The 1960s pop classic “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine in” played Tuesday when Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton walked into his election night party.
That same soulful anthem rang out 20 years earlier in Beverly Hills when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won reelection. That triumph marked the last time the GOP held the state’s top position and the final year a Republican captured a statewide office in California.
On Tuesday, the classic served as a funeral dirge for the roughly 800 people present who backed Hilton.
Michael Steel traveled from Ventura County hoping for an upset victory Tuesday, believing his candidate struck enough of a bipartisan tone to win. Steel, in the midst of his disappointment, asked: What will it take for a Republican to win a California gubernatorial race?
Essential California posed that question to Christian Grose, USC political science professor and director of the USC Democracy and Fair Elections Lab.
Let’s jump into some numbers first and check in with Grose.
What the numbers say
Hilton had claimed 35.1% of the vote with about 67% of all ballots cast counted as of Friday afternoon. That put him at roughly 3.23 million votes. However, that number trails the 4 million-plus of the Republican gubernatorial candidates of 2018 (4.7 million), 2022 (4.4 million) and 2010 (4.13 million).
Maybe more alarming for state Republicans is the percentage, though; no GOP candidate has finished with a number that low since 1914.
Many voters saw the president and Republicans as their chief concern
Californians often list affordable housing and the high cost of living, gasoline and utilities as important concerns. Hilton centered a large portion of his campaign on affordability issues such as bringing gas down to $3 a gallon and cutting annual car registration fees to $73.
Yet that was not the most decisive issue for most Californians.
Grose and his lab ran polling on voter attitudes in four congressional districts: two in Northern California, one in Central California and one in Southern California.
The No. 1 issue motivating voters in these districts was opposition to President Trump and the Republican Party (16%). That concern outranked affordability (10%), the economy (10%) and corruption (7%).
Grose said California voters ultimately may have tied economic concerns more to Trump and the Republican party than to Democrats.
“If people are blaming the economy on the national elected officials, which it’s easier to do in this election with tariffs and the war in Iran and a lot of national and international events …” he said, “it’s easier for the governor or statewide officials to say, ‘Hey I didn’t really do this.’”
Republicans just aren’t that popular
Digging a bit deeper, a look at Sacramento County’s 6th District showed that no party was seen favorably, but Republicans were particularly unpopular.
Poll participants were asked if they had a positive or negative opinion of a specific party, with answers ranging from strongly positive to somewhat positive, neither, somewhat negative, strongly negative and don’t know out of a 100% scale.
Democrats were underwater, with 38% of voters seeing the party as either strongly or somewhat positive versus 46% seeing the party as somewhat or strongly negative.
Democratic Socialists also struggled, with 23% of voters seeing the party as positive versus 44% holding a somewhat or strongly negative view.
Yet while both had issues, Republicans and MAGA were worse.
Only 26% of those polled thought of Republicans positively, while MAGA was at 21%. Those numbers far trailed the 63% and 67% negative views of each, respectively.
“The Democrats are persisting in the state despite negative opinions about the Democratic Party because the Republican Party is just so negatively perceived,” Grose said.
A direction for Republicans
Grose said that perhaps the first step for Republicans on a comeback tour would be to “boost their favorability numbers.”
“I don’t think the Republican Party is in a good state in California to even launch a serious candidate for governor,” he said. “They are a minority in the state Legislature, which is often the place where candidates actually emerge, not people like Steve Hilton.”
Breaking the Democratic Party’s supermajority and winning more seats in the Legislature should be an important and long-term goal, Grose said.
“It would need to be a multiyear process,” he said. “Right now, the party mindset seems to be thinking ‘how can we run someone acceptable’ and it’s not working.”
The week’s biggest stories
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles mayoral election
- Mayor-elect Nithya Raman will remake L.A. City Hall.
- Raman is expected to push the city left on public safety, while also advancing urbanist policies that favor public transit, greater housing production and the redesign of city streets.
- How did your neighborhood vote for L.A. mayor?
The GOP tries to understand and move forward from the election
Transportation
Crime, courts and policing
More news
Editor’s pick
More picks
Things to do
(The National Gallery, London)
Today’s recipe
(Glenn Koenig/Los Angeles Times)
Former L.A. Times Test Kitchen director Noelle Carter used to rave that “nothing beats the simplicity of a tender, moist piece of chicken, delicately seasoned and lightly dredged with a dusting of flour, and then baptized in a pool of sizzling fat to crisp, golden perfection.” Fortunately for us, Carter’s recipe delivers on her vision while leaving options for changing the texture or adding seasoning.
Photo of the day
Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman speaks at the University of California at Los Angeles on Monday. Raman made a campaign stop at Bruin Plaza ahead of the election.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
Games
Here’s today’s mini crossword, plus our other free, daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jack Dolan, investigative reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, Fast Break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected]. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.
