Biden-Era HHS Chief Becerra Announces Bid for California Governor

Former Biden administration Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced on Wednesday that he’s running for governor of California in 2026 to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat.

During his four years at HHS, Becerra drew criticism from within the Biden White House for his handling of both the COVID-19 pandemic response and the monkeypox outbreak, as well as for losing track of thousands of illegal immigrant children, many of them unaccompanied minors.

Becerra—whose name Joe Biden famously mispronounced when the then-president-elect nominated him to the HHS post—previously served as California’s attorney general and before that as a 12-term member of Congress.

Becerra joins a Democrat gubernatorial primary field that includes former Congresswoman Katie Porter and may yet include former Vice President Kamala Harris, who preceded him as the state’s AG.

Becerra received no shortage of criticism during his tenure at HHS, including from members of his own party. As the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was being implemented during the first year of the Biden administration, White House officials criticized Becerra for apparent messaging flubs. Experts cited by The Washington Post said he had failed his primary job of marshaling Biden’s policy response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Eric Topol, the director of the La Jolla, Calif.-based Scripps Research Translational Institute, which specializes in research aimed at individualizing health care by leveraging human genomics and combining it digital technologies, wrote that Becerra had “shirked other responsibilities.” He said those responsibilities included mandating collection of data and mediating fighting among the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When the monkeypox outbreak occurred in 2022, Becerra was again blamed for a slow and insufficient response. The HHS secretary had recommended that states take a primary role in combating the disease, telling reporters, “We don’t control public health in the 50 states, in the territories, and in the tribal jurisdictions.”

The comments were reported to have caused a rift between the Biden administration and state health officials, who felt they were being set up to fail. In a Politico piece, one senior Biden administration official went so far as to describe Becerra as being “out of his depth.”

Less than a year later, Becerra was again on the hot seat, this time over losing track of thousands of illegal immigrant children in the United States, some of whom were being put to work in violation of child labor laws or at risk of being sex-trafficked. More than 250,000 migrant children are thought to have entered the United States during Biden’s term, many of them unaccompanied and still unaccounted for.

Becerra has been sharply criticized by many on the Right for his pro-abortion policies. In 2021, Republican lawmakers sent a letter to the HHS secretary and to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland accusing them of dropping a lawsuit against the University of Vermont Medical Center over its forcing a nurse to assist in an elective abortion in violation of federal conscience-protection laws.

Peter Parisi contributed to this report.

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