Election deniers, vote suppressors, and democracy defenders are running in California’s primary. Here’s what we’re watching

California voters head to the polls Tuesday in primaries that could help determine whether the nation’s largest Democratic state continues serving as a critical counterweight to President Donald Trump’s agenda — and whether Republicans aligned with his attacks on elections can gain a statewide platform heading into November.

The most closely watched races are for governor and attorney general, two offices that have been central to California’s resistance to Trump’s efforts to undermine voting rights, state authority and the rule of law. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who cannot seek another term, has turned California into a national foil to Trump. Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), meanwhile, has helped lead multistate legal challenges to the administration’s attacks on voting and elections.

Tuesday’s primary will also test the strength of Trump-inspired “voter fraud” politics in deep-blue California. Several Republican candidates are running on — or are closely tied to — restrictive voting initiatives, election denial rhetoric or efforts to seize voter data and election materials.

California uses a top-two primary system, sometimes called a “jungle primary.” That means all candidates appear on the same ballot regardless of party, and the two candidates who receive the most votes advance to the general election. So Tuesday’s key question is not only who wins — but who survives to November.

Here’s what we’re watching.

Will Xavier Becerra inherit Newsom’s fight to protect democracy from Trump?

Newsom, who is term-limited and unable to seek reelection, has spent much of Trump’s second presidency turning California into a legal and political bulwark against the administration.

Just last week, Newsom signed a sweeping new law aimed at preventing federal interference in California elections. The law bars federal agents from accessing voter rolls or election technology without a court order and restricts law enforcement from disrupting election workers except in public safety emergencies.

That record raises one of the central questions in Tuesday’s governor’s race: whether former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is positioned to carry that fight forward.

Becerra, a former California attorney general, built his national reputation by taking Trump to court during the president’s first term, suing the administration more than 120 times over issues including health care, immigration, environmental policy and workers’ rights.

Some of those fights went directly to democracy issues. 

In 2018, Becerra sued the Trump administration over its attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, arguing that it threatened fair representation and voting rights. Two years later, he joined litigation over changes at the U.S. Postal Service that his office said threatened the timely delivery of mail ballots during the 2020 election.

Becerra is now campaigning as someone ready to resume that fight from the governor’s office. His campaign says California has a responsibility to step in when Trump threatens state protections and promises that, as governor, he would “protect and lead our state against Trump and his attacks.”

The question Tuesday is whether California voters put Becerra on track to inherit Newsom’s role — and whether November becomes a direct contest between him and Steve Hilton, the Trump-backed Republican who has surged into second place in recent polling.

Will Hilton give California Republicans a statewide platform to restrict voting rights?

The other major question in the governor’s race is whether Hilton, a Trump-backed Republican and former Fox News host, advances to November — and with him, a GOP-backed ballot measure that would impose strict new voter ID and citizenship-verification requirements in California.

The measure, which qualified for the ballot in April, would amend the state constitution to require voters to show government-issued identification at the polls or provide the last four digits of a government-issued ID number when voting by mail. It would also require election officials to report how many voters’ citizenships they have verified, adding new layers of bureaucracy to a system that already verifies voters’ identity at registration and checks signatures on mail ballots.

Hilton has embraced the measure, calling it a state-level answer to the SAVE America Act, the sweeping federal anti-voting bill pushed by Trump and congressional Republicans.

“Whatever they do in Washington with the SAVE America Act or whatever, here in California we will have the chance to get voter ID,” Hilton said after the measure qualified for the ballot. “And it’s more than that. It means that we’re gonna get a big Republican turnout in the elections this November.”

Voting rights groups have warned that the initiative could suppress eligible voters who may not have the necessary documents readily available.

If Hilton makes the top two, California’s November governor’s race could become a vehicle for the right’s broader effort to restrict voting — giving Republicans a statewide messenger for a ballot measure rooted in the same fraud and election denial politics Trump has used to attack elections nationwide.

Will California voters rebuke the Republican sheriff who seized over 650,000 ballots?

One of the most closely watched results Tuesday may be who does not make the top two.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican candidate for governor, became a national symbol of election conspiracy politics earlier this year when he seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in California’s 2025 special election on redistricting.

The extraordinary move was based on dubious claims pushed by fringe right-wing groups. The incident immediately raised alarms among voting rights advocates about how rogue officials, including law enforcement, could disrupt elections under the banner of investigating nonexistent fraud.

Newsom’s emergency legislation signed just days before Tuesday’s primary was in direct response to Bianco’s ballot seizure, to prevent a repeat. The new law criminalizes removing voted ballots from election officials’ custody and restricts law enforcement from interfering in election administration except in narrow circumstances.

Bianco is not expected to advance to November. If he falls short, California voters will have denied a statewide platform to a candidate who turned voter fraud conspiracy theories into an unprecedented attack on voting.

For pro-democracy advocates, Tuesday’s primary is not just about the race to succeed Newsom. It is also a test of whether California voters deny a statewide platform to one of the country’s most visible local officials to use police power against a free and fair election.

Will a former Trump DOJ official advance in California’s race for attorney general?

California’s attorney general race will help decide who controls one of the country’s most important legal offices for resisting Trump’s attacks on elections, voting and states’ rights.

Bonta is expected to advance to November, where he would be strongly favored. But Tuesday’s primary is also likely to elevate Republican Michael Gates, a former Huntington Beach city attorney who briefly served as deputy assistant attorney general in Trump’s Justice Department Civil Rights Division under Harmeet Dhillon.

The contrast is stark.

Bonta has made California’s Justice Department a key part of the state’s anti-Trump legal strategy. In April, he co-led a multistate lawsuit challenging Trump’s sweeping election executive order, which Bonta’s office said unlawfully interfered with states’ authority to run elections by restricting voter eligibility and mail voting. His office later moved to permanently block the order, arguing that Trump does not have the constitutional power to make or change federal election law.

Gates, by contrast, comes out of the Trump DOJ operation that has alarmed voting rights advocates. Before joining the administration, he defended Huntington Beach’s local voter ID law against California officials and said he was going to DOJ to advance Trump’s agenda.

At DOJ, Gates served in the Civil Rights Division as the department pursued lawsuits and demands for voter data from states and local election officials. In California, DOJ sued Orange County’s registrar over voter-list maintenance practices. Nationally, similar Trump administration efforts to obtain sensitive voter data have been described in court filings as part of a broader effort to create a national voter database and purge state voter rolls.

Gates’ short DOJ tenure ended under disputed circumstances. The Los Angeles Times reported that a personnel document obtained by the Orange County Register said Gates was terminated “for cause,” meaning the department said it had a reason to fire him. Gates denied he was fired and said he had planned to resign.

If Bonta and Gates advance, November’s attorney general race will offer California voters a direct choice between keeping the state’s top legal office in the hands of one of Trump’s most aggressive courtroom opponents — or elevating a Republican tied to the administration’s voter-roll crackdown.