Former American secretary for health and social services, Xavier Becerra, announced on Wednesday that he presented himself as governor, joining a field of democrats crowded in the hope of succeeding Governor Gavin Newsom.
Becerra said he had been thinking about the race for some time and decided to jump into the race because of his experience by fighting President Trump and managing disasters, two traits that he believes crucial for the next head of state.
“Looking at what is happening before you clearly said that this is not the time to sit on the sidelines,” said Becerra in an interview.
He declared that his experience dealing with natural disasters, including the mortal pandemic COVID-19, makes him particularly suitable for navigating in the artificial disasters created by Trump and the billionaire Elon Musk, a superior advisor to the president, because they carefully reduce the agencies and services of the essential federal government.
“The Americans are punished,” he said, “that it is cancer patients who will only see the fruitful research completed, whether the elderly who live in nursing homes who will not have inspectors who come to investigate the mistreatment of the elderly, or whether it is lead in the toys that our children buy and put in their mouths.”
He said that he believed that California was at a tilting point and – in an apparent blow to the democratic direction of the State – needs judicious executive leadership that brings companies brings back and facilitates the reconstruction of forest victims in fields such as the Pacific Palisades and Altadena to rebuild. Although environmental protection must remain a priority, laws such as California Environmental Quality Act, the power of the coastal commission and state regulations should be opened to the exam, said Becerra.
The imminent question of the race is whether the former vice-president Kamala Harris decides to direct, a decision that she should not take before the summer. If it participates in the competition, this decision should win the field because of its national profile, its fundraising capacity and its multiple successful campaigns on the level of the State.
Becerra said he would stay in the race so Harris runs.
Other candidates announced Include the following Democrats: Lieutenant-Governor Eleni Kounalakis, the state controller Betty Yee, the head of public schools Tony Thurmond, the former representative Katie Porter, the mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa, the former president of the Senate of State Pro Toni Atkins and the businessman Stephen Cloobeck. The Riverside County Republican Sheriff, Chad Bianco, is also being executed.
Becerra joins another eminent Latino, Villaragosa, in a race in which the Latin vote could be crucial. Becerra said he believed that his references and experiences speak for themselves.
“I feel very comfortable knowing who I am, what I have done, what I can say to the people I have done, what I built, how I protected, how we realized,” he said. “This is one of those things where you are trying to give people a choice. This is what the elections are. “
Becerra, 67, has been in the public service for 35 years. He served the State Assembly for two years before being elected in 1992 at the Congress. He finally served 12 mandates in the chamber and held several steering positions under the former speaker of the Nancy Pelosi Chamber (D-San Francisco).
In 2016, he was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to become the attorney general of the State, a traditional springboard to a higher office, after Harris was elected to the American Senate. During his mandate as the main state prosecutor, he brought more than 120 proceedings against Trump during the president’s first mandate. Trump is expected to be a major objective of the governor’s breed in a state which should once again be advanced strength in efforts to fight the Trump administration.
“I have already seen this film classified B, and we are ready to take it,” he said.
Becerra, who was the first secretary for health and social services to visit a Planned Parenthood clinic, underlined the work of the administration to repel Trump administration policies, such as those concerning reproductive care, during his mandate in the office. Biden administration, he noted, went to the Supreme Court To protect access to mifepristoneOne of the two drugs used to medically end pregnancy.
“We have clearly played a solid defense,” he said in an interview earlier this year in the official conference room outside his office a few days before the inauguration of Trump.
Becerra was sworn in in March 2021 to lead the bureaucracy of 95,000 people, at a time when Cavid was a major concern. He said one of his agency’s best achievements was to receive 700 million vaccination photos coded in the arms of the Americans.
He also underlined the launch of the Hotline 988 which provides advice on suicide and the 24 -hour crisis as well as to provide more than 300 million people to access health care, 46 million Americans obtaining health insurance coverage due to the affordable care law, popularly known under the name of Obamacare.
But Becerra was also confronted with criticism as a secretary on his treatment treatment, including the Monkeypox epidemic, including members of the Biden administration who argued that he was urgently lacked and that he had sought to unload the responsibility of the States, according to reports published by the New York Times, Washington Post and others. He defended his response, arguing that his department was ahead of the curve in the distribution of MonkeyPox vaccines across the country, and that state and local courts have finally made decisions about how they were distributed.
“We cannot control how local states and jurisdictions have distributed the vaccine, but we made sure they got it,” he said.
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