Eric Swalwell's Dublin Might Be a Model for California. But He Won't Talk
This weekly Connecting California column is edited and co-published by Zócalo Public Square. Lead photo via Flickr.
Gubernatorial hopeful Eric Swalwell isn’t from the same California as you and me.
That’s because he is from Dublin, a city on the eastern edge of the Bay Area.
Yes, that location makes Dublin, at least geographically speaking, from here. But 21st-century California is defined by stagnation in population and economy—making Dublin, the state’s fastest-growing city, feel like it belongs on another planet.
While California’s population has remained stuck at just under 40 million in this century, Dublin has more than doubled in population, from under 30,000 in 2000 to 74,691 last year.
While California obstructs home construction, Dublin is rapidly approving master planned communities, building more than 8,000 new units in the previous decade.
While many cities retreat from public transit amid financial challenges, Dublin has centered the future around its two BART stations.
And while much of the California landscape is dry and dusty and brown, Dublin is a place of lush parks (like 48-acre Emerald Glen) and green hills reminiscent of Ireland, which inspired the city’s name.
Maybe that’s why 175-year-old California shows its age with decaying infrastructure and a surge in senior citizens, Dublin, which was only incorporated in 1982, feels like a fountain of youth. Families flock there for the abundance of sports facilities, youth programs, and excellent schools.
You might imagine that his hometown’s success would be a natural topic for Swalwell on the stump. And the candidate—who moved to Dublin as a child and graduated Dublin High—did highlight Dublin in his campaign kickoff last November.
“When I was on the planning commission, people told us we couldn't build our way out of a housing crisis,” Swalwell said. “We proved them wrong. Dublin didn’t just grow; we grew with intention. We built the housing, we built the schools, and we built the transit. That is the Dublin Model: saying ‘yes’ to the future instead of ‘not in my backyard.’”
But Swalwell, the top Democrat in gubernatorial polls, is talking less about his hometown now. Both the candidate and his campaign failed to respond to my repeated requests to discuss the city.
The fact that Dublin’s success might be a liability for the candidate is another demonstration of the strangeness of today’s California politics and of the 2026 governor’s race in particular.
California voters have become so compulsively negative about the state that they might not want to hear about Dublin’s skyrocketing growth. Local media in Dublin has objected to a line on Swalwell’s campaign website claiming that the city was a “place of low income and expectations” before a transformation during his time in city office. Dublin has always had big ambitions, insist longtime locals. And Swalwell spent just two years on the planning commission and two years on the city council.
Highlighting Dublin also risk fueling questions about how tied Swalwell remains to the state after more than a decade in Congress. It’s been 13 years since Swalwell completed his one two-year term on the council. One gubernatorial opponent, the billionaire Tom Steyer, has alleged that Swalwell really lives in Washington, D.C., not at his Dublin-adjacent address in Livermore.
But a bigger reason for talking less about Dublin is that this governor’s race is not a campaign about California policy ideas or about who has the longest and most accomplished history of California governance. It’s become a contest about which candidate might best fight Trump.
That has been to the advantage of Swalwell, who never served in state government but has been in a long and public feud with the president, included leading the Trump impeachment team in 2019. Swalwell has said his number one priority as governor will be to “keep the worst president in history out of our homes, out of our streets, and out of our lives.”
This campaign dynamic has also boosted the poll standing of gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter, another member of Congress without state government experience but with a history of taking on Trump in D.C. and on television. Ironically, Porter is also from a successful and fast-growing outer suburb—in her case, Irvine, in Orange County. But, tellingly, she doesn’t talk about her hometown except to complain about the cost of living.
Meanwhile, candidates with deep experience in California and local governance are languishing in the single digits in the polls. The most maddening example of this dynamic is former Los Angeles mayor and state Assembly speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who has probably forgotten more about California government than Swalwell or Porter may ever know.
(Another ironic bit of trivia: Swalwell and Porter were both born in northwest Iowa, in small towns just 40 minutes apart, before their families moved to California.)
Even if Swalwell and Porter have made highly developed plans for the “Dublin-ization” or “Irvine-ization” of California, it wouldn’t make much sense to publicize them.
Both Dublin and Irvine have benefited from extensive master-planning by powerful developers (like the Irvine Company, and Trumark Homes in Dublin) who are not always popular with voters. And making the Golden State more like those two cities would draw backlash from environmental groups who dislike rapid growth in edge cities—and whose endorsements Swalwell and Porter now seek.
Indeed, Swalwell and Porter are both running insider campaigns focused on gathering support from powerful interest groups and politicians. Neither has advanced ideas that would rock the boat. In other words, if you want your own California community to embrace growth, accelerate housing construction, and offer more to kids, casting a ballot for Swalwell probably won’t you get there.
Much better to vote with your feet and move to Dublin.
