What Becerra’s historic win says about Latino political power in California
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- Xavier Becerra will be California’s first Latino governor in modern times and the second since Romualdo Pacheco served for 10 months in 1875.
- It’s a significant milestone, but it’s also anticlimactic.
- As the state’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.
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.”
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.
A four-part series by Times columnist Gustavo Arellano dives into the history of Latino political power in Los Angeles.
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.
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.”
Becerra has long been an exemplar of 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.
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.”
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 diners 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.”
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The article presents Xavier Becerra’s victory as a historic milestone: a Latino now leads California alongside Latino leaders in both chambers of the Legislature. It places that achievement in the context of a long struggle for political representation, from the loss of Mexican rule to voter organizing and successive Latino political “firsts.”
- At the same time, the piece argues that the milestone is less surprising than it once would have been. Latino political influence has grown through incremental gains, making Becerra one of many Latino leaders in positions of power rather than a solitary breakthrough.
- The article contends that representation matters most when it leads to effective governing. Becerra and other Latino leaders face challenges that affect Californians broadly, including high living costs, climate risks and federal-state conflict; the article emphasizes that voters will judge leaders by results, not identity alone.
- The piece warns that a historic election cannot by itself resolve the difficulties facing Latino communities. A recent Berkeley poll likewise found that many Latino voters were proud of the prospect but were cautious about how much one governor could change, amid concerns about prices and immigration enforcement.[1]
Different views on the topic
- Some voters place less importance on the governor’s ethnicity than on policy and performance. In the Berkeley IGS poll, 52% of Latino likely voters said electing the first Latino governor was “not too important” or “not at all important”; the article also reports that Latino political leaders see voters’ focus on how leaders will act as more consequential than their identity.[1]
- The poll also suggests that pride and expectations do not necessarily go together: only 45% of Latino likely voters said they felt proud about the prospect, and a Berkeley researcher cautioned that a single elected official would not be enough to ease immigrant communities’ fears and hardships.[1]
- Conversely, the evidence does not support dismissing the symbolic value of representation altogether. Among Becerra supporters, 60% said electing a Latino governor could help ease fears in the Latino community, though Latino voters overall were divided on that possibility.[3]
- Researchers also point to varied influences on Latino voting—including age, education, gender, economic concerns and immigration experiences—rather than treating Latino voters as a single constituency united by identity.[2]
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