Some say California dodged a bullet, when Kamala Harris made it clear that she wouldn’t run for governor (and appeared to conduct a soft launch of a presidential bid for 2028).

Nope.

Emerson Polling has the numbers for the governor’s race minus Kamala. And while numbers like these are preliminary especially well before an actual campaign, they’re also pretty nightmarish.

“With Kamala Harris officially out of the race, Katie Porter has emerged as the Democratic frontrunner, increasing her support from 12% to 18% since the April Emerson poll,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “Steve Hilton, who was not in the race in April, has jumped to 12%, while the share of undecided voters has dropped from 54% to 38% over the summer. Porter leads among voters over 50 (22%), those with a postgraduate degree (35%), and white voters (23%).”

Porter is at 18%. Potential rivals are in the long single digits. It’s well before any real campaign gets underway, but Xavier Becerra was California’s AG and Antonio Villaraigosa was the former LA mayor. Not exactly total unknowns.

Porter is a horrendous leftist social media troll who lost out on her frantic bid to become a senator to Adam Schiff, but is now in a prime position to become the next governor. And if you thought California was bad under Newsom, who is a non-ideological careerist with no real beliefs but whatever gets him ahead, and who occasionally pretended to be a centrist, California is in for a real ride if leftists can get Porter in. The real “good days” may just be getting started.