Incumbent California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, a former prosecutor and Democratic state legislator, received 56.6% of the June primary vote for the state’s top law enforcement post and is the clear front-runner to win his seat back on Nov. 3.
He again faces former Huntington Beach City Atty. Michael Gates, a Republican who finished second in the primary with 37.9% of the vote. A Green Party candidate, Marjorie Mikels, received about 5.4% of the primary vote, failing to advance.
Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state by a nearly two-to-one margin, and a Republican has not won a statewide race in two decades — since 2006.
In separate interviews with The Times, Bonta said the contrast “couldn’t be starker,” while Gates said they “could not be more opposite.”
Bonta is an establishment Democrat who has sued this Trump administration on behalf of the state more than 85 times and who vigorously defends California’s liberal and progressive policies — including on voting rights, transgender rights and immigrant rights.
Gates is a MAGA-style Republican who repeatedly has sided with the Trump administration on those hot-button issues and others and believes many of Bonta’s lawsuits against the administration are misguided.
In particular, Gates said Bonta’s many lawsuits to protect federal funding that the Trump administration has tried to rescind based on alleged state noncompliance with various federal laws wouldn’t even be necessary if Bonta just accepted the administration’s interpretation of those laws and brought the state into compliance.
“The funding wasn’t cut [by] the federal government capriciously or arbitrarily,” Gates said despite court rulings that determined otherwise. “It was cut because California was not meeting the conditions of the federal funding.”
Bonta said Gates doesn’t understand the law, won’t stand up to the Trump administration even when it wildly oversteps its authority on funding or anything else, and has a history of sharing misinformation to support his ideological position.
“I just don’t think he’s qualified for this job. He is fast and loose — that’s being very kind — with the facts,” Bonta said. “He advances misinformation and disinformation in ways that are just not intellectually honest.”
