Among the many small military of prospects who’ve eyed the California governorship, none appeared extra certified than Toni Atkins.
After serving on the San Diego Metropolis Council, she moved on to Sacramento, the place Atkins led each the Meeting and state Senate, one among simply three individuals in historical past — and the primary in 147 years — to go each homes of California’s Legislature.
She negotiated eight state budgets with two governors and, amongst different achievements, handed main laws on abortion rights, assist for low-income households and a $7.5-billion water bond.
You may disagree along with her politics however, clearly, Atkins is somebody who is aware of her method across the Capitol.
She married that experience with the form of hardscrabble, up-by-her-bootstraps backstory {that a} calculating political guide may need spun from entire material, had it not been so.
Atkins grew up in rural Appalachia in a rented dwelling with an outside privy. Her first pair of glasses was a present from the native Lions Membership. She didn’t go to a dentist till she was 24. Her household was too poor.
But for all of that, Atkins’ gubernatorial marketing campaign didn’t final even to 2026, when voters will elect a successor to the termed-out Gavin Newsom. She give up the race in September, greater than eight months earlier than the first.
She has no regrets.
“It was a tough resolution,” the Democrat mentioned. “However I’m a realistic individual.”
She couldn’t and wouldn’t maintain asking “supporters and folks to contribute increasingly if the result was not going to be what we hoped,” Atkins mentioned. “I wanted type of a moonshot to do it, and I didn’t see that.”
She spoke not too long ago by way of Zoom from the den of her dwelling in San Diego, the place Atkins had simply returned after spending a number of weeks again in Virginia, tending to a dying buddy and mentor, one among her former faculty professors.
“I used to be a first-generation faculty child … a hillbilly,” Atkins mentioned. She felt as if she had no place on this planet “and this professor, Steve Fisher, principally helped flip me round and never be a sufferer. Study to prepare. Study to work with individuals on frequent targets. … He was one of many first individuals that basically helped me to grasp the way to be a part of one thing larger than myself.”
Over the 22 months of her marketing campaign — between the launch in January 2024 and its abandonment on Sept. 29 — Atkins traveled California from tip to toe, holding numerous conferences and speaking to innumerable voters. “It’s one factor to be the speaker or the [Senate leader],” she mentioned. “Folks deal with you in another way whenever you’re a candidate. You’re interesting to them to help you, and it’s a unique dialog.”
What she heard was loads of practicality.
Folks lamenting the exorbitant price of housing, vitality and youngster care. Rural Californians apprehensive about their dwindling entry to healthcare. Dad and mom and lecturers involved about wanton immigration raids and their impact on youngsters. “It wasn’t offered as a political factor,” Atkins mentioned. “It was simply worry for [their] neighbors.”
She heard loads from enterprise homeowners and, particularly, put-upon residents of purple California, who griped about Sacramento and its seeming disconnection from their lives and livelihoods. “I heard in Tehama County … people saying, ‘Look, we care concerning the setting, however we will’t have electrical faculty buses right here. We don’t have any infrastructure.’ ”
Voters appeared to be of two — considerably contradictory — minds about what they need of their subsequent governor.
First off, “Somebody that’s going to be centered on California, California issues and California points,” Atkins mentioned. “They need a governor that’s not going to be performative, however actually centered on the problems that California wants assistance on.”
On the similar, they see the injury that President Trump and his punitive insurance policies have achieved to the state in a really quick time, so “in addition they need to see a fighter.”
The problem, Atkins urged, is “convincing individuals … you’re completely going to battle for California values and, on the similar, that you simply’re going to be centered on fixing the roads.”
Possibly California must elect a contortionist.
Given her appreciable know-how and compelling background, why did Atkins’ marketing campaign fizzle?
Right here’s a clue: The phrase begins with “m” and ends with “y” and speaks to one thing pernicious about our political system.
“I hoped my expertise and my collaborative nature and my capability to work throughout occasion strains after I wanted to … would acquire traction,” Atkins mentioned. “However I simply didn’t have the identify recognition.”
Or, extra pertinently, the large pile of money wanted to construct that identify recognition and get elected to statewide workplace in California.
Whereas Atkins wasn’t a foul fundraiser, she merely couldn’t elevate the various tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} wanted to run a viable gubernatorial race.
That could possibly be seen as a referendum of types. If sufficient individuals needed Atkins to be governor, she theoretically would have collected extra cash. However who doubts that cash has an unholy affect on our elections?
(Aside from Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who spent a lot of his profession combating marketing campaign finance reform, and members of the Supreme Courtroom who green-lit immediately’s limitless geyser of marketing campaign spending.)
At age 63, Atkins will not be sure what comes subsequent.
“I’ve misplaced mother and father, however it’s been a long time,” she mentioned. “And to lose Steve” — her beloved ex-college professor — “I feel I’m going to take the remainder of the 12 months to replicate. I’m undoubtedly going to remain engaged … however I’m going to give attention to household” no less than till January.
Atkins stays optimistic about her adopted dwelling state, however her unsuccessful run for governor and the earful of criticisms she heard alongside the best way,
“California is the place the place individuals dream,” she mentioned. “We nonetheless have the power to do huge issues … We’re the fourth-largest economic system. We’re a nation-state. We have to do not forget that.”
With out dropping sight of the fundamentals.
