{"id":356177,"date":"2026-06-11T12:53:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T12:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/356177\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T12:53:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T12:53:15","slug":"becerra-will-be-workhorse-governor-not-a-show-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/356177\/","title":{"rendered":"Becerra will be workhorse governor, not a show horse"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dan Walters<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""A\"
\n\t\t\t\tDemocrat Xavier Becerra speaks at The Western Growers gubernatorial candidate forum at Fresno State in Fresno on April 1, 2026. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters<\/p>\n

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

In the eight decades since the end of World War II, 11 men have served as governor of California<\/a> \u2014 counting Jerry Brown twice.<\/p>\n

Six, beginning with Earl Warren, have been Republicans and the remaining five, including current Gov. Gavin Newsom, have been Democrats.<\/p>\n

However, there\u2019s another way of differentiating their governorships \u2014 whether they were content to govern or yearned for higher office. That\u2019s also a 6-5 split, the majority having national ambitions and the minority focused on governing.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s governorship has about six months remaining, after which he will almost certainly launch his campaign for president. He is in the same ambitious category as Warren, the 1948 GOP candidate for vice president who later became chief justice of the U.S Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Another Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, sought and won the presidency. The four others \u2014Goodwin Knight, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger \u2014 pretty much stuck to governing.<\/p>\n

The same could be said of Democrats Pat Brown and Gray Davis, while Pat Brown\u2019s son Jerry had two very different stints as governor<\/a>, running for president twice and the U.S. Senate once during his first eight years, but sticking to the job after returning to the governor’s office 28 years later.<\/p>\n

This bit of gubernatorial history sets the stage for what is likely to be another governance-oriented regime by Democrat Xavier Becerra<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Becerra will face Republican Steve Hilton<\/a> in the November general election and is the overwhelming favorite. It\u2019s been two decades since any Republican won statewide office in California (Schwarzenegger\u2019s re-election in 2006), and Democrats have a very wide advantage over the GOP in registered voters \u2014 45% to 25%.<\/p>\n

Given the odds in Becerra\u2019s favor, some speculation about his forthcoming governorship is warranted.<\/p>\n

Personally, Becerra is a 180-degree departure from the verbose, ever-bragging Newsom. He\u2019s soft-spoken, obviously proud of his background as the son of working-class immigrants in Sacramento, and a dedicated ally of labor unions<\/a>. Rather than climbing the political ladder one rung at a time, as Newsom has done, Becerra advanced largely through appointments.<\/p>\n

After stints as an attorney in the state Department of Justice and a legislative aide, Becerra served one term in the state Assembly, put in 24 years as a Southern California congressman and was appointed attorney general in 2017 by Jerry Brown, filling the vacancy caused by Kamala Harris\u2019s election to the Senate. Four years later, newly elected President Joe Biden named him health and welfare secretary. He left the post last year and launched his campaign for governor shortly thereafter.<\/p>\n

Becerra was seemingly stuck in the lower tier of candidates and unlikely to make the primary election cut until fortune intervened.<\/p>\n

In April, Rep. Eric Swalwell, who was leading in the polls, pulled out of the race<\/a> and resigned from Congress amidst allegations of sexual harassment and abuse, leaving billionaire Tom Steyer as the leading candidate.<\/p>\n

But overnight, or so it seemed, business interests, labor unions and other elements of the political establishment pumped money and other resources into Becerra\u2019s campaign. That ultimately resulted in a top primary finish and a spot on the November ballot.<\/p>\n

Given his background, it\u2019s unlikely that as governor Becerra would try to make attention-getting splashes as Jerry Brown did in the 1970s and Newsom has done since 2019. He will have a very full plate of issues that remain unresolved, including crises in homelessness and housing, poverty and California’s loss of business and population to other states.<\/p>\n

Becerra’s governorship will probably resemble that of Brown\u2019s second stint, dealing with real issues rather than grandstanding. That would be a fine model to emulate.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dan Walters, CalMatters Democrat Xavier Becerra speaks at The Western Growers gubernatorial candidate forum at Fresno State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,2926,9,8,964,457,76068,3707],"class_list":["post-356177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-governor","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-commentary","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-governor-race-2026","tag-xavier-becerra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}