California’s gubernatorial candidates hurled verbal punches at each other on Tuesday evening in their first televised debate, as Republicans hope for a miracle at the ballot box in November. Democrat Xavier Becerra faced off against Republican Steve Hilton this week for what will likely be the pair’s only debate before the Nov. 3…
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Becerra, accused of ducking eight debate invitations, grants one and leads the poll that likes him less
As it ran on the front
The first thing the frontrunner in this race did was nothing, and he did it for weeks. On September 4 the wire described Xavier Becerra's campaign for governor as eerily silent, running out the clock, with the count of debate invitations his campaign stood accused of ducking at no fewer than eight. Eight is a number you have to work at. Eight means somebody in that office opened the mail, read the invitation, and decided the safest answer to a question about California was to not be in the room where the question got asked.
On September 8 he agreed to one. Of all those invitations, a single date became a date: one televised appearance, agreed to with the November 3 election eight weeks off and nothing behind it on the calendar. The Washington Examiner, today, calls it "what will likely be the pair's only debate." That is the deal the voters got out of a month of sniping — one stage, one night, one chance to hear both men answer in the same room.…
…(cont) Then on September 25 the poll landed, and it is the part of this story that pays. Becerra leads. Becerra is also liked less than the man he is beating. The cushion under the frontrunner is not built out of affection; it is built out of the other guy's party label in a state that will not vote for it. The stall worked, and it worked for a reason that has nothing to do with Becerra himself: he does not have to be wanted. He has to be the alternative.
Tuesday evening they finally stood on the same stage and talked about affordability and immigration. Affordability. The price of rent and groceries and the power bill got one televised hearing from the two men asking for the job of setting it, and it got that hearing because the arguing over the schedule got loud enough to embarrass someone into picking a night. The Examiner's frame for the evening is a proxy war between a president and a sitting governor, neither of whom is on the ballot. That is the tell. The night got covered as a fight between absent men rather than as the job interview of the man who is going to win it.
Here is the arithmetic a bar can follow. A campaign can go quiet in September, grant one appearance, be the less-liked of the two names in its own winning poll, and still be the safe bet in October. That is not a candidate problem, it is a ballot with one usable option on it, and the stall was priced accordingly. In November this state gets a governor who learned in public that one appearance was enough, and then gets four years of him remembering it.
“They told you for a month that the frontrunner was too busy to stand next to the other guy, and the September poll explains why he could afford it — he's ahead, and he's the less-liked of the two names on the card. That's not a campaign, that's a man sitting on a lead he never had to argue for, in a state where rent and groceries got exactly one televised hearing out of eight invitations. You don't get to find out what he'd do about your power bill, because the schedule decided you don't need to know.”
“Look, there was no ducking, there were scheduling conflicts — I'm not saying there weren't eight of them, I'm saying the count isn't the story. Did I say that? That doesn't sound like me. And frankly the poll has him winning, which is the only kind of likability that gets counted on November 3.”
The receipts
Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton debated immigration, affordability and more in their televised debate for the California gubernatorial contest. CBS News' Fin Gómez has more.
· Steve Hilton trails Xavier Becerra in California governor’s race — but voters dislike Becerra more: poll from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Xavier Becerra finally agrees to California governor debate with Steve Hilton from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Xavier Becerra goes eerily silent as he runs out the clock on California governor’s race from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.