What began as a tame, hourlong debate on Wednesday between seven candidates running for California governor morphed by the second half into a flurry of barbs during the last televised face-off before the June 2 primary.<\/p>\n
The debate, held at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, was the second in two days<\/a> in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom to run the nation\u2019s most populous state. Two Republicans and five Democrats took the stage for the event, hosted by NBC Los Angeles and the local Telemundo station, seeking enough support to be among the two top vote-getters next month.<\/p>\n The two Republicans, Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, have teamed up to attack Democrats but have not differentiated themselves much from each other on policy.<\/p>\n They were joined by a crowd of Democrats: Xavier Becerra, a former California attorney general and cabinet secretary under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.; Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager; Katie Porter, a former congresswoman; Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, Calif.; and Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Under California\u2019s election laws, the top two candidates in the primary will advance to November\u2019s general election, regardless of party.<\/p>\n Here are five takeaways from the debate.<\/p>\n Only the billionaire would vote for the billionaire tax initiative.<\/p>\n Early in the debate, the moderators asked each candidate whether they would support a billionaire tax initiative that is expected to qualify<\/a> for the November ballot.<\/p>\n The issue seemed to unite Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans have said it would drive innovation away from the state, and Democrats have said it doesn\u2019t make sense as a onetime tax, did not spread revenues to education and would only apply to a small number of people. Some Democrats said they would support a different way of taxing billionaires.<\/p>\n But everyone on the stage said they would oppose the current measure on the table \u2014 except for Tom Steyer, himself a billionaire. Mr. Steyer has run as a progressive Democrat who believes in raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, as well as taking more aggressive steps against climate change.<\/p>\n Two words said so much more.<\/p>\n Mr. Bianco has not hesitated to lean into an aggressive MAGA persona, which continued during the debate, when he said that immigrants had perpetrated many violent crimes.<\/p>\n When Ms. Porter tried to push back, he interrupted her by saying she should tell that to the mothers of victims.<\/p>\n \u201cSir, I don\u2019t need any lectures from you about being a mother,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n Mr. Bianco shot back: \u201cYou might.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the most caustic exchange of the debate, and Ms. Porter immediately threw him an icy glare. With those two words, it seemed Mr. Bianco was questioning her skills as a mother, an identity that Ms. Porter has embraced throughout her political career.<\/p>\n After the debate, Mr. Bianco said about the testy exchange, \u201cKatie\u2019s trying to raise herself in the polls.\u201d Asked what he meant by his two-word response, he would not explain further.<\/p>\n Ms. Porter said after the event that Mr. Bianco had been disrespectful to her \u2014 and to all women.<\/p>\n \u201cNo man has a right to tell a woman what it is like to be them,\u201d she said. \u201d<\/p>\n In Los Angeles, housing anxieties take center stage.<\/p>\n Nothing dominated the debate as much as discussions of housing and homelessness. In 60 minutes, the candidates said the words \u201chousing,\u201d \u201chome\u201d or \u201chomelessness\u201d more than 120 times.<\/p>\n It felt particularly relevant given that the debate was held in Los Angeles, where enormous wildfires last year wiped out swaths of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena and have since raised many questions about construction costs, fire insurance and the housing supply.<\/p>\n Many of the candidates framed the issue as personal. Mr. Villaraigosa said he had been kicked off his private fire insurance and had to pay for the state\u2019s bare-bones plan. Ms. Porter said that she was raising three teenagers and was worried about how they would ever afford rent.<\/p>\n Of one of her children, she said, \u201cI think there\u2019s a pretty good chance he\u2019s going to wind up living on my couch if we don\u2019t figure out how to build more affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n Candidates floated very different ideas for how to make housing more affordable for Californians.<\/p>\n Mr. Hilton said he wanted to build more subdivisions linked by freeways and to cut regulations to make construction cheaper. Mr. Steyer said he supported denser zoning near public transit and off-site construction to save costs.<\/p>\n Mr. Bianco said he wanted to eliminate bedrock environmental policies in California \u2014 the California Environmental Quality Act and the Coastal Commission \u2014 to allow housing to be built more rapidly. Several candidates said they supported down-payment assistance, especially for first-time home buyers.<\/p>\n Villaraigosa could play spoiler.<\/p>\n Mr. Villaraigosa was the lowest polling candidate on the debate stage. But that didn\u2019t stop the veteran politician from landing significant blows against his opponents.<\/p>\n Even if the polls don\u2019t change, Mr. Villaraigosa seemed to relish his opportunity to play spoiler in the race. He was the one who made sure viewers knew that Mr. Bianco was once a member of the Oath Keepers, the hard-right militia group. He was the one who portrayed Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate, as an election denier by asking Mr. Hilton at the CNN debate on Tuesday if he believed President Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the 2020 election.<\/p>\n But it was his repeated attacks on Mr. Becerra, an ascendant Democrat who has surged in polls since the departure of Eric Swalwell<\/a> from the race, that stood out the most.<\/p>\n