Xavier Becerra is California’s next governor after easily securing a victory that ensures Democrats continue their 16-year streak controlling the state.
The Associated Press declared Becerra the winner shortly after polls closed.
He will be the first Latino to serve as governor in a century and a half, and the first to be elected to the seat.
Becerra’s win caps a whirlwind and unexpected rise for a mild-mannered, risk-averse politician who just eight months ago polled so low he was being pressured to drop out of the race.
But when the leading Democratic contender in a crowded primary dropped out in April over sexual assault allegations, Becerra was the mainstream Democrat whom party insiders and interest groups coalesced behind the most. By the time he and Hilton finished first and second in the primary election in June, he was already being considered the presumptive next governor of California.
In a comfortable position in the polls and facing a GOP opponent whom he could easily tie to President Donald Trump, Becerra avoided sweeping policy promises and instead focused on his longtime experience in government.
With Becerra’s election, it’s unlikely the state will significantly depart from the policies of outgoing Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, including in its longstanding disputes with the Trump administration. Becerra has said he supports changes Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature have enacted to speed up housing construction, and he generally supports the state’s transition to clean energy — but also wants to find ways to lower gas prices.
He is, however, likely to differ in style compared to his predecessor. Newsom’s signature was ambition; he swept into office eight years ago with a litany of goals such as millions of new housing units and progressive moonshots like single-payer healthcare, not all of which he achieved. Becerra has avoided such promises, instead speaking generally about prioritizing working families, and says he doesn’t want to lose any public trust by overstating what he could accomplish.
Hilton, meanwhile, rolled out a litany of deregulatory policies and called for tax cuts, abolishing the Department of Motor Vehicles, canceling the high-speed rail project and ending the state’s climate goals in an aggressive campaign of lowering the cost of living. But he faced long odds running as a Republican in a blue state, during an election in which Democrats were expected to sweep offices nationwide.
He represented the best hope in years for a GOP victory. He has raised more than $33 million to Becerra’s $38 million and is running hard on a series of ambitious promises to lower costs by slashing regulations and taxes. He portrayed Becerra as the embodiment of the California political status quo, someone who would make decisions that benefit influential special interest groups like organized labor.
“It’s the people against the machine,” he said of his campaign in a virtual town hall last week.
His message of change, promises to slash gas prices and frequent invocations of Californians moving out-of-state resonated with Brad Gerig, who voted in Roseville last week. It was the first time Gerig, 34, could recall voting for a Republican, he said. The EMT and firefighter said he wants to be able to afford to stay and raise a family in California, so he was willing to “try something different.”
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Gerig said. “I think for everybody living in this area there’s an inherent angst for a little bit better. There’s no reason it should be as expensive as it is.”
But Hilton has struggled to rid himself of the baggage from President Donald Trump’s endorsement in a state Trump lost by 20 percentage points in 2024.
Becerra has reminded voters of Hilton’s link to Trump at every turn, and cast himself as a fighter who would, like Newsom, challenge decisions in Washington such as Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign.
He has dismissed Hilton as unserious and primarily campaigned on his longtime experience representing Los Angeles in Congress and serving as state attorney general and as U.S. health secretary. Those roles have earned him a wide swath of influential liberal allies.
“Xavier Becerra has stood with us for more than 30 years,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of the LGBTQ+ rights organization Equality California, at an event in San Francisco last week.
He highlighted Becerra’s role as one of the small minority of congressmembers who voted against the anti-gay marriage Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.
At the same event, Becerra touted his opposition to Trump.
“Donald Trump is on this ballot,” he said, without naming his opponent once. “We see right through you, Donald Trump. And we see through all those MAGA friends and relatives who are trying to push that agenda on us.”
Becerra’s comfortable standing is reflected in the relatively muted nature of his campaign: Becerra agreed to meet for only one debate with Hilton this fall. He has spent much of his time campaigning not for himself but against a Republican-backed voter ID measure and on behalf of other California Democrats.
The election comes at a particularly delicate time for California.
Street homelessness rose for years and only began to decline again in 2025. Wildfires have made it harder to buy homeowners insurance. Inflation, much of it attributable to Trump’s war in Iran, tariffs and immigration crackdown, have added to the already-high cost of living.
The state budget, always subject to the boom and bust of the stock market, has become particularly dependent on the fortunes of the artificial intelligence industry. Under Newsom, the state has made aggressive regulatory moves to curb the use of climate-warming fossil fuels. But despite recent polling that shows a majority of Californians support the green transition, fewer are willing to pay higher prices for energy than were a decade ago.
And the state’s liberal politics have often put it in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has withheld federal funds, challenged California’s environmental policies and attempted to intervene in this election.
Both candidates agree the state has become unaffordable for working families. That’s about all they agree on.
Becerra has proposed mostly incremental changes to existing state policies, such as continuing recent efforts by Newsom and lawmakers to reduce the bureaucratic hurdles to approving new housing construction.
He wants to expand state mortgage assistance programs and said he’s committed to the clean energy transition, but open to delays or tweaks to trim costs. He has not endorsed any new taxes on residents, but wants the state to assess a fee on corporations whose employees make so little they qualify for public healthcare.
Hilton, a British American who was once a close adviser to former British Prime Minister David Cameron, ran on a deregulatory agenda, promising to slash environmental rules and the gas tax and allow more home construction on exurban, undeveloped land.
One of his signature campaign promises was to eliminate the income tax on residents’ first $150,000 in earnings and make the income tax flat above that — amounting to an expensive tax cut for the highest earners that he’s said he would pay for with spending cuts. It’s one of his many promises that would need legislative approval, and he has not said how he would get Democrats in the Capitol to support them.
This story originally appeared in CalMatters.