President Trump accused Democrats on Thursday of trying to steal two high-profile California primaries, charging that sluggish vote counting in the state's gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral races pointed to foul play, and declaring that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles had opened a probe into the delays.
Two days after polls closed, barely 56% of the statewide vote had been tallied. Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton clung to a narrow 2-percentage-point lead over Democrat Xavier Becerra. In the Los Angeles mayor's race, ex-reality TV star Spencer Pratt held second place at 29.9%, just ahead of progressive Democrat Nithya Raman at 22.8%. Both contests remained fluid, and, in California's jungle-primary system, the top two finishers advance to November regardless of party.
That uncertainty was enough for Trump. In a pair of Truth Social posts, the president framed the counting gap as something far worse than bureaucratic slowness, the New York Post reported.
"They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS."
In a second post, Trump escalated further.
"There's big cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Why [is] the vote counting delay???"
No confirmation from the U.S. Attorney's Office has been reported, and it remains unclear who initiated the probe Trump referenced. But the president's willingness to invoke federal law enforcement signals that the White House views California's vote-processing timeline as more than an administrative nuisance.
California's election machinery was not built for speed. State law gives county election officials up to 30 days after an election to complete the official canvass, count every valid ballot, and perform post-election checks. The state also accepts vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received after it, a policy that guarantees late-arriving ballots will shift totals well beyond election night.
For a state where Democrats make up 45% of registered voters and Republicans just 25%, the composition of those outstanding mail-in ballots matters enormously. Late-counted mail ballots in California have historically skewed Democratic, which is exactly why both the gubernatorial and mayoral races remain unsettled.
Trump has long viewed universal mail-in voting as an invitation to fraud. Ahead of the 2020 election, he warned that it would lead to the most "INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history." Last August, he reiterated that position bluntly: "ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING." He added: "I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS."
Whether or not one shares that view, the practical reality in California is plain. A system designed to count ballots for a month after Election Day is a system designed to keep voters, and candidates, in the dark.
Steve Hilton, a former aide to ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron, is bidding to become California's first Republican governor in 15 years. With 27.6% of the vote and a slim lead over Becerra, Hilton has pitched himself as a corrective to years of one-party Democratic rule. He has said California has lost its way under Democratic leadership and has pledged to lower prices on gas and housing, reduce income taxes, create a loan program for first-time homebuyers, and freeze in-state tuition at public colleges.
Becerra trails by 2 points. Billionaire Tom Steyer, the San Francisco hedge-fund founder who pumped $215 million of his own cash into the race, sits in third.
The stakes are straightforward. If Hilton finishes in the top two, he advances to a November general-election matchup, likely against Becerra, in a state that hasn't elected a Republican governor in a decade and a half. If late-arriving mail ballots erode his margin and push Becerra or Steyer past him, the general election becomes a Democrat-vs.-Democrat affair, and the GOP is locked out entirely.
That is the scenario Trump appears determined to prevent, or, at minimum, to ensure is scrutinized if it unfolds.
The Los Angeles mayoral primary presents its own drama. Incumbent Karen Bass has already qualified for the November runoff. The fight is for the second slot.
Spencer Pratt holds it now, at 29.9%. Nithya Raman, whom the New York Post described as a "far-left candidate," trails at 22.8%. Raman sobbed during an impassioned speech on election night Tuesday, but her campaign may not be over.
Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, told the Los Angeles Times not to write Raman off.
"Don't count Nithya Raman out yet. Pratt has an edge... but it's not free from doubt at this point."
The reason is the same dynamic playing out statewide: a large trove of progressive mail-in ballots could still swing the race toward Raman. If that happens, Los Angeles voters in November would choose between the incumbent and a progressive challenger, with no Republican or outsider alternative on the ballot.
Trump's language was characteristically blunt, and his claims of "big cheating" remain unverified. No evidence of fraud has been reported. The U.S. Attorney's probe, if it exists as described, has produced no public findings.
But strip away the rhetoric and a legitimate concern remains. California's vote-counting process is, by design, among the slowest in the nation. It accepts ballots days after polls close. It gives counties a full month to finish counting. And the ballots that arrive last tend to favor one party.
None of that is illegal. All of it is legal under California state law. But a system that routinely leaves competitive races unresolved for weeks, in a state where one party holds a nearly two-to-one registration advantage, does not inspire confidence among voters on the short end of that ratio.
Democrats in California have built an election infrastructure that maximizes convenience for mail-in voters and minimizes urgency in producing results. They may call that access. Millions of Californians, and the president, call it something else.
The 44% of the statewide vote still uncounted will decide whether Steve Hilton gets his shot in November or whether California's one-party monopoly rolls on unchallenged. The same outstanding ballots will determine whether Spencer Pratt advances in Los Angeles or whether progressives claim both runoff spots.
Trump wants federal investigators watching. Given the stakes, and given California's track record, it is hard to argue that scrutiny is unwarranted.
A state that takes a month to count its votes has no standing to complain when people start asking what's taking so long.
