Progressive billionaire Tom Steyer issued a defiant message Wednesday that his campaign for California governor still has a chance, even as his bid faces a critical, not-so-optimistic situation of needing more votes.
Campaign manager Heather Hargreaves sent a letter to supporters, saying that “there’s still a lot that remains to be seen and we’re going to give democracy time to work.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, with 54% of votes counted, Steyer is struggling to make the top two spots that will advance from Tuesday’s primary into a runoff. He sits at 20% of the votes.
That’s nearly 288,000 votes behind former state attorney general and Democrat Xavier Becerra, who has a 25% share in second place. On top is Republican Steve Hilton with nearly 28% of the vote.
Hargreaves said a key point will be Thursday when county election officials report the number of ballots they still have to count and validate. Until then, nobody knows how many people voted in total, she said. Right now, voting data is using estimates of how many total people voted.
“The most important thing you can do while we wait is to visit the state’s ballot tracker and verify that your ballot has been accepted,” Hargreaves said.
However, both Becerra and Hilton have expressed strong confidence that they will hold onto their top two spots. Many analysts noted that the gap of hundreds of thousands of votes that Steyer will need to get over is daunting.
“Yes, there could be a huge shift in vote counts today and tomorrow, but Steyer has to make up 300,000 votes, and he is trailing Becerra in most places, and by a lot,” said UCLA political science professor Matt Barreto.
Steyer’s one shot, experts said, relies on him getting momentum from a good ton of the remaining voters breaking his way. California has a notoriously long vote-counting process where officials can take days or even weeks to count ballots arriving “late” after voters dropped or mailed them off on Election Day.
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Those “late” voters are key, said voting data expert Paul Mitchell, and whether there are signs of that momentum may be proven in the first batch of “late” ballots counted Wednesday night.
Some note that Democrats holding onto their ballots until the very end may have decided to vote Steyer disproportionately simply to try to block Hilton, the lone top Republican, out of the runoff.
The struggle for Steyer to advance from the primary is a measly result considering the historic $216 million the billionaire plowed of his own money into the race. Critics watching the vote counts cheered what they said was spending gone to waste and brushed off his chances of surviving.
“Steyer spent hundreds of millions thinking he would fool California voters and lost. He will not be missed,” said Santa Monica resident Ross Gerber.
“Should have given that money to charity versus wasting it on YouTube ads,” he said.
