Opinion: California’s Next Governor May Be All Business

If Xavier Becerra is California’s next governor, he’ll be a workhorse rather than a show horse

By Dan Walters, CalMatters

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

In the eight decades since the end of World War II, 11 men have served as governor of California — counting Jerry Brown twice.

Six, beginning with Earl Warren, have been Republicans and the remaining five, including current Gov. Gavin Newsom, have been Democrats.

However, there’s another way of differentiating their governorships — whether they were content to govern or yearned for higher office. That’s also a 6-5 split, the majority having national ambitions and the minority focused on governing.

Newsom’s 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.

Another Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, sought and won the presidency. The four others —Goodwin Knight, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger — pretty much stuck to governing.

The same could be said of Democrats Pat Brown and Gray Davis, while Pat Brown’s son Jerry had two very different stints as governor, 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.

This bit of gubernatorial history sets the stage for what is likely to be another governance-oriented regime by Democrat Xavier Becerra.

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

Given the odds in Becerra’s favor, some speculation about his forthcoming governorship is warranted.

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

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’s 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.

Becerra was seemingly stuck in the lower tier of candidates and unlikely to make the primary election cut until fortune intervened.

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

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

Given his background, it’s 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.

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

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.