By Joe Garofoli, Political Columnist June 23, 2026 (SFChronicle.com)
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Xavier Becerra addresses supporters on election night in downtown Los Angeles on June 2.Jen Osborne/For the S.F. Chronicle
San Francisco Democratic leaders on Wednesday will consider recommending a plan designed to avoid a repeat of what some saw as a nearly disastrous blunder — the statewide party not endorsing anyone in the primary election for governor.
Until weeks before the June 2 primary, Democrats were worried they might be locked out of the governor’s race as polls showed two Republican candidates ahead of the glut of Democratic candidates. Yet none within the crowded field had received the support of 60% of delegates at the state party’s February convention in San Francisco, needed to receive its endorsement, which could have united voters around a single candidate.
That wasn’t an outlier. The state party didn’t endorse a candidate in five of the eight statewide races.
What followed was a period of chaos during which the state party spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling in a bid to nudge lower-polling gubernatorial candidates out of the race. The effort backfired, as only one candidate dropped out and many observers recoiled at the idea of white party leaders asking candidates of color to step aside.
The proposed solution from San Francisco Democrats? Take a cue from the city.
Much as voters in San Francisco choose their mayor by ranked-choice voting, party delegates would rank their favorite candidates in order of preference. In each round of counting, if the leader does not reach a to-be-determined threshold, the lowest-ranking candidate would be eliminated and their votes redistributed to the next-ranked candidates on those ballots.
If “no endorsement” is the highest-ranked option chosen by the delegates, then the party would not extend an endorsement, according to the plan.
“We wrote this resolution with the idea that the state party should be adopting a new way of endorsing or not endorsing,” Eric Kingsbury, a member of the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee who co-authored the proposal, told me. “Let’s not have any more ‘no consensus’ candidates. Let’s either affirmatively say we’re not getting an endorsement, or let’s endorse someone and provide the leadership that voters deserve, because they’re busy.”
An additional part of the proposal would address what to do if a leading candidate implodes halfway through the race, as former Rep. Eric Swalwell did after the Chronicle reported allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman who used to work for him.
Though the state party didn’t endorse Swalwell (or anyone else) for governor, it would have been handcuffed if it had. Kingsbury said the party’s by-laws don’t include a “mechanism to rescind an endorsement.”
Kingsbury isn’t prescribing how to rescind and revote on an endorsement. He’s leaving the details to the state party. His hope is that if San Francisco Democrats pass the resolution, they can propose it to the state party executive board later this year.
California Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
After the panic of the primary, some in the party were calling for an end to the top-two system and a return to the previous format, in which Republicans and Democrats chose their own nominees during the primary who met in the general election.
“That is something that the broader state of California should have a conversation about, but this is about operating in the system that we have now,” Kingsbury said. “This is the start. You begin a conversation there.”
Kingsbury, who co-authored the proposal with fellow San Francisco Democrats Mike Chen and Emma Hare, isn’t the only party delegate who wants the system to change. So does Leslie Baxter, a member of the Contra Costa County Democratic Party’s central committee. After attending the state party convention this year where the party deadlocked on an endorsement for governor, Baxter was frustrated.
“This is wrong,” she told me this week. “This means that the Democratic Party has ceded its power to support a Democratic candidate. There has to be a better way.”
Baxter submitted a similar proposal to overhaul endorsements to the state party.
June 23, 2026
Senior Political Writer
Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, covering national and state politics. He has worked at The Chronicle since 2000 and in Bay Area journalism since 1992, when he left the Milwaukee Journal. He is the host of “It’s All Political,” The Chronicle’s political podcast. Catch it here: bit.ly/2LSAUjA
He has won numerous awards and covered everything from fashion to the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings to two Olympic Games to his own vasectomy — which he discussed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” after being told he couldn’t say the word “balls” on the air. He regularly appears on Bay Area radio and TV talking politics and is available to entertain at bar mitzvahs and First Communions. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and a proud native of Pittsburgh. Go Steelers!
