AG Bonta pledges to police the police
Former assemblyman transitioning to state’s top law enforcement officer
It would be easy to assume that Rob Bonta, 49, California’s new attorney general, is simply the right man at the right time.
Bonta, the first Filipino-American to hold the job, made a name for himself advocating for police reform as a Democratic assemblyman representing Oakland, Alameda and San Leandro. So it was no surprise that his colleagues focused on that record during his confirmation hearings last week, held a day after a jury convicted disgraced Minnesota police Officer Derek Chauvin for crushing George Floyd’s neck with his knee.
But to say that Bonta was made for this moment and this role would discount the single-minded drive and preparation that made his appointment possible.
Bonta assumes the office with a war chest exceeding $2.4 million, making him one of the state’s most prodigious fundraisers, despite the fact that he has never run for statewide office.
Bonta has been a favorite of law enforcement groups, who donated approximately $190,000 since he first ran for his Assembly seat, but says he will no longer accept contributions from police and prison guard unions as attorney general.
In October 2020 he donated the remainder of contributions from law enforcement groups, $14,625, to the 2020 campaign supporting the initiative to end cash bail.
In an interview with the Bay Area News Group, Bonta acknowledged that he had his eye on the attorney general’s office for years and colleagues said his largess is a sign that he was preparing to run for the position even before his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, left to join the Biden administration.
The day Gov. Gavin Newsom informed Bonta during a Zoom call last month that he would select him to lead the California Department of Justice, Bonta filed papers to defend his incumbency.
“Yes, I am running for election. I’m running in 2022. I intend to stay in the seat, to run a robust campaign and to continue to be
able to work for and fight for the people of California,” hesaid.
Bonta’s wife of 23 years, Mialisa Villafane, is running for his vacated Assembly seat. They have three children.
Bonta assumes the attorney general’s office at a time of deep mistrust of law enforcement and calls for greater police accountability. One of his first tasks will be establishing a new enforcement division — authorized by legislation he supported — to investigate police shootings of unarmed suspects.
“Based on historical data, we anticipate that there could be 40 of those incidents per year,” Bonta said. Police shooting investigations are expensive, politically fraught and, at the state level, exceedingly rare. Becerra and former AG — and current vice president — Kamala Harris each presided over only one such investigation.
Bonta said he will also advocate for broader implementation of federally mandated police reforms in California, after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland reversed a Trump administration policy to restrict the Justice Department’s authority.
California attorneys general have traditionally partnered with federal civil rights monitors in police misconduct cases.
Continued federal partnerships will “be an important tool in the toolbox of the attorney general to create more justice in California,” Bonta said.
Oakland and Los Angeles police departments have both been subject to yearslong consent decrees designed to force sweeping reforms. In addition, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been under a separate federal receivership for decades.
Bonta also said he expects fewer federal challenges to California’s vanguard environmental laws during the Biden presidency.
During the Trump administration, then-Attorney General Becerra defended the state against dozens of federal actions brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency aimed at curtailing California’s clean fuel standards, carbon emissions trading agreements with Canadian agencies and other state climate initiatives.
“But that doesn’t mean that the threats to our environment, go away,” Bonta said. “We need to look inward, in our state at bad actors and polluters.”
Robert Andres Bonta was born in Quezon City, Philippines, and immigrated to California in the 1970s. His parents were deeply involved in the United Farm Workers labor movement and raised him in Fair Oaks.
He attended the University of Oxford and Yale University for his undergraduate degree and also earned his law degree from Yale.
After clerking for U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Connecticut, Bonta practiced corporate law in San Francisco, and while there he became a deputy city attorney.
“When we met, he was in the City Attorney’s office, and I was a former civil rights attorney and prosecutor, but neither of us had thought deeply about our political careers — we were just interested in public service,” said Assemblyman David Sen-Fu Chiu, D-San Francisco.
After Chiu’s name also emerged as a potential replacement for Becerra, he publicly withdrew from consideration to back his friend’s candidacy.
“Rob has been a statewide leader on criminal justice reform, leading the bail reform conversation, leading the conversation about immigration detention, opposing the death penalty,” Chiu said. “He’s been a leader on all the issues of the day that matter.”
Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State Los Angeles, a state policy research organization, said that each attorney general lends their own imprimatur to the position.
Kamala Harris was known as a fierce prosecutor when she assumed the role. Becerra was a U.S. congressman and so was focused on national matters such as California’s leadership of various state coalitions opposed to Trump’s legal and regulatory initiatives.
“Now that Trump is gone, the world is changed,” Sonenshein said. “And you have to wonder if Bonta, who was a state lawmaker, will advocate for more legislation.”
Lateefah Simon, president of the Akonadi Foundation in Oakland, a racial justice and policy advocacy group, said she remembered seeing Bonta when he attended community events while working for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.
In 2014, when Simon’s husband, a prominent Oakland journalist, died from leukemia, she became closer to the couple.
“Rob and his wife, I don’t know how they knew, but they knocked on my door and they had a bunch of books for my 3-year-old,” shesaid.
Eventually, she volunteered and supported one of Bonta’s early Assembly campaigns.
“Our job as people of faith, is going to be to keep him accountable … but I don’t see him becoming someone we can’t trust,” she said. “We need him there.”