By Angelina Delfin, The Daily Signal | April 29, 2026
As Republican and Democrat candidates slug it out in debates to be California’s next governor, candidates who fit into the independent category continue to be shut out.
In Tuesday night’s debate hosted by CBS News, the players on the stage included two Republicans and six Democrats—and zero independents.
Elaine Culotti, an independent candidate who has polled as high as 23% on Polymarket but now is under 1%, claims the media is at fault for her sagging popularity.
If candidates get included in media polling and do well, they get to share the debate stage. If they’re excluded from polls, tough luck.
“Every single poll is the same problem, which is a violation of equal time,” Culotti told The Daily Signal. “Equal time should require that all candidates and all parties get to be on the poll. Otherwise, the poll is the mechanism in which they choose the debate candidates.”
The Pomona Collegeopens in a new tab website notes the candidates in Tuesday night’s debate were decided based on having at least 1% support in both the Emerson College and LA Times/UC Berkeley polls. The selection process was run by Asian Pacific American Public Affairs, in partnership with CBS and Pomona College.
Culotti said she does not fault CBS News moderators. Rather, it’s the polling process that needs fixing, she said.
“I don’t believe for one minute that any CBS News anchors knew that no party preference wasn’t actually polled in their own polling system. They didn’t conduct the polls, they don’t know,” she said.
The independent candidate added that it’s not just a CBS News issue, but one all debate organizers have due to their polling systems.
According to data from the Independent Voter Projectopens in a new tab, at least 30% of Californians do not fit into the categories of Democrat or Republican. Yet all the debates so far have included only the two major parties.
Culotti posted a video to her X account asking each major candidate if they thought she should have been on stage. Their answers were unanimous: “yes.”
“There are plenty of NPPs [no party preference] that should have been on this stage before the people that were,” Republican candidate Chad Bianco said in reply.
Democrat San Diego Mayor Matt Mahan, another candidate for governor, responded, “We should have it be as open and competitive as possible. If it’s truly a scientific poll and it asks people who you support, and any candidate comes above a certain threshold … I think they should be on the debate stage.”
Every other candidate Culotti interviewed agreed.
While CBS News did release a poll moments after the debate, it focused solely on issues primary voters said were most important to them.
CBS News did not immediately respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
Paul Mitchell, a longtime California political consultant, told The Daily Signal having independent candidates on the debate stage might not matter as much as Culotti thinks.
“Independent voters are not voters who vote for these independent candidates—they vote for Democrats and Republicans at the same rate as actual Democrat and Republican registered voters, or they don’t vote because they are less engaged,” he said.
“Don’t think of a no party preference voter as being a part of a club that shares a voting pattern,” Mitchell added.
Angelina Delfin is California correspondent for the Daily Signal.
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