Eric Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign is over, and if you blinked, you might have missed it entirely. The Bay Area congressman's exit from the 2026 governor's race has reshuffled the deck, and the first post-dropout poll from Emerson College suggests one clear winner: Xavier Becerra.

The former California Attorney General and current (well, recently departed) HHS Secretary apparently picked up a significant chunk of Swalwell's support, with pollsters calling the swing "impressive." Tom Steyer and Katie Porter also got a boost, because apparently in California politics, one man's dropout is everyone else's treasure.

Let's be honest about what this really means. California's governor's race is shaping up to be yet another contest between various shades of Sacramento insiders competing to see who can promise the most while delivering the least. Becerra's surge is notable, but his record — both as AG and in the Biden administration — should give fiscally conscious voters plenty to chew on. This is the man who helped oversee an HHS budget that ballooned to incomprehensible levels.

Steyer's continued presence in the race is its own kind of comedy. The billionaire climate activist has essentially been running for something in California since 2019, spending hundreds of millions of his own dollars in the process. At some point you have to admire the persistence, if not the returns on investment.

Porter, meanwhile, remains the wildcard — her whiteboard-wielding populism plays well on social media, but whether that translates to a statewide coalition remains an open question.

What's missing from this field? Anyone who might seriously address California's spending crisis, its crumbling infrastructure ROI, or the regulatory environment that keeps driving businesses — and residents — to Texas and Florida. The state is sitting on a massive budget deficit, and so far, every major candidate seems content to pretend it doesn't exist.

The election is still a long way off. But if this early polling tells us anything, it's that California voters are about to get a very expensive campaign season with very few new ideas.