Quick Take
Progressive former state controller Betty Yee said Monday that she is dropping out of the race to succeed Gavin Newsom amid faltering polling and poor fundraising.
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Former state controller Betty Yee dropped out of the California governor’s race on Monday, saying she couldn’t see a path to get donors and additional support from undecided voters with six weeks left before the primary.
“It was becoming clear that the donors were not going to be there,” she said. “Even some of my former supporters just felt like they needed to move on as well.”
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She did not immediately endorse another candidate, but said she would do so in the next few days. Six Democrats and two Republicans are leading in polling ahead of the June 2 election.
Yee was one of the earliest to enter the race, announcing her candidacy more than two years ago. She ran on her experience handling the state budget and her family’s middle-class, immigrant background.
A progressive who supported continuing the state’s greenhouse gas reduction mandates, Yee also emphasized her ability to balance the budget and spoke often about the importance of growing the state’s economy and auditing state programs for fraud. In recent days, she had begun styling herself as “Boring Betty,” promising a drama-free state government experience.
But pragmatism never translated into star power. Yee has stayed at or near the bottom of the polls, never garnering more than about 3% of likely voters, and lagged in fundraising.
Yee said she chose to run a grassroots campaign from the beginning rather than seek out large institutional support like other Democrats. But in the second half of last year, she brought in just $344,000 — compared with other candidates’ millions — and spent more than she raised. Donors, she said, held back out of concern about her low polling numbers, even those from Asian American communities that she said had backed her in the past.
That made her one of California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks’ unnamed targets of a public campaign to pressure lower-polling Democrats to drop out of the race. With many Democrats in the race potentially splitting the liberal vote, Democrats were concerned that two Republicans could win the top-two primary election in June.
‘People want a personality’
Yee, the former vice chair of the party, insisted she had grassroots support and wouldn’t be forced out of the race by a slate of wealthy, male candidates. She and the other candidates of color banded together to denounce their exclusion from a University of Southern California candidate debate last month after the university used a formula based on polling and fundraising to decide who to invite. The debate was ultimately canceled.
“This has been my life story, frankly, as a woman of color,” she told reporters in March. “I’ve been overlooked, I’ve been underestimated and pushed aside.”
In a tearful news conference on Monday, Yee expressed frustration about Hicks’ public pressure effort, which involved releasing periodic polls to prompt candidates to “assess the viability of their campaigns” that Yee said became “self-fulfilling.” And she said voters didn’t appear interested in her “experience and competence,” instead flocking toward candidates who made splashier statements about fighting the Trump administration.
“People want a personality,” she said. “You have to either be the loudest, you have to have gimmicks, you gotta do what you gotta do to get attention. I got no gimmicks.”
The chances of Democrats getting locked out of the general election have gone down since former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out over a week ago over sexual assault allegations and after President Donald Trump endorsed Steve Hilton on the Republican side.
But Yee has little cash on hand to continue, and the race is entering its most expensive phase yet with multiple candidates launching television ads last week.
Her exit leaves only one woman in the race, former Rep. Katie Porter.
Like Swalwell, Yee dropped out after a March state deadline to file or withdraw for the race, so her name will remain on the ballot in June.
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