June 3, 2026 • 32 mins
The votes are finally rolling in, and Election Night is heating up across California. Early unofficial results show movement in the governor’s race, with Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra emerging as the frontrunners while candidates up and down the ballot watch the numbers closely. Gary and the team break down the latest returns, analyze what the early vote counts could mean, and discuss some of the biggest storylines shaping the night.
As the governor’s race tightens, Republican strategist Amanda Blackwood joins the show to provide insight into the shifting political landscape. Later, Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio weighs in as major candidates begin conceding, including San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
From razor-thin margins and surprise developments to expert analysis and live updates from around the state, this episode delivers all the drama, strategy, and intrigue of a pivotal California primary election night.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Back
to Gary Hoffman and Chris Merrill.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I told you I would call a race. I think
it's safe to call this one.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Do you want me to have the ticker tape? We
have a special Yeah? Do you want to do that?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Sounds all right, Gary Hoffman, I think it's fair to
say unofficial results.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
At this point. Ta. Yeah, did you kind of have
to tap that a little bit? The years work? Huh?
All right, good out.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I believe it's safe to say that La City Council
District seven is going to go to Monica Rodriguez.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Oh yeah, she's in quite a bit. She's been in
this room a handful of times. She's a friend of
nil Sevadrin. Yeah, comes in, Yeah, yeah. She was running
out a post odd numbered districts in the La City
Council races.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
This year this year, yes, correct, So she was running
out a pose. There's a few other races where people
were unopposed. Convena City Council District one, unopposed Guardina City Clerk.
I think there was another one in Horrens if I'm
not mistaken, Pasadena City Council District five, same thing. So
the unopposed races, I think it's safe for us to say,
even if you are standing in line for that, I
(01:17):
don't think we're going to alter the election trajectory at
this point.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
For those of you who are wondering, we are keeping
an eye on the Secretary of State and their election
results websites that over the next few minutes we should
get some numbers that come in. If you voted for
Living for God and Country, DeMott for governor, Yeah, House,
he faring right now, zero percent, But that's also with
zero percent reporting porting. So also Barack Obama. That was
(01:43):
the one I was saying, Barack d Obama shaw right,
one of the sixty one people running for government right
now tied for first technically, but also tied for last.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
We should also point out that at this point Eric
Swalwell's also tied for first.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You remember his name is on the ballot. Such a
talk about that for just a second.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Please, Okay, So Eric Swalwell. When we found out that
Kamala Harris, a vice former vice president, was not going
to run for governor, right, it made everybody think, even
if she's not an extravagant candidate or an exciting candidate
(02:22):
for a lot of people. She was the biggest name
by far that would have been in this race. So
she says she's out. Eric Swalwell by default becomes the
biggest name in the race, and we saw him start
to rise in the polls. This was at roughly the
time when people started floating the idea of well, wait
(02:42):
a minute, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are polling better
than any of the ninety seven Democrats that are running.
So are we going to see two Republicans in you know,
make their way to the general. It wasn't likely to
happen then, it's still not likely to happen today. But
there was that thing where Eric Swalwell saw an opening
(03:04):
and then the wolves came out. And I don't mean
that in a negative sense. I just mean that once
you rise to the top, it's hard to stay there.
And in his case, obviously it's because he had skeletons
in the closet, literal sexual assault allegations that were that
were leveled against him. So so then he fades away,
which the timing on that was was very interesting to me.
(03:27):
And this is in no way, shape or form.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Meant to take away from the accusations or the validity
of those accusations. But he's been in the public eye
for a very long time, sure, And I mean, you know,
he's been in Congress. And so this was the point
where you had some of the accusers that came out
and they said, I couldn't stand by and let him
run for the governor of California. And I thought, it's
it's really interesting that that was the that was the
(03:53):
level Congress, right, right, Yeah, So anyway, the timing to
me just seemed, let's just say, interesting, right. I don't
want to say I'm questioning it at all, but it's
just it's just interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Well and Swalwell's bona fides for the Democratic Party were
sort of contained in the idea that he fought against
Donald Trump, which was clearly a notch in the belt
and gave him notoriety within the party.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
So he's out. Javier Besserro was at that time. Javier
Besserro was pulling it five percent.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
We had him in the studio at that time, so
Michael and I during our show Monks and Merrill every
day noon to three KFI. So he came in Gary,
he came in I think he was the second person
that we talked to. We had Antonio Viadrogs in here,
and then we talked with the Besera and we said,
at what point do you say I got to get
out of the way, right, you know?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
And he says, I'm on And he was right.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Because I think at that point to Hilton and Bianco
worried about twelve percent and he was at five and
he says, I'm only I'm only seven points back. Guys,
you know this is this is not a time for
me to throw in the towel. But all of a sudden,
Swalwell goes and it felt like a all the rats
were jumping off the ship and looking for a life boat,
and everybody's try to figure out which life boat they
were going to get into. Is it gonna be Styre,
is gonna be Mayhean, Is it going to be Porter?
(05:07):
Who's it going to be? And they they sort of said,
I guess Biserah feels like the safest lifeboat, and that
seemed to be where the establishment then focused their attention.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Eric Swalwell was technically in the race for fourteen scaramuccis,
which is the measure of political time ten days one
scaramucci is ten days. He was in it for approximately
fourteen scaramuccis, and when he leaves, Javier Bisera becomes that
safe is a great word, least objectionable character in the
(05:39):
Democratic part Democratic Party that then rises gets all of
the I hate to use this term because it's kind
of hack, but gets the machine behind him, which means
that he's got national attention he never got. And this
is also important to remember, he never got an endorsement
from the sitting governor. Gavin Newsom has not tipped his
hand yet in this No, and I'm wondering if he's
(06:01):
going to you after tonight. Well, well, of course of
course he is. Well you say he is, but maybe
he doesn't want anything to do with it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
That's also possible he's already just no. Yeah, I said
it would be inappropriate for me too. He washed his
hands of that.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Unless it's if it's a Republican and a Democrat, if
it's Javier Basara and Steve Hilton, Gaven Newsom will absolutely
do the obvious thing. Didn't saying that Jerry Brown didn't
didn't endorse him though, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Interview, remember that's it.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
It's highly likely I mean, but, but, but Sarah's not
received an endorsement from Joe Biden for for what that's worth,
or Barack Obama. I mean, there are people that are
within that party. This is an important enough position that
I would have expected it would have gained the national
attention to get endorsements from people like that. I mean,
you've got Elizabeth Warren who endorsed Katie Porter.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
In this race.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah, you know, again, do something that surprises me. If
you're gonna, if you're gonna endorse somebody, endorse somebody, that
surprises me. If David Foster comes out and David Foster
and Catherine McPhee come out and say they're going to
endorse Spencer Pratt, that's a surprise.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
That to me is a surprise, and I go, oh,
that's interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
If Elizabeth Warren to come out and supported Tom Styer,
the billionaire, I think we would have been surprised.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Yeah, yeah, that would have been a surprise. But they
politically are not that far apart in terms of their ideals.
So anyway, we're waiting for some of these numbers to
come in. We do have just a tiny smidge of
results two point one percent of election results that are
coming in from around the state, and the Secretary of
State as of right now puts javierbasera twenty two percent, interesting,
(07:41):
Tom Steyer at seventeen percent, Steve Hilton at thirty percent,
and again it's two two percent of precincts reporting, but
Steve Hilton has the very very early lead in Yes,
all right.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
We'll come back.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
We've got some other stuff that we're going to be
talking about in terms of these races we'll see today.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
You're listening to KFI Amix on demand.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
The numbers continue to roll in.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
The Secretary of State is going to continue to update
their dashboard throughout the evening obviously as they continue to
release some of those results, and every time they come through,
we will use the word trunch, a new trunch of that.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
I thought about that early today. I was going to
try to ban the word before you even said it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, dang it, I seriously consider turning that into a
drinking game.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
There was there was.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Going to be I was going to challenge you to
say certain things tonight off the air. I was going
to have a list of of I love that idea,
some I have My wife had a suggestion for one
of them. I'm going to write it down because I'm
not sure you can actually say it on the air, Okay,
And I guess there's a certain way that you could
say it, maybe that I'm yeah, I don't think we can.
(08:48):
It's wild inappropriate, yeah, mildly. The lady's dirt.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, I mean that borders on the Carlin dirty words,
my friend. Now, what we do have, though, is update
up to just shive seventeen percent, and the governor's race.
Steve Hilton continues to lead in that with just just
short of twenty nine percent of the vote, but Sarah
at twenty five, Styre at eighteen, Pianco at eleven percent.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I think Bianco is at Hish.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
His party tonight and they're I'm guessing he went in
there with eyes wide open but hopeful.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
He spoke to his supporters a few minutes ago, sixteen months.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
To make sure that I'm making a better life for
all of you.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
In California, one where the other.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
In my personal life. You were all a part of this,
so I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Very very much.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
He would to make sure that we made Caloria dream
an exteemable thing again, and we're going to keep this going.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
The whole are close. We're now waiting for them.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Numbers aren't awful at this point, considering we've been obviously
seeing him slide in the polls at least a bit
after especially after Trump came up and endorsed Hilton, he
saw some of those Republican numbers shift to Steve Hilton
away from Chad Bianco. But he stayed in the race
despite calls by Steve Hilton, at Hilton and others to
(10:20):
get out. As of right now, Chad Bianco at just
under fourteen percent.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So if we take a look at some of the
local races, and I think people are watching very carefully
the mayor's race in the city of Los Angeles. We'll
talk about some of the other mayor world races, some
of the races that are going on, including the congressional
district with the Ken Calvert and Young Kim, which has been.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
All over your television here.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
But at this point, we are at thirty nine percent
reported for the mayor's race, and Karen Bass with a
pretty commanding lead right now thirty eight percent. Spencer Pratt
in second with almost twenty eight percent, Nitthia Rahman third
at twenty percent. Adam Miller is below five percent right
now and Ray Wang is under three percent, So I
(11:02):
think that one is probably shaking out is the polls
have told us, although the results are showing a little
bit higher numbers. I will say this. I believe in
most polling ray Wang was showing higher than Adam Miller.
But I think you're looking a split between the Progressive
Democratic vote between Ray Wang and Nithi Ramen.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
The other question I had, and this is always going
to be one of the things that we look at
right on the polling night itself, is where the undecideds go. Obviously, right,
I mean, the last three polls in the mayor's race
showed somewhere between nineteen twenty seven percent undecided. So if
in fact Karen bass is picking up, it looks like
(11:41):
about ten percent of those undecided votes, or I should
say about about half of those undecided votes, then that
may it's hard to say if they would go the
other way and ten percent would go to Spencer Pratt,
or if there's if Nithia Rahman picks up some of
the undecided.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, probably a few, but it does look based on
some the pulling numbers that we've seen where Karen Bass
was somewhere between about twenty six and thirty percent in
the polling numbers. Right, Pratt was going to be in
that twenty two to twenty five percent issue. It looks
like both of them definitely picked up some of those
undecided votes, kind of consolidating behind who we thought were going.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
To be the front runners, you know, before.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Any of this evening began, those were the ones that
had consistently showed trends that were positive in all the
different polls.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
I wonder if this is one of those nights where.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
We mentioned Don Antonio's restaurant is where Spencer Pratt is
having his primary night dinner. I suppose I'm not supposed
to be private event. Reporters were kicked out of the
restaurant a little bit earlier. This is one of those
moments for him where it's like, boy, it's going to
get real. I mean that if these numbers hold up,
we had plenty of time to figure it out. But
(12:50):
if these if these numbers hold up, that's a that's
a five month marathon of just that this is your life. Yeah,
and it's twenty four hours a day. It is a
NonStop thing. And I mean the idea of running for
political office has never intrigued me ever at all. Part
(13:11):
of it is because as a reporter covering it for
so long, I've seen what these these campaigns do to people,
and he's on the verge of that, becoming a guy
who is in politics born out of frustration as opposed
to his life goal.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It will turn me Gray fast Man. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Now here's one thing that's really interesting, and again we're
really early on in this, but at this point that
the ballot measure most people have been watching it not
the one incomptent, although we'll talk about that later, the
La County measure er. This is the one that would
have raised the sales tax half a percent in order
to compensate for money that was lost from the big
beautiful bill. Right now, the no votes are leading by
(13:52):
five percent, fifty two to forty seven. So I think
that's a really interesting one to watch. There were a
number of different measures that we're asking for additional taxes
and will continue to in November, and that maybe just
overload for the voters.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Right now, we'll come back. We're going to talk with
a couple of different political strategists. We also wanted to
update you on that District forty, which is Ken Calvert
and Young Kim closer than you think. It could be
one of those that is going to be one of
the races that potentially takes a very long time to
figure out. Gary and Chris, we'll come back with our
(14:28):
the sound of that primary election night coverage.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
We'll figure we'll flip for it. Oh, I guess they're
on now.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Chris Merril Gary Hoffman primary election night coverage here on
this June second. The numbers have been coming in and
they're at a good pace right now, at least for
the first half an hour since the polls have closed.
But just to give you an update where we stand
in the governor's race, the top two races that were
keeping our eyes on, of course, governor and the mayor
(15:01):
of the city of La Javierbisara. Right now, this is
about thirty five percent of the vote in Javierbasara at
twenty six point four percent, and Steve Hilton very close
behind at twenty five point six just bounced up to
about twenty six percent, and then Tom Steyer just below
twenty percent.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So if that trend continues.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
That means that Javierbasara Steve Hilton obviously would be in
the runoff for governor. But that's still too close for
Steve Hilton. He wants a little bit more of a
comfort margin than six points above Tom Steyer. A couple
of observations there is that Steve Hilton called for Chad
Bianco to drop, and he said the best time to
drop would have been ten days ago.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah, the second best time to drop is right now.
Bionco never did.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
If we were to take that eleven percent and hand
it to Hilton, just assuming people are voting down party lines,
that would have given Steve Hilton a commanding lead here.
But instead it looks very tight between that one and
two spot Stier, as you made mentioned, still six points
off of of the qualifying in the Jungle primary, but
also too close for Steve Hilton's comfort right now, if
(16:06):
you're Tom Steyer, you just spent two hundred million dollars
for a third place finish in California.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
That's going to be frustrating.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
He did it, if this holds, he did it for
the presidential election too. He spent a lot of his
own mind.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
But you would think, Okay, well that was the nation.
Two hundred million dollars is going to go a long
way from just running in one state. I mean, at
some point, does he does he go from here to Texas,
to Florida, to New York and then keep working his
way then down to Illinois. If that doesn't work, he
heads to Iowa? I mean, does he just keep finding
places until he findly wins an election?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Amanda Blackwood is joining us. He's a Republican strategist who
is coming in to help shed some light on all
of this. And at this point, as we said, Steve
Hilton looks like he's in a pretty solid second place
behind Javey Arbissera. It's still very very early in all
of this. But how do you think things are going?
Speaker 6 (16:53):
You know, I think we thought that Steve was going
to come out of this from the get go. And
you know, it's politics, it's a game. So you know,
many wanted Chad to drop out and shift those votes over.
As you said, eleven percent is significant, but Steve Hilton's
platform in Chad Bianco's platform were different and respect you know,
Chad ran his race all the way through. But I
(17:13):
think certainly we are going to see Javier Bsera come
through this, and I think you will see Steve Hilton
move through this as well.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Which is sort of what I think we expected, Amanda,
based on the polling trends that we've been watching over
the last couple of months. Although if we go back
to just prior to Swalwell entering the race and then
shortly after Swalwell dropped.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
Out of the way and then imploding right.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right there, was there was certainly there was certainly a
talk of the idea of the Democrats getting shut out
of the general Was that ever in the inner circle?
Was that ever a conversation that.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
You entertained, Yes, you know, to be candid, I think
it's politics and anything can happen. And when you look
at somebody like Tom Steyer, who just dumped so much money,
you don't know how that's truly going to play out.
I think it did play out, is you can't buy trust,
and you know, good effort, thanks for throwing your hat in,
but it was very hard to believe that a billionaire
(18:08):
was a was a progressive Democrat. So you know that
that ship kind of failed. I think Swallwell could have
been a darling, he imploded. Matt Mayhan certainly got put
out there to kind of test how a moderate would do.
A younger moderate, you know, folks kind of see him
as maybe the new mayor peep. Maybe maybe he runs
and he finds himself in the newsome you know, cabinet
(18:30):
run in twenty twenty eight. But there definitely was a
fear that if you don't play these numbers right, you know,
you're not going to get to November, if you don't
get through June, and you need to get organized and
you need to have a real campaign.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Chris mentioned that Steve Hilton had asked, I don't know
if that's the right word, suggested that Chad Bianco drop out.
He wrote it in the California Post. I don't know
if there was actually right communication between the two guys,
if that ever took place.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
What happens now?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
I mean, assuming these numbers hold up, it looks like
Steve Hilton's going to make it in to a runoff.
Is it enough to just say Republicans should line up
behind me? Or does he reach out to Chad Bianco
and say give me your endorsement? What can we do
to make this you know to unite Republicans behind Steve Hilton.
Speaker 6 (19:16):
Well, I certainly hope that it is the latter. You know,
it's you run a race. And with great respect to
Chad Bianco, he has been running this thing from the
beginning and his platform was a bit more conservative, was
a bit more right. So I don't know if he
truly felt like that giving his people, you know, to
Steve Hilton was the right thing until this race is done.
(19:37):
But now it will be done and you have a
real chance to have a Republican in office in November.
We haven't had this chance for a while. You have
a real opportunity. Get over any kind of tiki tech
stuff because we need to coalesce. We got to come
together around one message. And I think Chad, you know,
do the right thing, and please let's help usher in
(19:58):
hopefully a good stable leader and not shift over back
to the Democrat's hands and all the things that you're
trying to do. Are you dead in the water A.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Man Blackwood, Republican Strategic Just Amanda, thank you so much
for your time to say and we appreciate that.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
Good luck moving forward, have fun tonight.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
We'll get the viewpoint of the democratic strategics here in
just a few moments, you did tease this, and I
wanted to give a little bit of an update on
it that when we went to our last election desk update,
it was what two tenths of a percentage point in
the District forty congressional race. That's the one that we
keep seeing all the ads for. That was the Ken
Calvert Young Kim and you saw the ads where Calvert
campaign was saying Young Kim is she's a rhino, she
(20:37):
doesn't support President Trump. And you saw Young Kim running
ads saying she does support the president, but Ken Calvert
loves prostitutes.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It became a wild race, right and.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Just in the last few minutes that we've been talking here,
with forty six percent of the vote now and Ken
Calvert has actually taken a very commanding lead. So there's
obviously a tranch of ballots landed two times.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
That is Ken Calvert right now at about thirty six
percent and then Young Kim at about twenty percent. And again,
this is that District forty that was created as a
as a result of Proposition fifty. Arguably the most dramatic
of the races that we've seen created by this because
(21:21):
it essentially forced Calvert and Kim to face off against
each other, two current members of Congress. He represents the
larger share of the current district population, but then she
comes in with a strong support of Orange County, which
tends to be more conservative.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
The district is.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
It's not one that is necessarily considered flippable for Democrats
as of right now, but it does bring in more
Democrat voters from northern La County, et cetera. So this
is not one that the expectation is that it would
go to Democrats. It will stay Republican. It's just a
matter of who Ken Calvert and Young Kim.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So yeah, and then part of a part of that
redistricting ends up sticking Huntington Beach, which is a very
red area, into a district that is likely to be
headed to a very progressive Democrat.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
In Robert Garcia.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Right, forty two, is that right, cal District forty Yes, yep,
it is forty two.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
All right, So we'll talk about this.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
There's a lot to be said about these house races
that have been changed significantly because of Proposition fifty and
the idea that potentially by November fifty two of California's
congressional seats would only include four or five Republicans, potentially
depending on how we see these things going over the
(22:41):
next couple of months. So we'll talk a little bit
about that, and we're going to talk with Steve Maviglio,
Democratic strategist here in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Crozier with the breaking news.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Former former LA Mayor Antonio Viergos has issued a concession statement,
saying tonight he didn't turn out the way we hoped,
while also congratulating the winners and thanking supporters. He says
California faces an inflection point on issues including housing, affordability
and the cost of living, and says he's not stepping
aside from the cause, only from the race. So former
LA Mayor Antonio Viragosa has stepped out of the governor running.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
All right, very good, And I think I saw it.
Matt Mayhem just made a speech a moment ago. I
saw it on NBC, but we didn't have the following
him up because you know, we're.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
On the radio. But but I do have the Matt
Man sound. You do I do yes to give that
a shot.
Speaker 7 (23:30):
He dropped everything to take on the herculean task of
managing a campaign that began merely one hundred and twenty
four days before the election and had to make every
single day count.
Speaker 8 (23:44):
Thank you, Sasha Dean as my.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
My wile he's just gonna go on. You know what
that means. Oh, come on, I wanted to hear about
Tasha Dean. Sorry, So that's a newsman.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
If he wants the whole story, Hey Krozier wants context,
listen to it on the way home or something like that.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Listen to it on the podcast. Be amazing.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
We are continuing to watch, of course, these the races
in the city of la as well. Right now, we're
at about forty five percent of the votes in in
the city of Los Angeles, Karen bass is ahead thirty
seven percent thirty six point five, specifically Spencer Pratt at
thirty and they are both pulling away.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
It looks like from.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Nithia Rahman, who is in a deep third place at
twenty percent of the vote vote right now.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And I'm not going to say it's pulling away because
the differences remained about the same between Hilton Besera and Stier.
Hilton and Besara keep jockeying between first and second place,
both within a percentage point of one another. Stier continues
to struggle to break that twenty percent. However, this is
as now forty five percent of the vote is in.
(25:04):
And if that's the case, all of a sudden, the
runway gets shorter and shorter and shorter for Tom Steyer
to make a surge near the end.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah, and a lot has been said, and we've talked
for years going back to I mean, we're just talking
off the air about Bush v. Gore in two thousand
and How races are called. The Associated Press is sort
of the gold standard and has been for some time
about the math that goes into how they call a race.
I don't know of any of these major races that
(25:31):
we're watching here in California that have been called right now,
obviously because the returns are still coming in. Polls have
been closed for less than an hour. But the math
that goes into it. You pointed it out that path
to victory or whichever path to victory may still exist
as we get more and more of these votes in.
And you see Steve Hilton at twenty six point five percent,
(25:53):
Javier Passra at twenty five point nine percent. Those paths
get cut off, those paths just.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Become harder and harder.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
And that's at some point there is a time for
the Associated Press, or at least somebody to stay to
say that Tom Steyer's pads have been exhausted. They're going
to not call the race for a winner, but call
a race for the top two.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I totally agree. There are a few that the La
Times is calling. We'll get into those a little bit
later on, but I did want to check in with
our Democratic strategist, Steve Maviiglio joins us right now, Steve,
is there anything that we should be reading into this
shortening runway for Tom Steyer? I mean, is it starting
to look like maybe the Fat Lady has sung for him?
Speaker 9 (26:33):
You know, I think it's way too early to do that,
just because there's so many Democrats who voted the last
couple of days, and so those numbers are going to turn.
You know, we're going to get fifty to fifty eight
percent of the vote in tonight. That means fifty percent
of the vote still left account and from what I've
been hearing, today.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
On the street.
Speaker 9 (26:49):
Democrats are trying to be strategic the way they voted,
rather than voting for something they cared about, because they
now wanted a Democratic on Democratic top two. So I
wouldn't count them out yet it's not looking.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Great, Steve Maviglio.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Why is that why the Democrats have held off on
the votes and we know that the early return seemed
to be down this year? Is what you just talked about,
strategic voting the explanation.
Speaker 9 (27:15):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, listen, then the beginning
of Democrats were scared very much of a Republican versus
Republican possibility in November, and that turned around and got
everybody all fired up and holding onto the ballast to
see what would happen. There's so many twists and turns
in this race, particularly for the Democrats, that they've been
(27:35):
waiting and seeing if another shoe was going to drop,
and they wanted to see if this was really going
to be a possibility. And I think a lot of
people that might have voted for Basera voted for Stire
just to see a D on D in November. I
don't know if it's going to happen, but you know,
it's interesting the way people voted because of this top
two primary.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Can we talk about the District eleven race up in
the Bay Area. This is Nancy Pelosi's seat. She's obviously retiring.
This will be the first time that she has not
appeared on a ballot in forty years forty plus.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I think since eighteen thirty two is the first one
since the state became a state.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
How important is the whoever it is that feels that
that takes her seat. It looks like Scott Wiener, State
Senator is ahead there. Does that person automatically get vaulted
to sort of a higher level than any other incoming
member of Congress simply because of who they're replacing.
Speaker 7 (28:30):
It?
Speaker 9 (28:30):
To some degree? I mean, those are big stilettos to show, right,
But Pelosi's choice is the number two positions. So I
would not say that game is over either. You know,
they have to San Francisco is liberal, the two liberals
combined or doing better than Wiener, who is, believe it
or not, the more conservative in the race. And so
you know, that remains to be seeing what the final
tally will be in November on that because these intra
(28:52):
mural Democrats can get very ugly and very expensive.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Steve.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
You've had access to some of the internal polling, some
of the internal discussions throughout this entire process.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Is there anything right now that's surprising you?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Because most of what we're seeing play out with the
governor's race, the LA mayor's race, things like that. It
seems to follow the trends that we were seeing in
the polls for the last few months. Is there anything
that you that maybe you saw that we weren't seeing.
Speaker 9 (29:15):
No, And then I think you know what was interesting.
The polls were all over the place, even in the
last week, right, and so it was very The fact
that PSARA is on top and seemingly comfortably at this
particular moment, is you know, consistent on what people were thinking.
And you know, I was one of those who pronounced
them dead months ago. The party chair tried to eat
(29:37):
and the other candidates that do did very poorly tonight
out of the race months ago, and the fact that
he came back to like the phoenix tonight is pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah, no doubt about that, Steve. Butviigli are a democratic strategist. Steve,
thanks so much for your time tonight. We appreciate that.
Good luck going forward.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Thank you all right.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
You were talking about the AP is kind of the
gold standard for the exit polling and then calling these races.
One of the the things that Gary, you and I
were talking about before the show began is that people
are frustrated with how long it takes to get some
of these returns. In fact, we were also worried coming
into tonight's broadcast that there was a possibility we wouldn't
know who the top two were in the races that
(30:14):
the rest of the nation's paying attention to La Mayor
and the California governor race. However, it looks right now
like it's going to be the top two that we've
seen in the polls, Bessarah Hilton, Pratt and Bass. But
there's frustration and how long it takes to return the results,
(30:34):
and I think there's a big difference between exit polling
results and what we get from the Secretary of State's off.
Secretary of State is slow, just inherently slow because they
have to count everything and they have to wait for
the mail in ballots who are dropped off in postmark
today to make their way through the system, and they
haven't told what the ninth or something, right, They've got
a week to arrive. So I think that it is inherently
(30:55):
slow and a close race. It's going to be slow,
and that can be very frustrating for us to watch.
And yet we do have some races that Ellie Times
is already saying Secretary of State. Looks like Shirley Weber
is going to hang out to that spot for another term.
And they're already calling the attorney general race. And Rob
Bonte he's got fifty four percent right now with the
just shy of forty percent of the vote returned, which
to me seems like maybe a little bit premature to
(31:16):
say he couldn't slip four percent with more than half
the ballots still out there. And yet they're comfortable in
calling that race right now, which I think is really fascinating.
Our expectation is we want to know who the winner is.
But back to what you said. Bush v.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Gore was the first election I ever worked. I was
twenty two years old.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
And I left the radio station and Bush was the winner,
and by the time I got home twenty five minutes later,
Bush was not the winner, and maybe Gore was the winner.
And then by the time I woke up in the morning.
We really had no idea what was going on. It
was very frustrating, but I think that really shone a
light on the process or behind the scenes. We're so
accustomed to, oh, the AP's got this right, but that
(31:56):
may not be accurate in a tight race, and so
we want accuracy and we want it now. We live
in a TikTok world. Now what the results as soon
as the polls close. There is some explanation to it.
We'll talk about in the next segment right after the
top of the hour. We're also going to talk with
Heather Brooker down at the Steve Hilton headquarters in Orange County.
There are some explanations for it, at least what the
Secretary of State and election officials have said slows down
(32:17):
California's ballot counting process. As of right now, it doesn't
appear there are any issues. Things are working the way
they're supposed to be going. But that does not mean
that we're done in terms of having these things called.
And it's not likely that we'll have the biggest ones called,
at least not maybe not officially any time tonight, but
(32:38):
we'll do that when we come back. Gary Hoffman Chris
Merrill in our primary election coverage right here on KFI
KFI
Speaker 1 (32:46):
AM six forty on demand
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand. Back
to Gary Hoffman and Chris Merrill.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I told you I would call a race. I think
it's safe to call this one.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Do you want me to have the ticker tape? We
have a special Yeah? Do you want to do that?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Sounds all right, Gary Hoffman, I think it's fair to
say unofficial results.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
At this point. Ta. Yeah, did you kind of have
to tap that a little bit? The years work? Huh?
All right, good out.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I believe it's safe to say that La City Council
District seven is going to go to Monica Rodriguez.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Oh yeah, she's in quite a bit. She's been in
this room a handful of times. She's a friend of
nil Sevadrin. Yeah, comes in, Yeah, yeah. She was running
out a post odd numbered districts in the La City
Council races.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
This year this year, yes, correct, So she was running
out a pose. There's a few other races where people
were unopposed. Convena City Council District one, unopposed Guardina City Clerk.
I think there was another one in Horrens if I'm
not mistaken, Pasadena City Council District five, same thing. So
the unopposed races, I think it's safe for us to say,
even if you are standing in line for that, I
(01:17):
don't think we're going to alter the election trajectory at
this point.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
For those of you who are wondering, we are keeping
an eye on the Secretary of State and their election
results websites that over the next few minutes we should
get some numbers that come in. If you voted for
Living for God and Country, DeMott for governor, Yeah, House,
he faring right now, zero percent, But that's also with
zero percent reporting porting. So also Barack Obama. That was
(01:43):
the one I was saying, Barack d Obama shaw right,
one of the sixty one people running for government right
now tied for first technically, but also tied for last.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
We should also point out that at this point Eric
Swalwell's also tied for first.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You remember his name is on the ballot. Such a
talk about that for just a second.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Please, Okay, So Eric Swalwell. When we found out that
Kamala Harris, a vice former vice president, was not going
to run for governor, right, it made everybody think, even
if she's not an extravagant candidate or an exciting candidate
(02:22):
for a lot of people. She was the biggest name
by far that would have been in this race. So
she says she's out. Eric Swalwell by default becomes the
biggest name in the race, and we saw him start
to rise in the polls. This was at roughly the
time when people started floating the idea of well, wait
(02:42):
a minute, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are polling better
than any of the ninety seven Democrats that are running.
So are we going to see two Republicans in you know,
make their way to the general. It wasn't likely to
happen then, it's still not likely to happen today. But
there was that thing where Eric Swalwell saw an opening
(03:04):
and then the wolves came out. And I don't mean
that in a negative sense. I just mean that once
you rise to the top, it's hard to stay there.
And in his case, obviously it's because he had skeletons
in the closet, literal sexual assault allegations that were that
were leveled against him. So so then he fades away,
which the timing on that was was very interesting to me.
(03:27):
And this is in no way, shape or form.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Meant to take away from the accusations or the validity
of those accusations. But he's been in the public eye
for a very long time, sure, And I mean, you know,
he's been in Congress. And so this was the point
where you had some of the accusers that came out
and they said, I couldn't stand by and let him
run for the governor of California. And I thought, it's
it's really interesting that that was the that was the
(03:53):
level Congress, right, right, Yeah, So anyway, the timing to
me just seemed, let's just say, interesting, right. I don't
want to say I'm questioning it at all, but it's
just it's just interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Well and Swalwell's bona fides for the Democratic Party were
sort of contained in the idea that he fought against
Donald Trump, which was clearly a notch in the belt
and gave him notoriety within the party.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
So he's out. Javier Besserro was at that time. Javier
Besserro was pulling it five percent.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
We had him in the studio at that time, so
Michael and I during our show Monks and Merrill every
day noon to three KFI. So he came in Gary,
he came in I think he was the second person
that we talked to. We had Antonio Viadrogs in here,
and then we talked with the Besera and we said,
at what point do you say I got to get
out of the way, right, you know?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
And he says, I'm on And he was right.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Because I think at that point to Hilton and Bianco
worried about twelve percent and he was at five and
he says, I'm only I'm only seven points back. Guys,
you know this is this is not a time for
me to throw in the towel. But all of a sudden,
Swalwell goes and it felt like a all the rats
were jumping off the ship and looking for a life boat,
and everybody's try to figure out which life boat they
were going to get into. Is it gonna be Styre,
is gonna be Mayhean, Is it going to be Porter?
(05:07):
Who's it going to be? And they they sort of said,
I guess Biserah feels like the safest lifeboat, and that
seemed to be where the establishment then focused their attention.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Eric Swalwell was technically in the race for fourteen scaramuccis,
which is the measure of political time ten days one
scaramucci is ten days. He was in it for approximately
fourteen scaramuccis, and when he leaves, Javier Bisera becomes that
safe is a great word, least objectionable character in the
(05:39):
Democratic part Democratic Party that then rises gets all of
the I hate to use this term because it's kind
of hack, but gets the machine behind him, which means
that he's got national attention he never got. And this
is also important to remember, he never got an endorsement
from the sitting governor. Gavin Newsom has not tipped his
hand yet in this No, and I'm wondering if he's
(06:01):
going to you after tonight. Well, well, of course of
course he is. Well you say he is, but maybe
he doesn't want anything to do with it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
That's also possible he's already just no. Yeah, I said
it would be inappropriate for me too. He washed his
hands of that.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Unless it's if it's a Republican and a Democrat, if
it's Javier Basara and Steve Hilton, Gaven Newsom will absolutely
do the obvious thing. Didn't saying that Jerry Brown didn't
didn't endorse him though, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Interview, remember that's it.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
It's highly likely I mean, but, but, but Sarah's not
received an endorsement from Joe Biden for for what that's worth,
or Barack Obama. I mean, there are people that are
within that party. This is an important enough position that
I would have expected it would have gained the national
attention to get endorsements from people like that. I mean,
you've got Elizabeth Warren who endorsed Katie Porter.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
In this race.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah, you know, again, do something that surprises me. If
you're gonna, if you're gonna endorse somebody, endorse somebody, that
surprises me. If David Foster comes out and David Foster
and Catherine McPhee come out and say they're going to
endorse Spencer Pratt, that's a surprise.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
That to me is a surprise, and I go, oh,
that's interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
If Elizabeth Warren to come out and supported Tom Styer,
the billionaire, I think we would have been surprised.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Yeah, yeah, that would have been a surprise. But they
politically are not that far apart in terms of their ideals.
So anyway, we're waiting for some of these numbers to
come in. We do have just a tiny smidge of
results two point one percent of election results that are
coming in from around the state, and the Secretary of
State as of right now puts javierbasera twenty two percent, interesting,
(07:41):
Tom Steyer at seventeen percent, Steve Hilton at thirty percent,
and again it's two two percent of precincts reporting, but
Steve Hilton has the very very early lead in Yes,
all right.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
We'll come back.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
We've got some other stuff that we're going to be
talking about in terms of these races we'll see today.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
You're listening to KFI Amix on demand.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
The numbers continue to roll in.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
The Secretary of State is going to continue to update
their dashboard throughout the evening obviously as they continue to
release some of those results, and every time they come through,
we will use the word trunch, a new trunch of that.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
I thought about that early today. I was going to
try to ban the word before you even said it.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Yeah, dang it, I seriously consider turning that into a
drinking game.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
There was there was.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Going to be I was going to challenge you to
say certain things tonight off the air. I was going
to have a list of of I love that idea,
some I have My wife had a suggestion for one
of them. I'm going to write it down because I'm
not sure you can actually say it on the air, Okay,
And I guess there's a certain way that you could
say it, maybe that I'm yeah, I don't think we can.
(08:48):
It's wild inappropriate, yeah, mildly. The lady's dirt.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, I mean that borders on the Carlin dirty words,
my friend. Now, what we do have, though, is update
up to just shive seventeen percent, and the governor's race.
Steve Hilton continues to lead in that with just just
short of twenty nine percent of the vote, but Sarah
at twenty five, Styre at eighteen, Pianco at eleven percent.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I think Bianco is at Hish.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
His party tonight and they're I'm guessing he went in
there with eyes wide open but hopeful.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
He spoke to his supporters a few minutes ago, sixteen months.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
To make sure that I'm making a better life for
all of you.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
In California, one where the other.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
In my personal life. You were all a part of this,
so I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Very very much.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
He would to make sure that we made Caloria dream
an exteemable thing again, and we're going to keep this going.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
The whole are close. We're now waiting for them.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Numbers aren't awful at this point, considering we've been obviously
seeing him slide in the polls at least a bit
after especially after Trump came up and endorsed Hilton, he
saw some of those Republican numbers shift to Steve Hilton
away from Chad Bianco. But he stayed in the race
despite calls by Steve Hilton, at Hilton and others to
(10:20):
get out. As of right now, Chad Bianco at just
under fourteen percent.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So if we take a look at some of the
local races, and I think people are watching very carefully
the mayor's race in the city of Los Angeles. We'll
talk about some of the other mayor world races, some
of the races that are going on, including the congressional
district with the Ken Calvert and Young Kim, which has been.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
All over your television here.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
But at this point, we are at thirty nine percent
reported for the mayor's race, and Karen Bass with a
pretty commanding lead right now thirty eight percent. Spencer Pratt
in second with almost twenty eight percent, Nitthia Rahman third
at twenty percent. Adam Miller is below five percent right
now and Ray Wang is under three percent, So I
(11:02):
think that one is probably shaking out is the polls
have told us, although the results are showing a little
bit higher numbers. I will say this. I believe in
most polling ray Wang was showing higher than Adam Miller.
But I think you're looking a split between the Progressive
Democratic vote between Ray Wang and Nithi Ramen.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
The other question I had, and this is always going
to be one of the things that we look at
right on the polling night itself, is where the undecideds go. Obviously, right,
I mean, the last three polls in the mayor's race
showed somewhere between nineteen twenty seven percent undecided. So if
in fact Karen bass is picking up, it looks like
(11:41):
about ten percent of those undecided votes, or I should
say about about half of those undecided votes, then that
may it's hard to say if they would go the
other way and ten percent would go to Spencer Pratt,
or if there's if Nithia Rahman picks up some of
the undecided.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, probably a few, but it does look based on
some the pulling numbers that we've seen where Karen Bass
was somewhere between about twenty six and thirty percent in
the polling numbers. Right, Pratt was going to be in
that twenty two to twenty five percent issue. It looks
like both of them definitely picked up some of those
undecided votes, kind of consolidating behind who we thought were going.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
To be the front runners, you know, before.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Any of this evening began, those were the ones that
had consistently showed trends that were positive in all the
different polls.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
I wonder if this is one of those nights where.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
We mentioned Don Antonio's restaurant is where Spencer Pratt is
having his primary night dinner. I suppose I'm not supposed
to be private event. Reporters were kicked out of the
restaurant a little bit earlier. This is one of those
moments for him where it's like, boy, it's going to
get real. I mean that if these numbers hold up,
we had plenty of time to figure it out. But
(12:50):
if these if these numbers hold up, that's a that's
a five month marathon of just that this is your life. Yeah,
and it's twenty four hours a day. It is a
NonStop thing. And I mean the idea of running for
political office has never intrigued me ever at all. Part
(13:11):
of it is because as a reporter covering it for
so long, I've seen what these these campaigns do to people,
and he's on the verge of that, becoming a guy
who is in politics born out of frustration as opposed
to his life goal.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
It will turn me Gray fast Man. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Now here's one thing that's really interesting, and again we're
really early on in this, but at this point that
the ballot measure most people have been watching it not
the one incomptent, although we'll talk about that later, the
La County measure er. This is the one that would
have raised the sales tax half a percent in order
to compensate for money that was lost from the big
beautiful bill. Right now, the no votes are leading by
(13:52):
five percent, fifty two to forty seven. So I think
that's a really interesting one to watch. There were a
number of different measures that we're asking for additional taxes
and will continue to in November, and that maybe just
overload for the voters.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Right now, we'll come back. We're going to talk with
a couple of different political strategists. We also wanted to
update you on that District forty, which is Ken Calvert
and Young Kim closer than you think. It could be
one of those that is going to be one of
the races that potentially takes a very long time to
figure out. Gary and Chris, we'll come back with our
(14:28):
the sound of that primary election night coverage.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
We'll figure we'll flip for it. Oh, I guess they're
on now.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Chris Merril Gary Hoffman primary election night coverage here on
this June second. The numbers have been coming in and
they're at a good pace right now, at least for
the first half an hour since the polls have closed.
But just to give you an update where we stand
in the governor's race, the top two races that were
keeping our eyes on, of course, governor and the mayor
(15:01):
of the city of La Javierbisara. Right now, this is
about thirty five percent of the vote in Javierbasara at
twenty six point four percent, and Steve Hilton very close
behind at twenty five point six just bounced up to
about twenty six percent, and then Tom Steyer just below
twenty percent.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So if that trend continues.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
That means that Javierbasara Steve Hilton obviously would be in
the runoff for governor. But that's still too close for
Steve Hilton. He wants a little bit more of a
comfort margin than six points above Tom Steyer. A couple
of observations there is that Steve Hilton called for Chad
Bianco to drop, and he said the best time to
drop would have been ten days ago.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah, the second best time to drop is right now.
Bionco never did.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
If we were to take that eleven percent and hand
it to Hilton, just assuming people are voting down party lines,
that would have given Steve Hilton a commanding lead here.
But instead it looks very tight between that one and
two spot Stier, as you made mentioned, still six points
off of of the qualifying in the Jungle primary, but
also too close for Steve Hilton's comfort right now, if
(16:06):
you're Tom Steyer, you just spent two hundred million dollars
for a third place finish in California.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
That's going to be frustrating.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
He did it, if this holds, he did it for
the presidential election too. He spent a lot of his
own mind.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
But you would think, Okay, well that was the nation.
Two hundred million dollars is going to go a long
way from just running in one state. I mean, at
some point, does he does he go from here to Texas,
to Florida, to New York and then keep working his
way then down to Illinois. If that doesn't work, he
heads to Iowa? I mean, does he just keep finding
places until he findly wins an election?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Amanda Blackwood is joining us. He's a Republican strategist who
is coming in to help shed some light on all
of this. And at this point, as we said, Steve
Hilton looks like he's in a pretty solid second place
behind Javey Arbissera. It's still very very early in all
of this. But how do you think things are going?
Speaker 6 (16:53):
You know, I think we thought that Steve was going
to come out of this from the get go. And
you know, it's politics, it's a game. So you know,
many wanted Chad to drop out and shift those votes over.
As you said, eleven percent is significant, but Steve Hilton's
platform in Chad Bianco's platform were different and respect you know,
Chad ran his race all the way through. But I
(17:13):
think certainly we are going to see Javier Bsera come
through this, and I think you will see Steve Hilton
move through this as well.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Which is sort of what I think we expected, Amanda,
based on the polling trends that we've been watching over
the last couple of months. Although if we go back
to just prior to Swalwell entering the race and then
shortly after Swalwell dropped.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
Out of the way and then imploding right.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right there, was there was certainly there was certainly a
talk of the idea of the Democrats getting shut out
of the general Was that ever in the inner circle?
Was that ever a conversation that.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
You entertained, Yes, you know, to be candid, I think
it's politics and anything can happen. And when you look
at somebody like Tom Steyer, who just dumped so much money,
you don't know how that's truly going to play out.
I think it did play out, is you can't buy trust,
and you know, good effort, thanks for throwing your hat in,
but it was very hard to believe that a billionaire
(18:08):
was a was a progressive Democrat. So you know that
that ship kind of failed. I think Swallwell could have
been a darling, he imploded. Matt Mayhan certainly got put
out there to kind of test how a moderate would do.
A younger moderate, you know, folks kind of see him
as maybe the new mayor peep. Maybe maybe he runs
and he finds himself in the newsome you know, cabinet
(18:30):
run in twenty twenty eight. But there definitely was a
fear that if you don't play these numbers right, you know,
you're not going to get to November, if you don't
get through June, and you need to get organized and
you need to have a real campaign.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Chris mentioned that Steve Hilton had asked, I don't know
if that's the right word, suggested that Chad Bianco drop out.
He wrote it in the California Post. I don't know
if there was actually right communication between the two guys,
if that ever took place.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
What happens now?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
I mean, assuming these numbers hold up, it looks like
Steve Hilton's going to make it in to a runoff.
Is it enough to just say Republicans should line up
behind me? Or does he reach out to Chad Bianco
and say give me your endorsement? What can we do
to make this you know to unite Republicans behind Steve Hilton.
Speaker 6 (19:16):
Well, I certainly hope that it is the latter. You know,
it's you run a race. And with great respect to
Chad Bianco, he has been running this thing from the
beginning and his platform was a bit more conservative, was
a bit more right. So I don't know if he
truly felt like that giving his people, you know, to
Steve Hilton was the right thing until this race is done.
(19:37):
But now it will be done and you have a
real chance to have a Republican in office in November.
We haven't had this chance for a while. You have
a real opportunity. Get over any kind of tiki tech
stuff because we need to coalesce. We got to come
together around one message. And I think Chad, you know,
do the right thing, and please let's help usher in
(19:58):
hopefully a good stable leader and not shift over back
to the Democrat's hands and all the things that you're
trying to do. Are you dead in the water A.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Man Blackwood, Republican Strategic Just Amanda, thank you so much
for your time to say and we appreciate that.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
Good luck moving forward, have fun tonight.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
We'll get the viewpoint of the democratic strategics here in
just a few moments, you did tease this, and I
wanted to give a little bit of an update on
it that when we went to our last election desk update,
it was what two tenths of a percentage point in
the District forty congressional race. That's the one that we
keep seeing all the ads for. That was the Ken
Calvert Young Kim and you saw the ads where Calvert
campaign was saying Young Kim is she's a rhino, she
(20:37):
doesn't support President Trump. And you saw Young Kim running
ads saying she does support the president, but Ken Calvert
loves prostitutes.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It became a wild race, right and.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Just in the last few minutes that we've been talking here,
with forty six percent of the vote now and Ken
Calvert has actually taken a very commanding lead. So there's
obviously a tranch of ballots landed two times.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
That is Ken Calvert right now at about thirty six
percent and then Young Kim at about twenty percent. And again,
this is that District forty that was created as a
as a result of Proposition fifty. Arguably the most dramatic
of the races that we've seen created by this because
(21:21):
it essentially forced Calvert and Kim to face off against
each other, two current members of Congress. He represents the
larger share of the current district population, but then she
comes in with a strong support of Orange County, which
tends to be more conservative.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
The district is.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
It's not one that is necessarily considered flippable for Democrats
as of right now, but it does bring in more
Democrat voters from northern La County, et cetera. So this
is not one that the expectation is that it would
go to Democrats. It will stay Republican. It's just a
matter of who Ken Calvert and Young Kim.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So yeah, and then part of a part of that
redistricting ends up sticking Huntington Beach, which is a very
red area, into a district that is likely to be
headed to a very progressive Democrat.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
In Robert Garcia.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Right, forty two, is that right, cal District forty Yes, yep,
it is forty two.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
All right, So we'll talk about this.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
There's a lot to be said about these house races
that have been changed significantly because of Proposition fifty and
the idea that potentially by November fifty two of California's
congressional seats would only include four or five Republicans, potentially
depending on how we see these things going over the
(22:41):
next couple of months. So we'll talk a little bit
about that, and we're going to talk with Steve Maviglio,
Democratic strategist here in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
Crozier with the breaking news.
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Former former LA Mayor Antonio Viergos has issued a concession statement,
saying tonight he didn't turn out the way we hoped,
while also congratulating the winners and thanking supporters. He says
California faces an inflection point on issues including housing, affordability
and the cost of living, and says he's not stepping
aside from the cause, only from the race. So former
LA Mayor Antonio Viragosa has stepped out of the governor running.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
All right, very good, And I think I saw it.
Matt Mayhem just made a speech a moment ago. I
saw it on NBC, but we didn't have the following
him up because you know, we're.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
On the radio. But but I do have the Matt
Man sound. You do I do yes to give that
a shot.
Speaker 7 (23:30):
He dropped everything to take on the herculean task of
managing a campaign that began merely one hundred and twenty
four days before the election and had to make every
single day count.
Speaker 8 (23:44):
Thank you, Sasha Dean as my.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
My wile he's just gonna go on. You know what
that means. Oh, come on, I wanted to hear about
Tasha Dean. Sorry, So that's a newsman.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
If he wants the whole story, Hey Krozier wants context,
listen to it on the way home or something like that.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Listen to it on the podcast. Be amazing.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
We are continuing to watch, of course, these the races
in the city of la as well. Right now, we're
at about forty five percent of the votes in in
the city of Los Angeles, Karen bass is ahead thirty
seven percent thirty six point five, specifically Spencer Pratt at
thirty and they are both pulling away.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
It looks like from.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Nithia Rahman, who is in a deep third place at
twenty percent of the vote vote right now.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And I'm not going to say it's pulling away because
the differences remained about the same between Hilton Besera and Stier.
Hilton and Besara keep jockeying between first and second place,
both within a percentage point of one another. Stier continues
to struggle to break that twenty percent. However, this is
as now forty five percent of the vote is in.
(25:04):
And if that's the case, all of a sudden, the
runway gets shorter and shorter and shorter for Tom Steyer
to make a surge near the end.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Yeah, and a lot has been said, and we've talked
for years going back to I mean, we're just talking
off the air about Bush v. Gore in two thousand
and How races are called. The Associated Press is sort
of the gold standard and has been for some time
about the math that goes into how they call a race.
I don't know of any of these major races that
(25:31):
we're watching here in California that have been called right now,
obviously because the returns are still coming in. Polls have
been closed for less than an hour. But the math
that goes into it. You pointed it out that path
to victory or whichever path to victory may still exist
as we get more and more of these votes in.
And you see Steve Hilton at twenty six point five percent,
(25:53):
Javier Passra at twenty five point nine percent. Those paths
get cut off, those paths just.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Become harder and harder.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
And that's at some point there is a time for
the Associated Press, or at least somebody to stay to
say that Tom Steyer's pads have been exhausted. They're going
to not call the race for a winner, but call
a race for the top two.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I totally agree. There are a few that the La
Times is calling. We'll get into those a little bit
later on, but I did want to check in with
our Democratic strategist, Steve Maviiglio joins us right now, Steve,
is there anything that we should be reading into this
shortening runway for Tom Steyer? I mean, is it starting
to look like maybe the Fat Lady has sung for him?
Speaker 9 (26:33):
You know, I think it's way too early to do that,
just because there's so many Democrats who voted the last
couple of days, and so those numbers are going to turn.
You know, we're going to get fifty to fifty eight
percent of the vote in tonight. That means fifty percent
of the vote still left account and from what I've
been hearing, today.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
On the street.
Speaker 9 (26:49):
Democrats are trying to be strategic the way they voted,
rather than voting for something they cared about, because they
now wanted a Democratic on Democratic top two. So I
wouldn't count them out yet it's not looking.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Great, Steve Maviglio.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Why is that why the Democrats have held off on
the votes and we know that the early return seemed
to be down this year? Is what you just talked about,
strategic voting the explanation.
Speaker 9 (27:15):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, listen, then the beginning
of Democrats were scared very much of a Republican versus
Republican possibility in November, and that turned around and got
everybody all fired up and holding onto the ballast to
see what would happen. There's so many twists and turns
in this race, particularly for the Democrats, that they've been
(27:35):
waiting and seeing if another shoe was going to drop,
and they wanted to see if this was really going
to be a possibility. And I think a lot of
people that might have voted for Basera voted for Stire
just to see a D on D in November. I
don't know if it's going to happen, but you know,
it's interesting the way people voted because of this top
two primary.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Can we talk about the District eleven race up in
the Bay Area. This is Nancy Pelosi's seat. She's obviously retiring.
This will be the first time that she has not
appeared on a ballot in forty years forty plus.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I think since eighteen thirty two is the first one
since the state became a state.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
How important is the whoever it is that feels that
that takes her seat. It looks like Scott Wiener, State
Senator is ahead there. Does that person automatically get vaulted
to sort of a higher level than any other incoming
member of Congress simply because of who they're replacing.
Speaker 7 (28:30):
It?
Speaker 9 (28:30):
To some degree? I mean, those are big stilettos to show, right,
But Pelosi's choice is the number two positions. So I
would not say that game is over either. You know,
they have to San Francisco is liberal, the two liberals
combined or doing better than Wiener, who is, believe it
or not, the more conservative in the race. And so
you know, that remains to be seeing what the final
tally will be in November on that because these intra
(28:52):
mural Democrats can get very ugly and very expensive.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Steve.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
You've had access to some of the internal polling, some
of the internal discussions throughout this entire process.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Is there anything right now that's surprising you?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Because most of what we're seeing play out with the
governor's race, the LA mayor's race, things like that. It
seems to follow the trends that we were seeing in
the polls for the last few months. Is there anything
that you that maybe you saw that we weren't seeing.
Speaker 9 (29:15):
No, And then I think you know what was interesting.
The polls were all over the place, even in the
last week, right, and so it was very The fact
that PSARA is on top and seemingly comfortably at this
particular moment, is you know, consistent on what people were thinking.
And you know, I was one of those who pronounced
them dead months ago. The party chair tried to eat
(29:37):
and the other candidates that do did very poorly tonight
out of the race months ago, and the fact that
he came back to like the phoenix tonight is pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah, no doubt about that, Steve. Butviigli are a democratic strategist. Steve,
thanks so much for your time tonight. We appreciate that.
Good luck going forward.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Thank you all right.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
You were talking about the AP is kind of the
gold standard for the exit polling and then calling these races.
One of the the things that Gary, you and I
were talking about before the show began is that people
are frustrated with how long it takes to get some
of these returns. In fact, we were also worried coming
into tonight's broadcast that there was a possibility we wouldn't
know who the top two were in the races that
(30:14):
the rest of the nation's paying attention to La Mayor
and the California governor race. However, it looks right now
like it's going to be the top two that we've
seen in the polls, Bessarah Hilton, Pratt and Bass. But
there's frustration and how long it takes to return the results,
(30:34):
and I think there's a big difference between exit polling
results and what we get from the Secretary of State's off.
Secretary of State is slow, just inherently slow because they
have to count everything and they have to wait for
the mail in ballots who are dropped off in postmark
today to make their way through the system, and they
haven't told what the ninth or something, right, They've got
a week to arrive. So I think that it is inherently
(30:55):
slow and a close race. It's going to be slow,
and that can be very frustrating for us to watch.
And yet we do have some races that Ellie Times
is already saying Secretary of State. Looks like Shirley Weber
is going to hang out to that spot for another term.
And they're already calling the attorney general race. And Rob
Bonte he's got fifty four percent right now with the
just shy of forty percent of the vote returned, which
to me seems like maybe a little bit premature to
(31:16):
say he couldn't slip four percent with more than half
the ballots still out there. And yet they're comfortable in
calling that race right now, which I think is really fascinating.
Our expectation is we want to know who the winner is.
But back to what you said. Bush v.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Gore was the first election I ever worked. I was
twenty two years old.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
And I left the radio station and Bush was the winner,
and by the time I got home twenty five minutes later,
Bush was not the winner, and maybe Gore was the winner.
And then by the time I woke up in the morning.
We really had no idea what was going on. It
was very frustrating, but I think that really shone a
light on the process or behind the scenes. We're so
accustomed to, oh, the AP's got this right, but that
(31:56):
may not be accurate in a tight race, and so
we want accuracy and we want it now. We live
in a TikTok world. Now what the results as soon
as the polls close. There is some explanation to it.
We'll talk about in the next segment right after the
top of the hour. We're also going to talk with
Heather Brooker down at the Steve Hilton headquarters in Orange County.
There are some explanations for it, at least what the
Secretary of State and election officials have said slows down
(32:17):
California's ballot counting process. As of right now, it doesn't
appear there are any issues. Things are working the way
they're supposed to be going. But that does not mean
that we're done in terms of having these things called.
And it's not likely that we'll have the biggest ones called,
at least not maybe not officially any time tonight, but
(32:38):
we'll do that when we come back. Gary Hoffman Chris
Merrill in our primary election coverage right here on KFI
KFI
Speaker 1 (32:46):
AM six forty on demand
Popular Podcasts
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com