FRESNO  — Four of the top Democrats running for California governor on Wednesday told a agriculture-friendly Central Valley audience that the left-leaning state’s restrictions on business and the environment have made life more difficult for farmers and should be rolled back.

The candidates onstage at the Fresno State political forum, including two Republicans, did their best to appeal to voters in the midsection of California who often feel neglected by a state government dominated by big-city politicians from Southern California and the Bay Area.

“I’m here today because for far too long, the interests of our ag economy and our rural towns and cities and communities have been second tier, if they’ve even been on the agenda in Sacramento,” said San José Mayor Matt Mahan, a moderate Democrat whose campaign has yet to live up to the high expectations it initially received.

Mahan and five others invited to the forum focused on the state’s affordability crisis, water, government regulations and other issues facing the agricultural hub — all doing their best to play up any ties to the farmers and farmworkers who are so essential to providing food to California and the nation.

Mahan recalled growing up in Watsonville, an agricultural community that is the home of Driscoll’s berries and Martinelli’s apple cider. Fellow Democrat and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra noted his family’s personal ties to the valley. His father picked crops along State Route 99 as a young man, he grew up in Sacramento, and his wife is from Hanford and Fresno.

Former conservative commentator Steve Hilton said his family had a small farm in Hungary, which they fled because of communism. Former Democratic Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, who grew up in Iowa during the farming crisis of the 1980s, spoke of being the descendant of generations of farmers and being a member of 4-H as well the Future Farmers of America.

“I’m not a farmer today, but I thought I would be. … I believe in the future of agriculture with a faith born not of words, but of deeds,” Porter said, repeating FFA’s creed.

The event marked the first gathering of gubernatorial hopefuls since USC pulled the plug on its debate last week. USC officials canceled the event less than 24 hours before it was scheduled to begin after facing criticism for excluding the top candidates of color. The university said it used opinion polls and financial viability to determine which candidates were invited.

Organizers of the Fresno State event invited candidates who have earned at least an average of 3% in recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics. Along with Mahan, Becerra, Hilton and Porter, the candidates invited included former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee, both Democrats, were not invited.

Two leading Democratic candidates were not at the Fresno State forum: billionaire Tom Steyer was scheduled to tour the polluted Tijuana River Valley in San Diego County. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign cited a scheduling conflict but did not elaborate. Swalwell (D-Dublin) appeared to be doing media interviews in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Cutting gas taxes and other ways to save

California’s high cost of living is one of the most visible and pressing issues in the race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, and candidates pitched their plans to address it, primarily by lowering housing and energy costs.

Bianco, Hilton, Villaraigosa and Mahan have floated plans to cut oil industry regulations and suspend the state’s 61-cent-per-gallon gas tax. Bianco went further, saying he would completely eliminate the gas tax. Hilton said he would cap vehicle registrations at $71 per year no matter the type of car. Porter said her top priority is to lower housing costs by “building housing faster, building more housing, changing how we permit housing and innovating in construction and design and materials.”

Republican candidates blamed Democratic policies for the state’s high cost of living and argued that it would not be solved under a new governor of the same party. Both Bianco and Hilton pledged to gut state agencies responsible for regulating air and water quality.

“We’re never going to reduce the cost of groceries or anything else until we abandon the climate dogma that has got us to this point,” Hilton said, invoking the state’s goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2045 as a major cost driver.

According to a recent UC Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll, lowering the state’s cost of living was the top issue that likely voters want the state’s next governor to address. It was followed by cutting government waste and corruption — the top priority for Republican voters — and addressing homelessness.

Republicans take their shots

Wednesday’s forum was among the rare instances when Hilton and Bianco appeared before the same crowd. The Republicans have led polls for months, raising the specter of two Republicans and no Democrats appearing on the November general election ballot under California’s top-two primary system.

On Wednesday, they each tried to appeal to a more conservative-leaning audience than many other gubernatorial forums by blasting their Democratic opponents and statewide leaders.

”I think every single Democrat on this stage today should start with an apology,” Hilton said. “An apology for what their party has done to this area and this industry, stealing your water, piling on the regulations — 1,000% increase in the last decade or so, cutting the pay of agricultural workers, on and on.”

The Democrats onstage were repeatedly challenged and at times interrupted by Republican candidates who argued that electing another Democratic governor would bring more of the same problems to the region.

“You can’t just believe what’s on this stage,” Bianco said. “You have to listen to what they say in front of groups that don’t think like you, because everything that they’re saying here contradicts what they say in those groups with more cap-and-trade, more regulation, more everything else.”

Democrats talk up their experience

Democrats largely concurred on issues such as reducing regulations and increasing water supply to farmers. So they sought to differentiate themselves based on their experience and records in office.

Mahan painted himself as a pragmatist who led to San José being named the safest large city in the nation, reducing homelessness by one-third and spurring the construction of housing by reducing regulatory restrictions and fees.

“I’m accountable every day for making people’s lives better. I don’t get to make excuses and blame another party,” Mahan said. “You deserve better from Sacramento, and I’ll work with you to make sure we deliver it.”

Villaraigosa pointed to his eight-year tenure as mayor of Los Angeles, saying the city went from being the most violent big city in the country when he took office to being the safest by the time he left. He also said he took on the teachers union, which he once worked for, resulting in a 60% increase in the graduation rate.

Becerra pointed to his experiences leading the sprawling federal health agency in the Biden administration, including dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the wildfires that devastated Maui, Hawaii, avian flu and monkey pox.

“We do not need someone who needs training wheels,” he said.

Porter highlighted that she was the only candidate on the stage who refuses to take money from corporations and corporate PACs. The former congresswoman, who gained fame for her aggressive questioning of chief executives and Trump administration officials while in Congress, also pointed to her longtime focus on oversight.

“There are too many regulations that we are passing,” she said. “That is why I’m running for governor, to make sure that when things come to my desk, the first question is going to be, why did we need this?”

Water is for fighting

Nearly half of the forum was dedicated to questions about water policy, a complicated and politically thorny issue for Central Valley farmers and California as a whole. Most agreed the state should fast-track new reservoirs, raise some existing dams and increase water recycling to boost supply.

“We need an ‘all of the above’ solution,” Villaraigosa said. “That means we need recycling, we need [groundwater] recharge. We need dams. We need underground aquifers.”

Some Democrats, along with Hilton, continued to distance themselves from the proposed Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta tunnel, a huge project to transport water to the Central Valley and Southern California that has been tied up by legal challenges.

Bianco lambasted “environmental regulation[s] that makes weeds and bugs more important than your life,” and Hilton slammed “ridiculous bureaucracy” created by environmental laws such as the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

Fourth-generation tomato and pepper farmer Briana Giampaoli described herself as moderate and said she hasn’t decided whom to support for governor yet, but she was impressed by the candidates’ breadth of knowledge on water and the regulatory hurdles farmers face, particularly Hilton.

“That was really surprising, and I’m glad that both parties seem to understand that there needs to be a change in California, that something is not working,” she said. “The industry is changing as a whole across the country, and the regulations here continue to make it harder and harder to farm.”

Democrats on immigration

Democratic candidates faced a friendlier audience at the Fresno City College forum later in the day, where they unanimously expressed support for immigrant communities and said the state should fully fund Medi-Cal coverage for undocumented people. To close a budget deficit, Newsom and state lawmakers froze enrollment and raised premiums for undocumented adults on the program.

Porter and Thurmond called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be abolished but said, short of that, the state should monitor the federal agency’s operations in the state to protect civil liberties. The other candidates agreed; Villaraigosa pledged to ensure federal detention centers comply with all health and safety rules.