Gas prices, AI data centers and Trumps long shadow: Top takeaways from the governors race debate

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Set us as preferred The two candidates to become California’s next governor painted vastly different portraits of the state they want to lead during a televised CNN debate Wednesday night — though they both agreed the state faces tremendous challenges.Democrat Xavier Becerra, leading in polls, cast the state as an economic engine and a critical bulwark against the disastrous economic policies and creeping authoritarianism of the Trump administration, but also a victim of Trump policies, including tariffs and the war in Iran, that have made life less affordable and the nation less safe.Becerra said he would work hard to help struggling Californians — including by cutting red tape on housing and regulating AI to ensure it doesn’t destroy jobs — while his challenger, Republican Steve Hilton, would harm them further by backing President Trump’s agenda at every turn.Hilton, endorsed by Trump, blamed the state’s most entrenched ills on years of Democratic governance, awash in unnecessary state bureaucracy and regulation that have made it wildly unaffordable, and wrongly obsessed with fighting the president instead of bringing down costs and fixing related local issues like homelessness.Hilton said he would help struggling Californians by cutting taxes, cutting the cost of building new housing, eliminating fraud and bringing common sense back to state policy-making.Both candidates came out of the gate on offense, and at times it got intensely personal, particularly on immigration — with Becerra accusing Hilton of welcoming white immigrants into the country while rejecting Latino immigrants, and Hilton accusing Becerra of handing migrant children over to sex and labor traffickers during his time as U.S.

Health and Human Services secretary.With ballots soon arriving in voters’ mailboxes and the Nov.3 midterm electio...