Three candidates are locked in a tight race for two spots in the November election for California governor as election officials continue counting millions of ballots cast in the primary.

Early results Tuesday night showed that Steve Hilton, a Republican and former Fox News host, and Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former California attorney general, held the top two positions to advance to the November election.

But Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, was in a close third place and told supporters in San Francisco that he was “going to wait until every ballot is counted.”

“We’re going to give democracy time to work,” he added.

In California’s primary, candidates of all parties run on the same ballot and the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the November election. It’s the first time since California began using the top-two primary system in 2012 that a governor’s race has been this close, making it possible that two Democrats could advance to compete for the state’s top office.

Many Californians were uncertain about whom to back for governor and waited until the last minute to cast their ballots, which was expected to slow the tally of final results. The initial election results reflect ballots that were cast early in the voting period. Republicans returned ballots at a faster pace than Democrats did, so the early results were expected to favor Republican candidates, including Hilton.

The election marked the end of dominance by a cadre of San Francisco Democrats who have wielded enormous influence on California politics for decades. Gov. Gavin Newsom is termed out of office. Rep. Nancy Pelosi is retiring. Neither of them endorsed a candidate for governor, and the volatile race to replace Newsom revealed a fading of dynastic power among California Democrats.

It was the most wide-open contest for governor that California has seen since the 1990s because it lacked heavyweights, and did not have a clear favorite at the start.

It began with 10 competitive candidates. By the final month, the leading Democrats were Steyer and Becerra as well as Katie Porter, a former member of Congress; Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose; and Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles. The main Republicans were Hilton and Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff.

Because no one built a commanding lead, California’s nonpartisan primary system drew intense scrutiny, and voters and endorsers became strategic in their decision-making.

Earlier in the year, voters were so uninspired by the Democratic candidates that polls showed there was potential for two Republicans to emerge as the winners in the primary.

Most of the candidates promised to address California’s high cost of living. They proposed various solutions, including cutting taxes, building more homes and providing more government services.

But their policy ideas were often overshadowed by unpredictable twists in the contest.

Democratic leaders initially began to coalesce behind Eric Swalwell, a Bay Area member of Congress, largely because they feared their party could be shut out of the general election if their voters didn’t gravitate toward one front-runner.

But just as Swalwell was heading toward the front of the pack in April, multiple women accused him of sexual assault and misconduct, prompting him to drop out of the race and resign from Congress.

Becerra, who at one point had poll numbers so low that he was excluded from a planned debate, saw a surge of support after Swalwell’s collapse. To many establishment Democrats, Becerra seemed a relatively safe choice, with decades of government experience. He was a former member of Congress and statewide official and had served as secretary of health and human services under President Joe Biden. In mere weeks, he went from being virtually out of the race to the new Democratic front-runner.

“The underdog stayed in the fight,” Becerra said Tuesday night.

Republican support, which had been split between Hilton and Bianco, began to solidify behind Hilton after he received President Donald Trump’s endorsement. That reduced the likelihood of two Republicans advancing from the primary but then led to a new statistical possibility: that two Democrats might win.

In the campaign’s final weeks, polls showed a close three-way race among Becerra, Hilton and Steyer. Steyer spent more than $216 million of his personal fortune on his campaign and said his wealth freed him from the influence of corporate interests that supported Becerra.

Oil companies, real estate interests, tech giants, electric utilities, healthcare businesses and other interest groups collectively poured about $54 million into supporting Becerra and opposing Steyer. Steyer ran an antiestablishment campaign promising to break up utility companies, pursue single-payer healthcare and raise taxes on corporations and commercial property.

Steyer’s closing argument framed the primary as a choice between his populist campaign and that of a corporate Democrat, Becerra. One of the most counterintuitive developments was the way in which labor unions and democratic socialists got behind the billionaire, Steyer.

Our Revolution, the group Sen. Bernie Sanders founded to fight “the billionaire class,” endorsed Steyer. He also won endorsements from a nurses union that backs single-payer healthcare and a powerful teachers union that wants to raise taxes.

Becerra portrayed the contest as pitting a billionaire who had never held elected office against an experienced government leader.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Laurel Rosenhall
c. 2026 The New York Times Company