California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Wednesday that he will not join the crowded field of Democrats vying to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2026 and will instead seek reelection to the state’s top law enforcement office.
Bonta’s decision would clear the field for several high-profile politicians said to be weighing their own campaigns, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Newsom is serving his second term as governor and cannot run again.
Bonta said last year that he was “seriously considering” a run for governor. He told Politico, which first reported the news, that he decided to keep his current job after Trump was reelected.
Bonta has become the face of California’s legal resistance to the second Trump administration, squaring off over new executive orders on gender, immigration and other hot-button issues.
Bonta recently joined other state attorneys general in suing the administration over a freeze on federal funding and an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.
If Harris entered the governor’s race, nearly half of voters would be very or somewhat likely to support her, according to a poll conducted in late October by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times.
About 72% of Democrats said they would be very likely or somewhat likely to consider Harris, compared with 8% of Republicans and 38% of voters with no party preference.
Bonta told Politico that he hasn’t spoken directly to Harris about running for governor, but that she would be “great.”
“I would support her if she ran,” Bonta said. “I’ve always supported her in everything she’s done. She would be field-clearing.”
That field includes Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state schools chief Tony Thurmond, former state Senate President pro tem Toni Atkins, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former State Controller Betty Yee.
A separate question in the same Berkeley/Times poll asked voters to choose their first and second favorites from a list of current and potential candidates. (Harris was not included on that list because she was still running for president when the polling was conducted.)
The results underscore how little most Californians know about the field of candidates, including some of the state’s top elected officials.
The poll found that Porter, who has not said whether she will run, would lead the pack as the first or second choice of 13% of voters.
Two Republicans said to be weighing campaigns, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and state Sen. Brian Dahle, who ran against Newsom in 2022, were the first or second choice of 12% and 11% of registered voters, respectively.
Kounalakis, Villaraigosa and Becerra each had 7% support. Republican commentator Steve Hilton, also said to be weighing a bid, would be the first or second choice of 6% of voters.
The poll found that Bonta, Thurmond, Atkins and Yee had less than 5% support, as did potential candidates Rick Caruso, who lost the Los Angeles mayor’s race in 2022, and Republican Lanhee Chen, who lost the election for state controller in 2022.
