The political press is currently obsessed with the "infighting" among the Democratic heavyweights vying to replace Gavin Newsom. They see a mess. They see a party at war with itself. They see a "split" in the base that might hand a opening to a Republican or a moderate spoiler.
They are completely wrong.
What we are witnessing in California isn’t a breakdown of the Democratic machine. It is the machine operating at peak efficiency. This isn’t a civil war; it’s a high-stakes stress test designed to ensure that whoever wins the keys to the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento inherits a crown, not just a desk.
In a state where the GOP is effectively a vestigial organ, the primary is the only election that matters. But the media's obsession with "civility" and "unity" ignores the brutal reality of one-party rule: survival of the fittest is the only way to prevent total stagnation. If these candidates weren't clawing each other's eyes out over housing, high-speed rail, and retail theft, we should be terrified.
The Myth of the "Unified Party"
Pundits love to wring their hands when Eleni Kounalakis, Rob Bonta, or Antonio Villaraigosa take shots at one another. They claim this "bitterness" will alienate voters.
Nonsense.
Unity is for losers. Unity is what happens when a party is so weak it has to hide its internal disagreements to survive a general election. California Democrats don't have that problem. They have the opposite problem: a surplus of ambition and a lack of external checks.
When you have a supermajority in both houses of the Legislature, the Governor’s job isn't to "lead" a party; it’s to dominate a bureaucracy. The "infighting" is a vetting process for ruthlessness. I’ve watched Sacramento politics for twenty years, and I can tell you that the most "collegial" candidates are usually the ones who get eaten alive by the California Teachers Association or the prison guards' union within six months of taking office.
We should stop asking "Why can't they get along?" and start asking "Which one of these people is mean enough to actually kill a bad bill?"
The Housing Lies Both Sides Tell
The current spat over housing policy is perhaps the most dishonest part of this entire campaign. You have the "YIMBY" (Yes In My Backyard) darlings and the "Neighborhood Integrity" stalwarts.
The "lazy consensus" is that California’s housing crisis is a battle between greedy developers and NIMBY homeowners.
The truth? It’s a battle between two different versions of state overreach.
- The Progressivists: They want to mandate "affordable" units that make every project pencil out to a net loss, ensuring nothing actually gets built.
- The Centrists: They want to deregulate just enough to help their donor base but not enough to actually lower property values for the suburbanites who vote.
Neither side wants to admit that California’s CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) is a weaponized piece of legislation used by both unions and NIMBYs to extort concessions. If a candidate isn't talking about a total, scorched-earth rewrite of CEQA, they aren't serious about housing. They are just performing for their respective donor classes.
I have seen developers walk away from billion-dollar transit-oriented projects because a single "community stakeholder" used an obscure environmental loophole to delay the project for seven years. Until a candidate promises to strip that power away from the "stakeholders," the infighting over housing is just theater.
The Retail Theft Distraction
The loudest part of the current infighting revolves around Proposition 47 and the rise of organized retail theft. The "moderates" say we need to lock everyone up; the "left" says we need to address root causes.
Both are distractions.
The real issue isn't whether $950 is the right threshold for a felony. The issue is a complete collapse of the social contract in our urban centers. We’ve created a system where the police have quiet-quit because they feel unsupported, and the DAs have stopped prosecuting because they want to be social workers.
The candidates are fighting over the symptoms because they are too cowardly to address the structure. California has a fragmented, overlapping web of law enforcement and social services that spends billions to achieve precisely nothing.
Imagine a scenario where we stopped funding "non-profit partners" with zero accountability and instead moved that money back into a unified, state-run mental health and enforcement agency. The candidates won't suggest this because those non-profits are their ground game during election season. They are fighting over the scraps of a broken system while the house burns down.
Money: The Only Poll That Matters
Forget the Emerson or Berkeley IGS polls. If you want to know who is winning the "infighting," look at the independent expenditure committees.
In California, the "infighting" is actually a shadow war between different pools of capital.
- Silicon Valley: Looking for a tech-friendly deregulator who won't touch their R&D credits.
- Public Sector Unions: Looking for a guarantor of the status quo who will keep the pension debt off the front page.
- Real Estate/Construction: Looking for the "Streamlining" candidate who will cut their specific red tape while leaving the competition's red tape intact.
When a candidate "attacks" another for being too close to special interests, they are usually signaling to a different special interest that they are open for business.
The False Hope of the "Moderate" Republican
Every four years, a "reasonable" Republican or an "independent" businessman enters the race, and the media treats it like a breath of fresh air. "Could this be the year the GOP makes a comeback?"
No.
The "infighting" among Democrats is so loud because the Democrats know the GOP is irrelevant. The real "opposition" in California isn't the Republican Party; it’s the reality of the state’s own math. We have the highest poverty rate in the country when adjusted for cost of living. We have a crumbling power grid. We have an exodus of the middle class.
The Republican candidate is a ghost. The "moderate" Democrat who claims they can "reach across the aisle" is lying, because there is no one on the other side of the aisle to reach toward. The fight is—and always will be—between the various factions of the Democratic Party.
The Cost of the "Circular Firing Squad"
Is there a downside to this brutal internal warfare? Absolutely.
The downside isn't that it "weakens the party." The downside is that it produces a Governor who is a master of political maneuvering but a novice at actual governance.
Gavin Newsom is the perfect example. He is a world-class communicator and a brilliant political strategist. But his administration has struggled with the basic "plumbing" of government—the EDD (Employment Development Department) fraud scandal, the DMV wait times, the high-speed rail that goes nowhere.
When the primary process rewards the best "fighter," we end up with a leader who knows how to win a war but doesn't know how to run a country. This is the danger of the current infighting: it filters for the most aggressive fundraiser and the most ruthless debater, not the person who can fix the electrical grid.
Why You Should Cheer for the Chaos
Despite the flaws, you should want this fight to get uglier.
In a one-party state, silence is the sound of corruption. When the candidates are "unified," it means the deals have already been made behind closed doors. When they are screaming at each other on stage, it means the deals are falling apart.
- Conflict breeds transparency: Under the pressure of a primary, candidates leak each other’s dirty laundry. We find out who is taking money from whom. We find out which "environmentalists" are actually just protecting their view of the ocean.
- Conflict forces specificty: When Kounalakis and Bonta have to differentiate themselves, they are forced to take stances on niche issues they would rather ignore.
- Conflict tests the "Goldilocks" zone: It helps the electorate find the exact point where a candidate is progressive enough to satisfy the base but "sane" enough not to scare away the remaining businesses.
Stop Looking for a Savior
The biggest misconception in California politics is that the next Governor will "fix" the state.
The Governor of California is not a CEO. They are a person trying to steer a supertanker with a broken rudder while 120 legislators try to grab the wheel. The "infighting" we see now is just a preview of what the winner will face every single day in Sacramento.
If a candidate can't handle a few attack ads from a fellow Democrat, they have no hope of handling the California Teachers Association. If they can't survive a primary debate without crying about "negativity," they will be crushed by the state’s massive, unelected bureaucracy.
We don't need a "unifier." We need a survivor.
The media wants a polite conversation about "the issues." The voters need a bloodsport that reveals who is actually capable of holding power without being consumed by it.
The infighting isn't a sign of failure. It's the only form of accountability we have left. Let them fight.
Check the donor lists for the next round of filings and see which "principled" candidate just took a massive check from the very industry they claimed to be "reforming" last week. Then you’ll know who’s actually winning.
