California’s governor’s race just got less comfortable for Xavier Becerra, and the man who wants his job is the one holding the clipboard. A poll taken the day after the first debate puts the Democrat ahead of Republican Steve Hilton by 5.6 points. That is not a victory lap. It is a campaign survey. It is also a long way from the blowout Sacramento has been selling.
The New York Post reported that pollster David Wolfson surveyed 1,020 California voters on Oct. 1 and 2, immediately after the Sept. 30 CNN debate in Burbank. Becerra sits at 45.7 percent. Hilton sits at 40.1 percent. Another 14.1 percent have not picked a side. Hilton’s campaign paid for the poll. Readers should treat it that way.
Even so, the movement inside Hilton’s own numbers is hard to wave off. An earlier survey commissioned by the same campaign, reported by the Post on Sept. 25, had Becerra up 52 to 37. Becerra’s support fell 6.3 points. Hilton’s rose 3.1. The margin moved 9.4 points in Hilton’s direction in a matter of days.
The State Already Knows It Is Broken
The more useful number may not be the horse race. Nearly six in ten voters, 58.8 percent, said California is headed in the wrong direction. Only 28.1 percent said the state is on the right track. Another 13.1 percent could not say. That is the inheritance Gavin Newsom is leaving, and Becerra is the man asking to keep the keys.
Hilton has built the campaign on that misery. High housing costs. Gas prices that punish a commute. A Democratic machine that treats the bill as a moral achievement. After the new numbers landed he said, “Unlike Becerra (because I’ve been out there listening to the people), I know Becerra’s policies have destroyed the California Dream. My plans will restore it.”
Independent surveys still tell a colder story for the Republican. The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and taken Sept. 15 to 20 among 4,512 likely voters, had Becerra up 58 to 33. The Public Policy Institute of California, in the field Sept. 4 to 10, had him up 60 to 38 among likely voters, with Hilton ahead only in the Central Valley. Prediction markets have barely blinked. A campaign poll that closes a gap the public polls have not closed is a spark, not a coronation.
The Debate Turned Personal and Ugly
Most Californians did not sit through the thing. Wolfson found that 11.2 percent watched all or nearly all of the CNN debate, 9.5 percent watched part of it, nearly 20 percent caught clips, and 19.9 percent followed the coverage without watching. The fight still spilled into the poll.
Immigration was the flashpoint. Hilton, who came from Britain, told the audience his parents had come from Hungary to England and that he wanted legal immigrants protected and the law enforced. Becerra answered with a line built for a mailer.
You seem to welcome immigrants who look like you, but deport immigrants who look like me.
He also said California had welcomed Hilton and that Hilton had welcomed “ICE mercenaries” in return. Hilton called the remark disgraceful and said Becerra’s party is not enforcing California law as written. After the poll he drew the line even harder. “Unlike Xavier Becerra, I am an immigrant. Unlike Xavier Becerra, my father was an immigrant. My stepfather, too. My whole family.”
Becerra has long said his parents came from Mexico. He was born here. The debate did not turn on paperwork. It turned on whether a career Democrat can smear a legal immigrant for wanting criminal illegal aliens handed to federal officers, then run as the heir to the California Dream.
The Record Becerra Does Not Want on Stage
Hilton spent part of the night on Becerra’s years as Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary. He accused Becerra of dismantling sponsor vetting and sending children “directly into the clutches of child sex and labor traffickers.” Becerra disputed the description.
The paper trail is not a debate prop. The Post reported Sept. 29 that a former Biden official claimed Becerra referred to migrant children as “these little Juanitos and Juanitas.” The campaign called that an outright fabrication. The same report noted a 2023 New York Times investigation in which Becerra pressed staff to speed placements with an assembly-line comparison, and an August Post account that roughly 330,000 cases involving children released on his watch remained unresolved. In August he walked away from reporters rather than answer questions about that tenure.
Scripture does not grade poll crosstabs. It does grade the powerful. “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” A man who ran the federal pipeline for unaccompanied children does not get to treat that record as jealousy.
Undecided Voters Still Lean His Way
The fine print keeps Becerra in front. Asked to pick if they had to, 72.5 percent of the undecided leaned toward him and 27.5 percent toward Hilton. Favorability is ugly for both. Becerra is at 44.1 percent favorable and 45.3 percent unfavorable. Hilton is at 35.5 percent favorable and 50.7 percent unfavorable. California Democrats have spent years defining any Republican as an extension of Donald Trump, and a chunk of that definition is still stuck to Hilton.
The Sept. 25 Echelon Insights survey for Hilton, 1,199 likely voters, showed what happens when the HHS record is actually put in front of people. The head-to-head tightened to 44 percent for Becerra and 42 percent for Hilton. That is the race Hilton is trying to force. Not a seminar on tone. A referendum on whether the next governor is another rubber stamp for the costs, the sanctuary posture, and the Biden Cabinet résumé.
Election Day is Nov. 3. Newsom is term-limited. Becerra would be the first Latino governor of California in more than 150 years, and the Democratic machine still has the registration, the money, and the public polls. What it does not have is a state that thinks it is working. A 5.6-point campaign poll will not flip California by itself. It does tell the people who have been told this race was over that the man who oversaw the missing children is no longer skating.
