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Xavier Becerra has advanced to the November general election in California’s gubernatorial race, cementing a stunning come-from-behind primary victory in one of California’s most turbulent campaign seasons in recent memory.

Election officials are continuing to count ballots to determine whether he will face fellow Democrat Tom Steyer, the environmental activist who championed progressive policies like universal healthcare and more taxes on billionaires like himself, or Republican Steve Hilton, the former UK political operative turned Fox News personality who was endorsed by Donald Trump, in the fall.

“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on earth, have spoken – loudly and proudly,” Becerra said in a statement, after the Associated Press declared that he had clinched one of two spots in the general election. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down. November, here we come.”

Becerra’s advance in the nation’s largest Democratic stronghold was, in his own words, a “Hollywood ending” few saw coming. Just months ago, mired at 3% in the polls, the former California attorney general and US health secretary faced pressure from his own party to drop out of the contest to allow voters to consolidate behind a more viable candidate. “The underdog stayed in the fight,” an ebullient Becerra told supporters at his election night party on Tuesday, as early returns showed him with a strong chance of pulling off a top-two finish in the primary. If elected in November, he would be California’s first Latino governor since 1875.

Despite the ongoing count, and the strong expectation that the so-called “late-mail” ballots would favor Democrats, Donald Trump prematurely declared Hilton the winner and, without evidence, accused the state of election rigging.

“We don’t want cheating in our elections. You see it in California. Those numbers are coming down rapidly. They found a lot of mail-in ballots last night, shockingly. We don’t want that,” Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office.

On Friday, the US justice department sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot processing in Los Angeles, while a Trump-appointed assistant US attorney said his office was conducting “multiple election fraud investigations”.