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Inside Politics

Hilton, Becerra, Steyer Battling For Two Spots In General Election; Karen Bass Advances To General Election; Pratt Battles For 2nd Spot; Paralympian Josh Turek Wins Iowa Senate Democratic Primary; Trump Pick For Iowa Gov. Loses After He Said Everyone He Endorses Wins; Republicans Criticize GOP Rep. Ogles' Now-Deleted Homophobic Post. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 03, 2026 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: According to TickPick, about 30 percent of the ticket buyers for game two, they have zip codes in New York, and another 11 percent in New Jersey. So that means you've got about 41 percent of the buyers on the secondary marketplace coming from New York and New Jersey. That surpasses the 31 percent from Texas. And I talked to a 25-year-old from Manhattan yesterday who told me, he was so bummed out when he saw how expensive it was to see his knicks at the garden. So, he said he ended up buying tickets in San Antonio for half the price.

Now, look, is any of this really worth the price? I don't really know, but Wolf and Pamela, I don't know. Maybe you guys can get our bosses to approve a little bit of an experiment here, right? For reporting purposes only, and we go check out the game in New York.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: All right, Matt, thanks so much.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Thanks for me as well. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

BROWN: Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: The voting is over, the counting is not. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

So, who won the California gubernatorial primary? Well, it could be hours, it could be days before we know the answer to that question, because there are still millions of votes to be counted in California's wild and unpredictable race to be the next governor. With nearly 60 percent of the vote in, Republican Steve Hilton is leading now, followed by Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer.

As you probably know by now, it's what we call a jungle primary. The top two vote getters advanced to the general election, regardless of party. Early this morning, all three expressed optimism that they'd punch one of the two tickets to November.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

XAVIER BECERRA (D), CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: After all the exhausting ads are run, the pundits are spun, and the billionaires try to buy their way in. It's the people, only the people, who get the last word.

STEVE HILTON (R), CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: It looks very much as if Californians really will have the chance to vote for change in November.

TOM STEYER (R), CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: Together we put the corporations on notice. Together we demanded more and better for the best state of them all, and now we just have to be patient.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to go now to our California political expert and anchor of the story is Elex Michaelson. Hey Elex, I know you got like no hours of sleep last night, so thanks for being here. These votes, this is really critical are still, as I mentioned, being counted in a very big way, and they could change dramatically. What do you think?

ELEX MICHAELSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT & ANCHOR, " THE STORY IS WITH ELEX MICHAELSON": They could. By the way, it's interesting, Tom Steyer spent over $200 million on the campaign but could not get a good AV person for the -- for the mic on election night. In terms of where the vote is at. So, most of the counties of California late today are going to put out a big dump of votes, including L.A. County, which will happen around 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock Pacific time, 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock Eastern time.

That's going to give us a big sense of where we're at, Tom Steyer needs to win that and win that in a big, big way today to show a path forward to make it into the top two. Some late polls suggested that Tom Steyer had momentum. Some of the anecdotal evidence I saw going to polling places in the last few days talking to people showed that Tom Steyer had some late momentum.

The question is, how much late momentum as some of these late returning ballots are going to be counted and going to be announced today. If we do not see a giant surge in Tom Steyer vote today, it is increasingly likely that we're going to have a top two, that's Republican and Democrat, Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton. I talked to Steve Hilton about that last night, live on CNN. Here's some of what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILTON: What we're really watching is the gap between me and the third-place candidate, Tom Steyer. As long as that gap stays roughly where it is, then Californians will have a choice for change in the general election, and that's what really matters here.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MICHAELSON: And so, that would be the more typical thing we would see a Democrat-Republican election, since we've done this top two system in California, Dana, we have not had a governor's race that was Democrat on Democrat. We'll see if this year is the exception.

BASH: Yeah. And just to emphasize, and you alluded to this traditionally, since this system has been in place, or even before that, the votes that come in and are counted first tend to be more Republican, and the ones that take longer tend to be more Democrat. It's known as the red mirage. We have no idea if that's going to be the case this year. Let's talk about the city that you're in, the city that is up for grabs when it comes to who's going to run it. A similar picture, a close three-way finish right now for L.A. mayor.

[12:05:00]

MICHAELSON: Well, and you talked about that concept of the red mirage last night on CNN, and that's even more so in the recent examples when it comes to the city elections. So, right now, when you look at that number and you see Spencer Pratt at 30.4 and Nithya Raman at 22.3, you would think, OK, this thing is over. Spencer Pratt is going to advance in one of the top two spots.

But let's look at recent history. Last time around, on election night, on the marriage race, Rick Caruso, at one point, was up five points over Karen Bass, and when all the counting was done, three weeks later, Karen Bass won by seven, so there was a 12-point swing. And as you said, oftentimes the late returning ballots are Democrat, and usually the most progressive Democrats who would tend to vote for Raman, who is a Democratic socialist.

Some of those Democratic ballots that are turned in late, though, are going to go for Karen Bass, which at this point is good for Spencer Pratt in terms of getting into the top two. So, the question is, will we see that pattern in play again? Most of the experts that I talked to that really, really know this stuff from a city and state perspective, think this one is really close. At this point, the smart money is that it's going to be Becerra and Hilton. But on this one, a lot of people think it's truly too close to call, and so we'll see where those final numbers end up, but this one could take weeks to really know.

BASH: Someday you will explain to the world why the state that has the fourth or fifth biggest economy on the planet takes so long to count these votes, Elex, but that's for another day. I know it's part of state law, I get that, but --

MICHAELSON: I can.

BASH: I know. I know. We'll do it later. Elex, thank you, appreciate it. And I'm joined here by a terrific group of reporters. First of all, welcome back to our studio, new and improved, David Chalian. Let's talk, just first of all, big, picture about these two races, and what we're seeing -- never mind the vote counting, but just the kind of the jockeying. And the questions about whether or not we're going to see Democrat versus Democrat or Democrat versus Republican in both of these races.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yeah. First of all, we need a better word than mirage, because a mirage indicates something there that isn't. These votes are there, they're cast, they're legitimate, they're just waiting to be counted. So, we, in our business, have to come up with a better term than mirage, but --

BASH: Only we knew how to use words.

CHALIAN: But, you know, no doubt we are watching to see if indeed in the governor's race this will be Democrat versus Democrat, as Elex indicated. Hilton, obviously, right now, when you see where he is in the numbers, I mean, he's sitting atop. I don't know many people that expect him to still sit atop when these Democratic, more Democratic leaning ballots come in and get counted. You could easily imagine a scenario where Becerra certainly gets a chunk of that and overrides Hilton.

And then the question is, as Hilton told Elex, you know, watch that Hilton and Steyer, that's still a pretty big gap that Steyer has to make up. But there, look at the percentage of the vote that's in right now, Dana, that's counted. There's still a lot of votes to be counted, and you noted in the mayor's race, there is no doubt. I think 37 percent of the vote remains to be counted in the L.A. mayor's race. We'll see when the new batch comes in tonight, but it is entirely conceivable that the progressive left wing Nithya Raman candidacy actually can perhaps supersede Pratt.

BASH: Let's put up the mayor's race, as we're just --

CHALIAN: Sorry. Yeah.

BASH: No, as you mentioned that I just want to stay on that. And the idea of Karen Bass, and initially the question was, would she be able to stave off what seemed to be the biggest challenge that she had was from the left, from Nithya Raman, and then the question became Spencer Pratt. It's still a question with one of those.

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: Yeah. I think it's interesting, you know, Spencer Pratt wrote this very conservative but also populist wave. So, the people who just, I think, feel most viscerally that Karen Bass has not responded to the needs of L.A. voters, particularly rebuilding after the fire. Really, just his -- what he said resonated with them, and they're caring less about, you know, track record or lack thereof.

Quite frankly, they're caring less about a true platform or lack thereof, but just that populist messaging is really, really, really, really spoke to voters. But the question is, especially because Spencer Pratt does still read very conservative, is he reaching his ceiling as far as the votes out there for him?

[12:10:00]

BASH: Right, in California. OK. Can we just talk about money, because there's so much of it that has gone in. Let's look at back at the governor's race, and I want you to check this out. This is -- there's a total spending, which is eye-popping, and this is again, we're just in the primary season. It's $316 million total. And we made this pie chart, so you can see where the lion's share of this money is coming from, and it's from -- it is from this guy, Tom Steyer.

I mean, look at this. Look at that, $201 million in a primary, and it's not even clear he's going to finish in the top two. It's really a stunning amount, and just to put it a little bit of perspective. These are the most expensive non-presidential races on record, like in the history of this country. And again, we're not even in the general election yet, and it's already, you know, bumping up against Pennsylvania last year, Georgia in 2022 and the list goes on, and then a little bit more perspective here. If you look at what he has -- what he has spent in 2026 for California governor and 2020 presidential, that's a lot of money.

MARC CAPUTO, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: And that doesn't include the amount of money that he had spent in the political system in the Obama years, where he really, Tom Steyer, first came on the scene. His big thing used to be the Keystone XL pipeline. He financed Democrats, he threatened those who would approve it with opposing or supporting their opponents, and that was another sort of kind of a successful operation by Tom Steyer. Now you do wonder if Democrats had the opportunity to vote again on scrapping the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought more oil down, whether they would have stuck with it.

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, POLITICAL REPORTER, NOTUS: We should also note he's not going to be broke after all that spending.

CAPUTO: That's right.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: He's got plenty of money. I like to say, it's so hard with California. It can feel very silly to try to analyze a race that has not been completed yet, but we can say the people who won or people who have political professionals who have Tom Steyer's phone. That's a very, very good position to be in.

I will say, I spoke to a strategist working on a campaign, not Steyer in California, and they said that actually it's interesting to watch this, because no matter how much he spent, they said, his poll numbers just could never really move that much. Like Tom Steyer has got a problem with this, where he can dump a lot of money, and it's so interesting how this works.

If we talk so much, especially this cycle, about money, it's all over the place, dark money, all these races, but still sort of candidate quality and candidate able to sort of connect with the audience, it's very, very important.

BASH: That's paramount. All right, everybody standby, because we have a lot more still to discuss about yesterday's primaries. Democrats haven't won a U.S. Senate seat in Iowa since 2008. Do they now have a candidate who could possibly change that and delete and regret. Congressman Andy Ogles deletes and then blames a staffer for a homophobic, really anti-gay post, but his other inflammatory posts are still up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: The November stage is set for the general election in Iowa, an open Republican Senate seat that Democrats are really hoping that they can try to flip. Iowa state Representative Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist beat state Senator Zach Wahls to be the Democrats Senate candidate. Turek will face GOP Congressman Ashley Hinson, and the two had really different messages last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH TUREK (D), IOWA STAGE CANDIDATE: If you are tired of this rigged system only looking out for billionaires and leaving the rest of us behind, then join us. Whether you are Republican, an Independent, or Democrat, there is room here for you in our campaign.

REP. ASHLEY HINSON (R-IA): We know that no one has fought harder and persevered through more, sacrificed more just to do the right thing for our country than our president has, right? Earning his support and endorsement in this race is not something that I take lightly. It is an honor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And my panel is back now. I mean, look, it is one of the most dramatic changes electorally since Donald Trump has been in office, because he won by like 13 percentage points in the last election, and it's because the Republican support is so strong for him there. And so, the question is whether or not everything that's happened in the world under his watch, from tariffs to the ramifications economically of the Iran war is going to have an impact.

MITCHELL: Yeah. I think of Iowa, you know, you think of agriculture, you think of the farmers, and you think about how they're suffering right now with gas and fertilizer and everything else, like you said with the world, the tariffs and everything.

So, the question is going to be, how much does clinging to Donald Trump is so interesting when you played that clip of Congresswoman Hinson, still clinging to Donald Trump on election night, as she, in theory, is pivoting to her general election message. So, aligning with Trump, will that pull her down? Are there farmers who are upset enough to support a Democrat in November?

[12:20:00]

BASH: I'm glad you brought that up, because we actually have a clip from a farmer, an Iowa farmer, Aaron Lehman, who's the president of the Iowa Farmers Union. Jeff Zeleny talked to when he was there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) AARON LEHMAN, IOWA FARMERS UNION PRESIDENT: Already farmers were experiencing higher prices on all the things we need to grow a crop, on seed, on pesticides, household expenses. No one anticipated that we would have a shock to the system, like a massive increase in fertilizer prices, because it -- all the experts did not see this coming when we received this rise in fertilizer prices because of this war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAPUTO: Well, the Trump administration started to see it, and that's why they try to have different import rules waived, but the problem that the administration realizes is that this is not an economy that's conducive to the incumbent. However, Hinson is not speaking just off the top of her head. There's polling that underlines that. The fact is that's a red state.

And since the time of Obama, we saw in his midterm, his first midterm in 2010 where Democrats tried to run away from him and got creamed. Both sides sort of learned a lesson there. You're stuck at the hip with your president, you can't get away, and you may as well embrace him. That's what Hinson is doing.

BASH: Yeah. That's a good point. And then there's the governor's race, which is very interesting, because the president endorsed a candidate who didn't win. And so, I do want to play something that he -- the president's former vice president, who is from neighboring Indiana said about that this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: The result in Iowa should be somewhat telling. The fact that Randy Feenstra was endorsed by President Trump, and his opponent focused more on Iowa first as a message I think suggests that there's concern in the heartland, particularly on the farm, Kate, for the impact of broad-based tariffs.

BASH: Now it wasn't like a blowout, I mean it was close, but since the storyline among Republicans and Trump over the past, you know, several weeks and even months has been a Trump endorsement stamp taken to the bank, in this case it didn't work out.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Maybe the exception that proves the rule, I don't know. But like, for viewers of this show, this is one of the most interesting races that happened last night, because it's more than just Trump's endorsement. There was the other side of the conversation, in which Turning Point USA, which is closely associated with J.D. Vance and the MAHA movement, you know, of course, RFK Jr.'s movement, they endorsed Lahn, who won, right?

So, you had a thing where actually this is true of Trump's coalition going against itself, and you know, if you're Hinson's campaign, we just showed that clip. What do you do with this result now that you -- that you have a significant portion of Republicans who maybe still like Republican stuff and like being conservative, but the Trump endorsement doesn't do it for them. So, what do you do if you're her? CAPUTO: So, to your point about candidate quality, Randy Feenstra didn't show up for debates, he's not known to be the best candidate, and Trump got in late. So, there was some of that going on with Zach Lahn as well, but there's no doubt. That split inside the coalition was apparent.

BASH: Let me just play a quick clip from Zach Lahn, since he's the one who won.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZACH LAHN (R), IOWA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: I don't have to tell you this, but nobody thought this could be done. We were outspent, opposed by the establishment, told to wait our turn. Well, tonight the people of Iowa had something to say about that, that we're not going to wait anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHALIAN: We should also just note, in Iowa, there is something in the soil right now, because it's special elections last year, two state senate districts flipped from Republican to Democrat. So, I think we are going to see, like, yes, it's a Trump plus 13-state. Does the environment close that enough for Democrats to get there? But you can see why Democrats are going to invest in that state this year.

CAPUTO: I also think of the case of Feenstra. Let's face it, Donald Trump was able to knock off these other primary candidates, sitting U.S. senator, sitting House member, because it was a vengeance campaign and he made it personal. Trump didn't really do that here. He sat back, as did Feenstra, who decided to just hang out on a lazy boy.

BASH: We're going to have to -- hold that thought. We're going to sneak in a quick break. Up next. A Republican's hateful post about gay Pride Month is met with disgust and condemnation. Will House GOP leadership intervene?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Quote, absolutely idiotic. That's how one Republican is describing a hateful post made by his colleague, Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles. His X account on the second day of Pride Month. The now deleted post said, quote, homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month. It was up for hours. Ogles said, a staffer made the stupid and hurtful post, and that they were reprimanded.

CNN's Lauren Fox caught up with Republican Mike Lawler, who was one of the first to criticize the post.

[12:30:00]