Voters in California are preparing to elect a new governor to replace Gavin Newsom. The state’s “state primaries”—a system adopted in 2011 in which all candidates compete against each other and the two with the highest support heading into the general election—were thrown into turmoil when former Rep. Eric Swalwell withdrew following multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
A recent debate between several remaining candidates, including former California attorney general and Biden cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra, hedge fund founder Tom Steyer, and former Rep. Katie Porter failed to produce a clear front-runner. While Democrats struggle to unite, Republican Steve Hilton, has been approved and President Donald Trump, is voting by force. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has consistently voted in third place.
Voters in California are preparing to elect a new governor to replace Gavin Newsom. The state’s “state primaries”—a system adopted in 2011 in which all candidates compete against each other and the two with the highest support heading into the general election—were thrown into turmoil when former Rep. Eric Swalwell withdrew following multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
A recent debate between several remaining candidates, including former California attorney general and Biden cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra, hedge fund founder Tom Steyer, and former Rep. Katie Porter failed to produce a clear front-runner. While Democrats struggle to unite, Republican Steve Hilton, has been approved and President Donald Trump, is voting by force. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has consistently voted in third place.
Election results in California often carry national implications. Considering the size and diversity of the state, as well as the large number of votes in the Electoral College (54), it can be used as a powerful platform to shape the direction of the party across the country and even emerge as a national leader.
The nation has seen this before, in 1966, when the Republican primary produced Ronald Reagan, a victory that would go on to reshape the GOP and national politics for decades.
The Republican Party became deeply divided in the 1960s. The Northeastern wing of the GOP, led by figures such as New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Jacob Javits, pulled the party toward the center, expressing liberal positions on issues such as civil rights and government health care. In contrast, Republicans from the Midwest and Sun Belt pushed the debate in the opposite direction, emphasizing opposition to government spending, high taxes, and economic regulation. As a result, averaging generally remained the preferred method in selecting candidates for most offices.
This conventional wisdom was tested during the presidential election of 1964. When Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a leading conservative on the right, won the Republican nomination, the party establishment panicked. At the Republican National Convention at the Cow House in California, Rockefeller was booed from the floor when he urged his colleagues to remember the virtues of moderation. In contrast, delegates cheered when Goldwater announced that “a strong stance in defense of freedom is not a bad thing.” American politics, however, was not ready for President Goldwater. President Lyndon Johnson, who had succeeded John F. Kennedy after his tragic assassination in Dallas, defeated the senator in one of the largest landslides in American history, bringing a majority of Democrats into Congress.
One shining star in the Republican campaign was Ronald Reagan. Reagan, a former Hollywood mogul turned conservative spokesman for General Electric, began to emerge as the most exciting voice on the right. He appeared in a Goldwater campaign spot on October 27, 1964, called “Choosing Time,” a televised speech that drew attention to the party. “This is what this election is all about,” Reagan said in the announcement. “If we believe in our ability to govern ourselves or if we abandon the American revolution and admit that an intellectual elite in a distant capital can plan our lives better than we can plan them ourselves.” Although Republicans were disappointed that Goldwater had failed so badly, they looked to Reagan with enthusiasm.
Two years later, despite the 1964 election showing true conservatism, Reagan entered the race for governor of California. During primary school, he faced George Christopher, the former mayor of San Francisco (1956 to 1964), a handsome 58-year-old who embodied the management of the party in the middle of the century. As mayor, Christopher was credited with revitalizing the city’s financial district, leading a residential boom, and attracting New Yorkers to San Francisco.
The California Republican League, representing the state’s governing Republican party, endorsed Christopher as the most likely candidate to win the 1966 primary and the one whose experience best qualified him for leadership. Christopher he accused Reagan of running “the dirtiest, most sleazy campaign I’ve ever seen.” Even some of Reagan’s allies were worried that he would not be able to win. One of his strongest followers, Caspar Weinbergerhe feared that Reagan’s unwillingness to break away from the radical John Birch Society would jeopardize his position.
When Christopher attacked the 55-year-old Reagan as a dirty campaigner and right-wing partisan who would destroy the party, Reagan countered by denouncing “welfare bums” and anti-war students at the University of California, Berkeley. Reagan warned one listener that the young protesters were “not just deviant, but mentally ill.” In a speech at the Cow House on May 12, the site of the historic 1964 convention, Reagan criticized what he called “a moral and decency gap” on campus. He also contributed to the growing anger among white voters about the urban riots that rocked Watts in August 1965. he swore launching a “moral war” to end the “arrogance” of the Democratic government that runs the government. While offering a bright vision of hope for California, he painted a grim picture of a state reeling from misguided liberal policies: “Our city streets are backwoods after dark, with more violent crime than New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts combined.” He called again and again for law and order.
Reagan’s campaign was run by Stuart Spencer and Bill Roberts, who helped create a televised public image for their candidate that maintained his ideological appeal while downplaying radical claims. Their firm had been recommended by Goldwater, who had been impressed by what they had done against him when he was representing Rockefeller in 1964. Democratic Governor Pat Brown’s attempt to undermine the Republicans by spreading scandals about Christopher—thinking that Reagan could be defeated more easily—was ultimately foiled. Eventually, Reagan received strong support from Hollywood, where he had spent most of his career. A number of celebrities—including John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart—supported him.
Reagan stunned the nation by defeating Christopher, along with several other candidates, with 65 percent of the vote. Everyone seemed to be watching. Shortly after winning the playoffs, Citizen of Austin reported on negotiations taking place to prepare Reagan to run for president in 1968. Former President Dwight Eisenhower met with California Republicans and endorsed his candidacy—although the party’s leading member, Senator Thomas Kuchel, remained ambivalent about supporting a man whose record was on the right. Although no one had any doubt that he was associated with Goldwater’s vision of the party, being the star of the most famous campaign ads, the Reagan team was able to soften his image by focusing on the “elite group in Sacramento” that threatened working and middle-class Californians.
Viewing this development in a more pessimistic light, baseball star Jackie Robinson, a Black Republican who left his party because of Goldwater’s extreme positions, including on race, warned that Reagan was like Goldwater—only his Hollywood charisma made him seem less of a threat.
During the general election, Reagan continued the same themes he used to defeat Christopher.
Reagan, according to historian Matthew Dallek in The Right Time: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and a Major Revolution in American Politics“successfully combined the liberal social programs of the 1960s with unrest in the streets … The Reagan Revolution would last so long because the principles promoted during the warmongering—social order, individual liberty, government-versus-government intervention—had lasting appeal.” In a state where Democrats outnumbered Republicans voters by three to two, Reagan defeated Brown on November 8 with nearly 58 percent of the vote.
It was a good year for Republicans, who won 47 seats in the US House of Representatives. They helped restore the Democrats’ gains in the 1964 election, which had formed the political base of President Johnson’s Great Society.
While serving two terms in the Sacramento state house, even as he compromised with the Democratic-controlled legislature on issues such as abortion, taxes, and government funding, Reagan would continue to revise many of his satirical themes from the campaign. He then ran against Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 primary, nearly unseating the incumbent, and won the presidency in 1980 in a historic victory over President Jimmy Carter.
Reagan’s years as governor of California gave him a national platform, elevating his brand of right-wing conservatism and showing that a candidate who did not pride himself on the political center could win and hold power. Those years put him in a good position to capture the White House and push national politics to the right.
It’s not It’s unclear whether any of the candidates currently running in California are as capable as Reagan. For Democrats, that could mean an elected official who can help define what the next generation of their party’s politics might look like, and for Republicans, what the GOP might look like once Trump is no longer in office.
But as the government has shown with Reagan, it is capable of producing statistics with national impact. Often, a candidate with the ability to do great things is not seen until that person is in power and starts using state instruments to make national declarations. For this reason, many political experts are keeping a close eye on the Golden State, knowing that it has a long history of bringing about political change that reaches far beyond its borders.
