Becerra surprised pretty much everyone when he started surging in the polls last month, following the spectacular exit of former Rep. Eric Swalwell amid sexual assault allegations.
The late jump invited late scrutiny of his record as well.
His most recent job as Health and Human Services secretary has provided fodder for opponents and journalists — and for good reason, as we discussed on Political Breakdown with Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier.
But I was more interested in what we could learn from Becerra’s time as attorney general. The job is often a launching pad for gubernatorial campaigns, and Becerra’s record of standing up to President Donald Trump is central to his pitch to voters: He filed 120 lawsuits against the first Trump administration when he was attorney general.
So I dug in. Below are some of my main takeaways. You can read the full piece here.
I spoke with a number of people who worked for Becerra, both on and off the record, and one thing was clear: Becerra does his homework, has high standards and works hard.
Melanie Fontes Rainer, an assistant attorney general under Becerra who focused on health care policy before following him to HHS, described a boss who gets into the weeds on policy and expects you to be right there with him.
“He expects you to work your ass off, because he works his ass off,” she said.
Amanda Renteria, who served as Becerra’s chief operating officer for his first year as attorney general, said his time in Congress prepared him well for his many battles against the first Trump administration.
“Not everyone was aggressive in those early days [of Trump],” she said. “He really was like, nope, we know what’s coming at us and we’re gonna be ready.”
When Democratic lawmakers passed a landmark police transparency bill in 2018, no one expected the Democratic attorney general to be its biggest hurdle. But Becerra went to court repeatedly to fight that law, which allows for the release of disciplinary records of police officers accused of sexual assault, excessive use of force and other serious misconduct.
Even his own staff seemed perplexed by the fight. Becerra first refused to release records created before the law took effect in 2019, then continued to withhold the documents even after an appeals court said the law was retroactive to pre-2019.
Perhaps most surprising was his aggressive response to two journalists who obtained a list of police officers convicted of crimes. His office provided that list — then threatened the reporters with criminal prosecution, claiming it was mistakenly provided and illegal to even have. The threats fly in the face of First Amendment protections afforded journalists, experts said.
“It’s either clear ignorance of a core First Amendment principle or its willful disregard of it. Neither of those, I think, reflect very well,” said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, which successfully sued Becerra and other police agencies, along with media organizations including KQED.
Becerra has continued to defend how he handled the law and its implementation, saying he simply wanted to make sure of the law’s limitations before releasing information into the world.
Becerra filed a number of lawsuits as attorney general that were aimed at protecting the environment, but in this race he has been repeatedly attacked for being too close to Big Oil.
He accepted the maximum allowable donation from Chevron, something he defended when my colleague, Scott Shafer, interviewed him recently. That’s provided fodder to fellow Democrat Tom Steyer and his allies, who have been running ads highlighting Becerra’s answer.
The oil money continues to flow in Becerra’s direction: Last week, the oil drilling company California Resources Corporation contributed $500,000 to an independent expenditure committee that is supporting Becerra.
Environmental activists don’t paint Becerra as an all-out ally of oil, but they have concerns, particularly in light of his apparent reluctance to pursue some litigation against oil companies when he was attorney general.
“His time as attorney general was a story of what he didn’t do,” said Kassie Siegel, climate political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund.
Becerra has appeared unsteady when pressed on housing policy, including at a recent forum hosted by Ezra Klein of the New York Times. In his first answer, he pivoted to blaming Trump for high housing prices — a problem, Klein pointed out, that clearly predates the current administration.
Advocates for building more housing told me that it felt like Becerra was more interested in blocking bad developments than ensuring good market-rate ones got built. And they said he focused a lot of energy on making sure that cities and counties moved forward with affordable housing, to the exclusion of enforcing other housing mandates.
But Laura Foote, executive director of the pro-development group YIMBY Action, said she thinks Becerra has come a long way. She gave him credit for appearing more interested in the issue as a candidate for governor, a shift that matches the state’s overall political evolution.
“I think that now there’s sort of a greater recognition that the overall housing shortage is damaging everyone, not just low-income people. He has made that pivot,” she said.
My takeaway after talking to more than a dozen people who worked for Becerra or on issues he handled as attorney general?
He’s unafraid of taking on Trump and Republicans, but he has been a bit more wary of picking fights with special interest groups closer to home. He can be cautious, but he is clearly willing to change his mind if presented with reasons to do so. He expects a lot from the people around him, but from himself as well.
And unlike many of his opponents, he has a long record to pick through — experience that’s proving to be both an asset and a liability.
To learn more about how we use your information, please read our privacy policy.