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Just when we thought the campaign for California’s governorship couldn’t get any weirder, it did.

A Tuesday night debate at the University of Southern California was cancelled late Monday amid allegations of racism because all the candidates invited to participate are white while the four Democrats who were left out are Latino, Black or Asian.

USC chose debaters on the basis of their standing in the polls or the amounts of money raised or being spent. It meant, for example, that San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan was included because of his heavy financial support from Silicon Valley, even though he is in the lower tier of candidates as measured by polling.

Bad Optics for Democrats

While the racial divide might have been a result of USC’s methodology, it is what political pros call “bad optics” for a party that embraces identification politics. Democratic leaders in the state Legislature had backed the four excluded candidates, saying in a letter, “The university’s selection process — built on a formula never before used for a debate of this scale — has delivered a result that is biased.”

USC had stoutly defended the selection formula, devised by USC Professor Christian Grose and based on research using data to project candidate viability. However, as criticism mounted, USC was compelled to backtrack.

“We recognize that concerns about the selection criteria for tomorrow’s gubernatorial debate have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” USC said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “Unfortunately, USC and KABC (the debate co-sponsor) have not been able to reach an agreement on expanding the number of candidates at tomorrow’s debate. As a result, USC has made the difficult decision to cancel tomorrow’s debate and will look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues.”

Former Congresswoman Katie Porter, billionaire Tom Steyer and Congressman Eric Stalwell were to have participated along with Mahan. They had joined in criticizing the selection methodology but none had pulled out prior to the cancellation announcement, even though those left out had asked them to boycott.

Directly and indirectly, Porter, Steyer and Stalwell had suggested that Mahan was invited to the debate despite his low standing in the polls due to intervention by Rick Caruso, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman who has been a major contributor to USC and is supporting Mahan after flirting with running himself. Caruso and USC flatly denied the allegation.

Hilton, Bianco Are 1-2 in Dem-Sponsored Poll

Cancellation was a rare bit of good news for those in the lower tier, former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee, all of whom had been mired in single-digit positions in the latest polls, along with Mahan.

Their euphoria was short-lived, however. Twelve hours after the debate cancellation, Democratic state chairman Rusty Hicks released a party-sponsored poll that confirmed what other surveys had shown. The two Republicans, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, are still leading the field at 16% and 14% respectively while Porter, Swalwell and Steyer are tied at 10% and every other Democrat is still mired in low single digits, from 3% to as low as 1%, with 24% undecided.

Hicks commissioned the series of polls after urging those in the lower tier to drop out, worrying aloud that the two Republicans could finish 1-2 in the June 2 primary, thus guaranteeing that one would win the governorship in November.

While that would seem to be nearly impossible in a state that’s utterly dominated by Democrats, voting by mail will begin in just six weeks, and so far the two Republicans are still on top and the eight Democrats are still failing to catch fire with voters.

How weird is that?

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.