SACRAMENTO — Winning elections — or achieving any success — often is about being in the right spot at the right moment. Getting lucky and capitalizing. Xavier Becerra is a textbook example.
Becerra’s moribund campaign for California governor was flatlining in early April when he got a shocking break. Five women publicly accused the Democratic front-runner, Rep. Eric Swalwell, of sexual misconduct, including rape. He denied the allegations but quickly quit the race and Congress.
And Becerra surged, leaping from his political deathbed to Democratic front-runner in the contest to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, ultimately earning one of two gubernatorial slots on the November ballot.
That’s assuming the agonizingly slow vote count in last week’s primary election holds up, and it’s virtually inconceivable that it won’t.
But Becerra didn’t suddenly just get lucky with Swalwell’s demise. He has capitalized on life-altering sudden good fortune much of his life.
There was a fortuitous incident in high school that substantially upgraded Becerra’s higher education and undoubtedly his career.
Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants whose construction worker father didn’t go past the sixth grade, was pulling down good grades at McClatchy High in Sacramento when he was invited to a summer program at UC Davis for promising students of color.
One day he saw a classmate toss some wadded paper into a waste basket.
“What’s that?” Becerra asked.
“I was going to apply to this college, but now I’m not,” the kid replied. He had screwed up on a final exam.
“Give it to me,” Becerra said.
It was an application form for Stanford University. Becerra filled it out and “got it in the mail at the last moment,” he recalled to me years later.
He was accepted. His working-class family was able to send him to the pricey, private university thanks to scholarships, federal aid and after-school work.
“I didn’t know where Stanford was until I rode there with my mom,” Becerra told me.
Becerra got a B.A. in economics at Stanford, then earned a law degree there. That ultimately landed him a job as a deputy state attorney general.
He eventually was elected to Congress, filling a vacant central Los Angeles seat when longtime Rep. Edward Roybal retired. He served 12 terms, rising to the No. 4 Democratic leadership position as party caucus chairman.
A big career break came just before the 2016 election. Becerra was back in Sacramento campaigning for two congressional candidates and was invited to a nonpolitical reception. Also attending by chance was Gov. Jerry Brown’s top aide, Nancy McFadden.
McFadden was impressed. They wound up having a long private talk in a corner. Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris was about to win a U.S. Senate seat and Brown would be appointing her replacement as AG.
“What about Xavier?” McFadden thought to herself, she later told me.
McFadden suggested Becerra to Brown, who didn’t really know the guy. But Becerra’s resume stood out and Brown phoned him. There was an instant liking.
“It wasn’t a hard decision,” McFadden recalled. “It just made sense.”
So, Becerra became California’s so-called top cop, a post he really hadn’t been seeking.
But it was the perfect job for Becerra because goofy Donald Trump became president at the same time. Becerra — often with other Democratic state attorneys general — filed 123 lawsuits against the Trump administration and won the vast majority.
The suits ran the gamut of issues, and one was particularly highlighted: Trump’s efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Fast-forward to Joe Biden’s ouster of Trump in 2020 and the newly elected president’s search for Cabinet members.
Biden needed a health secretary and was drawn to Becerra partly because he had helped jockey Obamacare through the U.S. House as a congressional leader and had staunchly defended it in court as California attorney general.
Without being appointed AG, Becerra might be running for House reelection in November instead of now seemingly having an easy shot at becoming California’s first elected Latino governor.
Becerra got a huge break in the gubernatorial race when two potential heavyweight contenders concluded the job wasn’t worth running for. Either person would have been heavily favored to win.
Sen. Alex Padilla opted to keep his comfy job, which opens lots of doors to national cable news sets and doesn’t require running vast, nerdy state bureaucracies.
But “if it hadn’t been for Swalwell’s demise, Becerra never would have made the top two” list of vote-getters in the primary, veteran Democratic strategist Garry South says.
Why did Swalwell’s collapse benefit the mild-mannered, low-key Becerra much more than any other Democrat?
“People are looking for something stable,” he told me several weeks ago. “Everybody likes pizzazz and glitter. Then all of a sudden their hero falls from grace. And they look for who they can trust.”
That trust is built on an impressive resume and likability.
Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer, who has never held public office, spent tens of millions of dollars attacking rival Becerra in TV ads. But it apparently didn’t work because he lacked credibility. Steyer came across to many voters, I suspect, as a wild-eyed meanie.
He would have been better off spending his negative ad money on positive spots promoting himself and becoming more likable.
Likability is a candidate’s No. 1 asset. We learn that as grammar schoolers in class president elections. It beats a billion dollars every time — at least in California.
Now Becerra is on the verge of another break — facing Republican former Fox news commentator Steve Hilton in a lopsided fall contest. Californians haven’t elected a Republican to statewide office in 20 years.
Becerra merely needs to remind voters that Hilton is endorsed by Trump — a nice break gifted by the president.
What else you should be reading
The must-read: Becerra advances to November, moves closer to becoming California’s first elected Latino governor
This just in: 2026 live primary election results
The L.A. Times Special: How a simple mix-up fueled false conspiracies about L.A. vote count
Until next week,
George Skelton
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