The Brief

The debate over the potential benefits and safety risks of accelerating artificial intelligence development reached a crescendo this month, as supporters and critics of the technology clashed over warnings that increasingly powerful AI could pose existential risks to humanity.

On September 8, Jacob Coxon, a researcher-turned-whistleblower, publicly resigned from major AI firm Anthropic after a previous stint at OpenAI, accusing the companies of "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

Coxon's claims supercharged an ongoing debate over the potential damage AI could wreak on society and prompted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other AI CEOs to call for a slowdown in AI development.

Over the past two months, companies including OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed multiple incidents in which their AI agents accessed the internet when they weren't supposed to and carried out unapproved activities. In OpenAI's case, swarms of agents worked together to hack the open-source software platform Hugging Face and OpenAI itself, without alerting humans.

The debate over the safety of AI and whether and how it should be regulated is not a simple clash between two opposing sides. There are multiple factions with a variety of goals and assessments about the technology's promise, dangers and how it should be governed. Here are the main arguments shaping that debate.

Effective accelerationists and the tech right

Those who have an aggressively optimistic worldview of AI are often referred to as effective accelerationists (sometimes shortened to e/acc) — a term reflecting their belief that AI should be rapidly advanced.

People belonging to the faction are emphatically optimistic about AI and its future benefits to society. They believe that the technology can propel medical advancements, boost economic productivity, increase living standards and automate dangerous or undesirable work. To achieve this, they argue that AI development should be accelerated, not restricted.

Effective accelerationists' ideology overlaps with that of the "tech right" in that both camps wholeheartedly believe in accelerating AI development and deployment and minimize critics' concerns over safety and security.

However, the tech right takes a more nationalistic stance, championing U.S. dominance in the global AI race. Like effective accelerationists, they believe that AI research and deployment should be unencumbered by regulation, arguing that could slow innovation or allow adversarial governments such as China to overtake the U.S. in the AI race.

Venture capitalist David Sacks is one of the leading accelerationist voices in the AI safety debate and was President Trump's AI and cryptocurrency advisor.

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The tech right's philosophy is represented by figures such as former White House AI and cryptocurrency advisor David Sacks, whose views remain influential with the Trump administration. Other significant players include venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman. The three founded the Leading the Future super PAC to support pro-AI political candidates, and campaign against those who advocate for regulation.

Andreessen also penned a 2023 widely-read blog post titled "Why AI Will Save the World," in which he claimed that fears of AI triggering mass unemployment are overstated. He argued that previous waves of automation ultimately created more jobs and economic activity than they eliminated, and the fears of existential risk are overblown.

Recently, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, whose chips are used by most AI companies, has emerged as one of the industry's leading voices pushing back against calls for a slowdown and urging a light regulatory approach.

Populist right

AI has exposed an ideological split within President Trump's political coalition. While Trump and his advisers overwhelmingly favor accelerating AI, parts of his MAGA base believe the powerful corporations he has aligned himself with could undermine the U.S. economy.

Figures including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have been vocal about potential job losses, the tech industry's political power, child safety and threats to traditional social and religious values.

This month, Bannon formed an unlikely partnership with independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist, to call for significant restrictions on AI development, government oversight and corporate accountability at the Pro-Human Assembly conference in Washington, D.C.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has sharply broken with the Trump administration around AI policy.

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Still, the two have differing stances on what any of those measures should look like. Sanders called for an immediate pause on AI development until clear safety rules are established by scientists, a permanent ban on the development of artificial "superintelligence" (AI systems that are more intelligent than humans in all domains), and an international treaty with China in an effort to avoid an AI arms race. Bannon, meanwhile, argued for slowing the pace of AI development, the formation of a national regulatory organization and cutting off China from U.S. AI technology.

"So why are we letting the Chinese Communist Party drive us? Oh, we have to do this or China wins," said Bannon in his speech at the event in Washington. "We should quarantine now every aspect of the ecosystem of artificial intelligence away from the Chinese Communist Party today. We should cut them off."

Safetyists

Safetyists are primarily concerned with the potential risks of the rapid advancement of AI. Their worries center on the possibility of catastrophic or existential outcomes, such as the death of humanity at the hands of autonomous machines.

High-profile members of the safetyist community include Geoffrey Hinton, who is commonly referred to as the "Godfather of AI" because of his pioneering work in deep learning that helped launch the modern era of AI. In recent years, Hinton, who previously worked at Google, has issued a series of warnings about existential risks associated with AI, particularly if an AI model surpasses human intelligence and becomes autonomous.

Another vocal AI safetyist is Daniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher at OpenAI and co-author of AI 2027, a paper published last year that discusses how super-intelligent AI could lead to human extinction by the mid-2030s.

Effective altruists

Effective altruists (often shortened to "EA") generally believe in maximizing humanity's long-term welfare. The movement originally focused on material ways to reduce global poverty. But more recently, many EA thinkers have focused their concerns on the possibility of existential risks from advanced AI and other potential societal-scale disasters such as nuclear war, climate change and pandemics. They particularly worry about the consequences for future generations. People from the EA camp prioritize AI safety, alignment — which is the science of making sure AI systems behave in a way that is reflective of human values and in line with safety rules — and reducing the probability of catastrophic outcomes.

The key difference between EAs and safetyists is that EAs generally provide funding for AI safety research and risk mitigation, whereas safetyists are researchers and advocates undertaking AI safety work and publicly calling for regulation.

Other AI factions often derisively describe effective altruists as so-called "AI Doomers." EA has also become a focus of criticism from the Trump administration since Coxon's resignation from Anthropic.

"Americanism, not effective altruism. The United States will continue to be AI DOMINANT!" said one Defense Department post this month.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is associated with the effective altruists and argues for stronger regulations on AI.

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Well-known people in the EA movement include Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), which focuses on mathematical approaches to making advanced AI systems safe. He is also the author of Harry Potter fan fiction that helped popularize ideas associated with EA. Holden Karnofsky, an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, founded Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy), an organization that funds causes central to the EA mission, including AI and biosecurity. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is considered to be aligned with effective altruism. Karnofsky also works at Anthropic and is married to Daniela Amodei, who is a co-founder of Anthropic and the sister of Dario Amodei, the CEO.

Another high-profile supporter of the EA movement is Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded major cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In 2023, he was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the misuse of customer and investor funds and is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence.

AI ethics

The AI ethics camp argues that society should focus on the harms AI is already causing, rather than on hypothetical existential risks. Some proponents contend that emphasizing existential threats from a hypothetical future superintelligence can serve as a distraction from the more immediate harms and accountability issues surrounding AI today.

AI ethicists' concerns include how AI systems can be biased due to the content of their training data, for example, the ways in which AI facial recognition or job application systems might perpetuate existing societal biases. They are also concerned with how AI could be used to exploit workers and to enable mass surveillance, as well as about the environmental costs of data centers, autonomous weapons and the concentration of power among technology companies.

A notable voice of the AI ethics faction is Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist and former co-lead of Google's Ethical AI team. Gebru left the company in 2020 because of a dispute with the company over a research paper she wrote exposing problems with large language models (LLMs), including their tendency to generate harmful or misleading language.

AI as a normal technology

People belonging to the "AI as a Normal Technology" group reject both the utopian and dystopian narratives about AI. Instead, this faction sees AI as a powerful but ultimately normal technology, comparable to the internet or electricity. They believe the focus should be on understanding and regulating specific applications and harms instead of treating AI as an unprecedented threat or as a path to inevitable superintelligence.

Fei-Fei Li is a computer scientist and co-director of the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute. She and others in her faction argue that AI is more like a typical technology than others in the field believe.

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Notable people associated with this worldview include Fei-Fei Li, a computer scientist and co-director of the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute. Li is famous for creating ImageNet, a vastly large dataset of images which provided the training data for large neural networks, which led to several major developments in AI.

Katie McQue's reporting is supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, which is a grantee of Coefficient Giving. Neither Tarbell nor Coefficient have any editorial input into her work.
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

It’s Thursday night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown, and the place is packed with about 300 people chatting under sparkling disco lights. Haystacks, wooden guitars and retro beer signs decorate the space. In the center, a metal stool holds a Mac laptop, and a big screen displays a visual sales presentation, or pitch deck. A beaming young woman steps to the mic and begins her slideshow pitch. But she’s not selling anything. She’s trying to get someone in the audience to date her friend.

This is Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles, one of LA’s hottest dating events, where singles looking for a match rely on a good friend with great slideshow skills as their wingman.

The goal is to connect people to dates in real life, but the unique concept also allows singles to see their friends say nice things about them in creative ways, Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles organizer Jackson Wise told The LA Local.

“I get to see best friends kind of hype each other up and talk about their friends’ characteristics and sometimes that’s not always spoken,” Wise said. He added that he often notices the friend being pitched sitting in the audience and getting teary-eyed from all the encouragement.

Wise began the LA offshoot of Pitch-A-Friend nearly two years ago. The original event began in Philadelphia. After spending several years struggling in LA’s notoriously difficult dating scene, Wise scrolled past the Instagram account for a Philly-hosted event of Pitch-A-Friend. “I reached out to them, and they said I should start it in Los Angeles,” Wise recalled.

He said his LA offshoot was not very successful early on, drawing small crowds. But he kept at it, relying on social media and word of mouth to grow the event, which now draws crowds in the hundreds.

Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles leader Jackson Wise opens the night at Eastwood Bar in Koreatown.

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What is Pitch-A-Friend?

The concept is simple: Instead of single people promoting themselves on a dating app, their friends do it for them, live, in front of a room full of strangers. Each presenter gets four to five minutes and a slide deck, usually made in Canva or Google Slides, to show off a single friend’s best qualities, quirks and what they’re looking for. Singles in the crowd who like what they see can find that person afterward, in the room or through the Hooked Up app.

The LA Local got a front-row seat to an LGBTQ+ singles event at Pitch-A-Friend Los Angeles. Here’s how it went down.

Half an hour before presentations, Wise made sure all participating friends were signed up. He checked that their five-minute Canva or Google Slides decks were good to go. Soon after, he energized the crowd with lively announcements like: “At the end of every presentation, I get, ‘Hey, I didn’t meet anybody.’ My first question is, ‘Did you talk to anybody?’ It’s usually no.”

Then he encouraged everyone to scan the QR code for the Hooked Up app or to break out of their circles, mingle and help their friends connect. He introduced stickers to help direct singles on queer night: green for women or friends, red for men and white for both or nonbinary.

Among the crowd was Elektra Armenta. “We don’t really get many mixers or dating events for queer folks in LA. So, I was really excited to be here, to experience all of us,” Armenta said.

The first presenter used colorful and playful multimedia slides to hype up her 23-year-old gay male roommate as someone who is intelligent, supportive and attentive and, above all, has a gift for listening.

Next, two young women took to the stage to introduce their accomplished friend, a 35-year-old retired three-time Olympian now thriving in tech at LA28. “Lauren is looking for something serious,” one of them declared. Someone in the crowd shouted back, “Yeah, we don’t play.”

As the night went on, each presenter was greeted with cheers and applause for their creativity, thoroughness and appreciation of their friends’ achievements. More importantly, singles were finding potential matches.

“Getting to know people through their friends is actually a really special experience,” first-time attendee Brex Garay told The LA Local. “It’s been really impressive to see people’s creative sides on pitching their friends.”

Jacaranda. Jacaranda. Jacaranda. We love those purple canopies across Los Angeles.

But have you seen the Chinese flame tree — sporting happy yellow blooms that brighten everything around them in the fall, before giving way to pink or reddish capsules that are reminiscent of paper lanterns?

“The genus for that group of plants is Koelreuteria,” said Donald Hodel, a landscape horticulture adviser with UC Cooperative Extension, part of the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Two species of the tree flower this time of the year. Hodel said that despite their varied origins, they’re almost visually indistinguishable. Koelreuteria bipinnata is from China, and Koelreuteria elegans is from Taiwan.

The golden yellow phase of the Chinese flame tree.

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Pinkish, reddish capsules of seeds emerge after the yellow flowers.

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The genus, according to the UC Cooperative Extension, was introduced to the United States in 1763 — most likely by an arboretum or botanical garden, Hodel said. From there, they entered the nursery trade.

They are popular trees in greater Los Angeles — and can be found in El Sereno, Long Beach and Culver City — with a couple of knocks against them.

“They aren't water hogs by any means; [but] they can't really be considered drought-tolerant,” Hodel explained.

Close-up of a capsule from the Chinese flower tree.

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And they sprout easily if their seeds find a water source. “Which means you have to take them out, 'cause eventually they'll get too big,” he said.

No tree is perfect — he stressed — not even SoCal’s beloved jacaranda.

“If I could only have one or the other, I'd probably pick a Koelreuteria,” he said. “It's a good-looking tree.”

The post appeared first on LA Local.

Go past the dog walkers and strollers up the hilly street with the massive refinery. You’ll see an aerospace company’s moon buggy mural. Head toward a classic dingbat apartment and you’ll find a surfer-themed bar in a WWII-style Quonset hut.

Shh. There’s a secret comedy show happening in there where a comic is revealing secret techniques to make babies fart.

Don’t Tell Comedy shows like this one at Boardroom Brewery in El Segundo last month are happening all around Los Angeles County. They are stand-up shows where the crowd is only given venue clues ahead of time and only told where to be just hours before. The sites vary from parking lots, furniture stores, wine shops and other unconventional settings for stand-up comedy.

How to find a secret comedy show

• The first step is fairly simple. Visit the Don’t Tell Comedy website and look for a show in a city you don’t mind driving to.
• You’re going to have to buy tickets without knowing anything about the show. That means you won’t know who is performing or where the show is being held.
• The morning of the event, you will receive a text message or email with the address to the secret location.

What a typical show looks like

Go past the dog walkers and strollers up the hilly street with the massive refinery. You’ll see an aerospace company’s moon buggy mural. Head toward a classic dingbat apartment and you’ll find a surfer-themed bar in a WWII-style Quonset hut.

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Boardroom Brewery bartender Rick Mathiesen told The LA Local that the night started with folks “getting out of their Ubers with confused looks on their faces.” They were trying to figure out if they got the right place, especially when the beach town bar rolled down its see-through hangar door.

The secret comedy show organization started in 2017 with backyard and living room pop-up shows. It has expanded its clandestine comedy format to more than 200 cities, including areas across LA such as downtown, Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Pasadena.

Griffin James, the emcee of the night and a local producer for Don’t Tell Comedy, was seen putting 80 chairs away by himself — hey, legendary comic Sam Kinison got his start as The Comedy Store’s doorman.

The 26-year-old Griffin said the gigs are still as competitive as landing a stage at The Laugh Factory, where he’s performed. There’s an added benefit for the audience: There is no mandatory two-drink minimum, which makes it more affordable than a night at a traditional comedy club.

Go past the dog walkers and strollers up the hilly street with the massive refinery. You’ll see an aerospace company’s moon buggy mural. Head toward a classic dingbat apartment and you’ll find a surfer-themed bar in a WWII-style Quonset hut.

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Most comics at Don’t Tell Comedy shows are up-and-coming locals, but a few big names like Ali Wong, Nikki Glaser and Michael Che have appeared.

Jenna Lewanda told The LA Local that she and her boyfriend, Manny Aguilar, decided to take a trip from their West Hollywood home to the mystery spot in El Segundo. Their usual haunts for live comedy are the Hollywood Improv and a friend’s show, Hambone Comedy.

Lewanda received a message at 9 a.m. that Saturday with the location details. She looked it up and committed the odd curved building to memory. She was happy that night’s headliner was a famous stand-up: Brad Williams. 

Williams — a comedian with dwarfism who has two Showtime specials and a Netflix stand-up episode under his belt — closed out the seven-comic show that night.

He got a lot of laughs recalling a camping incident where a park ranger told him to “get big” when confronted by a bear. The 4-foot-4-inch Williams’ response: “How?”

With less than three weeks until Election Day, outside groups are pouring millions of dollars into two types of state legislative races: purple districts featuring a Democrat and a Republican, and safely Democratic districts featuring Democrats of different ideological stripes.

Political action committees backed by politically powerful groups such as unions and business have spent over $100 million on California legislative races so far this election cycle, eclipsing 2024 spending. Groups can spend unlimited amounts on “independent expenditures” to boost or oppose a candidate, providing they don’t coordinate with the campaign.

Since they came on the scene in January, two new tech-backed groups have dominated spending in legislative races. Grow California, funded by cryptocurrency investor Chris Larsen and venture capitalist Tim Draper as a “counterforce” to union spending, has spent more than $20 million this cycle. California Leads, funded by Meta and Google, has spent close to $14 million this year to support candidates who are focused on “real-world solutions rather than ideological fights.”

Legislative Action PAC, which Republican strategists founded in 2025 at the request of Republican lawmakers amid frustration with the official state Republican Party, is also spending for the first time this cycle. It aims to help Republicans hold seats they flipped in 2024, and its major funders include Google, AT&T and oil and gas companies. The PAC and its offshoots, Legislative Action Victory PAC and Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC, have spent at least $6 million to support Republican candidates since April.

A CalMatters analysis of spending since the June 2 primary found that these are the nine most expensive competitive general election contests in the Legislature. Total spending in each race includes campaign spending from the primary through Sept. 19, the most recent reporting period, and independent expenditures from the primary through Oct. 13.

$5.6 million: David Penaloza (D) v. Jessie Lopez (D) – Assembly District 68

The priciest race so far is between two millennial Democrats who both serve on the Santa Ana City Council in Orange County. Lopez is the more progressive of the two: She helped pass a rent control ordinance in 2021 and faced a recall attempt by the local police union after she voted to create a police oversight commission in 2022. Tech money is flowing to help her opponent: In recent weeks, California Leads has spent $1.4 million and Grow California has spent $1.3 million on ads supporting Penaloza.

Several powerful unions, including those representing public employees, nurses and California State University faculty, have spent a combined $1.4 million on ads supporting Lopez and attacking Penaloza.

$5 million: John Erickson (D) v. Brian Goldsmith (D) – Senate District 24

In the battle to succeed Sen. Ben Allen, Brian Goldsmith, an entrepreneur and former senior adviser for the pro-Israel advocacy group Democratic Majority for Israel, faces John Erickson, a West Hollywood city councilmember. The coastal Los Angeles district includes Malibu and Santa Monica. The two candidates are sharply divided on renter protections. Erickson supports repealing both the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and the Ellis Act, which limit local rent control and allow landlords to evict tenants to leave the rental business. That’s likely driving the influx of money supporting Goldsmith from the California Apartment Association, which has spent $450,000 on independent ads attacking Erickson. The California Realtors Association is the main funder of a PAC that’s spent over $600,000 backing Goldsmith.

Criminal justice reform advocates and organized labor, including the carpenters and school employees association, have bankrolled ads supporting Erickson.

$4.7 million: Greg Wallis (R) v. Leila Namvar (D) – Assembly District 47

Republican Assemblymember Greg Wallis is again fighting hard to retain his seat representing a purple district that includes both deep-blue Palm Springs and Cathedral City as well as conservative suburbs around Redlands and Yucaipa. Wallis has a significant fundraising advantage over his opponent, Democrat Leila Namvar, a former local labor leader and city planner. His campaign has outspent hers 6-to-1 and independent expenditures supporting him are more than 5-to-1. A moderate with a pro-business record, Wallis has been a favorite of California Leads, which has spent $1.1 million supporting him. A PAC funded by oil and gas companies has spent about $450,000. Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC spent about the same.

Amid the flood of outside spending, the Democratic Party has backed Namvar. Since mid-September, the party and its county committees have given her committee about $1.8 million.

$4.6 million: Sara Hernandez (D) v. Sarah Rascón (D)  – Senate District 26

Two Democrats are vying to replace departing progressive Sen. María Elena Durazo in this deep blue Los Angeles-based district. Sara Hernandez, a community college trustee, faces Sarah Rascón, a planning commissioner for East Los Angeles. Grow California and California Leads are backing Hernandez to the tune of about $3 million, even though her campaign website says she will “fight for strict rules with real enforcement” on Big Tech profits. Cardrooms near this district, including Hawaiian Gardens Casino and Commerce Casino, which are in a perennial battle with tribal casinos over gaming rights, have spent about $500,000 on independent ads supporting Hernandez.

Rascón, whose top priorities include advancing environmental and social justice, has rejected corporate money. Her campaign had spent about $34,000 as of mid-September, and the Working Families Party and California Environmental Voters have spent over $100,000 on ads supporting her.

$3.8 million: Eric Lucan (D) v. Jackie Elward (D) – Assembly District 12

This seat, which encompasses all of Marin County and some of Sonoma County, is another target of Grow California. The group has spent about $1.8 million on ads supporting Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan. Lucan’s positions are more moderate than those of progressive Rohnert Park Councilmember Jackie Elward, who said in a KQED questionnaire that she supports moratoriums on “all things AI,” including data centers, and that “protecting workers is the priority.”

Elward’s support comes chiefly from the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, Consumer Attorneys of California and SEIU California State Council, which have spent over $1 million to support her race.

$3.2 million: Jeff Gonzalez (R) v. Ida Obeso-Martinez (D) – Assembly District 36

Outside groups have spent $2.7 million to back Republican Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMattersTraditionally Democratic, this Latino-majority district along the California-Mexico border voted for Trump by 1.3 percentage points in 2024. The same year, Republican Jeff Gonzalez flipped it. Democrat Ida Obeso-Martinez, a nurse practitioner and Imperial County councilmember, is now challenging him to take it back. Oil and gas companies, a California Chamber of Commerce PAC and Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC are among the outside groups that have spent $2.7 million on mailers, polling, and TV and digital ads supporting Gonzalez and attacking Obeso-Martinez.

No outside groups have spent on behalf of Obeso-Martinez, but the California Democratic Party and its central committees recently gave Obeso-Martinez over $1.5 million for the final weeks of the race.

$2.8 million: Josh Hoover (R) v. Amy Slavensky (D) – Assembly District 7

Incumbent Republican Josh Hoover faces Democrat Amy Slavensky, a retired teacher and superintendent, in this competitive Sacramento-area district, which shifted rightward after redistricting in 2022. Hoover’s allies, including business groups, cardrooms, and the Legislative Action PAC, have spent at least $2.3 million, chiefly on digital ads and mailers supporting him and opposing Slavensky.

No independent groups have spent to support Slavensky, but Democrats have contributed close to $1 million to Slavensky since mid-September.

$2.6 million: Leticia Castillo (R) v. Clarissa Cervantes (D) – Assembly District 58

Assemblymember Leticia Castillo at her desk during a floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 23, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMattersRepublican Assemblymember Leticia Castillo flipped this Latino-majority seat in Riverside County in 2024, defeating Democrat challenger Clarissa Cervantes by 596 votes. This year is a close rematch. Cervantes, a Riverside city councilmember whose sister is Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, received 54.5% of the vote compared to Castillo’s 45.5% in the June primary. In a rare move, Cervantes has outspent the incumbent Castillo in the general election. Much of her spending — close to $1 million — has been from her campaign account, compared to Castillo’s $80,000.

Legislative Action Victory PAC has spent about $650,000 on ads attacking Cervantes, and a coalition of unions spent about $530,000 supporting her. Both parties have been pouring in money to their respective candidates in the last few weeks.

$2.6 million: Guillermo Gonzalez (R) v. Melissa Hurtado (D) – Senate District 16

Incumbent Democratic Sen. Melissa Hurtado won this district by 13 votes in 2022 even as Gov. Gavin Newsom lost it by more than 10 percentage points, making her the only Democrat to represent a state Senate district that President Donald Trump won in 2024. She faces a challenge from Republican Guillermo Gonzalez, a small business owner and former aide to Rep. David Valadao. Legislative Action PAC has spent over $1.7 million supporting Gonzalez and opposing Hurtado.

The Democratic Party and various county central committees have donated $4.8 million to Hurtado’s campaign war chest this election cycle, allowing her to spend close to $1 million between the primary and mid-September’s filing deadline.

For the record: This story was corrected to reflect that Clarissa Cervantes received 54.5% of the vote in her June primary contest against Leticia Castillo.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.