Xavier Becerra: Just One More Professional Politician with a Shady Past Who Needs a Job

So, Xavier Becerra is now running for California Governor because the “California Dream” isn’t what it used to be. But Becerra, a career politician, won’t self-reflect long enough to recognize that he, his ideology and political party is a big part of the problem.

Becerra has been talking for one year about running for California governor, as we reported in April 2024:

Biden Administration Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra let slip this week that he is considering leaving the administration to run for California Governor. “I miss California,” Becerra said at the start of a talk at Manny’s in the Mission, a watering hole for political types.

Becerra later smiled and nodded silently when someone in the audience yelled “governor!” as he paused between questions.

Eye roll.

Becerra’s appointment as HHS Secretary by President Joe Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic was an odd appointment for several reasons, one of which that Biden promised he would “listen to scientists and heed their advice” regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. “Specifically, Biden promised that he would have American schools reopened and kids back in their seats within his first one hundred days in office,” the Globe reported in February 2021.

That didn’t happen, and instead, Becerra as HHS Secretary, doubled down on tyrannical COVID policies, including mandatory masking and vaccines for everyone including pregnant women and infants, as well as business and school lockdowns, and infamously said, “it is absolutely the government’s business” to know people’s vaccination status.

Becerra’s appointment was purely political, as Becerra had no health related experience – he was a member of congress for 25 years before being appointed California Attorney General by Gov. Jerry Brown – which was also a strange appointment as well, as I reported in 2018:

Becerra has his own troubles in D.C. as he was up to his eyeballs in the House Democratic Caucus Awan Brothers Congressional IT Scandal. Then-Rep. Xavier Becerra was the caucus chairman when he gave a fake server to the cops in order to obstruct their investigation. “The executive director of the Democratic Caucus was Sean McCluskie, who was Becerra’s chief of staff and is now chief deputy attorney general of California,” Daily Caller reporter Luke Rosiak reported in 2017. “The Awans and their associates collected more than $5 million in pay from congressional offices, often drawing chief-of-staff level pay though there is reason to believe many didn’t even show up. The House’s internal probe found they logged into servers they had no affiliation with, used members’ usernames, covered their tracks, and persisted even after being fired.”

Becerra, a sitting member of Congress since 1993, was surprisingly appointed to the California AG’s office when then-California AG Kamala Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate. Did he miss California? Not likely, since he and his wife and three daughters lived in and own a million dollar home in the D.C. area and by all accounts, were ensconced as permanent residents. (It appears the Becerra’s just this month sold their home in Maryland).

Members of the Awan family logged on to the Caucus server 7,000 times without authorization between October 2015 and August 2016, according to a House investigation.

“The Awans were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers, and stealing computer equipment — including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of bytes before making tracks,” former Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy reported in National Review. And none of the Awans could have qualified for a security clearance.

The unvetted Awans enjoyed unfettered access throughout the Democrat Caucus – and even had access to the accounts of members of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.

Many believe Becerra departed Congress to become Jerry Brown’s appointed attorney general in California to put him in a position in which he could not be prosecuted.

But the scandal quietly disappeared thanks the mainstream media, and Congress eventually looked the other way.

Does Becerra “miss California” or is the waning “California Dream” the lure for him in a run for governor?

Becerra wasn’t the most popular of the cool kids in the Biden administration.

Biden adviser Susan Rice referred to HHS Sec. Becerra as a “bitch-ass” and privately called him an “idiot,” according to multiple sources, Jim VanderHei of Axios Tweeted last year:

Axios reported:

• There was — and still is — deep animosity toward Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra for what was seen as his reluctance to find more space in child migrant shelters, which are overseen by HHS, according to several sources familiar with the dynamics.
• Rice referred to Becerra as a “bitch-ass” and privately called him an “idiot,” according to multiple sources.
• During one meeting when Biden was tearing into Becerra, Rice passed Mayorkas a note that read: “Don’t save him,” according to two people familiar with the meeting.

Elex Michaelson with Fox LA News interviewed Becerra and couldn’t get Becerra to discuss how he would “scrub” California’s problems:

Becerra says he’s running for Governor to make California more affordable. I point out that Democrats have controlled the state for decades…so what specific Democratic policy is he going to change to make things cheaper? He couldn’t point to a single example but repeatedly says he would “scrub” the state’s problems. “You need to bring the problem right to the table with the best experts there, you scrub it, and whatever is clean and survives, that’s what you do. We’ve not been willing to do that because of all the politics.” 

Becerra is just one more mediocre professional politician with a shady past who needs a job. Who is more detestable as the next California governor – Kamala Harris or Xavier Becerra?