An Open Governor's Office Changes Everything Down Ballot, Too
For the first time in eight years, California is electing a governor with no incumbent in the race. For cities like Long Beach, the choice in Sacramento shapes ports, housing and disaster money for years.
The most consequential line on California's 2026 ballot may be the first one. Gov. Gavin Newsom is term-limited, so the governorship is an open seat — a race with no incumbent, no sitting administration defending a record, and a field competing to define what the country's most populous state does next on housing, homelessness, climate, water and the cost of living.
Open-seat governor's races are rare enough to be generational events. The winner will appoint agency heads, board members and judges, command the state's vast budget proposal each January, and hold the veto pen over every bill the Legislature sends down. For a city like Long Beach, Sacramento's occupant is not a distant figure: state decisions flow directly into port infrastructure funding, coastal policy, housing mandates and disaster assistance.
The rest of the statewide picture matters as context. All of California's U.S. House seats are on the ballot, as they are every two years, and state legislative races fill out districts across the map. California has no U.S. Senate race in 2026 — neither seat is up — so the governor's contest stands alone at the top in a way it rarely does.
Midterm electorates are smaller than presidential ones, which magnifies each ballot's weight. The votes that decide an open governorship in a state of nearly forty million people will be counted in the millions, but they are cast in precinct-scale acts — at Los Angeles County vote centers, by mail from Belmont Shore kitchen tables, and through drop boxes from Bixby Knolls to Lakewood.
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, with polls and vote centers open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mail ballots count if postmarked by Nov. 3 and received by Nov. 10, or they can be returned in person by 8 p.m. Election Day. Whoever takes the oath in Sacramento in January will have been chosen by the Californians who used those options this week — the race is open, and so is the outcome.
