Democrat Xavier Becerra will advance to the November general election in the race for California governor, capping a sudden and dramatic ascent for a career politician who is running on his experience and his willingness to take on President Donald Trump.
Becerra, the former state attorney general, has secured nearly 27% of the vote in the June 2 primary, with about two-thirds of votes counted as of Friday afternoon. If elected in November, he would be the first Latino to serve as California governor in more than a century and the first to win the seat via election, which his campaign called “a breakthrough.”
It’s still unclear who his opponent will be: Returns so far show Republican Steve Hilton most likely to advance with more than 26% of votes counted, though the trailing Democrat Tom Steyer has not conceded and could make up ground in the more than 3 million votes that remain to be counted. Many Democratic voters held onto their ballots until the last minute, meaning the uncounted votes skew more Democratic.
California uses a top-two primary system; the two candidates with the most votes advance to the November ballot regardless of party.
The November race could differ dramatically depending on the opponent. If it’s Hilton, Becerra would be heavily favored to win: Democrats in California outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one, and Hilton is endorsed by Trump, whom Californians disapprove of in high numbers.
If it’s Steyer, California can expect an all-out slugfest between opposing wings of the Democratic Party, supercharged by the hundreds of millions of dollars Steyer has spent from his personal fortune on the primary alone.
While the hedge fund manager-turned-Democratic donor and climate activist has run a progressive campaign and garnered the support of Bernie Sanders surrogates, Becerra is favored by more of the Democratic establishment. He also received consequential endorsements — and funding — from labor and industry groups.
Becerra, who had lingered in the single-digits in polling, surged in popularity following the political implosion of former frontrunner Eric Swalwell, with establishment Democrats favoring the former Health and Human Services secretary and former state attorney general over former Rep. Katie Porter and the outsider Steyer.
It was a surprising and swift ascent for the mild-mannered career politician who was previously part of a crop of lower-polling Democratic candidates that party chair Rusty Hicks was publicly pressuring to drop out of the race.
“Guess what? The underdog stayed in the fight,” Becerra said at an election night rally Tuesday in Los Angeles, calling his near-victory “the everyday miracle of living in a state that regularly makes the improbable seem inevitable.”
The decision comes at a particularly consequential time for California. Residents face a crushing cost of living, nation-topping gas prices made worse by the war in Iran, wildfire risks that have driven insurance companies out of state, an unstable state budget, impending federal cuts to the state’s expansive health system and an economy dampened by immigration enforcement.
Becerra so far has not proposed major policy departures from Newsom’s two terms in office.
He has said to address the state’s affordability crisis, he would call a state of emergency to freeze utility and home insurance rates to examine why they’re rising and enforce current housing law to ensure local governments are planning for new construction. Like other California Democrats, he has also signaled a willingness to slow down on the state’s greenhouse gas reduction mandates and transition to clean energy in order to keep gas prices affordable.
The son of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Sacramento, Becerra got his start in the 90s, winning a Los Angeles-area state legislative seat as a young lawyer and getting elected to Congress two years later. He held the seat for 24 years, until he was appointed California’s attorney general in 2017 during the first Trump administration. After that, he served as health secretary during Biden’s administration.
He was dogged on the primary campaign trail by criticism of his time in the administration. Some Democratic leaders resurfaced complaints about his leadership during the pandemic, while opponents in the primary repeatedly pointed to his agency’s vetting of homes for a surge of migrant children who were later found to be working dangerous or exploitative jobs.
Steyer in particular also highlighted how a variety of corporations and special interests surged donations to boost Becerra’s campaign in the final weeks of the race.
Hilton, capitalizing on Republican frustrations with the state’s high costs and regulations, has portrayed Becerra as a symbol of the status quo under Newsom. Becerra has so far not proposed major policy departures from Newsom, and once said during a debate that he would grade Newsom an “A for effort” on homelessness, which has risen substantially over the past two terms.
But Becerra overcame most of the attacks primarily by pointing to his longtime experience in government, and his years of lawsuits against Trump when he was attorney general.
“You can have all these great inflated promises,” he said of critics like Steyer this week. “But delivery is more important.”