Xavier Becerra elected California governor

Xavier Becerra will become the first Latino elected governor of California. The Democrat’s victory marks a milestone in the state’s political history and highlights the influence of his parents, Manuel Guerrero Becerra and Maria Teresa, who migrated to the United States in the 1950s.

Manuel Becerra was born in Sacramento on July 14, 1928. He was the eldest of eight children. During the Great Depression, he began working to support his family. An obituary published by Legacy.com in partnership with The Sacramento Bee states that the family moved to Tijuana, Mexico, to cope with economic hardship. There, Manuel studied and worked shining shoes and selling fruit harvested from his father’s farm.

As a young man, he returned to California. He found that employers treated him more fairly than schools did, so he worked in fields along Highway 99. He also balanced this work with a job in the railway sector for Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1955, he married Maria Teresa, whom he had met in Guadalajara, Jalisco. The couple moved to California, where she was 18 years old. They both started working at a Campbell Soup canning plant.

Manuel later left the canning plant to pursue work in road construction. He joined Laborers' Union Local 185 and remained a member for 64 years. His steady work allowed him to retire from that position and take a job with Teichert Construction Co. That role provided greater financial stability. The couple raised four children, including Margie, Maria Elena, Xavier, and Teresa. Manuel also worked in fruit and vegetable cultivation, highway building, and home rehabilitation. He died at the age of 91.

Xavier Becerra graduated from Stanford Law School. In the 1980s, he served as deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice. In 2017, Governor Jerry Brown appointed him attorney general to succeed Kamala Harris. He served in that role until 2021, becoming the first Latino to hold the position. During his tenure, his office filed more than 100 lawsuits against the federal government. These cases addressed environmental protections, the Affordable Care Act, labor rights, and immigrant protection programs.

Becerra left the attorney general’s office in 2021 to serve as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden. That federal role preceded his recent victory for the governor’s office in California.