What Becerra’s historic win says about Latino political power in California
Mike Madrid was prepping to interview Xavier Becerra on Olvera Street last month when the immensity of the moment hit him.
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That morning, Becerra held a rally for his gubernatorial campaign in the birthplace of Los Angeles alongside California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and the leader of the state Senate, Monique Limón, that doubled as a referendum on where Latinos stood politically.
Never before have Latinos occupied the top spots in both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s mansion simultaneously, Rivas told the cheering crowd. Becerra reminded the audience that the moment was fraught for Latinos, though. Federal agents were still detaining undocumented immigrants across the state, and Latino residents — the state’s largest ethnic group at 41% — were suffering under the crushing cost of food, gas and housing.
“[Latinos] are here, we are present and we will fight,” Becerra said. “But right now, our fight is to get the vote out, to make sure everyone understands that our power lies in our vote.”
Gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra purchases an agua fresca from Taqueria Vista Hermosa in Mercado La Paloma on June 9.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
Madrid, a longtime political commentator and strategist, had set up his recording equipment at the Pico House, formerly a historic hotel named after the last Mexican governor of California. He recalled how Pio Pico, who helped found the California Republican Party but ended up dying destitute, opened the structure in 1870 as a testament to what Latinos had contributed to their state. But they would eventually be seen as a relic of the bygone days when Mexicans ruled — days that gringos imagined would never return.
The symbolism of a Becerra victory would be “kind of a big deal,” Madrid said, representing a back to the future opportunity for an ethnic group that ruled California until the United States won the Mexican-American War, then was relegated to political irrelevance for over a century before finally being at the doorstep of the governor’s mansion again. Becerra would become California’s first Latino governor in modern times and the second since Romualdo Pacheco served for 10 months in 1875.
Now that the race has been called, Becerra’s victory signifies how much Latinos have advanced since Pico’s days. But it’s also anticlimactic.
As California’s Latino population grew and their political power eventually did too, the days when such a victory would have been an inspiring surprise are long gone. Becerra is now just one of many Latino political captains who steer the Golden State.
Xavier Becerra, right, fist bumps with Roy Kuroyawagi, owner of Japangeles, during a tour of businesses in Little Tokyo on Aug. 18.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero became the first Latina to occupy that role when Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed her in 2023. The state’s senior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, is the son of Mexican immigrants who settled in the San Fernando Valley. Rep. Pete Aguilar, a fourth-generation Mexican American from Redlands, is the third most powerful Democrat in Congress as the head of the party’s House caucus. Lorena Gonzalez, daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and white mother, leads the California Labor Federation, a longtime kingmaker in state politics.
And now, with Becerra at the helm, they will have to govern at a precarious moment, inheriting a state with existential problems affecting everyone, everywhere.
Droughts, El Niño, an eroding coast and the year-round threat of wildfires, much of it accelerated by climate change. Stagnant population growth that threatens to shrink the number of congressional seats. A presidential administration that keeps fighting California in federal court and has attempted to block the votes of 20,000 Californians it alleges are noncitizens. A restive population that Madrid predicts won’t let Becerra bask in his historic win.
“This is what you’ve always wanted. Here’s the keys to the car,” he cracked. “You’re responsible for it now. Who you’re going to blame if things don’t get better — Trump?”
Jody Agius Vallejo, associate director of USC’s Equity Research Institute, said she hopes that California’s new caretakers remember the struggles of getting to the summit — that they represent the dreams and battles of generations of politicians, voters and activists — as they embark on whatever’s next.
“You use these narratives [of Latino personal and collective struggle] to get elected,” she said. “Use them to understand what people need, and govern for them.”
1. Patricia Guerrero, left, is sworn-in to the California Supreme Court in 2022 by Gov. Gavin Newsom. (Nathaniel Levine / The Sacramento Bee via Associated Press) 2. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., questions Attorney General Pam Bondi as she testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee in 2025. (Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press) 3. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., speaks at a Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing in 2026. (Allison Robbert / Associated Press) 4. Lorena Gonzalez at podium with California Attorney General Rob Bonta during a news conference in Los Angeles in 2024. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
Many voters were already shrugging about the significance of Becerra’s likely victory — especially Latinos. Only 45% of Latino voters in California felt “proud” about the prospect of a Latino governor, according to a Berkeley IGS poll released last week.
Those results aren’t surprising to Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach-area state senator who chairs California’s Latino Legislative Caucus. She praised Becerra’s victory as the culmination of decades of political organizing. But voters care more about results than identity, she said — something the Latino political class has been slow to realize.
“People will say, ‘OK, that’s great [he’s Latino], but how are you fighting back?’” she said. “I just think we need to lead now and not advertise we’re Latinos.”
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Xavier Becerra waves goodbye after a visit to Hoover St. Elementary School in March 2001.
(Kim D. Johnson / Associated Press)
Becerra has long been a poster child for Latino political firsts, representing L.A.’s Eastside in the state Assembly and Congress for 27 years before Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to be California’s first Latino attorney general in 2017. Three years later, Becerra became the country’s first Latino Health and Human Services secretary under President Biden.
Becerra has rarely highlighted his latinidad while never shying away from his background as the child of Mexican immigrants. He told Madrid at the end of their interview at the Pico House that Californians should be prouder of his working class roots than his ethnicity.
Some have complained that Becerra is an unworthy, boring torchbearer for Latinos — not dynamic enough to meet a moment where many hoped for a firebrand. But in many ways, his style is a callback to the past.
When Latino politicians first began winning local and state legislative elections in the decades after World War II, they “were constantly about, ‘How do I mobilize the Latino vote without alienating the white vote, and how do I get support from the establishment which is white?’” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University and a longtime chronicler of California politics.
Latinos were the majority of the population in some areas during that era, but politicians couldn’t rely solely on them to win, because they still didn’t represent a majority of voters. That changed by the late 1980s, as immigration brought millions of Latinos to California.
Civil rights activists successfully sued cities and counties to draw district lines making it easier for Latinos to vote for Latino candidates. Local activists registered new voters by selling them a future where people like them would be leaders, not tokens. Pioneers like Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina subsequently created political machines, which helped Becerra get his start.
Mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, center, and Assemblywoman Karen Bass, left, dance to gospel music sung by the McCoy Memorial Baptist choir during an endorsement celebration in 2005.
(Stefano Paltera / For The Times)
That set the stage for politicians who “didn’t need the external validation anymore” of white voters or power brokers, Guerra said. “They could now say, ‘I am a Latino candidate with a Latino agenda, because I represent a Latino district.’”
By 1996, two years after the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 galvanized Latino activism, a record number of newly registered Latino voters in Orange County helped Loretta Sanchez upset longtime Republican Rep. Bob Dornan, the first welt of purple in a famously red county. That same year, Cruz Bustamante became the first Latino Assembly speaker, then lieutenant governor — the first Latino elected to statewide office in California since Pacheco ascended to the same position in the 1870s. In 2005, Antonio Villaraigosa was elected mayor of Los Angeles, sparking national headlines as the first Latino to occupy that position in modern times.
The Latino political firsts kept coming over the next 20 years, now reaching a pinnacle with Becerra’s win. Guerra said that “incremental” approach made Latinos mainstream to the point where the novelty of another milestone quickly wore off.
“Do you want a transformative moment? Absolutely,” he said. “But those come few and far in between. Incremental comes every two years.”
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra takes a selfie with supporters after a campaign stop on May 21 at the Wende Museum in Culver City.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Becerra started his campaign for governor far behind in the polls, surging after Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out due to sexual assault allegations. Becerra’s campaign leaned into his milquetoast persona and crowned him Tío Xavier — Uncle Xavier — to market him as a non-threatening moderate who happened to be Latino.
Madrid, a lifelong Republican, voted for Becerra because of GOP candidate Steve Hilton’s refusal to denounce MAGA. He also thinks Becerra can “resurrect a healthy economy for the working class” — something he accuses Democrats of “abandon[ing] for a generation.” The “burden” is on California’s Latino leaders to show they can serve not just their own community but everyone, he said.
On Monday, Becerra mingled with eaters at Homegirl Cafe in Chinatown, looking anodyne in a white shirt, wire-framed glasses and tan khakis as supporters asked for selfies or a hug.
Half-hearted shouts of “¡Sí se puede!” gave way to authentically boisterous chants of “Be-ce-rra!”
The heavy favorite for governor took questions in the packed dining room and didn’t flinch when I asked him to reflect on the fact that Latinos will head every branch of California government if he wins.
“We’re all fortunate when a state like California gives all of us opportunities to be in position of authority,” Becerra replied.
He nodded at Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who stood by his side.
“But we gotta do it right,” he said. “And it’s on me to be a good governor — not to be a good Latino governor, but to be a good governor.”
