California Democrats are about to face something they have mostly avoided for years: a real campaign focused on their record.

The June primary produced two explosive fall matchups: Steve Hilton against Xavier Becerra for governor, and Spencer Pratt against Karen Bass for mayor of Los Angeles.

Neither race is going to be polite.

And that’s a good thing.

For years, Democrats have run California, run its largest cities, controlled the Legislature, controlled the agencies and then acted as if the results were somehow beyond their control.

That dodge gets a lot harder now.

Hilton’s big win gives him five months to prosecute the Gavin Newsom record, with Becerra standing at the defense table.

Becerra is not a fresh start. He is the continuation candidate. Newsom without the celebrity gloss. The same ideology, the same governing class and the same excuses.

If anything, Becerra may be even more conventionally liberal than Newsom, who often seems more focused on becoming president than fixing California.

That leaves Becerra carrying the luggage.

And the luggage is heavy.

High-speed rail is still a fiscal sinkhole. Homelessness spending has exploded while encampments remain. California’s cost of living is crushing working families. Gas prices are brutal. Housing is unaffordable. Insurance is harder to get and more expensive to keep. Public safety remains a major concern. Fraud and waste in public programs have become a recurring feature, not an aberration.

This is not bad luck.

It is the predictable result of one-party control, where taxpayers get fleeced, favored interests get paid and failure gets rewarded with a bigger budget.

California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn
California Post SportsFacebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X
California Post Opinion
California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!
California Post App: Download here!
Home delivery: Sign up here!
Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!

Hilton now has months to make that case every day.

The same dynamic is unfolding in Los Angeles, only louder and stranger.

Spencer Pratt’s candidacy has overturned every normal assumption about city politics.

Los Angeles is supposed to be too big, too unwieldy, too union-dominated, too insider-controlled and too firmly Democratic for a disruptive outsider campaign to set the terms of debate.

Yet here we are.

Pratt has done what Los Angeles business leaders, civic groups, editorial boards and political insiders failed to do: make Karen Bass defend her record.

Bass expected a reelection campaign. She is getting a trial.

Her first term has been defined by homelessness, public safety worries, bureaucratic paralysis, leadership failures and a deep public sense that Los Angeles is not working. Add in the city’s handling of the Palisades fire disaster, and the contrast becomes even sharper.

Pratt did not create those problems.

He forced them into the center of the campaign.

That is why Bass’ election-night posture mattered. Even in apparent victory, she sounded like a mayor responding to an indictment. The Pratt candidacy dragged the failures of Los Angeles government out of City Hall conference rooms and into the open.

That is no small thing.

Some caution is required.

California counts ballots slowly. Millions remain outstanding statewide. Hundreds of thousands remain to be counted in Los Angeles.

Nothing is official until it is official.

But the leads posted by Hilton and Pratt appear large enough that the basic fall matchups are unlikely to change.

The harder truth comes next.

No one should pretend the math is easy. California is blue. Los Angeles is bluer. Democrats have registration, money, unions, media muscle, institutional inertia and a political culture built to protect incumbents.

Hilton and Pratt start as underdogs.

But Democrats also have something else.

The record.

And the record is ugly.

If there were ever conditions for a serious challenge, California has created them. Voters are frustrated. Affordability is deteriorating. Trust in government is low. The ruling class looks arrogant, exhausted and out of answers.

Most importantly, the people in charge own the mess.

For years, California Democrats have campaigned against abstractions: Trump, Republicans, corporations, oil companies, landlords, climate change, misinformation, and whatever villain their consultants dreamed up that week.

This fall, they have to campaign against reality.

Becerra will have to defend the Newsom era.

Bass will have to defend Los Angeles.

Hilton and Pratt do not have easy paths to victory. But they have already done something important.

They have made the people in power answer for what they did with it.

California Democrats still have the advantage.

But for once, they do not get to campaign as spectators to their own failures.

This fall, they will have to defend the state and city they actually run.

That is why this campaign season matters.

And yes — it is going to be a contact sport.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com