Former Joe Biden official alleged Xavier Becerra called migrant kids 'little Juanitos and Juanitas,' sparking concern inside his California governor campaign.
Page A7From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 30 September 2026
Becerra forgets the mayor's name on camera, remembers one for migrant children off it.
As it ran on the front
The strategy always sounds fine in the room: keep the candidate on a short leash, avoid unforced errors, let the numbers in a blue state argue for him. On September 1, the Post wrote it up as hiding — the wannabe governor skating to Sacramento on registration numbers alone, no public health crisis needed this time, no effort required. That's not hiding. That's just —
Four weeks later, on September 29, a camera found Xavier Becerra anyway. Live. On tape. That's not a stumble. That's —…
…(cont) It is a stumble. It is the kind that happens when four weeks pass with no unscripted moment and then one arrives with no name loaded for it.
Nobody says he forgot that name. Nobody says he ever had trouble finding it.
Two names, one week. He lost the one he needed for the job in front of him and kept the one he never should have had for other people's children. I would like to tell you which of those costs more in a governor's race. I do not have to, because the Post already ran the poll four days earlier: Becerra beats Steve Hilton walking away, and voters say they dislike Becerra doing it. Leading and being disliked are supposed to be two different rooms in politics. The polling says he found a way to be in both at once, and the interview four days later is a fair guess at why.
A candidate who spends a month not talking eventually has to talk. What comes out first is the tell — and this month it was two names, the one he lost and the one he kept.
“Guy can't come up with the name of the mayor he'd actually have to work with, but he had a name ready for somebody else's kids this whole time. That's not two unlucky weeks, that's what a month of hiding from cameras looks like once the cameras finally show up. And California might elect him anyway, because the other option is worse — that's the con, not the gaffe.”
“Look, everybody blanks on a name under studio lights, that's not a competence question — and one former staffer's memory of an office nickname isn't a policy position, did I say nickname, that's not — okay, it's not a great two weeks, I'll grant you that, but the internal numbers still have him running away with the race, so — right, disliked while winning, that's — fine. It's not great.”
The receipts
Becerra may want to check how to spell the name of the San Francisco mayor.
· Xavier ‘Basement’ Becerra needs to come out of hiding and come clean from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· Steve Hilton trails Xavier Becerra in California governor’s race — but voters dislike Becerra more: poll from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.