Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will advance to the November election for California governor, CBS News and NBC News projected Friday, after late-counted ballots pushed the Democrat past Republican Steve Hilton at the top of the field for the first time since polls closed Tuesday.

The call resets a contest that for three days looked like a Becerra-Hilton runoff. With about two-thirds of the vote tallied, Becerra held roughly 27 percent to Hilton's 26 percent, NBC News reported, with billionaire activist Tom Steyer at 21 percent and gaining. Under California's top-two primary, the two highest vote-getters advance to November regardless of party, leaving the second slot a Hilton-Steyer fight that could deny the GOP a place on the November ballot in the country's most populous state.

The late drop

Hilton, a former Fox News host, led the count through Thursday before Friday's mail-ballot returns moved Becerra into first. California sends a mail ballot to every registered voter and counts those postmarked by Election Day if they arrive within seven days, prolonging the tally. Wednesday's JSJ coverage had paired Becerra and Hilton as the apparent finishers; Friday's drops scrambled that picture and put Steyer, who has poured nearly $200 million of his own money into the race, within striking distance of second place.

Becerra acknowledged the projection in a Facebook video. "California has spoken. Thank you for standing with us... this victory belongs to you," he wrote. "We're just getting started. On to November."

Who Becerra is

Becerra, a former California attorney general, represented parts of Los Angeles in Congress for 24 years beginning in 1992 before joining the Biden Cabinet. He ran as a mainstream Democrat and leaned on government experience, telling voters, "The governor's office is not a place with training wheels," CBS News reported. If elected, he would be the first Latino governor of California in 150 years, since Romualdo Pacheco.

He was polling in the low single digits for much of the campaign and rose only after former Rep. Eric Swalwell quit the race in April following sexual-assault and misconduct allegations that Swalwell denied. Becerra also weathered guilty pleas by two former consultants who admitted stealing from a dormant Becerra campaign account, NBC News reported.

The second slot

Hilton, born in London and a U.S. citizen since 2021, served as strategy director to former British Prime Minister David Cameron and built his campaign around the state's cost of living, promising to make California "Califordable" through tax cuts, regulatory rollback and homeownership measures. President Trump endorsed him in April, consolidating Republican voters who had been splitting with Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

Steyer, a hedge-fund manager and 2020 presidential candidate who has never held public office, has run to Becerra's left, calling for single-payer health care, a tax on oil-company profits and a billionaire tax expected on the fall ballot. NBC News said Steyer has "blanketed the state’s airwaves" with self-funded spending.

Former Rep. Katie Porter, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa conceded earlier in the week.

The count, contested

Hilton spent Friday attacking the pace of the tally. At a Bay Area press conference, he said that if elected he "will end this FARCE and make sure all votes are counted within 48 hours of the mail-in deadline." Trump has separately questioned California's counting timeline without offering evidence of wrongdoing. State and local election officials said every ballot undergoes identical verification regardless of when it arrives.

All three body-tier sources in today's reporting lean left; no right-leaning outlet's account of the projection was available at press time, and Hilton's complaint about the count is the most prominent on-the-record Republican response in those reports.

A recent CBS News poll found 70 percent of registered California voters described their local cost of living as "unmanageable," framing the issue Becerra and his eventual opponent will run on.

The secretary of state's office will continue counting through next week. If Steyer overtakes Hilton, Becerra would face a fellow Democrat in November and become the heavy favorite to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom, NBC News said.