California AG Rob Bonta Won’t Rule Out a Run for Governor Amid Campaign Fund Questions

California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Thursday left the door open to a possible run for governor, weeks after previously saying he would stay out of the 2026 race.

In an interview with KQED’s Political Breakdown, Bonta also provided new details about his spending of campaign funds on legal services as he faced questions in the federal corruption investigation that ensnared former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao. Bonta is not accused of any wrongdoing, but questions about his connection to the East Bay recycling executives at the center of the scandal have swirled alongside speculation about his political future.

As attorney general, Bonta has spearheaded California’s legal battles against the Trump administration, and his position as the state’s top law enforcement official could serve as a springboard to pursue the governorship.

Bonta said he had initially hoped former Vice President Kamala Harris would run to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is termed out in 2027. When Harris decided against running, Bonta shifted his support to Sen. Alex Padilla.

At a press conference in October, Bonta said he was “staying out of the governor’s race.” Then, in early November, Padilla announced he was also declining to enter the campaign.

Asked on Thursday whether the door to running was completely shut, Bonta responded that he is “completely focused on the work I’m doing as AG.”

“I will say this: I’ve been getting a very significant amount of encouragement to consider running for governor, and for that I am flattered, I’m honored, I’m grateful,” Bonta said. “It comes from a wide variety of people and entities that I very much respect and that I know care deeply about the future of California, but I am focused on being AG and I have nothing to announce today.”

The list of candidates running in the June primary includes Democrats such as former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as well as Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican. But the field continues to grow — megadonor Tom Steyer jumped in the race on Wednesday — and 44% of voters remain undecided, according to a Berkeley IGS poll released this month.

Officially, Bonta has been raising money to run for another term as attorney general. His campaign finance filings this year have raised eyebrows for the large sums he is spending on legal fees: over $468,000 to the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

“Over a year ago, maybe 14 months ago, the federal government reached out to me and said that they thought I may have information that would be relevant to the investigation that they were engaged in of other individuals that they were focused on,” Bonta said. “Having never done this before, I wanted to make sure I had an attorney who could guide me through the process and ensure that I provided everything that could be helpful.”

The federal probe resulted in a January indictment of Thao, as well as David and Andy Duong, the father-and-son owners of the recycling company California Waste Solutions.

The Duongs are accused of funding campaign mailers and a no-show job for Thao’s boyfriend. In exchange, Thao is alleged to have promised an extension of Oakland’s contract with California Waste Solutions, an appointment of a city official hand-picked by the Duongs and a city purchase of housing units from another company run by the Duongs. Both Andy and David Duong, along with Thao and her romantic partner, Andre Jones, have pleaded not guilty.

The Duongs were longtime political supporters of Bonta, who previously represented Oakland and Alameda in the state Assembly. After California Waste Solutions was raided in 2024, Bonta returned $155,100 in donations that he had received from the family.

“The East Bay political world is relatively finite and small, and so I operated in that space for a number of years and had a really broad number of supporters,” Bonta said. “The Duong family was active in East Bay politics as well, and had supported me.”

“When the news came out that there was raids on homes … and potential indictments coming down that eventually did come down, that was a shock and a surprise to me,” he added.

Bonta said he hired lawyers to guide him through the process of fulfilling the investigators’ requests.

“They helped gather all the information that the federal government was interested in and provide it,” he said. “And then I made myself available to answer any questions about any of that information, any of those documents and anything else they wanted to talk to me about.”

Bonta said that at no point was he given the sense that he was a target of the investigation.

“I got a very clear opposite sense that they are absolutely not investigating me and that I am not a target,” he added. “I am someone that they thought may have relevant information about an investigation that they were engaged in of others.”

Earlier Thursday, the politics newsletter East Bay Insiders reported that Bonta received a letter in May 2024 from Mario Juarez, a former Duong business partner who is believed to have cooperated with the federal investigation, warning the attorney general that the Duong family possessed a recording of Bonta in a “compromising situation.”

Bonta confirmed to KQED that he received the letter, but said that “the reference to any video is absolutely not true. It’s false, and there is no video.”

He said much of the letter seemed “wild and baseless,” but he was concerned about Juarez’s claims that he felt his life was endangered.

“I took steps to provide that letter to local law enforcement partners to ensure that safety was enhanced and people were protected,” Bonta said.