Becerra Cancels LA Times Debate as Family Story Collapses

Democrat Xavier Becerra has pulled out of a scheduled Los Angeles Times debate with Republican rival Steve Hilton, Hilton announced Monday, a retreat that comes on the heels of independent reporter Anthony Cabassa’s exposure and challenge of Becerra’s claim that his parents arrived as immigrants with twelve dollars in their pockets.

Hilton posted the announcement on X Monday afternoon, calling the withdrawal a break from a pledge Becerra made in August to participate in multiple debates. 

“Becerra PULLS OUT of tomorrow’s LA Times debate,” Hilton wrote. “The move comes after a new poll found CNN debate viewers favored Hilton 74% to 20%. In August, Becerra promised MULTIPLE debates. Now after losing the first, he’s back in hiding—taking voters for granted. Pathetic!”

The only televised matchup between the two nominees so far was CNN’s California gubernatorial debate on Sept. 30 in Burbank. During that hour, Becerra repeatedly tied Hilton to President Donald Trump. Hilton answered that the Democratic nominee was offering “more of the same” after years of one-party rule in Sacramento.

On that same stage, Hilton charged that as Health and Human Services secretary, Becerra was responsible for hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children and had weakened the vetting of the sponsors who took them. Hilton said thousands were sent to sex and labor traffickers and that many children the department placed are still missing. Becerra brushed the charge off as a Trump talking point. Hilton shot back that the reporting came from the New York Times, which won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

Cabassa, whose Oct. 4 thread on the family story drew tens of thousands of engagements, connected the cancellation directly to that reporting. “Following my viral report that Xavier Becerra LIED about his family’s immigrant story, Xavier Becerra has abruptly CANCELLED his debate with @SteveHiltonx tomorrow with @latimes,” Cabassa wrote Monday evening. “I guess he didn’t want to be asked why he lied to millions about his family’s history.”

The timing is hard to separate from the claim Becerra repeated on the CNN stage. 

Cabassa’s original reporting found that Becerra told debate viewers his parents “came to this country with $12,” a line he has used throughout the general-election campaign. Cabassa traced the wording to an April 2, 2025, Contra Costa News press release issued the day Becerra announced for governor: “My parents came to California with $12 in their pockets. They built a life they were proud of.” 

His review found no earlier recorded use of the line in Becerra’s years in Congress, as California attorney general, or as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary under President Joe Biden.

The paper trail Cabassa published does not match Becerra’s pitch. An obituary for Becerra’s father, Manuel Guerrero Becerra, who died in 2020, states that he was born in Sacramento on July 14, 1928—in California, not Mexico—the eldest of eight children. 

The same obituary says the family later moved to Tijuana and that Manuel returned to California as a young teenager, not as an adult immigrant arriving with a wife and a few dollars. It further states that he worked on the railroad for several years before marrying a woman he met in Jalisco, Mexico, bringing her to California, and that the couple purchased a home soon after the wedding.

Cabassa reported that he contacted Becerra’s campaign press team and that staff declined to comment after asking which outlet he represented. 

Becerra finished first in the June 2 top-two primary with about 28%of the vote. Hilton, a former Fox News host endorsed by Trump, took the second spot with roughly 25%, ahead of Democrat Tom Steyer. A UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted Sept. 15–20 and sponsored by the Los Angeles Times still showed Becerra leading Hilton 58% to 33% among likely voters. 

Hilton’s campaign has pointed to post-debate viewer surveys and its own polling as evidence the race tightened after the CNN broadcast.

Hilton has spent the general election casting Becerra as the “ultimate career politician” and arguing that California’s highest-in-the-nation costs are the product of the Democratic machine Becerra has served for decades. 

Monday’s announcement frames the next week as a test of whether Becerra will face those attacks, and Cabassa’s questions about the origin story, on a debate stage, or keep running on the lead public polls still give him while avoiding reporters.