Nobody even cares who wins,” said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic strategist in Sacramento. “It’s about who comes in second.” State Treasurer John Chiang, lagging far behind in the race, released an ad recently with a more biting assessment.
"The race for governor,” he said, “has turned into a scam.”
If Newsom and Villaraigosa advance to the November election, it’s possible that they will engage in the kind of spirited, ideological debate that Democrats once envisioned for the 2018 campaign.
But for California Democrats and progressives looking West for inspiration, the race has already taken on the scent of a missed opportunity. Democrats here first circled 2018 on their calendars nearly four years ago, when Gov. Jerry Brown was reelected to a fourth and final term. As the national party fractured, the state emerged as a pole of the Trump resistance, leaving many eager to see heavily Democratic California assert a baseline set of issues for the national party — including on immigration, health care and, more emphatically than in most other states, climate change.
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“We now live in the world of Donald Trump,” Davis said. “He dominates every news cycle. His entire goal is to occupy the news hole so no one else in public life gets any attention.”