Democrats kicked out of the USC governor’s debate are urging opponents to boycott

Four Democratic gubernatorial candidates have called on their colleagues to boycott the upcoming debate at USC, reiterating concerns that the method used to determine who is invited to participate has resulted in everyone of color being excluded from the forum.

“We’re asking everyone in this race to realize that if we’re not going to have a proper debate process, we shouldn’t all be participating,” said Xavier Becerra, former US Health and Human Services secretary. “We ask them to withdraw from this biased forum.”

Becerra’s call was echoed by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, county Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former state Superintendent Betty Yee during a news conference Friday afternoon.

The candidate’s request comes a week after some expressed concern over the terms of Tuesday’s debate, saying it was designed to allow the inclusion of San José Mayor Matt Mahan, entered the race in late January and immediately raised millions of dollars from Silicon Valley managers.

“In the beginning, the rules were voting and money [polling] less than some of us, time,” Villaraigosa said, adding that debate organizers “then added time to the race,” leading to Mahan’s invitation.

Mahan’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Friday, but when Becerra raised those concerns last week, Mahan said the former Biden administration official should be included in the conversation.

The issue is also complicated by Mahan’s supporters who have significant ties to the university.

Mike Murphy, director of USC’s debate center, has been volunteering to advise an independent spending committee that supports Mahan. The veteran GOP strategist said last week that he had nothing to do with organizing the debate and said that he has requested unpaid leave from the university until the June 2 primary if he takes a paid part in the campaign.

USC also received tens of millions of dollars in donations from billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso and his wife. Caruso, a USC alumnus who has served as a trustee for years, is also a supporter of Mahan.

A representative for Caruso did not respond to a request for comment.

The debate, organized by the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, KABC-TV Los Angeles and Univision, is scheduled to air at 5 p.m. Tuesday — less than two months before ballots go to voters’ mailboxes. The forum will be broadcast and televised on ABC and Univision affiliates throughout the state.

USC and the television stations issued a joint statement Friday morning, before the candidates’ press conference, justifying the methods used to determine who was invited to participate and saying that none of the debate partners had any influence on the process.

“We want to make it clear that we absolutely, unequivocally deny any allegations that the debate process was biased by either candidate and we want to clarify the facts,” they said in a statement, adding that Christian Grose, a political science professor at USC, was asked to conduct “data-driven” benchmarks to determine which candidates were invited.

“This methodology was based on well-established metrics consistent with formulas widely used to determine national debate participation — a combination of polling and fundraising — and was developed without regard to any candidate.”

After the Democratic candidates asked their rivals not to participate, USC and KABC declined to comment further. Univision did not respond to a request for comment.

Grose defended the approach as “intentional” in an interview Friday, saying he met with Becerra and other staff members to explain it to him.

“The idea that it’s biased or designed to create some kind of negative effect on the people who were speaking at the press conference is wrong,” Grose said, adding that the attack on the program “has a negative effect” on universities and media outlets that sponsor the debates.

“I’m not worried about the optics,” he said. “We have an optics debate at USC to inform voters and educate students.”

Jarred Cuellar, an assistant professor of political science at Cal Poly Pomona, described Grose’s approach as “reasonable” and “solidly grounded,” and characterized the concerns expressed by the people who were not included in the debate as baseless and unbelievable.

“The formula is procedurally correct and represents a clear improvement over how debate participation is often determined,” he said. “Instead of relying on a single metric like polling, it takes a broader approach to evaluating candidate performance. That approach better reflects how political scientists measure complex things like electoral competition.”

But the controversy has created confusion among former and current USC professors.

“It seems like an unforced error that puts the whole event in jeopardy,” said a current USC professor who follows politics closely but is not involved in the debate, and who asked not to be identified to speak freely. “It is very important that if the debate happens, it happens in the right way.”

Darry Sragow, a veteran Democrat who taught election and environmental law at USC for 19 years, said that while he believes a large field of Democratic candidates needs to be won over, that’s not the university’s or the media’s job.

“All of these eight [Democratic candidates] it knows how to manage the state of California,” he said.

Democratic candidates who were not invited to the debate argued that voters are just beginning to pay attention to the race, which has been filled with sleep and that diverse people should be represented.

“We’re a minority country, and the idea that four voters of color aren’t going to be on stage to bring those ideas, to really speak to those communities, really doesn’t do well with voters,” Yee said.

Becerra said some of the candidates have asked to speak with the university’s senior leadership, including President Beong-Soo Kim. In other discussions, he said university officials indicated that it was possible to “cancel this debate or include other candidates in it. Obviously, they could not agree to do that. …

Becerra said he has reviewed the formula and has “never seen” a debate approach like it before during his decades in elected office.

“Your fundraising numbers are divided by the number of days you campaign in front of voters,” he said. “So you could raise millions of dollars, but if you stay longer than someone who just raised millions of dollars very quickly, you get penalized.”

The campaigns of many of the invitees — Democrats Rep. Eric Swalwell of Dublin, former Orange County District Attorney Katie Porter, climate activist Tom Steyer and Mahan; and Republican Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County — did not respond to requests for comment on the call to boycott the debate.

Former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, a Republican who will appear in the debate, criticized Democrats who were upset about the inappropriateness of the debate and USC’s debate process as “absolutely ridiculous.”

“You have a lot of Democrats who are not doing well enough to enter the debate, complaining about it, and I don’t have time for that at all. Do better, you will enter the debate,” Hilton said in a video posted Friday evening on the social network X. bring him in.”

Hilton said she was also upset by the omission of developer Elaine Culotti, who starred in the second season of the reality show “Undercover Billionaire” and is running for governor as an independent.

“She is a businesswoman, she has many supporters. There are many independent voters in California now. Yes, I would like those voters to support my campaign, but the fact that you do not have an independent on that stage, you have a lot of Democrats, and you have two Republicans, but there are no independents, that is annoying,” said Hilton, who has never registered public support for Culotti. “He should be on that stage next week at USC.”