Xavier Becerra stood in the kitchen of Guelaguetza, the famed Oaxacan restaurant in Los Angeles, last Tuesday and did something remarkable for a candidate cruising toward the governor’s mansion: he ignored the script. The event was staged to oppose Proposition 39, a Republican-backed voter ID measure. But the former congressman, state attorney general and health secretary wanted to talk about the previous night’s rally in Nebraska, where Donald Trump had mused — specifically, and with unsettling casualness — that Iran might “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego. “Life is already tough enough in California,” Becerra told reporters, his voice tight. “You don’t need to have a president pile on and say, ‘I don’t care about you. If you get bombed, who cares?'”
It was a moment that crystallised the central tension of the 2026 California governor’s race. Becerra, 68, is the prohibitive favourite in a state where Democrats hold a near two-to-one registration advantage. His Republican opponent, Steve Hilton, a former David Cameron strategist turned Fox News host, carries Trump’s endorsement but faces near-impossible odds. The real contest, however, isn’t November. It’s the day after.
The Primary That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen
Six months ago, Becerra’s campaign was a punchline. Democratic insiders whispered he should step aside. The fear was palpable: a crowded field of underperforming Democrats might split the vote, allowing two Republicans to advance under California’s “top-two” primary system. Eric Swalwell was the anointed successor to Gavin Newsom — until his campaign collapsed under allegations of sexual misconduct. Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist, flooded the airwaves with progressive purity tests and attacked Becerra’s corporate ties.
Becerra survived by doing what he has always done: he waited. “When we started this campaign, we were the underdogs,” he told a Hollywood rally on the eve of the June primary. “Actually we were an afterthought, maybe even a punchline.” He ran on a résumé that reads like a Democratic greatest-hits album: 12 terms in the House, architect of the Affordable Care Act, the first Latino attorney general of California, the man who sued the Trump administration more than 100 times. As HHS secretary under Joe Biden, he managed a budget larger than the Pentagon’s.
Critics saw a different record. Former Biden officials described a secretary who was “invisible” during the pandemic’s chaotic middle phase. Immigration advocates pointed to the child migration crisis. Becerra’s allies counter that he was deliberative, methodical — a negotiator who prized progress over purity. “His north star really is his parents,” said Sirat Attapit, a longtime staffer. “The test he applied to policy was personal: ‘Does this help people like my parents? Does it make life just a little bit easier for people like them?'”
Voters bought the résumé. Becerra crushed the primary. Hilton, boosted by Trump, claimed second place. Steyer spent hundreds of millions to finish third.
Governing in Trump’s Shadow
If the primary was about the past, the general election is about a future that arrives on January 5, 2027. Becerra’s first two years in Sacramento will coincide with the final two years of Trump’s second term. The dynamic is familiar. As attorney general from 2017 to 2021, Becerra turned California into the resistance’s legal headquarters. “While we don’t go looking for a fight, we’re prepared to act when the people, resources and values of California are at stake,” he declared while announcing the state’s 100th lawsuit against the administration.
That muscle memory is already twitching. Survivors of the catastrophic 2025 Los Angeles fires are still waiting for federal disaster aid. Communities across the state are reeling from immigration raids and mass deportations. Tariffs and the widening conflict in Iran have driven up costs for everything from fuel to food. And the healthcare cuts embedded in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” are set to take effect next year, threatening a sharp spike in the uninsured rate.
“People are feeling a real sense of urgency about the need to do something about affordability,” said Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California. “I’m not sure there’s going to be much of a honeymoon.”
The PPIC’s latest survey captures the mood: more than eight in ten Californians say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Nearly six in ten say the same of the state. Just two in ten approve of Trump’s performance — a record low across both terms. Yet the same pessimism extends to the state’s direction. Californians want a firewall against Washington. They also want their rent to drop.
The Affordability Crisis No Slogan Can Fix
Becerra’s platform is a study in deliberate ambiguity. He promises to “restore the California dream” — the same dream that carried the son of Mexican immigrants from a one-room Sacramento apartment to Stanford Law School. His specifics: reduce permitting times for housing construction, expand down-payment assistance for first-time buyers, declare a state of emergency on the housing shortage. He recently floated a “power hour” of free midday electricity for low-income households. On artificial intelligence, he supports “real guardrails” to protect workers and children, and believes Californians should share in the prosperity generated by the tech giants headquartered in the state. He has not defined what those guardrails look like.
“He has no incentive now to be specific,” said Melissa Michelson, a political science professor at Menlo College. “Politically, it’s a very logical strategy. Obviously, it’s frustrating to folks who want to know what’s going to happen.”
The frustration is bipartisan. Progressives worry Becerra is an establishment figure unequal to the structural crisis. His opposition to Proposition 40 — a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires to fund healthcare, championed by Bernie Sanders and the California Nurses Association — put him in an awkward coalition with Newsom, tech billionaires, the California Teachers Association and Planned Parenthood Affiliates. “Billionaires should pay more,” Becerra said. “But Prop 40 is not the way to do tax policy.”
Republicans see a different vacancy. “All you ever say is ‘Trump, Trump, Trump,'” Hilton charged in their sole debate. “That’s nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something to change in this state.” The attack lands because it echoes a private fear among Democratic operatives: that anti-Trump rhetoric has become a substitute for governing.
The numbers are daunting. California’s budget relies heavily on capital gains taxes from the ultra-wealthy and the AI-driven surge in tech valuations. That volatility has produced a structural deficit analysts warn will constrain any new spending. Meanwhile, Hollywood is contracting. Insurance markets are retreating from wildfire zones. The median home price remains stubbornly out of reach for median earners.
A Historic First, If He Wins
On Sunday night, Becerra stood on a stage in Los Angeles alongside Newsom, Kamala Harris, and the state’s two US senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff. The crowd waved “Becerra Era” placards. “In so many ways, this election is a choice between reaching higher for California’s golden dream or descending further down Donald Trump’s golden infamous escalator,” he said. “I promise California will be the light at the end of the tunnel for the next two years.”
He speaks often of his parents, who arrived from Mexico with $12 in their pockets. He speaks less often of what his victory would represent: the first Latino elected governor of California since Romualdo Pacheco completed a vacant term in 1875. In a state where more than 40% of residents are Latino and nearly half of all children have an immigrant parent, the symbolism is profound. Becerra knows it. “It’s not because we got lucky,” he told a rally last month, reflecting on the defeat of Proposition 187, the 1994 anti-immigrant measure that galvanised Latino political power. “It was very intentional. There was a lot of hard work done by our parents, by our communities, to get us where we are.”
His final campaign days have been spent barnstorming competitive House districts — the same seats California redrew last year as a counterpunch to Texas gerrymandering. He opposes Proposition 39, the voter ID measure, in English and Spanish. “I want to make sure I protect my mother’s right to vote,” he said.
Why it Matters
California is not just another state; it is the world’s fifth-largest economy, the primary engine of American cultural and technological power, and the Democratic Party’s most reliable electoral fortress. What happens in Sacramento over the next four years will test whether the party’s dominant governing model — high-tax, high-regulation, high-resistance — can deliver tangible relief to a population that feels the dream slipping away. Becerra offers steadiness and institutional knowledge. He lacks a transformative agenda. If he wins, as seems certain, his tenure will be defined not by the lawsuits he files against Washington, but by whether he can make the mathematics of the California dream add up for the people who never left, and the ones still arriving.
