Lagging in polls and fundraising, Betty Yee drops out of California governor’s race

Former state Controller Betty Yee dropped out from the governor’s race on Monday, saying she couldn’t see a path to get donors and additional support from undecided voters with six weeks left before the primary.

“It was becoming clear that the donors were not going to be there,” she said. “Even some of my former supporters just felt like they needed to move on as well.”

She did not immediately endorse another candidate, but said she would do so in the next few days.

Yee was one of the earliest to enter the race, announcing her candidacy more than two years ago. She ran on her experience handling the state budget and her family’s middle-class, immigrant background.

A progressive who supported continuing the state’s greenhouse gas reduction mandates, Yee also emphasized her ability to balance the budget and spoke often about the importance of growing the state’s economy and auditing state programs for fraud. In recent days, she had begun styling herself as “Boring Betty,” promising drama-free state government experience.

But pragmatism never translated into star power. Yee has stayed at or near the bottom of the polls, never garnering more than about 3% of likely voters, and consistently lagged in fundraising.

That made her one of California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks’ unnamed targets of a public campaign to pressure lower-polling Democrats to drop out of the race. With many Democrats in the race potentially splitting the liberal vote, Democrats were concerned two Republicans could possibly win the top-two primary election in June.

Yee, the former vice chair of the party, insisted she had grassroots support and wouldn’t be forced out of the race by a slate of wealthy, male candidates. She and the other candidates of color banded together to denounce their exclusion from a USC candidate debate last month after the university used a formula based on polling and fundraising to decide who to invite. The debate was ultimately canceled.

“This has been my life story, frankly, as a woman of color,” she told reporters in March. “I’ve been overlooked, I’ve been underestimated and pushed aside.”

The chances of Democrats getting locked out of the general election have gone down since former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out over a week ago over sexual assault allegations and after President Donald Trump endorsed Steve Hilton on the Republican side.

But Yee has little cash on hand to continue, and the race is entering its most expensive phase yet with multiple candidates launching television ads last week.

Her exit leaves only one woman in the race, former Rep. Katie Porter.

Like Swalwell, Yee dropped out after a March state deadline to file or withdraw for the race, so her name will remain on the ballot in June.

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