Bonta waiting to voice candidacy for governor

WASHINGTON — California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is considering a run for governor in 2026, won’t announce his decision until after the November election, he told the Chronicle on Thursday.

Announcing ahead of the November election is “premature, to be honest. I think we gotta get through 2024,” Bonta said — a reference to many of his fellow Democrats who have already entered the race.

California has some of the country’s most expensive media markets; the growing cast of candidates — former state Senate leader Toni Atkins, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee — declared early, in part, to begin fundraising in earnest.

There isn’t a clear frontrunner for the gubernatorial race for the first time in two decades, a strategist previously said.

Bonta said his focus is on getting President Joe Biden reelected, helping Democrats win the majority in the House and keep the majority in the Senate.

“The best audition for anything that I might want to do next is to do as good a job as I can in the role I’m in,” Bonta said. “There will be a time to make a decision; that time’s not now.”

Yet Bonta raised more money, $1.9 million, than the four top declared candidates in the second half of 2023.

Because Bonta hasn’t declared his candidacy, however, he is subject to stricter contribution limits than those who have opened gubernatorial campaign accounts.

As the top law enforcement official in the nation’s most populous state, Bonta is facing volatile campus protests, rising crime and questions surrounding the controversial arrest of a Los Angeles prosecutor who accessed police records.

Protests on campuses across the country have led to tough decisions for police departments and prosecutors. Demonstrators were arrested at San Diego State University, Cal Poly Humboldt, the University of Southern California and UCLA. No charges have been filed yet, according to the Appeal.

Bonta, who has largely stayed quiet about the issue, said his goal is to have “peaceful, law-abiding protests. People exercising their free speech rights with full volume and amplification, but also not breaking any laws in the process.”

He said the tradition of civil disobedience is one that he learned from his parents, who fought for voting rights and against the Vietnam War on campuses in the 1960s.

“Part of civil disobedience and peaceful protests over the years has been a knowledge that you’re breaking the law and a willingness to be arrested and to draw attention to your cause,” he said. “The hope is to continue to have peaceful protests where people speak out, and everyone is safe, no one is discriminated against and no one is hurt.”

While there hasn’t been widespread police violence against student demonstrators reported in California, police at UCLA launched flares over the encampment and shot rubber bullets into the crowd May 2, the Los Angeles Times reported. Authorities told the newspaper that a man was struck in the chest with a rubber bullet after California Highway Patrol officers told protesters to stop throwing objects at them. The campus announced a police consulting firm will review the police response.

But Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Los Angeles, called for Bonta to investigate the police response to the UCLA protests as well.

Bonta said he has sent guidance to police departments “reminding everyone what students are allowed to do; that should not be infringed upon, interfered with with violence or excessive force or any use of force.”

Use of force may be justified, but only in self defense or defense of others and only in a proportionate response to the force used by a demonstrator, Bonta said.

“We’ve been very firm and clear about our commitment to justified uses of force only, appropriate uses of forces,” he said.

Arrests of protestors have also been handled in different ways by jurisdictions.

Local prosecutors have a “great deal of prosecutorial discretion” when it comes to charging protesters, Bonta said. Prosecutors have chosen to drop charges or charge protesters with misdemeanors like trespassing and vandalism, while others have charged them with felony burglary.

Bonta said his team has been monitoring those cases and would get involved “if there’s an abuse of discretion; if someone is charged and it abuses the discretion because there’s no basis for it.”

So far, his office hasn’t received any reports of abuse by prosecutors.

Meanwhile, Bonta’s office is also under scrutiny for its efforts to investigate instances in which police use deadly force against unarmed people, a responsibility it took on beginning in 2021.

His office has concluded nine investigations, none of which resulted in charges. An additional 45 cases, dating to August 2021, are ongoing.

“We’re ready, willing and able to charge on any case where the facts justify it, and we will continue to do it,” Bonta said. “We take them as we see them. We apply the law to the facts and we make a decision based on that.”

Bonta said he’s not reticent to charge, even with the high bar for doing so, but that he’s also “not gung ho to charge if the facts aren’t there.”

He has, however, filed high-profile charges against one law enforcement official.

Bonta filed felony charges against Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Diana Teran on April 24, alleging that she improperly used confidential information about sheriffs’ deputies.

He told the Chronicle that his office found evidence that Teran “violated the penal code multiple times.” There were other incidents for which his office decided not to charge at this time, he said.

And while Bonta is a vocal Biden supporter, he said he’s also ready to litigate if Donald Trump retakes the presidency. “I’m fighting for a Biden administration, but we can’t be caught flat-footed if that doesn’t pan out,” Bonta said.

Then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration for its policymaking that he argued violated federal law, and Bonta said he would do the same.

“California took a very important and critical role in 2016 to 2020. We will do that again, if necessary, to protect our people, our values, our resources, our future,” Bonta said.

If a Trump administration were to break the law, “we will be the loyal opposition.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta say he is focused on Joe Biden’s reelection.