In 173 years as a state, California has had 40 governors.
Democrats, Republicans, members of the Unionist and Know-Nothing events.
Retailers, attorneys, former mayors.
A bodybuilder-turned-movie-star. Two film stars, really.
However by no means a lady.
It’s a proven fact that stands out like Half Dome. This, in any case, is a state that fancies itself a progressive path-breaker and bastion of open-minded alternative — and made historical past in 1992 by turning into the primary to elect two girls to function U.S. senators on the similar time.
And but as Mindy Romero, director of USC’s Middle for Inclusive Democracy put it, “We nonetheless have that cup ceiling” in terms of the governor’s workplace.
Nonetheless, that all-white-male hegemony might lastly come to an finish in 2026.
Democrats Eleni Kounalakis, California’s first feminine lieutenant governor; Toni Atkins, the primary girls to lead each the Meeting and state Senate, and former state controller Betty Yee have all declared their candidacies to succeed the term-limited Gavin Newsom. Every is a reputable candidate, in what’s shaping as much as be a big and unusually assorted discipline.
It’s means too early, in fact, to dimension up a contest two years off; nobody is aware of what is going to occur within the presidential election nearly seven months from now. However California voters might make historical past in 2026 in a number of methods.
Democratic Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, a doable gubernatorial contestant, can be the state’s first Filipino American governor. State faculties chief Tony Thurmond, a fellow Democrat who launched his candidacy final fall, is bidding to turn into California’s first Black and Latino governor. Atkins can be the state’s first brazenly LGBTQ+ governor, in addition to its first feminine chief government.
All can be noteworthy achievements.
However in a state the place girls outnumber males amongst registered voters, electing a feminine governor wouldn’t simply fill a obtrusive hole within the state’s management roll but additionally finish considered one of California’s extra curious political distinctions.
There have been 49 girls — 30 Democrats and 19 Republicans — serving as governor in 32 states, in keeping with the Middle for America Ladies and Politics at Rutgers College. A dozen states at present have feminine chief executives.
Arizona holds the document, with 5 girls serving as governor. Kansas, New Hampshire and Oregon have every elected three. A handful of states have had two.
Why none in California?
There appears to be no explicit cause — a minimum of not in current many years, as soon as girls lastly started to achieve a measure of political equality and attain the stature to compete for the state’s highest elected workplaces.
It may possibly’t merely be written off as misogyny.
Along with electing three feminine U.S. senators, Californians have elevated quite a few girls to statewide workplace. Fifty out of 120 legislative seats in Sacramento are held by girls, and a couple of third of the California congressional delegation is feminine.
All 5 members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors are girls, and Los Angeles has a feminine mayor, as does San Francisco and scores of different cities, from Rancho Cordova within the north to Murrieta within the south.
There’s not a protracted historical past of ladies vying for California governor. Solely a handful have had a severe shot: Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Kathleen Brown and Republican Meg Whitman.
Feinstein got here closest to profitable. In 1990, she turned the primary lady in state historical past to garner a significant get together’s nomination for governor. She narrowly misplaced to Republican Sen. Pete Wilson.
Invoice Carrick, the chief media strategist for Feinstein’s marketing campaign, recollects her narrowly main the competition till the outbreak of the First Gulf Conflict. Help for Wilson grew as President George H.W. Bush rallied the nation and assembled a global coalition that ultimately rolled again Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.
“You noticed an enormous Republican uptick due to it,” Carrick mentioned.
Was is it a case of voters embracing the GOP and its candidates to reward Bush and his get together? Or did the perils of wartime make them query a lady’s capability to function California governor?
Carrick shouldn’t be sure. Possibly it was each.
Again then, he mentioned, even “some liberal-minded individuals” had doubts about Feinstein’s political viability. “I don’t assume there’s that type of hesitancy” at present, Carrick mentioned.
(In case you return additional, to 1969, when Feinstein made her first run for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, everybody — together with her father — informed her a lady couldn’t win. She proved them mistaken.)
Feinstein exacted a measure of revenge two years after her defeat within the governor’s race when she beat Wilson’s hand-picked successor, John Seymour, to assert a Senate seat she held till her demise in September.
The success of Feinstein and others who got here after reduce a a lot clearer path for these following their footprints.
“Because the years go on, girls candidates clearly have a neater time than they ever have,” mentioned Gale Kaufman, a veteran Sacramento strategist who helped elect many Democratic girls to workplace.
“It wasn’t all that way back individuals would ask, ‘Can a lady deal with the job of governor? ‘“ Kaufman mentioned. “I don’t assume anyone would ask that query now.”
That augurs nicely for these operating in 2026. It doesn’t assure a lady can be elected California’s subsequent governor, but it surely appears more likely.
It’s about time.
