Several more of Xavier Becerra’s former colleagues have joined the chorus of former colleagues who question his ability to lead

At least two dozen former administration officials have spoken out

CALIFORNIA –  In case you missed it in the flurry of bad press for Becerra last week, NBC News published more damning evidence detailing Xavier Becerra’s failures as HHS Secretary, adding to mounting concerns about his ability to lead in times of crisis.

The piece included multiple former Biden White House officials who worked intimately with Becerra and paints a grim picture: a cabinet secretary absent during crises, unable to manage a federal agency responsible for over $3 trillion dollars in funding, and deliberately and repeatedly left out of major decisions.

Former colleagues say he was “asleep at the wheel” on the baby formula shortage, failed to shepherd coherent COVID-19 messaging, and left unaccompanied migrant children in dangerous conditions.

These concerns continue to pile up: at least two dozen of Becerra’s former colleagues continue to question his ability to lead.

Notably, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have both declined to endorse Becerra for governor.

Excerpts of the full piece are below and can be found here.

…[Becerra] has drawn an onslaught of criticism from Becerra’s fellow alumni of the Biden administration, including some who worked closely with him, over his leadership of HHS and how he handled multiple crises during his tenure.

–

“In moments of real challenge, that’s kind of when you mark: Are you able to step up? He did not have the grasp of the agency or the role that I think you want in an executive,” said a former White House official under then-President Joe Biden who worked closely with matters involving the Department of Health and Human Services.

“HHS is one of the most challenging bureaucracies because it’s so huge, and it has all of these independent agencies as part of it that you have to make sure that an executive-style person is in charge and who is able to manage that,” continued the former official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “And he did not have the capabilities to do that.”

Becerra faced a number of challenges as health and human services secretary, most notably managing the Covid pandemic. HHS was also the lead agency in charge of dealing with the surge of unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, a pandemic-created shortage of baby formula and a 2022 outbreak of the mpox virus.

On the issue of Covid, the former administration official said Becerra should have done more to help coordinate a clearer messaging strategy in disseminating what was often conflicting public health guidance on issues like social distancing.

“There was debate and disagreement among all of those government scientists and public health officials about the best way to kind of get that forward, and he really wasn’t able to shepherd that,” the person said. “He just wasn’t up for it.”

The official added that Becerra, as well as others throughout the administration, were “asleep at the wheel” when it came to the baby formula shortage.

Another former Biden administration official said that Becerra didn’t adequately tackle efforts to handle the migrants who were arriving in droves at the border.

“You just saw this huge backflow of unaccompanied children overflowing” in Customs and Border Protection facilities, “because HHS was not really able to do what it needed to do to hold up its end of the formula,” that person said.

That person said that Becerra’s stewardship of HHS — a sprawling agency that at the time had about 80,000 employees — is particularly relevant to his gubernatorial campaign, given that he would oversee an even broader government bureaucracy if elected. California currently has around 250,000 state civil service employees.

“California is a huge state with very complex bureaucracies, very complex, sweeping agencies that all fall within the governor’s purview,” the person said. “His experience leading such complex entities, his track record on that is not great.”

“I’m not sure his experience there has, you know, set the stage for him to be governor of one of the world’s largest economies — I just think that’s not his skill set,” the person added.

Last week, Xochitl Hinojosa, who led the Justice Department’s public affairs office for two years during the Biden administration, also sharply criticized Becerra on CNN.

“He was not effective in government, and I think that a lot of people in the Biden administration are talking about this because they realize that he was not an effective HHS secretary,” she said. “And if you ask any Cabinet secretary, they will tell you the same thing.”

…Some of the criticisms of Becerra were made at the time he held the top job at HHS. NBC News also reported in December 2021 that Becerra kept a low public profile in fighting the pandemic.

More recently, some of Becerra’s former colleagues in the Biden White House have declined to back his campaign. Former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in an interview with Politico that he was “agnostic with respect to the California gubernatorial race right now.” That came just days after former Vice President Kamala Harris issued a slate of endorsements in races up and down the ballot in her home state of California — but not in the race for governor.

..Becerra’s campaign has also dealt with several other controversies…

…A California political consultant to Becerra, who also served as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff, pleaded guilty Thursday to a plot to steal campaign funds from a dormant Becerra campaign account. Becerra’s chief of staff at HHS had also pleaded guilty in December to stealing campaign funds from that Becerra account…

…The scandal has been the subject of attack ads run by the Steyer campaign in recent weeks, and at Thursday night’s debate, Becerra drew fire from several of his opponents on the issue.

Democratic former Rep. Katie Porter suggested that Becerra could still face charges, saying the latest plea “does not preclude an indictment from being issued against you.”

And this week, Becerra faced blowback for how he handled an interview with Los Angeles TV station KTLA.

In a clip that was circulated on social media, Becerra asked the reporter, “By the way, this is a profile piece, this is not a ‘gotcha’ piece, right?”

“The way I describe profile is: You talk about all the things I’ve done, things I want to do, along with some tough questions. But not only tough questions,” he said.

Steyer brought up the interview during a recent campaign event and posted the clip on X.

“You ask me a tough question — if it hurts, I will answer it. And that’s the thing Xavier Becerra has not been willing to do,” he said. “You can’t duck the hard questions.”

…

###