Commentary: This is the most compelling California governor's race in ages. Really.

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Pity poor California.It’s not just the eye-watering price of gasoline, the absurd cost of housing, the rising price of utilities and groceries, the Trump-led assault on the state’s immigrant population and his attack on California’s long-cherished values of tolerance and diversity.No, on top of all that voters have been subjected to — the horror! — a dull and drab gubernatorial campaign, burdened by a surfeit of C- and D-list candidates with all the electricity and elan of a tepid bath.Where are the A-listers? Where are the lights? The cameras? The action?That, anyway, is the perspective one gets reading a certain genre of campaign dispatch, written from the perspective that all of California, Land of Reagan and Schwarzenegger, home to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, incubator of the Next Big Thing, is a stage.Woe unto those who fail to entertain, animate or amuse.The fact that those dreary assessments have very little to do with the actual wants and needs of the vast majority of Californians — not to mention the state’s history of electing mostly dull and drab governors — should give their authors pause.

It hasn’t.Contra all the stifled yawns and thinly veiled condescension, the contest — now in its final stretch — is the most compelling California gubernatorial campaign in decades.And not just because one of the leading contestants torched himself and his political livelihood in a bonfire of hubris and stupidity.As ballots arrive at homes throughout the state, residents have to decide when to vote, so they can respond to late-breaking events but not risk their ballot arriving too late to count.Come November, voters could elect the first female governor in state history, or possibly the first Latino governor in more than 150 years.

(They might also install California’s first billionaire governor, a considerably less uplifting and monumental achievement, bu...