California’s Cardboard-Box Candidate

W hen Joe Biden nominated Xavier Becerra to serve as the secretary of health and human services, Republicans responded with revulsion because of his far-left record, but also with some degree of confusion. Why pick Becerra — a lawyer, state attorney general, and former member of the House with no relevant health-care experience — to run HHS? The only health-care-adjacent “qualification” of which Becerra could boast was his maniacal support for abortion, a zeal that carried over into HHS with abortion mandates for emergency rooms, slashing restrictions on the abortion pill, and more.

California voters should face similar bewilderment over Becerra’s announcement that he is running for governor of California in 2026. As California continues to struggle with many of the same problems Gavin Newsom pledged to confront eight years ago — high cost of living, unsustainable housing costs and lack of construction, homelessness, and a never-ending disaster of a high-speed rail project — Democratic candidates will need to explain how they will deviate from the prior 15 years of failed Democratic policies under Newsom and Jerry Brown. One would think this would be a top messaging priority for any Democrat entering the race.

Yet Becerra kicked off his campaign with the bold strategy of refusing to say a single thing he would do differently from his predecessors. In fact, he implies that he does not even know what policies he would adopt at all. Kudos to KTTV Fox 11 Los Angeles anchor Elex Michaelson, who sat down for an interview with Becerra and had this remarkable exchange about housing affordability:

What might be even more remarkable than Becerra’s refusal to say what he will do is the implication that he does not even know what he is going to do yet. All Becerra said was that he would gather experts’ opinions and see what remains after he “scrubs out” their ideas.

One wonders: Was Becerra genuinely unable to gather expert opinions and “scrub” them into policy proposals before doing this interview? Or — hear me out — is it too much to expect that someone who has served in public office for decades might have some ideas of his own? Maybe one of those experts should run instead of him.

Becerra admits that this strategy — listening to the “experts” and utilizing their ideas — was how he approached Covid and his other work at HHS. Becerra let the CDC incorporate the supposed expertise of teachers’ unions (the most powerful force in California politics, whose support Becerra will need) to help keep schools closed far longer than was necessary. California students suffered tremendously from prolonged closures. Becerra’s legacy at HHS was to enforce whatever the dominant left-wing, technocrat, “expert” consensus was, while far more successful states like Georgia and Florida were bucking that consensus.

This deference to the professional-managerial class has been a defining characteristic of California governance for the past 15 years of unified Democratic rule, to disastrous results. California’s cost of living is 38 percent higher than the national average; its unemployment rate is one of the highest in the country; its poverty rate is the highest in the country, and it is the center of homelessness in America — you get the picture. It has finally become socially acceptable for liberals like Ezra Klein to notice the deep failures that unimpeded Democratic “expert” governance produces.

Becerra’s interview was also a masterful demonstration of the knee-jerk instincts of mediocre Democratic politicians everywhere. In between lauding himself for negotiating better drug prices for seniors (which had nothing to do with the question), Becerra had the gall to blame housing unaffordability on “Republican governors” (last seen in January of 2011) and a nameless, faceless “politics.” California has been unable to gather and distill the best expert ideas on housing “because of all the politics,” according to Becerra.

Sorry, but what “politics” is he talking about? Democrats hold 60 of the 80 seats in the state assembly and 30 of 40 in the state senate, comfortably more than the two-thirds supermajority necessary to introduce state constitutional amendments or increase taxes. Democrats have continuously held every statewide office, from governor to insurance commissioner, since 2011. Liberals thoroughly control the executive bureaucracy and the courts, including six of seven seats on the Supreme Court of California. There are no “politics” to contend with.

Housing construction is insufficient in California because the Democratic Party is beholden to environmentalist nonprofits (and, more importantly, the nonprofits’ billionaire donors) who hate the environmental impact of any and all housing construction. These nonprofits (along with labor unions, NIMBY neighbors, or sometimes even competing developers) weaponize California environmental laws to wildly inflate costs or outright block projects they dislike. In a hilariously ironic example, this past December, a nonprofit used the California Environmental Quality Act to stop the construction of a green, zero-emissions hydrogen power plant in Pixley, claiming it would attract truck pollution.

The fact is that Becerra cannot think outside the box on housing (though other California Democrats are doing so) or any other issue. He is a mirthless, idea-less cardboard box himself, an empty vessel for whatever California’s so-called expert consensus of activists, bureaucrats, and activist-bureaucrats think.

The only good news about Becerra’s campaign is its indication that Kamala Harris might not run for governor. NR’s Jim Geraghty considered that Becerra might not care whether Harris is running and be open to challenging her, but I find that somewhat unlikely. Harris would have such an advantage in a gubernatorial race based on name recognition alone that I think her presence would dissuade serious, non-desperate challengers (apologies to Katie Porter) like Becerra from running, or donors from backing them. I would guess Becerra took the donors’ temperature before announcing, many of whom likely gave to both his and Harris’s prior statewide campaigns.

That Democratic donor machine is near-impossible to beat in California, and if Becerra has its backing, he will be the leading candidate. If Becerra is California’s future, then the future looks a lot like the past.