In Washington, the knives are out for Xavier Becerra. Most anonymously, of course
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- Becerra’s years in the Biden administration have become a focus of attacks against the gubernatorial front-runner.
- The former health secretary has been criticized for his performance during the pandemic and handling of unaccompanied migrant children.
- While there are legitimate questions, some attacks appear to be ax-grinding, or a stab at political relevance.
Xavier Becerra has spent nearly four decades in elected office. To some that speaks of extensive experience and a deep grounding in policy. To others, it smacks of political careerism and a long-term investment in the failed status quo.
Wired or tired?
It all depends on your perspective.
Becerra, a California native, emerged from the hothouse of Latino politics on Los Angeles’ Eastside. He was elected to the state Assembly in 1990, served 12 terms in Congress, was California attorney general and then, for nearly four years, ran the Department of Health and Human Services under President Biden.
It’s that latter stint that’s become a particular focus in the final days of California’s long and winding gubernatorial primary.
As Becerra surged from inconsequence to front-runner, opponents — led by chief Democratic rival Tom Steyer — have hammered Becerra’s performance in the Biden administration, suggesting he was AWOL during the COVID-19 pandemic and inept in his handling of unaccompanied migrant children, 85,000 of whom were supposedly “lost” on Becerra’s watch.
Politics is about persuasion and emotion, not rocket telemetry, so it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.
On the cusp of California’s gubernatorial primary, voters are closely split among three candidates to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to a new poll.
“You look at Xavier and he seems to be perceived as a thoughtful, credible, trustworthy choice. That’s what I hear when I talk to regular people who aren’t political insiders,” said Darry Sragow, a Democrat strategist who’s spent decades running California campaigns. “So you see the people who want to take him out going after one of the words I just used here, which is ‘trustworthy’ and, to some extent, ‘credible.’”
A recent Steyer mail piece — which, naturally, features a grim-faced portrait of Becerra — accuses him of “mismanagement,” “scandal” and “incompetence,” and cites a 2024 quote from Susan Rice, a former Biden domestic policy advisor, describing the ex-Cabinet member as an “idiot.” (Apparently “bitch-a—,” another Rice epithet from the same Axios news report, was deemed unsuitable.)
The mail piece also quotes Xochitl Hinojosa, a Justice Department spokesperson in the Biden administration, saying Becerra “was not effective in government,” though several people who worked in the White House could not think of any occasion, or any reason, Hinojosa would have meaningfully interacted with Becerra.
Pretty weak sauce. But at least Hinojosa, who delivered her gibe on one of CNN’s talking-head shows, was willing to publicly attach herself to the criticism.
Six former Biden administration officials were quoted by Politico “reacting with a mix of incredulity, mockery and resignation” to Becerra’s sudden ascendance in the governor’s race. Critics also unloaded to NBC News and other outlets. All of them spoke anonymously.
Therefore, it’s impossible to discern their motivations. Jealousy? Ego? An attempt to stay politically relevant?
Or maybe Becerra was, indeed, a feckless, flailing and thoroughly awful Cabinet member, deserving of scorn and shame.
Ron Klain, who was Biden’s chief of staff during the first two years of his presidency, doesn’t believe so.
“I think he did an excellent job as HHS secretary and I think the record shows that,” Klain said, citing, among other accomplishments, Becerra’s work helping negotiate a drop in the price of prescription drugs and expanding healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
On COVID-19, Becerra “wasn’t confirmed until several months into the Biden administration. Dr. [Anthony] Fauci had been on the job and was quite a well-known figure to Americans. So, of course, he became more the face of the COVID response.”
“On immigration,” Klain went on. “Xavier’s part was small and discreet. He wasn’t the secretary of Homeland Security. He didn’t run the border. He oversaw an office called the Office of Refugee Resettlement” responsible for processing children who crossed the border alone. “I was in meetings where he was a passionate and forceful advocate for these minors,” Klain said.
Still, there are legitimate questions, notwithstanding Becerra’s deflections — Trump! MAGA! Trump! — about his handling of the migrant children, some of whom died, suffered horrible abuse or were catastrophically injured, according to revelatory reporting by the New York Times. It’s worth noting, however, that Becerra inherited a plan to deal with unaccompanied minors that was drafted and phased in by Rice and her Domestic Policy Council.
There is an unhappy history between the two; apparently Becerra was not alone in drawing Rice’s ire. In 2022, an article in the American Prospect accused her of creating an “abusive and dehumanizing workplace,” in which Rice routinely berated others, including the Health and Human Services secretary.
Becerra and Hilton have emerged as the candidates to beat. But dozens of interviews across the San Gabriel Valley, a prime campaign battleground, find many voters still undecided. And discouraged.
On social media, Rice has made no secret of her continued contempt for Becerra, a display that carries no small whiff of ax-grinding and score-settling. She highlighted the refusal of Biden’s Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, to endorse Becerra in the governor’s race, though it would be surprising if Mayorkas, Biden, Kamala Harris or any high-level Democrat picked a favorite in such a fiercely contested primary.
Becerra “had big things to do and he got them done,” said Neera Tanden, who succeeded Rice as head of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council and has vigorously defended Becerra against attacks on social media.
“I am not on or coordinating with the Becerra campaign,” Tanden said. “I just know these attacks are ridiculous.”
If Becerra makes it past Tuesday’s primary to the November runoff, his career merits careful scrutiny — and not just those years spent in the Biden Cabinet. Many voters are still getting to know Becerra, who is the likeliest candidate to be California’s next governor. Anonymous quotes, drive-by commentary and incendiary mailers may be standard campaign fare. But voters deserve better.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article presents Xavier Becerra’s nearly four decades in public office as a double-edged but fundamentally substantial record, noting service in the California Assembly, 12 terms in Congress, a term as state attorney general and a stint as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary that demonstrate deep policy experience and familiarity with complex government systems.[2][4][5][6]
It emphasizes that Becerra’s rise in California’s gubernatorial primary has prompted rivals to focus on personal attacks, particularly on his perceived trustworthiness and competence, because polling and campaign professionals describe many voters as viewing Becerra as a thoughtful, credible and trustworthy choice rather than a flashy outsider.
The piece describes attacks led by Democratic rival Tom Steyer and amplified by national media commentary as heavily reliant on charged language — “mismanagement,” “scandal,” “incompetence” — and on a small number of sharp televised criticisms, such as former Justice Department communications director Xochitl Hinojosa’s claim on CNN that Becerra was “not effective” at HHS, while noting that Hinojosa had little clear reason to interact closely with him in government.[1][3]
It contrasts those criticisms with Becerra’s defenders inside the Biden orbit, highlighting former White House chief of staff Ron Klain’s assertion that Becerra was “one of the most effective members of the president’s Cabinet,” and Neera Tanden’s argument that he “delivered on Medicare drug negotiation, $35 insulin and got health care coverage for 14 million more people,” achievements that are also cited in independent reporting on his tenure.[1][3][5][6]
The article underscores that many of the harshest assessments of Becerra’s HHS performance have come from unnamed former Biden officials quoted in outlets such as Politico and NBC News, and it stresses that anonymity makes it impossible for voters to judge whether those critiques spring from genuine policy concerns, personal grudges, professional jealousy or ideological differences.[1][3]
In recounting Becerra’s role during the COVID-19 pandemic, the piece echoes Klain’s view that Becerra entered the administration months into the crisis and that Anthony Fauci had already become the public face of the federal response, arguing that Becerra’s lower public profile did not necessarily reflect weak engagement behind the scenes.[1][6]
On immigration, the article notes that Becerra’s portfolio as HHS secretary centered on the Office of Refugee Resettlement rather than border enforcement, and it relays Klain’s recollection of Becerra as a “passionate and forceful advocate” for unaccompanied minors in internal debates, while still acknowledging that serious investigative reports about children who were harmed or lost in the sponsor system raise real questions about how that office functioned on his watch.[1][6]
The piece places some of the fiercest Beltway criticism in the context of longstanding intramural tensions, pointing to reports that Susan Rice’s Domestic Policy Council designed the approach to handling unaccompanied minors that Becerra inherited and to past accounts describing Rice as running an abrasive workplace, thereby suggesting that her continuing public disdain for Becerra may involve personal animosity rather than dispassionate evaluation.
At the same time, the article argues that Becerra’s broader record — from helping pass and later defend the Affordable Care Act to suing the Trump administration scores of times as California attorney general — supports the picture of a methodical insider who has repeatedly taken on large structural fights over healthcare access, immigration and regulation, not merely a passive occupant of powerful offices.[2][5][6][7]
Ultimately, the piece contends that as Becerra moves closer to becoming California’s next governor, voters deserve a rigorous, transparent examination of his career based on documented actions and outcomes, rather than a campaign conversation dominated by anonymous Beltway sniping, incendiary mailers and out-of-context television sound bites.[1][3]
Different views on the topic
Critics within Biden-world and beyond argue that Becerra’s long résumé masks an underwhelming record as a federal executive, with several former administration officials telling Politico that his rise in the governor’s race “gets the biggest laugh” in their group chats and describing him as ineffective during critical moments of the COVID response and a migrant health crisis.[1][3]
Former Biden Justice Department communications director Xochitl Hinojosa has publicly said on CNN that Becerra was “not effective in governing” and that “a lot of people in the Biden administration are talking about this because they realize that he was not an effective HHS secretary,” a clip that Steyer’s campaign has circulated to argue that even those who worked alongside Becerra doubt his leadership.[1][3]
Anonymous officials quoted in Politico and summarized by other outlets contend that Becerra was often unprepared in meetings with President Biden, struggled to answer detailed questions and had to work through intermediaries to reach the Oval Office, which they cite as evidence that he lacked the command and decisiveness expected of a Cabinet-level manager during overlapping health and humanitarian emergencies.[1][3]
Some former aides argue that Becerra “took a backseat” to Fauci and other health leaders, remained largely invisible to the public at the height of the pandemic and failed to provide clear, assertive direction on implementing the administration’s COVID strategy, undercutting one of the central qualifications he highlights in his campaign for governor.[1][3][6]
In parallel, critics of his handling of unaccompanied migrant children point to reporting that thousands of minors were placed with sponsors who later could not be located and that some children experienced exploitation or severe harm, and they argue that HHS under Becerra did not build or enforce adequate safeguards despite warning signs, making his oversight of that office a major liability in a statewide campaign emphasizing competence and care for vulnerable communities.
Opponents also frame Becerra’s Washington-centric career as evidence of entrenched political careerism rather than public-spirited expertise, noting that he has spent more than three decades climbing from Congress to the state attorney general’s office and then to a Cabinet post; from this perspective, his Beltway background ties him to a “failed status quo” in both national and California politics rather than signaling readiness to chart a new direction.[2][4][5][7]
Some Democrats skeptical of his candidacy point to the absence of endorsements from President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, even as other former Biden officials running for office have been publicly backed by the ticket, interpreting that silence — rightly or wrongly — as a sign that the party’s top leadership has reservations about elevating Becerra to the governor’s office.[1]
Additionally, commentators who favor more outspoken, media-savvy leadership maintain that Becerra’s low-key style and limited public profile during national crises suggest a lack of political urgency and communicative skill, qualities they consider especially important for a governor who would need to respond visibly and forcefully to future pandemics, wildfires, economic shocks and direct confrontations with a potential second Trump administration.[1][3][6]
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