Here is a name you will not have expected to see on a California ballot. But the numbers are real. A former British political aide, now a Democrat, is running neck and neck with a Biden cabinet secretary for the governorship.
The latest polling out of the Golden State shows the ex-Whitehall operator, who cut his teeth in the rough and tumble of Westminster, drawing level with the Secretary of Health and Human Services. It is a jaw-dropping twist in a race that was supposed to be a coronation.
Let me give you the inside track. This man knows the game. He served as a key strategist for a former British Prime Minister. He understands the dark arts of the Lobby, the whisper network that can make or break a career. He has taken those skills and applied them to California's byzantine political landscape.
How did he do it? Simple. He ran as an outsider, an innovator. His campaign ads are slick, his ground game is relentless. He has tapped into the same vein of discontent that gave us Brexit and Trump. The irony is rich. A Brit, selling American populism.
Lobby sources tell me the Harris campaign is rattled. They were expecting a cakewalk. Instead, they face a candidate who knows how to weaponise a leak, how to frame a narrative. The Secretary, for all her Washington polish, looks flat-footed on the trail.
Consider the demographics. California is changing. The tech bros in Silicon Valley love a disruptor. The Latino community, traditionally Democratic, is seeing a candidate who speaks their language of opportunity. It is a dangerous cocktail for the establishment.
But here is the rub. Can a foreign-born candidate really win the governorship? The state has no such bar, but the optics are tricky. Expect some nativist pushback from the right. The left will also have its doubts. They will ask: does he truly understand California's values?
His answer, as I have heard it, is slick. He talks about his British mother who worked as a nurse, his American father who built a small business. He is the American dream, just with a different accent. It plays well in focus groups, I am told.
The race is still fluid. Endorsements are yet to fall. But if I were a betting man, I would not count him out. He has the killer instinct that comes from surviving the Westminster jungle. And as any political hack knows, that counts for a lot.
Watch this space. The polls will tighten further. And if he pulls it off, it will be the story of the decade: a Brit in Sacramento, rewriting the rules of the game.
