TONIGHT: Will Becerra’s Town Hall Be (Another) Bust?

If it’s anything like his last one, Becerra will be screening questions, giving scripted answers with no substance, and fleeing the press.

SAN FRANCISCO — Has anyone checked on Xavier Becerra today? It’s been a banner week for his campaign, after fumbling answers about his ties to his former top aides’ corruption scandal, the migrant children lost under his watch, and his request for “not only tough questions” during an interview. 

On top of that, a new poll out today shows Becerra’s momentum has stalled out, with just under three weeks to go.    

There’s been a lot to take in, so it’s possible you missed the column from San Francisco Chronicle’s Jack Ohman, who yesterday wrote a scathing account on the (lack of) energy at Becerra’s Sacramento town hall Monday night – recounting everything from staff screening questions to Becerra avoiding tough questions with the press to Becerra’s “IT guy” energy. Every word of this column recapping this “Hollywood version of a substance-free campaign rally” is worth a read. 

And tonight, at Becerra’s event in San Francisco, will it be more of the same, or will he finally answer tough questions? 

"Becerra’s bad day has spiraled into a bad week of unforced errors,” said Steyer for Governor spokesperson Amelia Platt. “You have to wonder: if he’s crumbling under pressure on the campaign trail, how will he handle the pressure of the highest office in the state?"

The San Francisco Chronicle’s full piece is below and listen to Jack Ohman’s bonus conversation with the Los Angeles Times’ Anita Chabria here. 

SF Chronicle: California Democrats are about to make a big mistake with Xavier Becerra

Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Xavier Becerra held a rally in the old school Sacramento State Hornets basketball gym Monday night. To this reporter’s eyes, it was at best underwhelming and at worst an alarming preview of the campaign voters may get if Becerra becomes the party’s nominee. 

Becerra opened by saying what a great rally it was, repetitively, the way President Donald Trump restates questionable things over and over to try to make them true. 

Sure, many of the roughly 500 people in attendance cheered enthusiastically, especially the Laborers’ International Union of North America folks, who wore hard hats, orange T-shirts and reflective vests. There was also a Service Employees International Union contingent that dutifully held up their end of the bargain during Becerra’s canned, call-and-response bit: “Are there any teachers in the house?”  

In fact, if Becerra had a set speech, it was mostly lost in the rote, box-checking shout-outs to the various constituent groups: “Any veterans here?” 

There was a lot of “we’re gonna win,” but little detail about what he’d do if he did win — you know, actual policy proposals. 

Instead, Becerra, who lives in Sacramento’s Land Park neighborhood in a duplex alongside his parents, introduced his mother and wished her a happy Mother’s Day. Touching stuff, to be sure, but it provided no real indication of how Becerra would govern. 

The rally felt like a Hollywood version of a substance-free campaign rally, in which an unseen director shouts “action!” and the extras magically spring to life, yelling at the appropriate moments while waving signs. 

After his approximately 20-minute nonspeech, Becerra deigned to take three prescreened, pre-written questions from audience members who were not permitted to actually ask the questions themselves. Like some 1970s game show, one of Becerra’s staff members awkwardly fished the softball questions out of a bowl and handed them to the candidate, who read them aloud.

“Will you stop ICE in Sacramento?” one attendee asked. 

Becerra responded by saying he “would investigate ICE. We will arrest ICE.” Case closed.

In response to a question about what he would do as governor to get more funding for education in low-income areas, Becerra said he would protect Proposition 98 funding for education, then promised to reduce class size, something that requires a whole lot more funding. 

On the state’s skyrocketing housing costs, Becerra did have a plan — kind of.

“We have to expand down payment assistance programs,” he said, so that renters can “actually own a home.” 

Not mentioned was how much money that would cost a state with the second-highest home prices in the country. 

Questions answered, Becerra then left the stage. 

News reporters were then escorted into a holding room where they set up their cameras and waited 30 minutes for the front-runner to enter. When he did arrive, there was no spark of electricity to be found. No palpable, this-is-the-next-governor energy. More like, the IT guy is here.

There were reporters from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, CalMatters, Caló News and Sacramento TV stations KXTV and KTXL. Some asked pointed but fair questions about Becerra’s role in the Dana Williamson case, in which she and another Becerra aide allegedly conspired to pay his chief of staff out of his campaign kitty. Becerra said he didn’t know about his former staffers’ bank and wire fraud, adding that he himself was “not involved” or named in the indictment. 

“Last question,” Becerra’s spokesman Michael Bustamante abruptly announced.

It went to Laurel Rosenhall from the New York Times, who referenced her newspaper’s thorough, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into Becerra’s handling of 85,000 migrant children when he was the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, some of whom ended up being trafficked in child labor situations.

“For the voters in California who might look at that situation and wonder if you have the chops to manage a crisis as governor, what do you say?” Rosenhall asked.

As he has done in the past, Becerra deflected. “Where the exploitation of children may have occurred was not on my watch,” he said, adding, “while those kids were with us, they didn’t get exploited.”

And with that, Becerra exited the room. 

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