Becerra ramps up campaign for governor

Republican Steve Hilton has spent months traveling around California in his bid for governor, while Democratic front-runner Xavier Becerra has only recently emerged from quasi-hibernation into the political sunshine.

Hilton criticized Becerra for taking the support of the state’s voters for granted and not holding a public campaign event to explain his detailed plans to address California’s many ills. Although Becerra committed to participating in multiple debates, he declined several invitations, agreeing to a one-hour stand-off with Hilton on CNN in late September.

Hilton held 14 public events that month, a dozen more than Becerra, but the Democratic spokesman said he attended multiple events sponsored by other groups. Hilton doesn’t foot the bill.

“He’s a dud, a completely unaccomplished little guy who is so smug, so arrogant, so self-righteous that he thinks he deserves the job just because he was selected as a useful puppet by the Sacramento machine,” Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and British political strategist, said last week in West Sacramento.

On October 10, Becerra, the long-time congressman and Biden’s U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, mocked his Republican opponent.

“Uh, hello?” Becerra said sarcastically to reporters in Sacramento after being asked about his absence from the campaign trail.

“It’s his problem that Steve Hilton can’t see me on Fox News, not my problem. I’m going to talk to voters,” Becerra said, rattling off a list of his recent campaign events. “I’ll be talking to them until November 3rd, and then when I become the next governor, I’ll be ready to talk to voters, taxpayers and the people of California.”

Becerra held a news conference with Latino leaders and prominent Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday to urge voters to cast their ballots despite alleged intimidation by the Trump administration.

He held get-out-the-vote events in Santa Clarita and Glendale on Monday, shortly after campaigning for former state Sen. and congressional candidate Richard Penn in Sacramento, and urged voters to cast their ballots early at an event in Santa Rosa. In September, Becerra introduced Proposition 1, which was on the November ballot and would have allowed the state to sell nearly $11.3 billion in bonds to fund affordable housing.

“We know we can keep these men and women in orange vests working so that if we pass Proposition 1, they can afford a home,” Becerra said, standing in front of a chain-link fence surrounding a vacant lot in North Long Beach.

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, who endorsed Becerra in April and attended a housing event, pushed back against the notion that Becerra took the election for granted after winning first place in the primary, making him the first Mexican American elected California governor.

“I’ve witnessed firsthand the work that goes on under the radar that may not be explicitly, overtly political or openly viewed as a campaign, but it’s something you want to see,” Richardson said in an interview Thursday, adding that he saw Becerra meeting with elected officials from both parties, mayors of the state’s largest cities and labor leaders. “I’ve seen a very motivated candidate who has always made sure to put in real-time investment in building relationships that ultimately translates into a successful governor, because that’s the goal. I mean, ultimately, what we want is a leader who has the relationships to lead our state.”

Becerra’s campaign said the candidate has met regularly with voters since the primary, but has had no media coverage of Californians’ opinions, and that he will appear frequently in public in the weeks leading up to the election, when “voters really get involved when the ballots arrive in the mailbox,” spokesman Jonathan Underland said.

“People have very busy lives. They worry about paying their medical bills, putting food on the table, paying for gas,” Andran said. “Secretary Becerra is most concerned about the very real issues Californians face every day.”

Hilton, by contrast, has been on a public speaking tour of California since the June primary.

Becerra’s schedule is not surprising given the Democratic dominance in California, where the party outnumbers Republicans in registered voters by nearly two to one. While appearances at parades, pancake breakfasts and voters’ living rooms can be effective for candidates participating in local campaigns, the most effective way for candidates to reach voters in a state as vast as California is through ongoing ad buys, which can cost tens of millions of dollars.

Tim Rosales, a veteran Republican consultant who led businessman John Cox’s failed gubernatorial campaign in 2018, previously worked on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful bid to unseat Gov. Gray Davis. 2003 recall campaign.

Newsom was more active in his general election campaign against Cox in 2018 than Becerra was this year, but Rosales believes that may be because Becerra sees this as the final chapter of his political career, which may have been the case with former Gov. Jerry Brown in his 2014 re-election bid. However, Newsom is considering a run for the White House in 2028.

“For Xavier Becerra, this may be more of a swan song, the icing on the cake for a long and distinguished political career, while for Gavin Newsom it’s a stepping stone,” Rosales said.

As of Friday, Becerra had raised $40.5 million, while Hilton had raised $29 million, according to fundraising disclosure reports filed with the state. Those numbers don’t include Becerra’s exponential advantage over Hilton in spending on the Independent Expenditure Committee during the primary.

Rob Stutzman, a veteran Republican strategist who advises Schwarzenegger, said that while Becerra is almost certain to become the state’s next governor, he should be cautious about his approach in the weeks leading up to the November election.

“What he needs to be careful about is that the big night of Democrats across the country looks quiet in California, and if that happens, the analysis will be his fault,” Stutzman said. “As the clear leader of the party now in California, he should want to optimize his political capital. So he has to be careful not to build a stronger brand over the next three weeks that leaves some political capital behind.”

The last gubernatorial race that was considered competitive was in 2010 between Brown and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, then a Republican who spent $144 million of her personal fortune on the campaign.

That race drew national attention, but Brown defeated Whitman by nearly 13 percentage points. Since that campaign, every gubernatorial election has languished and been ignored in national politics, while Democratic candidates have won handily. The state has experienced contentious gubernatorial primaries, particularly in 2018 and this year, when the Democratic field was so crowded that party leaders urged low-poll candidates, including Becerra, to drop out.

He won first place in the primary behind then-Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) dropped out of school amid rape and sexual assault charges.

Mason Harrison worked for Republicans Carly Fiorina in the 2010 Senate race, Neel Kashkari in the 2014 gubernatorial campaign, and worked with Hilton on business ventures but had nothing to do with Hilton’s campaign. He noted that while Brown is well-known to Californians for his decades in the public eye, Becerra is not. However, given the Democratic advantage in voter registration in the state and the current headwinds facing Republicans in California and nationally, it’s not surprising that Becerra is less well-known than Hilton. Harrison compared Becerra’s campaign to the one in 2024 before Biden drops out of the race.

“Calculatively, the further along he is in the campaign, the greater the chance that he’s going to make a mistake in an interview or get some tough questions that he has to answer, and in a year when you’re facing a party that’s probably going to lose miserably by historical standards, what’s the benefit of doing that,” Harrison said. “Why try to be more competitive by making yourself more vulnerable?”

In fact, Becerra has participated in many debates before, but has only participated in one so far and seems unlikely to agree to another. Still, he repeatedly pushed back against the idea that he took the campaign for granted.

“If I wanted to go down the coast, I would be on the coast right now instead of with you,” he told reporters on a sweltering August afternoon in downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, a district he represents in Congress.

There, he met with local business and community leaders. He also purchased merchandise and gourmet treats, including sweet mango mochi wrapped in thin, fluffy pancakes at a 123-year-old Japanese confectionery shop.

New York Times staff writer Nicole Nixon contributed to this report from Sacramento.