Four of California’s leading Democrats running for governor gathered Sunday morning for the first major forum of candidates for the 2026 elections, a cordial discussion with few fireworks and almost no shots at the politician they hope to succeed, Governor Gavin Newsom.
The forum in downtown San Francisco, sponsored by the National Health Care Workers Union, featured gubernatorial candidates Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state superintendent. of Public Education Tony Thurmond, State Senator Toni Atkins of San Diego and former State Comptroller Betty Yee.
The event, broadcast live on the Los Angeles Times website, took place very early in the 2026 gubernatorial campaign, just over a month before the high-stakes 2024 presidential election. More candidates for California’s highest office are expected to enter the race in the coming months.
Also missing from the forum was one of the race’s best-known Democrats, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The union said Villaraigosa was invited but declined to attend.
Do you agree with Newsom?
All four candidates were pressed repeatedly on Newsom’s record and how they might govern differently. They mostly sided with Newsom – and each other – notably on the death penalty (they all oppose it) and on California’s policy to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered cars from here 2035 (they all support it).
All four also said they would sign legislation giving striking workers access to state unemployment benefits, a top priority for California’s powerful organized labor movement. Newsom vetoed a similar bill last year, saying the increased benefits would make the unemployment trust fund “vulnerable to insolvency.”
Candidates were divided on whether California should have allowed school districts to determine when they would reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led public schools in some urban areas to remain closed for months longer than private schools and schools in more rural areas.
Kounalakis, Thurmond and Yee said they would have handled the situation differently than Newsom. Atkins said she wasn’t sure, saying, “It’s easy to be Monday morning quarterback now.” … We know more today than we did then.”
Single-payer healthcare
Moderators emphasized the candidates’ positions on health policy, which is of particular interest to the audience of a union that represents about 19,000 California health care workers, including nurses and pharmacists.
All four candidates have said, to varying degrees, that they would opt for a single-payer health care system, one that would cover all Californians and radically reshape the state’s health coverage.
All said they were awaiting a January 2025 report required by Senate Bill 770, a measure Newsom signed into law last fall that requires the state’s health secretary to begin talking with the federal government of a waiver of the allocation of federal Medicaid and Medicare funds to a state. manage the health system.
Legislative analysts estimated earlier this year that a single-payer system could cost $392 billion a year.
Thurmond said California doesn’t have a single-payer system because “people don’t have the political will to put it forward.” Atkins, who authored a 2017 bill that would have created a single-payer system, said she was waiting to see waiver options presented under SB 770 and that “you can’t have this system is realized overnight.”
After the panel, Yee said in an interview that his support for a single-payer system would depend in part on the findings of SB 770.
“I think a unified funding system makes sense,” Yee said. “Whether it’s single-payer, that’s the question.”
The last time California held a competitive gubernatorial race, the same issue sparked: At the 2017 NUHW candidate forum, Villaraigosa and Newsom clashed over state-funded health care. State and single-payer.
Villaraigosa said he supports the concept of single-payer health care, but warned that politicians who have championed the concept are “selling snake oil.” He said politicians like Newsom underestimated the complexities of creating the new system and didn’t know how to finance it.
Newsom dismissed Villaraigosa’s concerns, saying that fighting for single-payer health care was a “leadership issue” and that he would not wait for Congress to act. Newsom won the union endorsement and gubernatorial race in 2018, but did not implement a single-payer health care system.
Housing, homelessness, and the California exodus
All four candidates said their top priority to address California’s soaring cost of living would be to build more housing.
Kounalakis highlighted her two decades of experience in real estate development before entering politics, saying she helped build planned communities for 200,000 people. When it comes to local governments, she said, “the resistance to our ability to build housing has been enormous.”
“It’s time to have someone in the governor’s office who has actually built things,” Kounalakis said.
Yee called for an expansion of local zoning to increase housing capacity and said she would push for a “permanent and stable source of funding for affordable housing.”
Forum panelist Laurel Rosenhall, the Times’ California politics editor, asked the candidates what homeless policy they would support that Newsom hasn’t already tried. She said Newsom has spent more than $20 billion to combat the crisis but has seen the number of homeless Californians rise.
Yee said she would like to see more spending to prevent people from falling into homelessness. She cited a University of San Francisco poll that found 83 percent of homeless seniors believed a one-time payment of $5,000 to $10,000 would have prevented homelessness, which is “certainly much less than what we proposed in our report. budgets. »
Thurmond said California has 240,000 homeless students, 10,000 of whom are unaccompanied minors. He said he would like to see subsidized housing with wraparound support to help students get to class and find work.
Crime in California
Three of the four candidates avoided taking a position on Proposition 36, an initiative on the November ballot that would impose harsher penalties for repetitive thefts and offenses involving the deadly drug fentanyl.
The measure has been the subject of intense debate this year as Republicans and law enforcement advocates have called for softening parts of Proposition 47. The criminal justice reform measure, which voters approved a decade ago, downgraded some crimes to misdemeanors and was blamed for an increase in organized retail theft And “crush and grab” thefts.
Thurmond said his vote was “yet to be determined.” Kounalakis said she had made her decision, but wanted to keep her vote private.
Atkins said she would “probably” vote no. She said she feared ballot measures would craft laws that are “set in stone, and the only way to undo them is to come back to the people,” and said she supported a package of bills on retail theft that were passed by the Legislature in August.
Yee said Proposition 36 was “misguided” and she planned to vote no, adding, “It makes false promises about how we want to address the issue of public safety in general.” »
Will they do it or not?
In a state where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly twice to one, Democrats are expected to dominate the 2026 national contest to replace Newsom, who is finishing his second term and cannot run again. No Republican has won a statewide election in California since 2006.
Other Democrats could potentially jump into the race, including California Atty. General Rob Bonta; Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine), who lost her bid for U.S. Senate in March; and developer Rick Caruso, who ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, losing to Karen Bass.
Several Republicans are also reportedly considering their campaigns, including Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton.
