By Grant Stringer | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group
The crowded race to succeed California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2027 looked frozen in place for months as former Vice President Kamala Harris considered whether to jump in.
But campaign finance reports filed this week reveal that serious fundraising was playing out behind the scenes even before Harris announced on Wednesday that she’ll steer clear of the race.
Democratic former Rep. Katie Porter raked in funds even as Harris spent months considering her political future. Across the aisle, two top Republican candidates courted donors and voters as they seek an office not held by the GOP since Arnold Schwarzenegger departed in 2011.
“It’s game-on now,” former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, one of the many Democratic candidates, said in an interview with Bay Area News Group. “We’ve all got to get to work convincing people that we’re the right candidate.”
The announcement by Harris immediately sent some donors running toward Porter, the potential early front-runner in the race who is fresh off an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate last year. Independent polling of the governor’s race is scant so far, but some polls have suggested that voters are more familiar with Porter, known for her whiteboard-assisted take downs of business execs, than other candidates.
Within 36 hours of Harris bowing out of the race, Porter received more than $250,000 in donations, according to her campaign.
That windfall padded her lead in recent fundraising — even though she entered the race relatively late, in March. Between then and June 30, Porter raised $3 million. That included a $1 million loan from her Senate campaign, said spokesperson Nathan Click. More than 34,000 individuals donated funds, and the average donation size was $33, Click said. Porter had about $2 million of cash on hand for the race as of June 30.
“The enthusiasm we’re seeing from donors at every level shows that Californians know how critical this race is,” Porter said in a statement. “Our next governor must have the grit to stand up to Trump and the determination to tackle California’s biggest challenges.”
Porter is probably leading the race so far, said Dan Schnur, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and other California universities. But that’s likely because voters still recognize her from her high-profile race for Senate last year, he said. Name recognition ebbs and flows.
“This is the most wide-open governor’s race that California has seen in the modern era,” said Schnur, who’d been a spokesman for former Gov. Pete Wilson and worked on three campaigns for governor. “There really is no precedent for this.”
Porter has seen early fundraising success, but her coffers were far slimmer than another heavyweight fundraiser in her party: Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a close ally of Harris who snagged an early endorsement from Hillary Clinton and added the approval of Rep. Nancy Pelosi this week.
Kounalakis reported only about $100,000 in donations during the first six months of 2025. But with $4.6 million of cash on hand, she controls more than twice the funds that Porter does at this early moment in the race. Kounalakis is connected to Harris’ political base, said Democratic consultant Steven Maviglio, and she’ll likely see donations rise with the former Veep out of the race. The lieutenant governor is also independently wealthy, he said: Kounalakis is the former president of AKT Development, a real estate firm her father founded.
“By the end of the next fundraising period, she’ll have a commanding lead over everyone else,” said Maviglio, who said he is the rare Democratic consultant in California not involved in the governor’s race.
Kounalakis’ campaign did not respond to a comment request.
Other Democrats posted bigger hauls of late. Between January and June 30, Villaraigosa raised more than $1 million and reported $3.3 million cash on hand. Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra raised $2.5 million and controls $2.1 million total in cash. Former state Senate Leader Toni Atkins raised $650,000 and holds a total $4.3 million. Former State Controller Betty Yee raised $238,000 and reported about $640,000 on hand.
And timeshare company exec Stephen Cloobeck raised $160,000 and has $730,000. However, Cloobeck donated a whopping $10 million of his own money to his campaign just three hours after Harris bowed out of the race — which Porter noted in a fundraising email Friday to supporters.
Meanwhile, two top Republicans slugged it our for funds, unencumbered this year by the possibility that Harris would run. Democrats enjoy a 2-1 advantage in voter registration over Republicans, and the state’s June 2 primary format doesn’t guarantee the GOP a place on the deciding November 2026 ballot, when the two candidates with the most primary votes regardless of party affiliation face off.
“It’s difficult to see their world changing that much now that Harris is out of the race,” Schnur said.
Fox News contributor and political advisor Steve Hilton took in about $1.5 million since he jumped into the race in late April. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco reported $1.6 million in donations. In separate interviews with Bay Area News Group, both dismissed their opponent.
“Whichever way you look at it, I’m the clear Republican front runner, by a long way actually,” Hilton said.
“We’re not really considering him serious competition,” Bianco said. “In the end, I know that we will by far come out the front-runner.”
For a Republican to reach the runoff election in November 2026 and have a real shot at winning the race in the heavily Democratic state, GOP candidates will have to unite behind a single candidate during the primary, Bianco said.
But at this early stage in the race, there’s no sign of a detente.
“I’m not in this campaign to be the top Republican,” Bianco said. “I’m in this campaign to be the top Californian.”
