ATTORNEY GENERAL
There has been a lot of recent turnover at the California Department of Justice. In 2016, Attorney General Kamala Harris became a U.S. senator and U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra was appointed to the job. Four years later, Becerra was promoted to a cabinet job in the Biden administration, allowing Gov. Newsom to tap then-Democratic Assembly Member Rob Bonta. Now Bonta has to convince a majority of voters he deserves to keep the job, but the recent surge in public concern over crime has buoyed the prospect of his competitor, Nathan Hochman, a Los Angeles Republican who served as assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush.
Chen has been dubbed by Politico as the Republican Party's “most-courted ideas adviser,” and while it's an uphill battle for a Republican to win any statewide office in California, his pitch is that someone outside the dominant party will be a stronger and more independent watchdog over the state's finances. He pledges to use the office to increase transparency and understanding, to spotlight problems and longer-term policy decisions and to restore public faith in state government. Chen took an ambiguous route during the lead-up to the primary on his support for former President Trump and his stance on abortion. But after finishing first, he told CalMatters he wrote in Mitt Romey for president in 2016 and left the question blank in 2020. He also clarified his stance on abortion, but not before criticizing Cohen for making it a central part of her campaign: “I support women's reproductive freedoms. And that includes access to family planning services, to contraceptives and abortions, as allowed under California law.”
Democrat, Board of Equalization chairperson
Like Yee, the current controller, Cohen is a Democrat campaigning for the position after serving on the California Board of Equalization. Cohen presided over the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for eight years representing the 10th District where she advocated for police reform, took on the tobacco and soda industries and created a program to address inequities in the cannabis industry. Cohen says she's uniquely qualified for this position because of that hands-on experience with state finances as an elected official and in local government, but also because of her life experience as a woman of color. She vows to be an inspiring example to take a bigger policymaking role and also to make sure state money isn't wasted so it gets to the neediest Californians.
Newsom certainly had Weber's biography in mind when he appointed her secretary of state. The daughter of Arkansas sharecroppers who fled Jim
Crow violence for Los Angeles, Weber says voting was a core part of her family tradition. Now she's the first Black person to hold the role of chief overseer of California's elections. A founding faculty member of San Diego State University's Africana Studies program, Weber taught for nearly four decades before jumping into politics. After a stint on the local school board, she joined the California Assembly, where she developed a reputation as a fierce advocate for racial justice and as a Democrat willing to occasionally lock horns with teachers' unions.
Despite a failed bid for treasurer in 2018, as well as for state Assembly in 2012 and state Senate in a special election in 2019, Guerrero is gunning again to unseat the incumbent treasurer. If he succeeds, Guerrero pledges to fix what he calls mismanagement — including of the state's unfunded pension liability — and safeguard state assets. His platform includes lower taxes and smaller government. Prior to his political career, Guerrero worked with Fortune 500 companies as an auditor, consultant and mergers and acquisitions adviser. He has been a certified public accountant since 2002.
Ma has served as California's treasurer since 2018 — the first woman of color in the role. During her tenure, she led the sale of $20 billion in state debt, which financed many building projects that created thousands of construction jobs and saved taxpayers $1.8 billion. Ma has been outspoken in her support for increasing diversity on corporate boards, constructing high-speed rail to Las Vegas and divesting from fossil fuels. In 2020, Ma's office narrowly avoided losing nearly $457 million in state funds after a deal for N95 masks early in the COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be fraudulent. It was only after two banks flagged the transaction that it was canceled. Prior to her current role, Ma was a member of the state Board of Equalization, where she pushed for online retailers to collect sales taxes from third-party sellers to help brick-and-mortar retailers compete, which increased state revenues by between $431 million and $1.8 billion a year. She also advocated for taxing e-cigarettes and led efforts to regulate the cannabis industry.