Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden administration official, began the race for California governor with poll numbers so low that his own party chairman urged him to drop out.
Now, Mr. Becerra will become the next governor of the nation’s most populous state, The Associated Press said on Tuesday, a rise that was considered improbable a year ago. Mr. Becerra, 68, is the first Latino elected as governor of California, a milestone that punctuates a decades-long demographic shift in the state.
Mr. Becerra will succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat who could not run again because of term limits.
Mr. Becerra is likely to continue Mr. Newsom’s battles with President Trump, and he often referred during the campaign to the 122 lawsuits he filed against the first Trump administration when he was California’s attorney general. But with his mild-mannered demeanor, Mr. Becerra is expected to be less fiery than Mr. Newsom.
Mr. Becerra is likely to govern as an establishment Democrat, having won the backing of major labor unions, industry groups and the California Chamber of Commerce. He refrained from making many detailed promises during the campaign and instead sold voters on his long résumé of government experience, including his four-year tenure as state attorney general and more than two decades as a congressman.
Mr. Becerra also benefited from voters’ overwhelming disapproval of Mr. Trump in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a roughly two-to-one margin. Mr. Becerra defeated Steve Hilton, a Republican and former Fox News host, who had what Mr. Trump called his “COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT.”
The president’s support helped Mr. Hilton in the primary but doomed him in the general election. California voters have not elected a Republican to statewide office in 20 years, and Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the state, which included deploying Marines to the streets of Los Angeles last year in response to immigration crackdown protests, have made him particularly unpopular.
Mr. Hilton tried to appeal to anti-Trump voters by focusing on California’s high cost of living in his general election campaign, arguing that conditions would only improve with a partisan change in the state’s political leadership.
Mr. Hilton’s closing argument to voters wary of the G.O.P. was to “just try it.” He spread that message with ads that played on sexual innuendo and spoofed Californians as sage-burning hippies and Hollywood hangers-on who would like Republican policies if only they’d give Mr. Hilton a try.
Mr. Hilton, 57, grew up in England and moved to California in 2012 for his wife’s career in Silicon Valley. He ran an energetic campaign and proposed lowering gas prices, building more houses and creating an Office of Fun and Freedom “to cut the killjoy rules crushing nightlife.”
Mr. Becerra will become California’s first Latino governor elected by voters but not the state’s first Latino governor. Romualdo Pacheco had that honor when he rose to the role by succession in 1875. Mr. Becerra routinely talked about his family’s Mexican roots as he campaigned in both English and Spanish this year.
Mr. Hilton repeatedly attacked Mr. Becerra over his work as President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s secretary of health and human services. The agency was responsible for helping migrant children who entered the United States without their parents. A New York Times investigation in 2023 found that many of those children wound up trafficked into dangerous jobs.
Mr. Becerra said that children were not exploited when they were under the supervision of his agency and that he was not responsible for what happened after they were released.
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