I’m voting for Xavier Becerra for governor, and I want to say why.
When a candidate self-funds $130 million, he never has to build a coalition. He never has to sit with communities that don’t already agree with him, earn trust, or be changed by what he hears. That back and forth isn’t just campaigning. It’s the education that shapes whether someone can actually govern. Becerra has spent his career doing that work, from Sacramento to Congress to leading the nation’s pandemic health response. He didn’t buy his way to any of it.
And you can see it in who’s behind him. Planned Parenthood, whose CEO said plainly that it takes more than pretty words and a big bank account to get things done. Equality California. CHIRLA, the state’s major immigrant rights organization, who interviewed every candidate before 200 of their leaders before deciding. Twenty-nine California legislators and members of Congress including Jim Clyburn and Ted Lieu. These aren’t purchased endorsements. They are earned ones, from organizations that did the work of vetting him.
If your reason for looking past him is electability, look at the polls. The candidate of color is leading. That argument doesn’t hold up anymore, and it never did.
Remember when billionaire money in politics was the whole problem? Occupy, Bernie’s entire 2016 campaign, Warren’s wealth tax, the outrage over Bloomberg self-funding in 2020. The argument wasn’t that billionaire money is corrosive unless they say the right things. It was that the structural problem doesn’t have a charming exception. Bernie himself quietly said he’s not a fan of billionaires getting involved in politics, yet his organization endorsed Steyer. They know. They just decided fear mattered more than principle.
What finally made me write this? My 6-year-old son was talking about Steyer because he’s all over everything they watch. That’s not a movement. That’s what $130 million buys.
Now, think about what California is actually facing. A governor who will have to fight Trump in court from day one. A housing and cost of living crisis squeezing nearly half of all California households. A healthcare system under federal attack. A homelessness epidemic. Wildfire risk and a $15 billion to $25 billion budget deficit. These are not abstract challenges. They require someone who has actually done this work at the highest levels. Becerra sued the Trump administration over 120 times as Attorney General and won most of those cases, protecting the ACA, DACA recipients, and California’s sanctuary law. He then ran the nation’s entire health system. On every single issue California is facing right now, his resume is a direct match. Steyer has climate philanthropy. Becerra has a decade of wins.
California has a habit of electing governors who look the part. Schwarzenegger was a movie star. Newsom performed like a governor before he ever was one. There’s always been a premium on charisma and spectacle. Becerra doesn’t offer that, and I think that’s exactly why people keep looking past him. But this is one of those rare moments where the most qualified candidate and the most needed candidate happen to be the same person. California right now doesn’t need a performer. It needs someone who has faced down hostile federal administrations and won, who understands health, immigration, and environmental law from the inside. Competence is his resume. And after everything this state has been through, that should be more than enough.
