My column for the San Francisco Chronicle on Becerra and avoiding the news media...

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The one big potential flaw to Becerra’s low-profile strategy in the California governor’s race

By Jack Ohman,

Contributing Columnist

Sep 28, 2026

According to every general election poll taken during the past few months, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra appears to be on a glide path to become the next governor of California.

Feel the excitement of a nail-biter campaign that wasn’t, in which Becerra seems more than content to stay out of the public eye as much as possible.

Becerra’s lack of engagement with voters suggests he’d like to keep questions to a minimum before Election Day and avoid any possible unforced errors.

In fact, Becerra hasn’t really answered any press questions since June 9, save one interview with Politico California’s Melanie Mason in August and a press conference gaggle on the same day.

That may seem, well, a bit odd given that he’s running for governor of the most populous state in the union and the election is just five weeks away.

For the moment, anyway, California is a big haystack, and Becerra is barely a needle. That seems to be by design. Even before the June 4 primary, he was honing a less-is-more strategy. Becerra held a 120-second “news conference” on May 11 at Sacramento State University, for example, where he answered all of three questions from a frustrated pool of reporters, yours truly among them.

A few weeks ago, I ran into Becerra’s new press secretary, Jonathan Unterland, an amiable young fellow who seemed to be sympathetic to my inquiry about his boss’ lack of media availability. He threw up his hands and blamed the Becerra schedulers.

Last week, I was talking to a major supporter of Becerra’s, and I asked him to convey that maybe no news conferences since June 9 was a bit of a lag. He said he’d see what he could do.

Becerra was seen recently walking through the Capitol grounds through crowds of potential voters, but no one seemed to know or care that they were in the presence of the state’s putative next governor.

But does it matter that Becerra’s campaign has effectively turned into a game of “Where’s Waldo?”

Politico ran a story last month by Jeremy B. White that noted Becerra’s invisibility. The headline? “He’s Probably California’s Next Governor — So Why Does No One Know What He Thinks?”

The Fresno Bee noted the dynamic in a recent story: “Becerra in Madera visits clinic, ignores media. Local Fresno Dems attend a $5K-a-head event.”

Imagine Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown or Gavin Newsom not answering media questions at some event in Fresno. These guys lived for that sort of thing, were good at it and didn’t seem to be afraid of interactions with local newspaper reporters.

Hilton, in contrast, has been all over the news and taking public positions, such as saying if he had a U.S. Senate vacancy to fill during his tenure, he’d appoint a Democrat. I asked Hilton last week about Becerra’s low profile.

“Every event pretty much that I do,” Hilton said, “whether that’s a media appearance, for example, on Pod Save America or on Sacramento Capital Public Radio, or the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce … it’s the same mantra when I make my appearance: ‘We reached out to Becerra to invite him to join us today, but due to a scheduling conflict he was not able to join us.’ After hearing this dozens and dozens of times, I’m wondering what the exact conflict is.”

As you might expect, Hilton has gotten good at using Becerra’s absences as an attack line.

“It shows to me a complete not just contempt for the process for the voters (but) for the principles of the democratic process, but (also) for California itself,” Hilton said.

Say what you want about Hilton, but he’s almost comically accessible to reporters and voters.

And while it’s easy to make the case that Becerra’s scarcity is demeaning to the voters and a bad sign for how transparent and responsive he might be if he is indeed elected governor, there’s also no denying that silence has proven golden.

A Berkeley IGS poll released Thursday found that Becerra leads Hilton by 25 points, a margin that has grown by 7 points since the pollsters released their last finding in August.

The one wildcard to Becerra’s strategy of keeping mum will come on Wednesday when he will be obliged to, you know, talk as the cameras roll during his CNN debate with Hilton.

Democrats should hope that he’s been spending at least some of his time away from public event microphones preparing to make his case to voters. Otherwise, his 25-point lead could disappear faster than a Democratic candidate for governor on a glide path to victory.

Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman