Xavier Becerra, who is running for California governor, and his wife, Carolina Reyes, voted this morning before a flank of TV cameras at Belle Cooledge Community Center in Sacramento.
Speaking to reporters after he voted, Becerra said he plans to stay involved with the UCLA Voting Rights Project, where he is an adviser, until “right before I am sworn” if he wins. In that role he represents some of the plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration’s so-far unsuccessful attempt to force California election officials not to count 20,000 ballots of people the administration claims aren’t citizens.
He addressed the press in both English and Spanish, telling reporters to “get used to that.”
Asked by a Spanish-language news outlet what it meant for the child of Mexican immigrants to potentially become governor, he reflected on growing up not far from the polling place, which was in Sacramento’s South Land Park neighborhood, and seeing the Capitol during visits downtown. To be close to winning that office, he said, is the “American dream, the California dream, the dream of my parents.”
“The wonderful thing about this country is that those dreams become reality,” he said.
— CalMatters reporter Jeanne Kuang
