Dan Morain is a former Los Angeles Times reporter as well as Sacramento Bee editorial page editor. His forthcoming book is about the mental healthcare system. This article originally appeared on Morain’s Substack page.
Voters should take issue with Xavier Becerra’s campaign for governor. All but guaranteed of victory over his Republican opponent Steve Hilton, Becerra is taking few stands, issuing no white papers and making no grand pronouncements.
That he avoids talking about weighty issues is fodder for fair criticism. But Hilton’s allegation that Becerra is lying about his father’s immigrant background is phony. I know. I spent time in the living room of Maria and Manuel Becerra and got to know a little about them.
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I was the editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee in January 2015, and Maria’s and Manuel’s son was contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate. Ultimately he backed out, effectively clearing the way for Kamala Harris to succeed Barbara Boxer.
Becerra grew up in Sacramento but was a veteran member of Congress representing downtown Los Angeles. I knew enough about his record in Congress. I wanted to know about his Sacramento roots and asked him to introduce me to his parents.
Becerra is careful about revealing much of anything about himself, but in this instance he didn’t hesitate. Of course, he said, he’d arrange a conversation.
Manuel Becerra was 86 at the time, and Maria was 81. A sister joined us. Becerra was, as I recall, in Philadelphia.
They were living in a tract house in South Sacramento. A sign above their front door read, “Home sweet home,” and an American flag decal was pasted in the entryway window.
Manuel Becerra told me he was born in Sacramento, as did his son. He was a citizen of the United States by birthright but had no early memory of Sacramento. His parents moved back to Tijuana during the Great Depression. That’s where he grew up.
Golden State staff
Maria was born in Mexico, grew up in Guadalajara and came across the southern border when she and Manuel got married. They settled in Sacramento.
I remember two things about Manuel. He didn’t speak much. Maria did most of the talking. But when he did talk, he spoke with a heavy accent. That, and his hands.
He was not a tall man. But even at 86, he was physically powerful. His handshake was strong and his hands gnarled, those of a man who spent a lifetime swinging hammers and working with heavy tools.
He had worked at the Sacramento railyard and in construction, and he built the family home where he and Maria raised their four children.
The Becerra children attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, where Mass was in Spanish. They graduated from C.K. McClatchy High School, the public school that produced Anthony Kennedy, who became a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye, who became chief justice of the California Supreme Court.
The main decorations in Maria and Manuel’s living room were framed portraits of their three daughters, their son and their 10 grandchildren. One was in a Marine uniform.
Maria pulled one photo from the wall. It was of her, Manuel and their son standing in the White House with President Bill Clinton, who was much taller than Becerra’s parents.
“He called Xavier ‘the little rascal,’” Maria told me then.
Paul Thornton
Their daughter, Maria Elena, took me to the garage to show me the car her younger brother drove when he was in high school: a '68 Buick Riviera, purple metal flake, with white leather interior — ideal for cruising.
Here are two paragraphs from the column I wrote for The Bee:
His father would come home dusty and sweaty from a day’s work. The parents would tell the kids that they needed to go to school, unless they wanted to toil in the heat like the old man. Not knowing much about Stanford, he filled out an application, and got in on the strength of grades and test scores.
He saw The Farm for the first time when he and his mother drove up in the Riviera for the start of classes in 1976. It was, he realized, a long way from where he grew up. He went on to Stanford Law School, paying for it all with financial aid, work and loans. He met his wife, Carolina Reyes, at Stanford. She went on to Harvard Medical School.
In other words, Becerra is a product of two hardworking parents who emigrated north seeking a better life for their children. They succeeded, the essence of the California dream.
When Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Becerra as California attorney general to succeed Harris after she won the 2016 Senate race, he moved back to his hometown. Whenever I saw him, I would ask about his parents. It was clear that he kept in close touch with them and his roots.
“I am very proud of my parents, and I consider them immigrants because even though my dad was born in the U.S. — in a country that wouldn’t treat him the way it would treat other U.S. citizens — my dad was a proud immigrant,” Becerra said, as quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “I am proud that I am their son. I am the son of immigrants.”
Paul Thornton
Hilton, who was born in Britain and whose parents were from Hungary, posted on X: “Unlike Xavier Becerra, I am an immigrant. Unlike Xavier Becerra, my father was an immigrant. My stepfather too. My whole family.”
The Rupert Murdoch-owned California Post piled on, and Richard Grenell, the former Trump administration ambassador to Germany who considered running for California governor, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as accusing news outlets of letting a lie “continue for decades.” That’s bogus.
Voters should expect Becerra to make his positions clear. We ought to know what he envisions for public schools, California’s twisted system of taxation and the university system, and how he will confront homelessness. But the notion that he’s lying about his roots is itself a lie. Becerra’s story has not changed.
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