He’s Probably California’s Next Governor — So Why Does No One Know What He Thinks?

SACRAMENTO — Xavier Becerra is keeping people guessing.

The presumptive next leader of California traced a circuitous path through the state’s most chaotic governor race in a generation. He was not the first or second or even third or fourth choice of most Democratic kingmakers, prevailing over a fractured field after better-positioned candidates either passed on running (Kamala Harris, Alex Padilla) or imploded (Eric Swalwell). Becerra effectively punched his ticket to lead America’s largest state — a progressive bastion, a Democratic bellwether and a national launching pad — by winning 28 percent of primary voters.

Now, as Sacramento prepares for Becerra’s all but inevitable ascension, the elected officials, lobbyists, and corporate and labor leaders who shape policy in one of the nation’s most consequential capitals are grappling with a contradiction: Despite Becerra’s decades in public service, no one seems to be quite sure what he’ll do with the biggest job of his career. And the ambiguity seems to be by design.

“I can make some really big promises. But that doesn’t get us anywhere — it may get us elected, but I would prefer not to run on inflated promises that I can’t deliver on,” Becerra told POLITICO this week, subsequently telling reporters his caution was a product of hard-learned experience, like his time helping to lead the White House’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic: “When I was dealing with Covid, I could not say ‘I’m going to get you all the ventilators you need,’ because I didn’t want people to say — ‘you promised them, (and) because you didn’t bring them, these people died.”

He remains something of a cipher, even to some of California’s most attentive political observers, despite having served at virtually every level of government. He rose from the state legislature to Congress to statewide office to a cabinet position in President Joe Biden’s administration leading the Health and Human Services Agency.

But none of those roles carry the same weight as the governor’s office, both as a matter of policy impact and given the power California governors have to define the Democratic Party. Becerra will almost certainly become a prominent target for President Donald Trump and national Republicans who need no encouragement to vilify California Democrats.

Conversely, he can help chart Democrats’ course as disaffected voters say they crave bold, authentic leaders. Becerra will lead a fall campaign against a Republican-backed voter ID ballot initiative, allowing him to step into the anti-Trump crusader role that Gov. Gavin Newsom has enthusiastically embraced.

As for policy, while Becerra has offered a few concrete proposals, like freezing insurance rates, offering a block of free electricity, and identifying “shovel-ready” housing projects, he prevailed in the primary by running as a steady hand for an era of budget deficits and political upheaval. The candidate of big swings was Becerra’s chief rival, billionaire Tom Steyer, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to seize the progressive lane and vowed to institute single-payer health care, tax billionaires and shatter utility monopolies.

“I think in some ways, Becerra has the freedom to be able to put his plan together on his timeline,” said Amanda Renteria, who was a senior aide to Becerra when he was attorney general. “There wasn’t some big expectation when he was in the election cycle to have big, bombastic promises in the sort of Mamdani fashion — that’s not how he rolls. He ran on being thoughtful and experienced.”

Becerra wants California to be more affordable. He wants to make health care universally accessible, as befits a former health and human services secretary who oversaw a massive expansion in insurance coverage. He abhors Trump, as you’d expect from a former California attorney general who prolifically sued him.

Fusing those two themes, he said last week that he intends to restore health insurance to the millions of Californians poised to lose it because of Trump’s policies — a monumental undertaking that he hasn’t quite explained how he’d achieve.

Similarly, Sacramento is still hazy on the details of how Becerra would govern after his unexpectedly meteoric rise to the top of the governor’s race. Insiders are asking information about how to get in touch with Becerra and trading rumors about who he might hire.

One prominent lobbyist, who insisted on anonymity to convey sensitive dynamics, likened the unsettled state of affairs to “walking into a final exam and realizing you studied the wrong material.”

“So we are all trying to get through multiple choice questions by eliminating obviously wrong answers and then making educated guesses,” the lobbyist said in a text message.

When he is asked about his plans, Becerra falls back on a ready refrain: look at my record. Want to know how he’ll approach climate change after he was pilloried for receiving Chevron money and saying California needs the oil giant? Research his lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. In response to an inquiry for this story, a spokesman pointed to his past statements and actions.

But he’s also looking ahead. Becerra has been taking meetings with lobbying firms, industry associations, labor groups and tech titans. He is studying up on issues like California’s budget crunch and the impact of steep federal cuts leveled by HR1, working with a small and now highly in-demand coterie of advisers.

That partially reflects Becerra’s longstanding approach to politics. The Stanford-educated lawyer prefers to rigorously study issues and run exhaustively through the pros and cons with his team. Once he arrives at his decision, he can be immovable.

“There’s not going to be a lot of hyperbolic pronouncements. There’s not going to be a lot of rhetorically pushing the envelope,” said Roger Salazar, a political consultant who has known Becerra for years and worked for his attorney general campaign. “That’s just not who Xavier is. He’s a steady person who takes his time to formulate policies and then sticks to them.”

Some players — particularly those who did not support Becerra — have a less charitable interpretation. A methodical approach can look plodding or equivocal, ill-suited to a moment when California is facing converging challenges like climate change, pervasive homelessness, a reeling insurance market and periodic population loss.

Becerra has been dogged by accusations from fellow Biden alumni that he was ill-prepared for his role as health and human services secretary and slow to respond to crises like a surge of unaccompanied minors at the southern border. While Becerra and allies like former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain have dismissed those critiquesas unfounded or uninformed, they have nevertheless circulated in Sacramento.

One interest group leader, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, met with Becerra hoping to get specifics and instead received vague assurances about bringing people to the table — a not uncommon takeaway as Becerra makes the rounds.

“We haven’t heard a vision from him on what his goals are for the state of California,” the person said. “It was a lot of those phrases but a lack of specificity and substance on what he plans to do.”

Every governor is measured against their predecessors. Becerra presents a marked contrast to the outsize personalities he will likely follow into office: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s global starpower, Jerry Brown’s unrivaled experience and relentless focus on a small handful of issues, Gavin Newsom’s oozing ambition and propensity for headline-grabbing proposals.

He also won a very different kind of election. Unlike 2018, when Newsom was the clear candidate to beat and secured support from traditional powers like organized labor, Becerra spent much of the race languishing in the lower tier of candidates before rocketing to the top of the field after Swalwell’’s departure created a vacuum.

That precipitous rise meant Becerra faced less scrutiny than a candidate who spends months as the frontrunner. Moneyed interests spent much of their resources on thwarting Steyer, casting Becerra in the role of the reasonable alternative.

And even though Becerra eventually emerged as the candidate to beat, he did so without locking down the sole endorsements of Democratic allies — in particular organized labor groups like the California Teachers Association and SEIU California, an influential collection of service unions — who are usually indispensable for statewide candidates.

Becerra and his team are well aware that he was not the favorite. But with that snub comes a form of freedom. Unbound by litmus tests or policy pledges, Becerra could have more room to maneuver — and even less incentive to squander that runway by committing to an extensive policy agenda.

“It gives him a lot of leeway that I don’t think most governors have had — even those who have won with big mandates,” said a second interest group official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about private dynamics. “Nobody thought he was going to win, so no one was putting him through the ringer on this stuff, so now he has a great opportunity to say: ‘I’m not beholden to anyone. What do I want to do with this?’”

Becerra has kept a relatively low public profile since winning the primary — a conspicuous contrast with his Republican opponent, Steve Hilton, who has maintained a steady stream of events and new proposals as he seeks to make up ground. Becerra has begun to pivot toward the general election, delving into ballot politics by spearheading an anti-voter ID push as a way of protecting California against Trumpism — a winning strategy for governors in a state where anti-MAGA animus abounds.

Despite growing up in Sacramento, Becerra is not seen as a creature of the state capital. The single term he spent in the state Assembly and his four years as attorney general are dwarfed by the decades he spent in Washington, first in Congress — where he became close to Rep. Nancy Pelosi — and then in the Biden administration.

That magnifies the importance of his impending staffing decisions. Becerra is broadly known to be especially reliant on his closest aides. But his former chief of staff recently pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges — Becerra has not been implicated in any wrongdoing and has forcefully pushed back on efforts to do so — creating more uncertainty about who he might hire.

The team currently surrounding him includes longtime staffers and more recent additions with links to Newsom’s orbit, including Lindsey Cobia and Courtni Pugh — two Newsom-world veterans who came onto the Becerra campaign in the later stages — and policy adviser Nicole Elliott, who oversaw cannabis regulation in the Newsom administration and is married to inner-circle Newsom loyalist Jason Elliott.

The mix of familiar and new faces has fueled more speculation about a larger shift underway. Newsom has towered over the state’s politics for nearly a decade, trumpeting California as a national model for Democrats and, in the process, refining the public conception of what California represents. The state’s size and industrial might give it tremendous sway over national politics and commerce.

As Newsom prepares to conclude his Sacramento era and looks ahead to a likely presidential campaign, California is trying to figure out if Becerra represents more of the same or a shift to something new.

Newsom has some ideas.

For now, Becerra occupies an interstitial space. A November victory is basically a foregone conclusion, but he still has a race to run — raising money for a fall campaign that re-introduces him to voters. At the same time,he has to both show deference to Newsom while preparing to succeed him.

There hasn’t been any formal contact between Becerra’s team and the Newsom administration, according to people familiar with discussions, although the two principals met at a San Francisco restaurant soon after Becerra’s primary victory.

But a change is coming. And Newsom’s team is preparing papers and memos to both brief his successor and make the case for preserving some of the governor’s policies.

“There’s a lot of planning to make sure the next governor has a seamless transition, from the budget announcement in January to maintaining existing programs to the thousands of new appointments he’ll have to make,” Newsom spokesperson Bob Salladay said in a text message. “Obviously, the next Governor will have his own priorities, but we’re going to lay out in detail everything Governor Newsom has been working on, and what we feel needs to be protected and managed.”

Both politicians have reasons to think beyond November. Becerra is preparing for the possibility that he’ll soon oversee the world’s fifth-largest economy. Newsom is looking to shape what comes after his governorship by smoothing the handoff and laying out his priorities.

Newsom’s office declined to elaborate on which initiatives he’d most want Becerra to preserve. But Becerra has offered some clues about what he might do.

He has said he will maintain Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty while breaking with the governor on other fronts. Becerra has pledged to restore health coverage for undocumented immigrants that Newsom pared back and indicated he would reverse a Department of Motor Vehicle regulation allowing autonomous trucks without human drivers on board — a departure from Newsom’s history of thwarting labor’s push to limit self-driving vehicles. He initially raised doubts about Newsom’s order banning sales of new gas-powered vehicles in 2035 before saying on Tuesday he believed it was achievable.

And Newsom has ensured that a major test will land on Becerra’s agenda in the first few months of his term. For most of his time in office Newsom, a relative economic moderate, resisted raising taxes. Then, under pressure to find more revenue, Newsom this year signed legislation requiring California to develop a plan for a labor priority: charging corporations whose employees earn low enough wages that they qualify for public benefits.

Becerra has said he supports the policy and suggested it could pay for his goal of keeping Californians insured — potentially delivering a landmark win for some of the same labor unions that did not support him until it was clear he would win. But it would also antagonize business groups like the California Chamber of Commerce, which broke with longstanding practice by endorsing Becerra after having strenuously opposed Steyer.

And it would require securing two-thirds votes for higher taxes from the legislature — never an easy task, despite Democrats’ overwhelming margins in Sacramento, and one that would serve as an early gauge of his relationship with lawmakers who are still assessing their likely next governor.

So will he do it? The man poised to be one of Becerra’s key allies in Sacramento couldn’t say.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas forged a relationship with Becerra years ago. Rivas was a newly elected lawmaker from an obscure coastal enclave who was surprised to get an encouraging call from the attorney general of California. Nearly a decade later, Rivas emerged as one of Becerra’s more prominent endorsers, rallying his caucus at the moment when Becerra needed to cement his nascent frontrunner status. Rivas will now devote some of his fall to campaigning with Becerra against a voter ID ballot initiative.

But as for what Becerra will do if he’s elected, Rivas said he “can’t say for certain he’s going to focus on issue X, A, B or C.” Nevertheless, Rivas said he was confident his old friend was “going to have an ambitious plan and an agenda” — even if it’s not his style to trumpet that vision.

“He doesn’t wake up every morning thinking how he can make headlines or be on the front page of our newspapers,” Rivas said. “He’s someone that doesn’t ever have to speak the loudest, but you can’’ mistake that as being passive. That’s not who Xavier is. He’s intensely competitive, he’s extremely persistent and he’s certainly planning for the future.”

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