How Xavier Becerra turned around his campaign to be California’s governor | California

After a fairly underwhelming start to the California gubernatorial campaign, former Biden cabinet official Xavier Becerra has advanced to the general election in a striking reversal of political fortunes.

If he prevails in November, Becerra would make history as the state’s first Latino governor since 1875, when California was briefly ruled by Romualdo Pacheco, who was born in the region while it was still part of Mexico.

Born in Sacramento to Mexican immigrant parents, Becerra rose from the California state legislature to Congress, where he served from 1993 to 2017, then to California attorney general, replacing Kamala Harris when she was elected to the U.S. Senate. He left that post in 2021 when then-President Joe Biden appointed him as secretary of health and human services.

Despite his government’s good intentions, Becerra floundered early in the race to replace term-limit Gavin Newsom as governor of California. His vote was around 3 percent in late March, trailing far behind three Democrats in the nonpartisan primary — then-congressman Eric Swalwell, former congressman Katie Porter and billionaire activist Tom Steyer, as well as two Republicans, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Democrats have moved to quickly turn the page on the Biden years.

Many voters have turned to leaders like Newsom who are willing to fight at the presidential level. The party sought out anti-establishment outsiders and challengers from the younger generation. Becerra, a mild-mannered 68-year-old politician, didn’t seem like much of a rival.

University of Southern California political science professor Christian Grose said there was a particular anti-Trump buzz in California after the passage of Proposition 50, the Newsom-led redistricting plan aimed at blunting Republican gerrymandering in Texas.

The crowded Democrats had also raised concerns that the party’s vote would be so fragmented that two Republican candidates would finish first and second in the primaries, depriving Democrats of the top two runoffs in the general election. In March, Rusty Hicks, chairman of the California Democratic Party, called on candidates without a viable path — low-ballot candidates like Becerra — to leave and help avoid the nightmare scenario of no Democrats on the ballot for governor in November.

Becerra’s bid suffered a blow when he was unable to attend the debate scheduled for March at USC. Six candidates were invited based on a mathematical “viability” formula, but the forum was rejected after backlash that it would not include candidates of color.

“He was a pretty good candidate,” said Grose, who developed the formula methodology for the scrapped debate, but Becerra did not excite voters.

But his luck changed in April when the race was rocked by a series of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Swalwell (the San Francisco district representative denied the allegations, but withdrew his bid and resigned from Congress).

Becerra rose to the top of the polls in the void left by Swalwell.

“He had a resume. He was known to the voters. So it was an alternative to go for what made sense,” Grose said.

The wake of the Swalwell scandal also renewed panic about Democrats being shut out of the general election in a state where nearly 60% of votes typically go to Democratic candidates.

“This fear sounds odd in California, but Democratic voters were starting to get nervous. And so the more centrist or left-of-center voters in the Democratic party gravitated toward Becerra, while the more left-wing voters gravitated toward Steyer,” Grose said.

During the campaign, Becerra’s speeches were often interspersed with anecdotes about being the son of Mexican immigrants. He connected his personal history to the present, with the Trump administration waging a mass deportation campaign largely targeting undocumented Latinos.

Although his opponents accused him of mishandling the care of undocumented immigrant children as HHS secretary, Becerra’s background appealed to Latino voters who saw him as relatable.

About 37 percent of Latino voters said they would vote for Becerra, according to the poll conducted just before this week’s primary by professors at three California universities. The other two candidates who received the most support among Latinos in the survey were Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Bianco, with 17 percent, and former Fox News host Hilton, with 12 percent.

“I think he’s exactly the right person, the right time, the right profile,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who studies Latino voters. “Experience” has come up again and again in conversations with Becerra voters in recent weeks, he said. But Madrid said they weren’t just talking about Becerra’s long resume, but also his “life experience.”

“I thought they were talking about his resume,” Madrid recalled recently. “It wasn’t like that. It was relatability… They would say: ‘A construction worker’s son. He did the construction himself. He represented East Los Angeles and lived there.’ “They say, ‘This man is one of us.'”

Becerra supporters from other California communities also cited his working-class appeal as a factor in their votes. Dwayne Murphy, a 35-year-old Irvine resident, told the Guardian this week that he voted for Becerra after initially considering Steyer.

“I know a lot of people are branding it as corporate nonsense,” Murphy said, referring to the emerging line of attack that conglomerates like Chevron were financing Becerra’s campaign.

Murphy, a delivery worker for Amazon, said he was impressed by Becerra’s promises to help working-class people and make first-time homeownership easier. “We are just like the majority of people in California trying to find ways to survive and thrive,” he said of his family.

As California’s slow vote count continues and an estimated 3 million ballots still need to be counted, it remains unclear whether Becerra will face Republican Hilton or Democrat Steyer in the general election.

“California, we’re just getting started,” Becerra said in a video post to X on Friday after taking the lead in the preliminary count, and the Associated Press predicted he would finish in the top two. “Let’s hit the ground running. Let’s go win this thing.”