Democrat Xavier Becerra wins California governorship

LOS ANGELES: Democrat Xavier Becerra handily waved off an insurgent challenge from Donald Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton on Tuesday in the race to become the governor of California, US networks said.

Partial results showed Becerra, a career politican who served in the cabinet of former president Joe Biden, had a two-to-one advantage over Hilton, with almost half of the ballots counted.

Becerra had run a low-key campaign in a state where Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans and where the Trump brand is almost toxic.

NBC News and Fox News were among the outlets that declared the race.

Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants, will be the first Latino governor of California, a state that would be the world’s fourth largest economy if it were a country.

He will replace term-limited Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democratic Party big-hitter who is believed to have his eyes on a tilt at the White House in 2028.

Hilton, a British-born conservative former pundit who was once an adviser to former UK prime minister David Cameron, had always been a long shot.

But he sought to leverage his status as an outsider and a relative newcomer to the state to persaude voters that he could channel what he said was California’s “rebel spirit” to make it more business-friendlly and less constrained by red tape. -AFP