BECERRA A VERY DUBIOUS CHOICE TO RUN HHS

President-elect Joe Biden’s push for a diverse leadership team is welcome and smart. The centuries in which the federal government was almost entirely run by White men faded under Presidents

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, only to resurge under President Donald Trump.

It’s heartening to see Biden pick the first woman secretary of Treasury (Janet Yellen) and first Black secretary of Defense (Lloyd Austin). Yellen, a former

Federal Reserve Board chair, and Austin, a retired four-star general, are eminently qualified.

But it is difficult to grasp why Biden has tapped

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be secretary of Health and Human Services. At a time when the nation faces its worst health crisis in more than a century, it is baff ling that Biden would choose an HHS chief with no public health experience. There are many Latinos who would have been far better choices, starting with Dr. Antonia Novello, the former U.S. surgeon general, and Cecilia Muñoz, an Obama domestic policy adviser.

But concerns about Becerra should extend far beyond the fact that he doesn’t have the appropriate background to lead the push against a pandemic that could end up killing a half-million Americans or more. As California’s attorney general, he has been a sharp disappointment.

Becerra has continued the ugly tradition of state attorneys general writing grossly misleading ballot language on propositions put before voters. In 2018, he described a measure that would repeal a $5 billion annual increase in taxes and fees on motorists approved by the Legislature and then-Gov. Jerry

Brown as eliminating “certain road repair and transportation funding.” That helped it be rejected.

This year, he described a measure that would have created the largest property tax hike in state history as a proposal to increase “funding for public schools, community colleges and local government services by changing tax assessment of commercial and industrial property.” It failed when opponents provided the context that Becerra wouldn’t. Yes, of course, politics is hardball. Yet such dishonesty shouldn’t be accepted as par for the course.

But his lack of principle goes far beyond that.

Becerra sought to sabotage one of the most important police reforms of recent years: the Legislature’s 2018 vote for a law that mandates that law enforcement agencies make publicly available the discipline records of officers who faced sustained allegations of misconduct. Not only did Becerra side with police unions’ absurd claim that the law only applied to new allegations of misconduct, he threatened to prosecute members of the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program and its Investigative Studios if they reported details on past and present law enforcement officers who had committed crimes, using information provided by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training after a legal, straightforward public records request.

Becerra will likely face tough questioning from

Senate Republicans simply because he is a California Democrat. Senators of both parties who know his baggage will have far better reasons to question his selection. His nomination should be seen for what it is: a clear mistake by Joe Biden.