Though the date is nearly seven months away, mark the fourth day of next year on your calendar if you happen to be an aficionado of California politics.

Why January 4, 2026? Because it’s the 60th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s announcing his candidacy for governor (here’s a video that, antiquated though it may appear, in black and white, is futuristic in one key regard: Reagan’s kickoff was actually a 30-minute television spot that appeared in multiple California markets).

Two things stand out about the 1966 governor’s race in California—explained insightfully, by the way, in Matthew Dallek’s The Right Moment, which chronicles how Reagan, a political neophyte known better for his acting career than his policy takes, would end up winning in a landslide.

First, Reagan was hardly the darling of the Golden State’s GOP when the contest began. George Christopher, a former Republican San Francisco mayor (that’s not a typo—there once was a viable GOP presence in that city), was the preferred choice among party moderates. (Reagan went on to swamp Christopher by a two-to-one margin in June’s Republican primary.)

Second, Reagan’s candidacy was a continuation of a unique path to political power in California: actors turning to politics.

Two years prior to Reagan’s victory, George Murphy, a Yale dropout and former Hollywood song-and-dance-man (among his partners was Shirley Temple), danced his way to victory in a US Senate contest versus the appointed Democratic incumbent Pierre Salinger—a twin-celebrity race, if you will, as Salinger’s claim to fame was serving as White House press secretary during John F. Kennedy’s fabled “Camelot” reign.

Sixty years later, California’s governor’s race reads like a bad restaurant review: zero stars. That’s “stars” as in celebrities, who dot the California landscape yet in today’s political landscape seem more content to stay on the sidelines rather than enter the game.

That changes somewhat if former vice president decides to run for governor next year—Kamala Harris being a “star” in the political more than the Hollywood sense given she’s her party’s most recent presidential nominee. Then again, her decision not to make a personal appearance at last weekend’s California Democratic convention in Anaheim adds to the intrigue of Harris’s next........

© Hoover Institution