Washington, D.C., June 5, 2026 — During an interview on The John Phillips Show, Nestpoint Managing Director John Thomas broke down the latest California election results, focusing on both the governor’s race and the Los Angeles mayor’s race. His analysis pointed to a broader pattern across both contests: voters may be settling on familiar outcomes, but the underlying fields remain weak, fractured, and short on genuine enthusiasm.
On the governor’s race, Thomas said the returns were landing largely where he expected, with Xavier Becerra appearing positioned for the top slot and Steve Hilton looking increasingly likely to secure the second-place position. He argued that the outcome reflected two simultaneous realities: Democratic establishment consolidation behind Becerra and Republican coalescing around Hilton as the clearest Trump-aligned option in the field.
“It proves that money is important in politics, but not everything,” Thomas said, pointing to Tom Steyer’s enormous spending and lack of electoral return. He also argued that Matt Mahan’s disappointing performance reinforced a larger lesson about the current Democratic electorate in California: “moderate politics just simply doesn’t sell in a state as blue as California.”
Thomas was equally blunt about Katie Porter, saying the now-infamous video of her swearing at a staffer confirmed what many voters already suspected about her political persona.
“It was done. She just didn’t realize it at that point,” Thomas said, arguing that the video exposed an underlying weakness in her candidacy rather than creating a new one. In his view, there was little path back once that perception hardened.
He also addressed the role Kamala Harris might have played had she entered the race, suggesting that she likely would have dominated the contest but did not want the actual burden of governing California.
Thomas said Harris likely believed she “could have had it if I wanted,” but argued the stronger explanation for her staying out was simpler: “Being a governor in the state of California is a lot of work.”
The conversation then turned to Los Angeles, where Thomas said the second runoff slot remained unusually difficult to call with confidence. While Spencer Pratt still appeared to be ahead at the time of the interview, Thomas argued that Nithya Raman still had a plausible path if late ballot tranches continued to come disproportionately from Democratic strongholds. By his reading of the trend at that moment, however, Raman was still more likely to come up slightly short if the pace held steady.
Thomas also highlighted the organizational edge he believes the democratic socialist left often holds in Los Angeles local races, especially when it comes to ballot chasing and late-vote infrastructure. In his view, that made the final mayoral positioning harder to call with total confidence, even as Pratt retained a narrow apparent edge.
“It’s 100 percent the DSA,” Thomas said. “They are better organizers. They’re better ballot harvesters.”
What emerged from Thomas’s analysis was a picture of California politics that remains deeply blue but increasingly unsettled. In the governor’s race, money could not overcome a mismatch between candidate identity and electorate mood. In Los Angeles, late-vote mechanics and organizational strength kept the second-place fight fluid even after election night. Across both contests, the results suggested that familiar partisan structures remain strong, even as voter confidence in the available options appears far weaker.
The segment originally aired on The John Phillips Show on June 5, 2026. Listen to it here.
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