, had a different plan.
“We need to import gasoline either from neighboring states like Washington, or we need to buy it, regardless of what Mr. Hilton says, from Asia, and have them ship, refine it there and ship it to us.”
All agreed that housing affordability is California voter’s main concern. Yee vowed to speed up approval processes for new housing. Steyer vowed to audit the state’s utilities.
“I’m going to go after the electric monopolies that charge us twice as much for electricity as the average in the United States of America,” he Steyer. Thurmond specifically pledged to build at least 2 million new homes in California by 2030.
Steyer pledged to allocate at least $15 billion from the state budget every year for healthcare, childcare and education.
“California, on a cost-adjusted basis, spends the 31st most out of the 50 U.S. states,” said Steyer. “And lo and behold, we’re about the 31st best state in terms of education. And that is not nearly good enough.”
According to local Fox polls shown on screens in the venue, those watching the debate on TV overwhelmingly supported Hilton — not a huge surprise, given the conservative audience and Hilton’s past as a Fox personality.
In the opera house itself, several attendees said they were undecided for now.
“If there were a conglomerate of three candidates, I would vote for them,” said one. “But you can’t do that.”
Evidently Swalwell has not made much impact
Stronger borders and law enforcement sound great in theory, but there’s some troubling signs from there. Republicans (not incorrectly) say that Democrats preferred border approach creates a sort of serf class of farm workers getting terrible wages, but what they don’t understand is that the wages are still middle-class as far as Mexican standards go. In the past when the border was not so rigid and seasonal workers could come and go as needed, it was a win-win – Americans benefited from cheap labor and thus cheaper food, and Mexico had cash coming in which created jobs and stability. But once the border started being rigid, those seasonal workers had pretty much no option but to remain in the US all the time, which puts them at the mercy of farm bosses. There is a win-win to be had, but Republicans refuse to see that.
As far as law enforcement, certainly public security is needed to develop a stable economy and have dignified jobs and living standards for everyone. But when I read things like how the SF Sheriff’s office is sexually assaulting trans people behind bars (https://missionlocal.org/2025/10/sf-sheriff-deputy-fired-sexual-misconduct-trans-inmate/), it really makes you rethink the implications of hiring 12349871238947123 new officers and arresting 1209348123948212349 people. When the people who are supposed to protect us are instead preying on us, why should we trust them to enforce the law?
Why was Katie Porter not in the debate?
They’re all good, except of course for the typically useless Republican.
I throughly enjoyed this article mostly because it captures what candidates stand for. Now we can research the ones that stand for what is important to us. Thank you
Tom Steyer’s stance on energy is just bonkers and nonsensical, while his stance on PG&E is literally due to losing power for a day. Tony Thurmond stance on immigration is doomed to fail cause he’s appearing to not understand the difference between Federal and State. Xavier Becerra claim to fame was suing Trump. Betty Yee and Antonio Villaraigosa both struggle to compete. Matt Mahan is the centrist sweetheart, but his rational plan of auditing Newsom’s mess while securing borders is too sensible for Progressives because he’s pointing out the ten ton gorilla said progs are responsible for. Steve Hilton is really just the same stance as Mahan, just whether you like your candidate in Red rather than Blue.
Honestly think it’s going to come down to Hilton and Mahan with Steyer just sticking around as the annoying independent with nothing better to do.
It’s funny to read the name of the group that hosted the debate, and then to read that the crowd booed Hilton for criticizing California’s lax criminal justice system and that the state releasing so many violent prisoners into communities needlessly. It’s so easy to see that none of the Democrats are worth voting for as they come from a party that lacks principles and standards. That’s why all the Democrat candidates came off as sounding the same because they were basically all reading from the tired and true Democratic talking points. Just look at how awful the state is doing today with the high cost of living, the homeless crises, crime rates, and the loss of jobs and state revenue from the loss of corporations and billionaires leaving California due to over regulation and the state’s unfriendly business and tax environment.