By Peter Hamby, PUCK
https://puck.news/eric-swalwell-was-the-favorite-to-succeed-newsom-now-what
Just four days ago, California Rep. Eric Swalwell was a frontrunner in the race to lead his state as governor. As of today, he’s a disgraced former congressman, having relinquished the seat he’s held for over a decade after a second woman accused him of rape. (He’s denied any sexual misconduct.) It’s a remarkably rapid fall for a politician who spent many years looking around for something bigger and better—and not just higher office.
Last summer, for instance, Swalwell was taking advantage of dial time, but not to solicit donations or test the waters ahead of his impending jump into the governor’s race. Instead, according to two Democrats I spoke to this week, Swalwell was calling to pitch his A.I. company, Findraiser, a tool that analyzes fundraising data for politicians and campaigns.
Founded by Swalwell and some former staffers, Findraiser has been endorsed by former D.N.C. chairman Jaime Harrison and used by several congressional campaigns, including those of Swalwell’s former close pals Sen. Ruben Gallego (who just referred (opens in new tab) to his erstwhile colleague as “a predator”) and Rep. Jimmy Gomez. But Swalwell wasn’t breaking congressional rules by hawking the startup—members of Congress are allowed to own outside companies, as long as they don’t take a salary. Still, it struck the person on the other end of Swalwell’s call as odd. “I thought, ‘That’s weird. This dude is in Congress but also trying to play entrepreneur around some tacky deal?’” the Democrat told me. “I was like, ‘Let’s talk another time.’”
Last October, I’m told, Swalwell was making more calls, but still not about the governor’s race he’d be joining a month later. This time, Swalwell mentioned a couple of screenplays he was shopping around Los Angeles. (Screenplays about what? I haven’t been able to confirm, and Swalwell did not respond to a request for comment about them. But Hollywood readers, let me or Belloni know if you’ve seen them!) “He wanted so desperately to be accepted by the Hollywood scene,” the person who talked to Swalwell about the screenplays told me. “Just a total starfucker.”
The Hollywood Connection
That checks out. For a guy whose congressional district is up in the East Bay, Swalwell sure was down in Los Angeles a lot, getting himself on camera and raising money from the anti-Trump lib set he cultivated so well over the years. He was a frequent guest on Real Time With Bill Maher—and also at the Maher team’s season wrap parties in West Hollywood. Swalwell also came to town to raise campaign money from all the usual suspects in #Resistance donor world: Robert De Niro, Bryan Lourd, Jane Fonda, KathyGriffin, Sean Penn, etcetera.
Back in 2024, Swalwell worked to organize Zoom calls in support of Kamala Harris’s campaign featuring various Hollywood celebs: “Comics for Kamala,” with Ben Stiller and Jason Bateman; “Cooking for Kamala,” with Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio. He would also send the events to me in my Twitter D.M.s, hoping I would promote them for some reason. (Unlike a lot of politicians, Swalwell went around his flacks and kept in direct touch with reporters on text and email.)
L.A. has always been a wellspring of donor cash for Democratic politicians. But as his fame grew in the Trump years—especially after fronting two impeachment hearings—it seemed like Swalwell liked the party scene a little too much. This week, 4-year-old pictures and videos of Swalwell surfaced on the Instagram page of Nik Richie, a media entrepreneur and founder of the salacious 2000s-era gossip website TheDirty.com (opens in new tab). Swalwell is seen sunburned, wearing a robe, grinning from ear to ear on a yacht off St. Tropez packed with attractive younger women. Why? Presumably because Swalwell wanted to party on a yacht—without his wife.
Like many replacement-level politicians in Washington, Swalwell became enamored with his growing fame and the fawning attention that came with it. What else could compel a little-known four-term congressman to shamelessly run for president in 2020 against a bevy of governors and senators? Or run for governor of the largest state in the nation knowing his own history with women? Or continue to serve in Congress knowing the risk to himself and family? Only the most brazen of politicians would keep riding that lightning.
In recent years, there was simply no guest booking—and no celebrity collab—that Swalwell would turn down. Case in point: In January 2024, the comedian Matt Friend bumped into Swalwell on the streets of Manhattan. Friend recalled that he immediately launched into his Trump impression for a video (opens in new tab), ribbing Swalwell for his onetime relationship with Fang Fang, a suspected Chinese intelligence operative who got close to Swalwell and his campaign operations. Swalwell is known to bristle at any reference to Fang Fang. But Friend is a rising star, so Swalwell hung onscreen for the entire Trump bit anyway, grinning his way through it. “It’s so insane in hindsight,” Friend told me on Tuesday. “He probably hated it.”
Polymarket Candidacy
When Swalwell entered the California governor’s race last November—on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, naturally—the water was warm. Bigger names like Kamala Harris and Alex Padillahad passed on the opportunity, leaving the Democratic field full of lesser-known retreads and two onetime frontrunners who had failed to gain traction. One was former congresswoman Katie Porter, who had led in the polls until a pair of videos surfaced showing her berating and harassing staffers, confirming longtime rumors on Capitol Hill about her temper.
The other was billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, who was spending tens of millions of dollars on television and streaming ads but failing to catch on with Democratic voters who are skeptical of billionaire business types. Steyer has money to spare: On my drive out to Coachella last week, amid the many promotional billboards for festival headliners, there was a billboard for Steyer riffing on the Sabrina Carpenter hit “Please Please Please”: “Please Please Please, let’s lower your bills. “TomSteyer.com,” it read. I laughed at the mental image of some Orange County college kid googling Steyer to see if he was a D.J. act in the Sahara Tent that weekend.
Following the Kimmel appearance, Swalwell unleashed a factory load of semi-cringe social media videos, his favorite content genre as a self-styled next-gen pol. He quickly became the frontrunner in a crowded open primary in which no one, Republican or Democrat, was polling higher than the mid-teens. Swalwell, though, made for an unusual candidate in geographically massive California, where statewide office hopefuls traditionally need relationships and a support network that extend beyond a single congressional district. But Swalwell made up for it with his knack for getting attention. He had a national brand as a Trump fighter willing to appear on any available screen—which matters more to the emotionally charged Democratic base these days than any newspaper or union endorsement.
When Swalwell joined the field, I shot him a text to catch up. We swapped a few off-the-record notes, and then he said he would get back to me soon with some perspective on his campaign. When he did, it wasn’t with any grand theory about the state of California, or some kind of well-honed strategy against his rivals. Instead, he sent me a screenshot of odds on Polymarket, which at the time showed him winning the race, ahead of the two frontrunning Republicans, former Fox News talker Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
For plenty of California Democrats, Swalwell’s fixation with the prediction markets—he was fond of tweeting out Kalshi and Polymarket screenshots before his campaign imploded—got at another common complaint about him: What did this guy stand for other than power and ambition? That reputation goes back to his first congressional campaign in 2012, a primary ouster of the aging Bay Area liberal Pete Stark, when Swalwell ran more on turning the generational page than on any sort of policy platform. Swalwell, barely 30, was half a century younger than Stark, and outhustled him. He’s been in Congress ever since, with few defining accomplishments other than becoming a leader of the anti-Trump MS NOW resistance set.
“There’s always been the empty-suit thing with Eric,” one San Francisco Democratic operative told me Monday. “When he got in the race, it was pretty unsettled, and a lot of the players in California—consultants, unions, business types—they just kind of settled on him because he was an empty slate. The gossip about him and women was always on the radar, but never came out, so people wondered if it was even true. He became the last non-offensive guy in the mix.” Democrats in Sacramento were skeptical of Porter given questions about her management style and lack of strong relationships in the capital. And the consultant class was very skeptical of Steyer because he was self-funding his campaign, denying many of the usual operatives paychecks and cuts from media buys. But Swalwell didn’t have many deep connections inside the California political class either.
Swalwell ultimately signed on with Bearstar, the powerful Democratic consulting firm run by Ace Smith, Sean Clegg, and Juan Rodriguez. Bearstar has long had a kind of monopoly power over political campaigns in California, having worked on the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom over the years, as well as many of the lucrative ballot measures that Californians are so fond of. Bearstar stood up an independent expenditure group for Swalwell called “Californians for a Fighter” and padded it with a $2 million donation from Uber. Swalwell’s consultants also helped organize labor endorsements from the California Teachers Association and the SEIU, valuable stamps of approval in a state where many Democratic voters look to unions for guidance come Election Day.
Swalwell’s spectacular collapse is also a tough break for Bearstar, which has plenty of critics who are tired of their outsize influence. “Bearstar couldn’t get their hooks into Porter or Steyer in the same way they had in the past with others, but they got their hooks into Swalwell,” said Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog. Court is also a fierce critic of Uber’s safety policies and is backing a ballot measure this year that would require Uber to investigate sexual assaults involving drivers in California. He pointed out the irony of the company steering $2 million to a candidate for governor who is now twice accused of sexual assault. “What a bad bet,” Court told me, somewhat understating things.
The big question about the governor’s race now is who benefits most from Swalwell’s departure. College-educated white #Resistance types might give Porter a second look, and her campaign boasts of internal polling showing as much, even if her fundraising evaporated after those incriminating videos were released last year. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is making a play for law-and-order, business-friendly moderates with backing from Silicon Valley honchos, is launching a $14 million ad blitz in the next two weeks to capitalize on Swalwell’s departure. But Steyer has been steadily climbing in the polls, point by point, and no one else has the cash to compete. And time is running out. The primary is on June 2, but early voting starts in three weeks. Swalwell was Steyer’s biggest obstacle, and his downfall may have clinched the race for the billionaire unless something dramatic unfolds in a campaign that was pretty much drama-free until a few days ago.
