Commentary: Will or won't he? A lot rides on a Trump endorsement in California governor's race
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Chad Bianco couldn’t fly to Mar-a-Lago, wreathe President Trump in honeyed words, bestow the Riverside County Peace Prize upon him and hand-feed him his favorite dish — a Big Mac? — from a platter of 24-karat gold.Security, logistics and all of that.So the Republican candidate for California governor did the next best thing: He confiscated hundreds of thousands of ballots from last November’s special election in a trumped-up investigation of supposed voting irregularities.Never mind the complete lack of evidence or the fact Proposition 50, the subject of Bianco’s investigation, was approved by a clear-cut majority of voters.The intent of Riverside County’s grasping sheriff was as transparent as a pane of glass.
It’s all about trying to win the endorsement of Trump — he of phantasmagorical election-fraud claims — in California’s neck-and-neck-and-neck gubernatorial contest.Bianco, fellow Republican Steve Hilton and a passel of Democratic hopefuls are bunched together in a contest that remains utterly wide open just weeks before voters start receiving their ballots in the mail.“Trump’s endorsement would be huge,” said Jon Fleischman, a conservative strategist and former executive director of the state GOP.“Actually,” he went on, ‘I think it would be determinative” — virtually guaranteeing either Hilton or Bianco finished in the top two in the June 2 primary, ushering them past the rope line into November’s runoff.Gray Davis was a huge underdog who prevailed in a wide-open 1998 contest.The Democrat urges trailing hopefuls to ignore pressure to quit and ‘follow your heart.’If there’s an inside edge in the Trump Endorsement Sweepstakes, it would seemingly go to Hilton.He’s familiar to the president as a former Fox News host.
He’s interviewed Trump several times and the two occasionally text and talk on the phone.Bianco has no such pers...