California Democrats have assembled perhaps the least impressive collection of gubernatorial candidates in U.S. history.
Now, the party’s new front-runner, former Biden administration Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, has taken his turn at humiliating himself.
In an interview published and aired this week, reporter Annie Rose Ramos of KTLA-TV in Los Angeles exposed Becerra as a lightweight and a fraud simply by asking fair questions and doing her homework on the candidate.
Indeed, from start to finish, Becerra did himself no favors.
First, he opened the interview with a bizarre question.
“By the way, this is a profile piece, this is not a gotcha piece, right?” the candidate asked in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
“Well, look, I think these questions are fair. It’s in order to learn about you as a candidate,” Ramos replied.
But Becerra would not let it go.
“So long as it’s about the profile,” he said.
“I don’t know how you define profile, but I’d like to begin the interview,” the reporter answered.
“The way I describe profile is, you talk about all the things that I’ve done, things I want to do, and along with some tough questions. But not only tough questions,” Beccera said.
Surely the Democrat lost a few voters by demanding a softball interview. Fortunately, he did not get one.
Ramos posed substantive questions on homelessness, gas prices, and affordability. Aside from declaring that he would “work with” refineries to produce more gasoline and also “freeze” utility rates, the candidate offered no specifics.
Finally, in another damaging segment, Ramos asked about former President Joe Biden’s propensity for losing migrant children.
“During your time as HHS Secretary, a New York Times investigation found the health department couldn’t find some 85,000 children it had released,” Ramos said.
“That’s not accurate,” Becerra shot back. “What you just read is not accurate. First, that’s what I’ll say, because it was never the case that we could not find kids. You’re essentially, I don’t know if you got those talking points, from Donald Trump.”
“It’s from a New York Times article,” the savvy reporter replied.
“That’s not what the New York Times article said,” the flustered Democrat insisted. “The New York Times said that individuals, the children and their sponsors, did not respond to calls. They didn’t say we couldn’t find kids.”
As Becerra spoke, the station proved Ramos’ point by showing a highlighted clip from the New York Times article, which did, in fact, mention that the agency “could not reach more than 85,000 children. Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children.”
The full interview didn’t go much better. Annie Rose Ramos did a bang up job for KTLA. It’s usually a very liberal station, but she didn’t cut him slack. 💪🏻😎 pic.twitter.com/73ksk69QDx
— Plein Crazy (@PleinCrazy) May 12, 2026
All told, it was a catastrophic interview that could not have come at a worse time for Becerra.
In October, former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter torpedoed her California gubernatorial campaign with a dreadful interview of her own, followed by the release of a damaging 2021 video that went viral, for it showed her berating a staffer with such ruthlessness that it called into question her temperament and decency.
Then, last month, multiple women stepped forward to accuse now-former Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of sexual assault. Swalwell, then the Democratic front-runner, quickly suspended his gubernatorial campaign.
As a result, according to the latest RealClearPolling aggregate of polls, Becerra has surged to the front of the Democratic pack in California’s open primary, only fractions of a percentage point behind Republican pace-setter Steve Hilton.
Ramos, however, might have reversed Becerra’s momentum with a single fair interview.
In short, the Democratic primary field in every election nearly always resembles a clown car. But the Democrats in California’s gubernatorial race may have brought collective humiliation upon themselves to a degree never before seen.
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