SACRAMENTO, California — Kamala Harris is out, but the climate still isn’t in.
The former vice president’s decision Wednesday not to run for California governor in 2026 cracked open a splintered-yet-stagnant field, liberating Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Rep. Katie Porter, and others who would have struggled against Harris’ name ID and fundraising prowess.
Climate advocates see a wide-open lane — and no one taking it.
“There’s no candidate right now who has kind of taken that space,” said Ken Alex, a former climate adviser to former Gov. Jerry Brown and now the director of Project Climate at the University of California, Berkeley. “Yes, I’m worried, is the short answer.”
It’s not that Harris would have necessarily occupied that lane, either. Her thin record on energy and environment issues includes calling for a ban on fracking and promising to prosecute oil companies over their contributions to climate change, and then backing away from those positions during her 2024 race against President Donald Trump.
The now wide-open race, though, is likely to get candidates to work harder to differentiate themselves on policy questions. And there’s plenty of climate debates to go around: how to phase out oil, manage growing grid demands and balance climate goals with affordability — all under a hostile federal administration and amid worsening natural disasters.
The debate is already skewing towards jobs and prices, with labor unions weighing in heavily on refineries and high-speed rail, including at a Labor Federation forum in May.
All seven of the Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls answered “yes” when an ironworker attendee asked for a commitment to “stop targeting California’s oil and gas industry in ways that jeopardize union jobs and force us to rely on dirty imported energy.”
Porter, who stands to benefit most from Harris’ exit because of their overlapping donors and her early polling strength, is trying to tie a changing climate to rising costs. In her first campaign event in March, she said that the state’s next governor needs to fix a spiraling property insurance crisis.
One clear dividing line in the race is which candidates signed a pledge to decline fossil fuel industry money. That campaign, supported by environmental groups from across the country, lists Kounalakis, Porter, state Superintendent Tony Thurmond and state Controller Betty Yee as signatories. (Harris also signed the pledge in 2019.) Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and former Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins aren’t listed.
And former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa tops the campaign website’s No Fossil Fuel Money “Wall of Shame,” reserved for politicians who initially committed to the pledge and then backtracked. Chevron contributed $39,200 each to Villaraigosa’s and Becerra’s gubernatorial campaigns in June, according to campaign finance filings.
Villaraigosa’s campaign spokesperson, Josh Pulliam, said Villaraigosa didn’t break the pledge, which he initially signed during his 2018 gubernatorial run — he’s just refusing to sign it this time around.
“Anyone who says that closing refineries is good for the environment is ignoring [that] it just means more gas is being imported by the Middle East,” Pulliam said.
Environmental groups have kept mostly to the sidelines of the race so far, said RL Miller, founder of the super PAC Climate Hawks Vote. But Harris’ exit is nudging them out of the starting block: Miller said she started officially reaching out to campaigns Thursday to figure out who she might ultimately support.
“It’s time for all of us to start having serious conversations with serious candidates in a much more fractured field,” she said.
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