Eric Swalwell dropped out of the California governor’s race Sunday, less than a week after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, including a former congressional staffer who alleged he raped her in 2024.
He announced the decision through a social media statement. “To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past,” he wrote. “I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made, but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.”
That’s the clearest thing Swalwell has said since the story broke. Reports from CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle last week outlined accusations from several women. The Chronicle’s reporting included text messages that the former staffer allegedly sent to friends shortly after the 2024 incident, in which she described what happened. Swalwell has called the accusations “absolutely false,” but denial wasn’t enough to hold his campaign together.
The institutional collapse came fast. The California Federation of Labor Unions yanked their endorsement. So did the California Teachers Association. At least four campaign staffers resigned. Democratic members of Congress who had lined up behind him walked away too. In political terms, he went from viable to finished inside of roughly seven days.
What makes this particularly striking is where Swalwell stood just weeks ago. As of mid-March, he was in a three-way tie atop a crowded Democratic primary field, running alongside former Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire investor Tom Steyer. At the California Democratic Party’s annual convention in February, he pulled in 24 percent of delegate votes, the largest share of any candidate in the room. None of that translated into a formal party endorsement, but it showed real forward movement at a moment when the race was starting to matter.
None of it matters now.
CalMatters has tracked how quickly the endorsement network around him dissolved once the Chronicle and CNN published their reporting. That’s the part that’s hard to rebuild. Institutional backers don’t come back.
The more immediate question for California Democrats is where his voters land. Porter and Steyer are the obvious candidates to absorb his support, but it’s not a clean transfer. Swalwell’s coalition included organized labor, which just pulled their backing entirely, and that bloc won’t move as a unit. The race reshuffles in ways that don’t follow a simple script.
There’s also the question of what happens to Swalwell himself beyond the governor’s race. Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said Saturday she intends to file a motion to expel him from the House. Calls for his resignation from Congress have come from members on both sides of the aisle. Swalwell has given no indication he’ll leave his seat.
The California governor’s race was already getting complicated before this week. The Democratic field is unusually large, with candidates jostling for position ahead of the June 2, 2026 primary. California’s top-two primary system means the two leading vote-getters advance to November regardless of their party affiliation, so the distribution of Democratic votes across a crowded field carries real strategic weight. A split vote could let a Republican through, or it could create a general election matchup that nobody planned for.
Swalwell was one of the better-funded candidates in that field and one of the more recognizable names after years of national media exposure. He’d been a serious presence in the 2020 presidential primary before dropping out early. His exit from the 2026 governor’s race opens space that Porter and Steyer will both try to fill, but the money and the momentum he’d built don’t automatically transfer to either of them.
Jim Mayer, who’s watched California Democratic primaries for two decades, told reporters this week that losing a candidate at this stage doesn’t just scramble the delegate math. “It changes what voters think the race is,” he said. “People who were with Swalwell have to decide who they trust now.”
The June 2, 2026 primary is still months away. Porter and Steyer are in the race. The field includes others who’ll also compete for Swalwell’s former supporters. But the candidate who stood at 24 percent in February is gone, and what happens next in this race is genuinely open.