Former California state Controller Betty Yee ended her Democratic campaign for governor on Monday, telling reporters she saw no viable path forward after polls conducted at the urging of party leaders showed her stuck near the bottom of a crowded field. Her exit marks the second Democratic departure from the race in barely a week, and it lands in the middle of a primary season that has turned into a slow-motion disaster for the state party.
Yee, who served two terms as controller before entering the gubernatorial contest, told CBS that Democratic operatives had spent money on polling designed to thin the herd. She did not hide her frustration with the process.
The bottom line: California Democrats have been pleading with low-polling candidates to drop out for weeks, worried that a fractured field could hand Republicans a historic opening in the state's top-two primary system. Yee obliged. But the party's problems in this race run far deeper than one former controller polling in the single digits.
A new poll from Gudelunas Strategies, released the same day Yee stepped aside, showed Trump-backed candidate Steve Hilton leading the field at 20 percent. Xavier Becerra and billionaire Tom Steyer were tied at 15 percent. Chad Bianco sat at 14 percent, and Katie Porter trailed at 13 percent.
Those numbers spell trouble for Democrats. In California's jungle primary, the top two vote-getters advance regardless of party. A split Democratic vote could send two Republicans to the general election, an outcome that would have been unthinkable a cycle ago in deep-blue California.
Yee had consistently polled in single digits, and Newsmax reported that she trailed badly in fundraising as well. She told reporters that donor support had dried up, leaving her without the money to compete in California's punishingly expensive media markets.
"It was becoming clear that the donors were not going to be there. Even some of my former supporters just felt like they needed to move on," Yee said.
That candid admission tells you everything about the state of the Democratic bench in California. The party's establishment wanted a smaller field. They got one. Whether they got the right one is another question entirely.
Yee's exit came just over a week after a far more dramatic departure. Rep. Eric Swalwell, once considered a Democratic frontrunner in the race, suspended his campaign this month amid multiple serious sexual misconduct allegations from four women. His withdrawal threw the contest into chaos and left the party scrambling to regroup.
The Associated Press noted that while Yee was not a top-tier contender, her departure further narrowed the Democratic side of the field just weeks before the June 2 primary. The combination of Swalwell's implosion and Yee's quiet exit has reshaped a race that was already unstable.
Swalwell's troubles extended well beyond the misconduct claims. Earlier in the campaign, he faced scrutiny over questions about his California residency arrangements, adding to a pattern of controversy that dogged his bid from the start.
Fox News reported that Swalwell's exit was especially disruptive because it came amid the resurfaced allegations, leaving Democrats with a narrower field and mounting uncertainty heading into the primary. The fallout reached senior party figures, with Nancy Pelosi scrambling to distance herself from Swalwell as the accusations mounted.
Yee did not go quietly into the night. In her remarks to CBS, she offered a pointed critique of what she sees as a political culture that rewards flash over substance. She said party bosses had commissioned polling specifically to push low-performing candidates out of the race.
"I mean, they're doing their job and for whatever reason decided to put money into a poll that would narrow the field," Yee said.
She went further, lamenting that competence and experience, the qualities she ran on, simply did not register with voters the way she had expected.
"What they were saying, which was concerning, was that experience and competence was not polling as high as we thought when I first started this race."
That observation deserves more attention than it will probably get. A two-term state controller, someone who actually managed California's books, could not gain traction in a field that includes a billionaire activist, a congressman who left under a cloud of misconduct allegations, and a former Fox News host backed by Donald Trump. The Democratic electorate, at least in this race, was not shopping for a résumé.
Yee seemed to grasp this. She described the current political environment as a "reality TV show mentality" where conflict sells and attention is the only currency that matters.
"I'm not a flashy person, I don't come with gimmicks. I even joked with my team one time, maybe I just need to bring a folding stool and throw it off the stage just to get some attention. I mean, what's it gonna take, right?"
The remark was self-deprecating, but the frustration underneath it was real. And it points to a broader problem within the Democratic Party, a pattern of bruising internal primaries where institutional credentials count for less than media presence and fundraising muscle.
The remaining Democratic candidates, Porter, Becerra, and Steyer among them, now face a compressed timeline to consolidate support before the June 2 primary. Term-limited Governor Gavin Newsom has not issued a formal endorsement, leaving the field without a clear establishment favorite.
Yee, for her part, said she was not done with public life. She framed her withdrawal as a practical decision, not a permanent retreat.
"I am stepping aside from this race for governor because this is a time where I do not see a path to be successful. But success comes in all different forms."
She added that she planned to return to community work and that her "commitment to public service" extended beyond electoral politics. Newsmax reported that Yee explicitly cited a lack of resources as the deciding factor, telling reporters she had "surmised, with all the information that we have," that the money would not be there by primary day.
The California governor's race is now a case study in what happens when a dominant party takes its dominance for granted. Democrats hold every statewide office. They enjoy supermajorities in the legislature. And yet, weeks before the primary, their field is bleeding candidates, their frontrunner left under an ethics cloud, and a Trump-backed contender leads the polls.
Betty Yee's departure is the quieter story. She ran on competence, couldn't raise the money, and got squeezed out by party operatives who wanted a cleaner lane for someone else. Fair enough, that's politics. But the louder story is the one the numbers tell: 20 percent for Steve Hilton, and a fractured Democratic vote that could hand Republicans two spots on the November ballot.
When a party can't manage its own primary in its own stronghold, voters are right to ask who's actually in charge, and whether anyone at the top is paying attention to the wreckage below.
