OAKLAND, Calif. – With Tuesday’s primary election approaching, the race for California governor is coming into focus — and one candidate’s rise has surprised nearly everyone watching.

That’s according to Joe Garofoli, senior political writer and columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, who broke down the latest polling and key races to watch with KTVU.

Who’s in the lead?

By the numbers:

The latest Berkeley IGS poll of 5,000 likely voters from May 19-24, shows former Attorney General Xavier Becerra leading the field at 25%, with Republican Steve Hilton at 21% and billionaire activist Tom Steyer at 19%.

Just two months ago, Becerra was polling at 5% and Democratic Party leaders were quietly urging lower-performing candidates to reconsider their campaigns. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is now polling at 1%, was among those who suggested Becerra consider dropping out.

“This would be the greatest comeback since Lazarus,” Garofoli said.

He attributed Becerra’s turnaround primarily to the exit of Congressman Eric Swalwell from the race, saying Swalwell’s voters and Becerra share many of the same moderate positions. 

Becerra, Garofoli said, has leaned into a steady, reassuring image on the campaign trail.

“He’s sort of portraying himself as Tío Becerra — Uncle Becerra, the kindly uncle,” Garofoli said. “This is not a guy who’s going to go to Sacramento and turn over the tables.”

The other side:

Steyer, meanwhile, has climbed from 15% earlier this month to 19% in the latest poll, powered by $213 million of his own money and a string of endorsements from major progressive organizations in California. 

His support for single-payer health care and his pledge to not take corporate PAC money have resonated with the left, even as some progressives have historically been skeptical of billionaire candidates.

“Steyer’s a different type of billionaire than the tech billionaires who they traditionally oppose,” Garofoli said, noting that Steyer’s platform focuses on protecting and creating working-class jobs rather than advancing technologies that could eliminate them.

Ballots are slow coming in

Dig deeper:

Despite the competitive field, Democrats have been slow to return their mail-in ballots, with return rates sitting around 12%. 

Garofoli said the hesitation reflects a broader dissatisfaction with the candidate pool.

“I can’t tell you how many people told me, ‘I don’t know who to vote for, none of these people appeal to me,’” he said. “Nobody in this field really has that outsized big personality, or at least has demonstrated it at this point.”

Local perspective:

In San Francisco, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added a new variable to the congressional race to fill her seat, endorsing Supervisor Connie Chan over front-runner State Senator Scott Wiener. Garofoli said the endorsement was expected, though its timing surprised him.

Pelosi’s recent endorsement record in San Francisco has been uneven — she backed Dean Preston, who lost, and Joel Engardio, who was recalled — but Garofoli said this one may carry more weight.

“It is for her seat. She has tapped Chan on the shoulder and said, this is the person I want,” he said.

Chan is currently in a tight race with Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech engineer and one-time aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to Chronicle polling.

The Pelosi endorsement, Garofoli said, could be enough to push Chan into the top two alongside Wiener.

It’s been quite the unexpected slog through a field of candidates so numerous that all of their names don’t even fit on a single page of the ballot. Democrats in California have held the governor’s mansion, state House, and state Senate for almost two decades and unrest about that trifecta out West is real. The traditional political alliances are frayed, at best, with socialists backing a billionaire and Trump supporting an immigrant. A sex scandal tanked the hopes of a leading candidate, Rep. Eric Swalwell, and Trump’s endorsement of Hilton all but sidelined tough-on-crime Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco. It’s why Hilton, who moved to California in 2012, is in the mix in a race that is set to test assumptions about party loyalty, candidate partisanship, and money’s power. And it carries massive consequences about who will be the de facto CEO of the fourth-largest economy on the planet, between Germany and Japan, and a major player on the national political stage. This is not some backwater local election.

By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California air regulators on Friday approved a contentious overhaul of the state’s carbon market, creating a program that could steer billions of dollars in free pollution permits to oil refineries and other major polluters over the objections of environmental groups, key lawmakers and three of the board’s own members.

Ten members of the California Air Resources Board voted to adopt the changes to its cap-and-invest program after two days of lengthy hearings, including a full day dedicated to hundreds of public comments.

The overhaul followed intensive lobbying by the oil industry as well as pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration to help keep refineries operating in the state amid rising gas prices.

The approval sets up a potential budget fight in Sacramento. The Legislative Analyst’s Office projects that quarterly auction revenue for state climate programs will drop from roughly $4 billion a year to about $2 billion under the new overhaul.

Such a shortfall would effectively zero out programs lawmakers spent last year fighting to fund: affordable housing, public transit, drinking water in low-income communities and pollution monitoring in California’s most polluted neighborhoods.

The governor’s office praised the measure as a compromise that balanced economic uncertainty with the state’s climate goals. Refinery closures and the Iran-Israel war have driven average California gas prices above $6 a gallon. 

Newsom, in a statement, used the moment to draw a contrast with President Donald Trump.

“While Trump sows ongoing chaos and uncertainty, California is staying focused by protecting our economy, safeguarding public health, and doubling down on the clean energy future all Californians deserve,” he said. 

Environmentalists warned the changes to the program amount to a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry that weakens California’s only program setting a firm cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California senior director for the Environmental Defense Fund, called the decision “deeply misguided” for prioritizing polluters over communities.

“Newsom’s air regulators are handing billions to oil executives at the expense of our climate, health, and affordability for working families in a rushed process that has shortchanged meaningful public participation,” said Bahram Fazeli, policy director at Communities for a Better Environment. 

How the program works — and what changes

California’s 13-year-old carbon market forces major polluters to buy permits while the state lowers the overall cap each year. Friday’s vote will reduce those permits – and creates a new subsidy program carved out of the market.

The program, which may still see changes, could make available a new pool of free pollution permits available to industry valued at as much as $4 billion. Companies that pledge to invest in clean energy and efficiency may qualify for the permits in exchange for investments in clean energy. 

The pool will be capped at 118.3 million permits — the same number the air board has said must come off the market for California to hit its 2030 climate target. Environmentalists say the proposal risks wiping out those reductions. 

Half are reserved for the fossil fuel sector. A recent Berkeley analysis, by the chair of an independent committee that oversees the carbon market, found refineries could end up with more free permits than they need to cover their emissions.

The air board has defended the design. Officials say the credits will go only to companies undertaking decarbonization projects, will be limited and temporary and can be clawed back if companies misuse them. The plan, they say, is meant to keep California refineries operating at a time of mounting closures and global market pressure. According to air regulators, the amended program will spur clean-energy investment as Trump cuts federal support.

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