The independent Emerson College poll of likely voters showed that Becerra, who was among the also-rans at 4% in early April, is now clearly leading the race for governor at 28%.

In 30 counties, including Santa Clara County, in-person voting began Saturday, May 23.

Democrat Tom Steyer faded and candidates Chad Bianco, Katie Porter and Matt Mahan were left in the dust in what the California Democratic Party called its final tracking poll from the California VOTER Index.

The men were indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco for conspiracy to commit robbery, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, attempted robbery, and attempted kidnapping.

Polls released earlier this week showed some separation of three candidates – Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer and Republican Steve Hilton – from the others, and the trio were on the receiving end of most of the barbs at the May 14 debate. 

The debate comes at a pivotal moment in the top-two primary campaign – as mail ballots are returned and new polls show the number of undecided voters are dwindling with less than three weeks until the official June 2 Election Day.

Santa Clara County is going after Menlo Park-based Meta Platforms Inc., accusing the social media giant of facilitating 15 billion scam ads daily on Facebook and Instagram, accounting for $7 billion in revenues per year.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who was still polling at single digits last week, was spared most of the vitriol, but didn’t hesitate to criticize each of the other candidates at every opportunity.
His favorite debate target was Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra.

Primary ballots are in the mail to nearly 23 million registered California voters and the most recent statewide poll shows that 27 percent of the electorate are still undecided.

The statewide debate was more rough-and-tumble than last Wednesday’s event in San Francisco, but again, no governor candidate broke away from the scrum, and the playing field just got muddier.

The first major poll since last Wednesday’s Inside California Politics governor’s debate released today showed the April 22 debate had little impact on the public’s assessment of the top candidates.

One cybersecurity firm reported that an Islamic cyber attack group claimed responsibility for the massive eBay outages that began at noon Sunday and continued into Monday evening. San Jose-based eBay described the outages as ‘intermittent technical issues.’

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan – still polling in single digits – has approximately $8.9 million on hand to spend in the gubernatorial primary campaign's home stretch, more than double any other candidate.

Scorecards for the two Republican and four Democratic candidates each showed a few strikes, some hits, but no home runs.

On April 22, the county revealed that 10 county social workers had been placed on paid administrative leave on April 8. On April 21, local NAACP officials filed a formal civil rights complaint against the county, one day after District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he had charged a San Jose teenager with murdering his two-year-old cousin, identified as Baby Jaxon.

The Emerson College poll released last week, based on April 14-15 interviews, showed the biggest boost for Xavier Becerra, in contrast to the Mahan-sponsored poll released this week, based on April 8-12 interviews.