Campaigning in Spanish takes on new meaning for candidates in California governor’s race

​

At a political summit this summer, California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra briefly broke into Spanish in response to a journalist’s question:

Why should voters choose him over a fresh face?

Becerra could have touted his extensive government experience. He’s a former member of Congress and state attorney general. He also served as Health and Human Services secretary in the Biden administration.

But Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants, reflected on his parents’ labor, in connection to California’s current plight.

“My dad used to say to me: ‘Mijo, si me puedo levantar en la mañana e ir a trabajar, va a ser un buen dia,’” he said. Becerra immediately translated for English speakers: “‘My son, if I get up in the morning and go to work, it’s going to be a good day.’”

Becerra’s father was a construction worker, he explained. So for him, missing out on a day’s work could mean not having enough money to put food on the table.

If elected, Becerra pledged, he’ll work to ensure that Californians have access to affordable healthcare and housing; that they can send their kids to college; and that they “retire in dignity.”

A clip of that conversation is now part of Becerra’s social media strategy, which includes a TikTok account devoted to Spanish speakers.

“For some people, it’ll be easier for them to really understand [my platform] if they hear it in Spanish,” Becerra said.

“I want to elevate them,” he added. “They deserve to be as informed as anybody else.”

On social media, Becerra makes being bilingual look easy. But honing his mother tongue, he told LAist, has been anything but.

A lifelong learner

Becerra grew up in a bilingual home in Sacramento. Until college, he thought his Spanish was pretty good.

But when he enrolled in a Spanish class as an undergrad at Stanford University, Becerra discovered he had a lot of room left for growth. So he studied abroad at Spain’s University of Salamanca, where he broadened his understanding of the language’s many varieties. Still, his ability to communicate complex ideas in Spanish wasn’t seamless.

When Becerra was first elected to public office in his early thirties, Spanish language news organizations began asking for interviews.

“My words weren’t always the most eloquent,” he said, recalling on-camera stumbles. “I found out how important it was to be able to communicate both in English and Spanish, and I have since worked hard to try to make sure I can.”

Today, Spanish speakers around the world compliment Becerra’s fluency.

“I take that as a badge of honor,” he said. “I wish I could do it in more than two languages.”

Karen Bass, seen when she was a candidate for L.A. Mayor, has endorsed former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign for California governor.

(

Kyle Stokes

/

LAist

)

Candidates weigh in on California’s linguistic diversity

Other candidates running in the 2026 race to become California’s next governor said they share Becerra’s goals of connecting with voters in their preferred tongue. (LAist reached out to all of the declared candidates and received responses from two.)

Former state controller Betty Yee is vying for the Democratic nomination. In an email, spokesperson Marcey Brightwell said Yee is “engaging trusted community leaders to facilitate in-language discussions in our diverse communities.” These conversations involve citizens across the state, Brightwell added, including Latinos in the Central Valley and those of Vietnamese descent in Orange County.

Yee has done a little Spanish-language social media engagement, but “she is eager to expand [this effort] in multiple languages as the campaign progresses,” Brightwell said.

Antonio Villaraigosa, the former assemblymember and Los Angeles mayor, noted that more than 200 languages are spoken in California.

“From the first time I got elected in 1994, I’ve always spoken in English and Spanish,” said Villaraigosa, who is also competing for the Democratic nomination. “And if I could speak Korean, Mandarin or Armenian, I’d do that as well.”

Becoming bilingual was also a challenge for him.

Though Villaraigosa is of Mexican ancestry, his mother chose not to teach him Spanish to shield him from anti-Latino discrimination and the potential of being placed in remedial classes at school.

As a result, Villaraigosa didn’t learn Spanish till he was an adult.

To practice, he’d listen to radio and TV programs and watch movies with subtitles. When he tried to strike up conversations with native speakers, most were supportive, he added. But some “people used to make fun of me and say, ‘No, speak in English.’”

Villaraigosa persisted. And today, he’s fluent enough to communicate.

Reclaiming a language

Wendy Ramirez, an East L.A. native who is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, founded Spanish Sin Pena, an online language program and cultural community that helps people with Latin American roots reclaim their Spanish. Part of that work involves acknowledging and celebrating the region’s many dialects, which have been imbued with Indigenous and African tongues.

Ramirez also helps Latino professionals — including lawyers, teachers, therapists, nurses and politicians — take their Spanish to new heights.

“The population I work with comes from that era where people were punished at school for speaking Spanish,” she said.

Like Villaraigosa’s mother, many of her clients’ parents thought it would be best not to pass on their mother tongue.

“We’re all healing together,” Ramirez added. “That self-imposed assimilation was an effort to survive.”

What it means to speak Spanish in public right now

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to temporarily allow immigration agents to continue treating language as grounds for questioning. According to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, speaking Spanish in public or speaking English “with an accent” is one of the factors that can be cause for suspicion.

In this context, the California gubernatorial candidates’ use of Spanish is more than just a way to reach multiple constituencies, said Jonathan Rosa, an associate professor at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and author of “Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad.”

“In this political moment, it also has a symbolic meaning,” he said. “It suggests that a political candidate is trying to signal to different audiences that they are taking a stand in opposition to anti-immigrant perspectives … xenophobia, assimilationism and English-only sentiment.”

But in the recent past, politicians have used Spanish for different purposes, Rosa noted. During a 2016 Republican presidential debate, for instance, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz “used Spanish to test one another’s credentials, to test one another’s latinidad, while promoting anti-immigrant policies,” he said.

“It’s important for us to not make sweeping generalizations about the meanings of this language use,” Rosa added, “and to pay attention to how those meanings take shape in context.”

To protect themselves in this political climate, some Spanish speakers — including U.S. citizens — have opted not to speak Spanish in public.

Ramirez won’t be joining them.

“At this point in time,” she said, reclaiming Spanish “is really an act of solidarity and of resistance.”