Less than 20 minutes after polls closed in California, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has been projected to defeat Republican Steve Hilton, a result that comes as little surprise in the Democratic stronghold.

With only 25 percent of the vote counted, Becerra already holds a commanding lead of more than 600,000 votes and nearly 20 percentage points, all despite a lackluster campaign from a Democrat who all but expected to be anointed California’s next governor.

His top priorities remain unclear, but his most memorable positions have been his support for a mileage tax on Californians without a corresponding decrease in the state’s highest-in-the-country gas tax; a so-called “power hour” that promised residents free electricity; openness to a wealth tax, just not in the form of Proposition 40; and, of course, a continuation of the state’s progressive status quo, which many residents claim is unbearable, just not unbearable enough to vote any differently.

Republican Steve Hilton, unlike Becerra, campaigned as though he actually had to earn the job, crisscrossing the state and remaining hopeful until the very end. But while you can put change on the ballot in California, you apparently can’t make voters choose it. Hilton offered a far better set of priorities: $3 gas, no income tax on earnings under $150,000, and friendlier business policies for the world’s fourth-largest economy. 

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California voters, it seems, preferred another helping of the status quo.