Gavin Newsom’s ‘dark horse’ governor favorite Xavier Becerra brutally mocked behind the scenes
Even Biden insiders are laughing at Xavier Becerra’s surge as California’s likely next governor, the man who couldn’t lead HHS during the pandemic now leads the polls.
Xavier Becerra’s sudden status as front-runner to replace Gavin Newsom has left former Biden administration colleagues openly mocking the idea behind closed doors. Six anonymous staffers told Politico the notion of a Governor Becerra elicits the "biggest laugh every time we send around a poll." With the June primary less than a month away, Becerra sits atop surveys at 24 percent in one April poll and tied at 19 percent in another.
The disconnect is glaring. Becerra ran HHS at the height of COVID yet "took a backseat to Dr. Fauci," one former staffer said, adding he "didn’t visibly lead on implementation" and required layers of handlers to reach the president. Briefings became embarrassing: Biden would "pepper him with questions and he would not be able to answer them." Another described him as skilled at politics but lost when crises hit, the exact test a governor faces daily.
His resume gets dissected in harsher terms. As attorney general he filed lawsuits, as a congressman he introduced bills and helped constituents. Cabinet leadership exposed the gap. "When people noticed he wasn’t cut out for [the Cabinet] was when there was a crisis," one staffer recalled. The migrant surge at the border and pandemic response both dogged his record, yet California Democrats appear ready to hand him the state’s top job for lack of better options.
The absence of heavyweight backing tells its own story. Biden has endorsed other former administration alumni running for office but pointedly skipped Becerra. Kamala Harris has done the same. Newsom has avoided an endorsement despite reports that his aides favor the former HHS secretary. Xochitl Hinojosa, Biden’s former Justice Department communications director, put it bluntly after Becerra’s recent CNN debate: "A lot of people in the Biden administration are talking about this because they realize that he was not an effective HHS secretary."
Even the race’s internal logic exposes weakness. One staffer shrugged that Becerra became the face of the contest simply because "What other choice is there?" Most don’t seem to believe he can actually win, they just view him as preferable to Tom Steyer. A lone defender, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, called the criticism the product of "more junior people" and insisted Becerra delivered powerfully on Biden’s agenda. The rest of the anonymous chorus tells a different tale.
California voters now confront the contradiction: a candidate whose own former colleagues see him as unprepared for executive power is nonetheless positioned to lead the nation’s largest state. The laughter in Washington may soon echo in Sacramento.
Original reporting: New York Post.
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