This article is a bit more informative:
California governor debate abruptly canceled amid controversy over who was invited to attendhttps://www.ocregister.com/2026/03/24/california-governor-debate-abruptly-canceled-amid-controversy-over-who-was-invited-to-attend/A planned California gubernatorial debate for Tuesday night was abruptly canceled less than 24 hours before the event, amid controversy that no candidates of color were among those invited to participate.
In a statement released late Monday night, a USC spokesperson said it will “look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues.” But the debate planned with ABC for Tuesday evening was nixed.
“USC vigorously defends the independence, objectivity and integrity of USC professor Christian Grose, whose data-driven candidate viability formula is based on extensive research and enjoys broad academic support,” said Beth Shuster, vice president of content strategy for USC.
“At the same time, we recognize that concerns about the selection criteria for tomorrow’s gubernatorial debate have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” said Shuster, adding that USC and KABC Channel 7, the television partner of the debate, could not “reach an agreement on expanding the number of candidates.”
... The six candidates invited to participate were Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton and Democrats Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, Tom Steyer and Eric Swalwell.
These top six candidates were picked based on a formula created by Grose, a political science professor.
Polling percentage and fundraising were used to determine a candidate’s viability formula, according to the methodology. The polling percentage was determined by the most recent Public Policy Institute of California survey, and the fundraising component took the total amount raised divided by the number of days a candidate was in the race. Polling, though, was weighted more than fundraising because that “is a snapshot measure of actual voters’ opinions,” the methodology said.
The situation is pretty simple, victim-playing ignored. The Rs have, IIRC, 3 or 4 candidates for governor. The Dems have 50 billion ... OK, "only" about a dozen. It's not going to work, let alone be coherent, to have 15+ candidates "debating" (I'm not sure having 6 would be very coherent). So USC devised an algorithm for choosing 6 participants based on perceived popularity, and came up with 2 Rs and 4 Dems, Rs Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton and Dems Matt Mahan, Katie Porter, Tom Steyer, and Eric Swalwell. The chosen 4 Dems happen to be all white, something the candidate-crunching computer could not see, because the algorithm did not consider ethnicity.
Several Dem POCs
(Politicians Of Color) are POed. They cannot handle that the color-blind algorithm simply chose the Dems most likely to win the nomination and want the algorithm to consider candidates' popularity less for the sake of race-based "fairness".
I haven't dug deep, but Bianco and Hilton both look pretty good to me.
Porter is a light-weight (except in pounds/Kg) whose "leadership" style seems to be b@#$%-boss. Swillwell is a hyper-partisan fruitcake. Steyer is a 21st Century Upton Sinclair style Socialist. Mahan (I had to check W'pedia,
) is the current Mayor of San Jose (my mailing address is San Jose, but because my home is in an unincorporated area, I do not vote for mayor). Mahan seems somewhat better than average - he's had homeless encampments cleaned out from the Guadalupe River, which flows through San Jose - but he's still solidly in the Lib/Prog spectrum.
