Bloomberg Article Suggests Top-Two System May Result in a Republican Winning for California Governor

Posted on by January 17, 2026

On January 14, Bloomberg News posted a story titled “Will California Get a Republican Governor After Newsom?” It is behind a paywall and cannot be reproduced here in its entirety. The subtitle is, “California’s primary election rules, which advance the top two candidates to a runoff election regardless of party, could result in a Republican being elected Governor in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one.” Also, “Unless something changes, what could happen is that Bianco and Hilton become the two candidates on the ballot in November.”

Democrats hold over two-thirds of the membership of each house of the legislature, so they have the power to pass a bill with an urgency clause. They could pass a bill legalizing write-in space on the general election ballot for top-two offices, so that if the November 2026 ballot does just contain the names of Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, whichever Democrat had placed third in the primary could mount a write-in campaign in November and potentially win. Californians have elected write-in candidates in the general election office in the past. Three times, a write-in candidate was elected to Congress from California in the general election, in 1930, 1946, and 1982,

The Bloomberg story, by Erika D. Smith, is incorrect to refer to the California November election as a “runoff.” A runoff is only held following an actual election, and is only held when the actual election fails to elect someone. But the California June event is not an “election”, because no one can be elected in June. Even if a candidate receives 100% of the vote in June, he or she is not yet elected and must run in November in order to be elected. The California top-two system was written that way because federal law requires all states to hold congressional elections in November of even years.

Comments

Bloomberg Article Suggests Top-Two System May Result in a Republican Winning for California Governor — 54 Comments

  1. While it would be nice for two Republicans to be on the final ballot for Governor of California, the people there haven’t earned such good fortune, and won’t get it. The Democrats (more accurately known as demon rats) will consolidate behind a candidate or two before the end of the process.

    Of the more likely events for California, tectonic plate seduction is the least terrible outcome, particularly for the coastal areas.

  2. California doesn’t permit candidates to withdraw.
    The filing deadline for California governor this year is March 11.

  4. to ‘RealFacts’ (previous commentor) i say go f**k yourslf! i live on Cali coast punk, its BEST part of Ca BOY!! FYI youre in the WRONG state b!tch boy trumpster, take your a$$ to Texas or some othr Trumpian infested state! omg morons like u (trumpsters) are flat out anti-American scum. yall trumpsters are nothing more than Treasonous Tratiors period! u clearly dont evn know what it means to be an American, genius. Morons like u (led by ‘King of Morons’ Trump) clearly present yourselves as brainless turds who couldnt compose a complete coherent thought to save your life. No suprise at all tht Trump is widely considered the ‘DUMBEST POTUS’ of ALL-TIME (no joke, look it up)

  8. Richard Winger,

    Their names might still appear on the ballot, but they have the financial and media reach resources to let enough of their supporters know they suspended their campaigns, endorsed other candidates etc. to have the same practical results.

    UR,

    You make a lot of unwarranted assumptions about me. For example, that I am male, or where I live. By the grace of God, it is nowhere near California, but in what was and should still be, but for an unconstitutional invasion by the damn yankees, the Confederate States of America. Nothing about the US government has been legitimate at any time since then. They still owe us reparations, too.

    I don’t recall discussing President Trump above, but reading comprehension doesn’t seem to be your strong suit. On the gradients of mental acuity and loyalty to America, President Trump is certainly superior to severely dementia ridden Chinese Communist puppet Cho Bai-Din, Kenyan Communist Barak Insane Osama, or the globalist puppet Bushes and Clinton’s, but anyone who thinks that someone who was born in and lived most of his life in New York is my leader doesn’t know me at all. Believing nonsense and propaganda you “look up” may be part of the reason you are one of the millions of illustrations why my previous comment was correct, and that the best high probability outcome for California will be for its coastal areas to be technically subducted.

    Stop trolling,

    You would do well to take your own advice. You have yet to produce the first piece of evidence that any of the people you endlessly claim are Stock are in fact him.

    AZ spambot,

    As always, if President Trump was a tyrant, you would be deprogrammed, your programmers would be in prison, and this website would be taken down.

  9. Correction: tectonically subducted, not technically. Google and its pernicious autocorrect are a couple of the endless plagues on our country and world emanating from the California coast.

  10. “USMC Raider” whoever he or she is clearly is a treasonous moron, which is typical of California coast residents. Along with the rest of those turds, having the Pacific plate slide under the ocean would be of great benefit to the rest of us. In other words, go die in a fire.

  11. Don’t blame USMC Raider, blame the woeful California miseducation system that did him or her such a terrible disservice.

  13. Deporting the entire population of all coastal counties of California would also make America much greater. It doesn’t matter what shithole countries they get deported to, only that reasonable measures are taken that they do not ever return.

  14. I’m not sure, but I think even California might be ok once we deport everyone who is in the U.S. illegally, is only “legal” due to the disastrous 1965 immigration law – the worst legislation to ever pass into law in 250 years – and crack down in a draconian way on drugs and crime.

    We would also need to complete dismantle all welfare programs, end women voting, reinstate the draft, bring back prayer and segregation in public schools or privatize them all, and if possible send back the outdated farm equipment of the 19th century to its ancestral continent of origin. As a bonus, all communists would be dropped from helicopters.

    Once those common sense steps are taken, California could perhaps be restored to its former glory when Reagan was governor, but even better without hippie and negro riots.

  15. California is a beautiful state. Any place in the world can be turned into total hell by left-wing fascists and commies. And any place can be transformed into a great place to live with patriarchy, Christian nationalism, capitalism, and most of all White Power.

  16. Sometimes a rose grows in the middle of the most lifeless desert. Don’t hold being born and raised in New York against President Trump. There are also many great Americans even on the California coast, they are just vastly outnumbered by criminal alien invaders, leftard zombies, drug addicts, feminazis, mentally ill gender benders, etc.

  17. Richard Winger’s commentary ignores the unique circumstances in 1930 and 1946 and 1982.

    Charles Curry died on October 10, 1930, just a month before the November general election. Curry was the nominee of both Republican and Democratic parties. In 1928, he was also the nominee of both parties. You could vote for a Republican or Democrat, so long as you voted for Curry. His death was too close to the general election to permit the parties to choose replacement nominees. His name was stricken from the ballot, and the general election was entirely write-in. His son, Charles Curry, Jr. was elected as a write-in.

    Senator Hiram Johnson died on August 6, 1945. He had been the only person ever popularly elected to that seat (in 1916, 1922, 1928, 1934, 1940), and California apparently expected him to live forever. Governor Earl Warren appointed William Knowland as interim senator on August 14, 1945. A special election was scheduled for November 4, 1946, 15 months later, to fill the remaining two months of Johnson’s term ending on January 3, 1947. Given the time to count the votes and certify the results a new senator might only serve a few weeks. Nobody, including Knowland filed for the special election in August. The primary for the full term (1947-1953) had been held in June. The special election became write-in only because no one filed. A few candidates announced they would seek to be elected by write-in, and Knowland then actively campaigned for the write-in election. At least one write-in candidate withdrew.

    It appears that a combination of failure to harmonize the 17th and 20th Amendments, and moving the California primary from August to June resulted in holding a meaningless election. Knowland was elected to serve the final few weeks of a term to which he had already been appointed, as well as being elected for a full term. Only about 20% of voters voted in the special election.

    In 1982, there were 18 candidates on the Republican primary ballot for CA-43. This was an open seat radically redrawn by the infamous Burton-mander which had been rejected by the voters by a 1:2 margin, but nonetheless imposed by Chief Justice Liberal Rose Bird. Not only did no candidate receive a majority, the Top 3 collectively fell short of a majority. Ron Packard finished second, 69 votes behind “first place”. Packard ran a write-in campaign, defeating the Democratic and Republican nominees. Had Top 2 been used, it is likely there would have been two Republicans on the general election ballot.

    November.

  18. Some good things do come out of Cali. The Aryan Brotherhood originated in the California penal system. The White Aryan Resistance was created and based in California, although Tom Metzger moved it to Indiana before he died. The Golden State Skinheads and the Rise Above Movement, also from the Cali coast. Hail!

  21. States should certainly be able to secede, but some states should also be expelled from the USA, and Calipornia is most definitely at the top of that list.

  22. The whole discussion of California makes me wonder: is there a constitutional mechanism for congress to convert a state back to a territory?

  23. Democracy is always a race to the bottom of a bottomless pit – governance by the lowest common denominator of a continuously dumbed down product of multigenerational broken families, propaganda mills, filthy vulgar entertainment, brain eating social media, population replacement, breeding by the dumbest (see idiocracy), the lazy and stupid voting tax extorted welfare for themselves, chemical warfare through narcoterrorism, etc.

    Christian White Nationalists must create our own independent living spaces, whether as anarcho-capitalist enclaves or as neofeudal, theocratic, or Capitalist meritocratic micronations with very limited voting rights along a corporate shareholder model. We’ve seen what continuously diluting the (breeding) stock does to a constitutional republic. It’s time to learn the lessons and terminate a failed experiment before we get to full third world status or worse.

  24. Trump is only a first step. We must move much, much further to the right.

  25. The problems boil down to giving voting rights to a whole bunch of people who shouldn’t have ever had them, which goes hand in hand with them voting themselves ever more of other people’s money, ever more burdensome regulations, voting to bring in additional welfare parasites, spies, terrorists, commies and criminals from every part of the world.

  27. Things really started to go to hell quickly when they started letting broads vote. They need to get back in the kitchen and let men make decisions, especially in politics.

  28. Relax and don’t worry, it’s going to be fine. The White People’s movement keeps getting bigger all the time. I’m dreaming of a White nation, just like the ones that I once knew. And now with mass deportation, my dream is starting to come true!

  29. MONARCHY / OLIGARCHY IS THE BOTTOM — FOREIGN WARS / DOMESTIC OPPRESSIONS / SLAVERY / TYRANNY
    —

    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  31. Monarchy can be bad, but it isn’t as bad as dumbocracy. With monarchy, a mad tyrant king can be deposed. With dumbocracy, bad incentives create increasingly bad outcomes over time. Limited government constitutional republic is better than both, but there are inadequate safeguards from sliding downwards into dumbocracy, so they need to be significantly tightened up. The changes in our form of government since the time of the founder’s have all been for the worse and worse. So, we need changes that don’t just go back to their original system but change things in the opposite direction along multiple axes and make future changes after that much more difficult.

  32. Real Facts

    “AZ spambot,

    As always, if President Trump was a tyrant, you would be deprogrammed, your programmers would be in prison, and this website would be taken down.”

    Duh!

  33. Why so many retards spazzing out here? Don’t y’all got some pornos, blooper and fail videos, dating shows, and crap like that to watch?

  34. Why wasn’t the AZ spambot spAZzing out about Xi’s demented Quisling Cho Bai-Din being a tyrant? Wasn’t he much more tyrannical than Trump?

  38. If you expect anything good to come out of politics and government, you’re going to be disappointed. Quit digging yourself and everyone else a deeper hole. Pick up a gun or a shovel and do something useful. Don’t forget to pray.

  39. “With dumbocracy, bad incentives create increasingly bad outcomes over time.”

    …and everyone can point fingers at each other, with the buck not stopping anywhere. Replacing this or that politician or law doesn’t fundamentally change anything. The tyrant isn’t a person, it’s a toxic combination of the lowest common denominator voter and a flawed system. See Hoppe, “Democracy: the God that Failed.”

  41. These people who think Biden was better than Trump are too stupid to breathe. They all need to be humanely euthanized for their own good and especially everyone else’s, with eugenic health practices instituted to prevent them from being replicated going forward. God bless America!

  43. The evil sinister left must be defeated by any and all means necessary to save America, save Christendom, and save European based civilization. God bless President Trump!

  44. Maybe we can give California back to Mexico? Wouldn’t both countries be better off if we did?

    And just in general terms can a state be constitutionally converted into a territory?

  45. ALL the minority rule gerrymander regimes in the USA since 1776 are NOT * democracies*

    BUT evil and vicious minority rule oligarchies — often with lawless tyrant monarch bosses.

    1/2 or less votes x 1/2 rigged PACK/CRACK GERRYMANDER areas = 1/4 or less control

    MUCH MUCH MUCH WORSE MINORITY RULE IN RIGGED EXTREMIST PRIMARIES.

    BRAIN DEAD MEDIA AND MATH MORON COURTS
    —–
    NOOO PRIMARIES
    PR = REAL DEMOCRACY / MAJORITY RULE

  46. I agree with the spambot! We are getting ruled by minorities. They vote as a bloc, and Whites don’t. It’s time for the majority to reassert ourselves and take back our country, before we become the minority and then go extinct. Thanks, spambot!

  47. To the extent we’ve become ever more of a democracy through overextended voting rights since 1776, that has made things worse, not better. A full blown democracy would quickly result in full blown communist tyranny as the moronic majority vote their rights away for a handful of other people’s money.

  48. Puerto Rico is a real democracy. Whites are already a minority there, and in DC. Obviously they are run much better than the 50 States, like every other nonWhite majority democracy on the planet. Let’s make them States and import ourselves a nonWhite future voting majority of criminals, lunatics, terrorists, welfare parasites, religious cults etc from every part of the world so we can be a wonderful democracy too!

  49. Importing global democracy might be a shortcut, but a patient cabal of globalist Fabian communist termites can arrive at totalitarian prison planet democracy over a few generations by …

    – turning education into propaganda

    – turning news and entertainment into propaganda

    – turning academic scholarship in history, social sciences, and even natural sciences where they can be useful to a propaganda narrative, e.g. fake “pandemic,” “climate change,” etc into propaganda

    – letting stupid, lazy products of all this propaganda vote themselves other people’s hard earned money

    – taking over government jobs and binding down the economy with red tape, particularly with the assistance of government employee unions

    – taking over jobs in charities, foundations, and nongovernmental organizations

    – shutting down lunatic asylums and letting mentally ill criminal drug addicts out on the streets as vagrant panhandlers

    – secularizing and sexualizing children

    – turning the legal system into a kangaroo farce

    – dumbing down generation by generation with mind destroying drugs, idiotic social media and “reality” shows, and paying lazy sluts to have as many bastard children as possible

    – mixing the races to breed a genetically engineered race of naturally subservient slaves

    – with all the crime that inevitably results from all this, scare people into giving up guns and leaving them all in the hands of government, criminals, and the paid private armed guards of the elite

    – entering international treaties to let globalist bureaucrats rule us, export our jobs and import junk

    – letting idiots, children, and idiot children vote

    Using these time tested tactics, we get to global communist totalitarianism through democracy over several generations

  50. A majority of moronic sheep dumbed down by several generations of propaganda, addicted to consumerism and cheap thrills, and bred like farm animals for their docile traits one generation after another will certainly march democratically to the slaughterhouses, bleeting the whole way.

  51. SORRY – GERMAN AND JAPAN MASTER RACE REGIMES BLOWN TO HELL IN 1939-1945 BY OTHER REGIMES – MAINLY THE USA AND OLDE USSR WITH EARLY CHINA AND BRIT SACRIFICES.

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