Today in a surprise move, President-elect Biden Jr. selected Xavier Becerra as his nominee for secretary of health and human services, tapping a former congressman who would be the first Latinx to run the department as it battles the surging coronavirus pandemic. As a resident of the great state of California, I am proud to have one of our own lead that Department. I am happy that Bacerra is a leader on issues of criminal justice and immigration.
Mr. Becerra has been California’s attorney general since 2017, when Ms. Harris was elected to the Senate and Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to fill her seat. His term would expire in 2022. As attorney general in California, he has been at the forefront of legal efforts on health care, leading 20 states and the District of Columbia in a campaign to protect Obamacare from being dismantled. He has also been vocal in the Democratic Party about fighting for women’s health.
Born in Sacramento, Becerra is the son of working-class immigrants from Mexico. Becerra grew up in a one-room apartment with his three sisters. He studied abroad at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain, before earning his B.A. in economics from Stanford University, becoming the first person in his family to graduate from college. He received his law degree from Stanford Law School.
Biden was impressed by Mr. Becerra’s personal story. In particular, the president-elect liked the fact that Mr. Becerra served clients with mental health needs shortly after graduating from law school.
Mr. Becerra will immediately face a daunting task in leading the department at a critical moment during a pandemic that has killed more than 281,000 people in the United States. NABWMT is well aware that this pandemic has taken a particularly devastating toll on people of color.
Becerra is a good choice and an experienced legislator and executive. Bacerra may also help Mr. Biden secure legislative changes to bolster Obamacare, a central promise that the president-elect made during the 2020 campaign.
Mr. Becerra, 62, served 12 terms in Congress, representing Los Angeles, before becoming the attorney general of his home state in 2017. He is the first Latinx to hold that office, and while in Congress he was the first Latinx to serve as a member of the Ways and Means Committee, where he worked on health care as a senior member of the health subcommittee. He also led the House Democratic Caucus, which gave him a powerful leadership post. He is an outspoken advocate of improved health care access
As California’s top law enforcement official, Mr. Becerra helped lead legal fights across the nation for access to health care, focusing in particular on dismantling barriers for women struggling to get medical services.
Mr. Becerra led a coalition of 22 state attorneys general in challenging a Mississippi law that prohibited doctors from providing abortion services past 15 weeks. In a statement at the time, Mr. Becerra called the ban “unjust, unlawful, and unfair.”
Mr. Becerra’s office boasted frequently of the many lawsuits he had filed against the Trump administration, including suits challenging the president’s immigration and environmental policies. His activism in fighting the Trump agenda in court earned him praise from leading progressives in the Democratic Party.
But Mr. Becerra also partnered with Republican counterparts at times, joining a bipartisan group of attorneys general in August to urge the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies to increase access to remdesivir, a drug that has shown promise in treating Covid-19. He also worked with Republicans to prevent student vaping.
While in Congress, Mr. Becerra was a fierce advocate of the Latino community and became deeply involved in efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. He also promoted plans to build a national museum devoted to exploring the culture and history of American Latinos. The House voted this year to create such a museum.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Becerra traveled to Cuba and visited with its leader, Fidel Castro, which infuriated Republican members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. They resigned, saying they were “personally insulted” by the visit.
Mr. Biden’s selection of Mr. Becerra to replace the current secretary, Alex M. Azar II, comes as the president-elect is under increasing pressure from the Latino community and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to diversify his cabinet. Mr. Becerra is the second Latino Mr. Biden has chosen for his cabinet after the selection last month of Alejandro N. Mayorkas, a Cuban immigrant, as secretary of homeland security.
If approved, Mr. Becerra’s nomination would create yet another statewide office in California to be filled by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was already considering candidates, including Mr. Becerra, for the Senate seat being vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, who served as surgeon general under President Barack Obama, will reprise that role for Mr. Biden. A telegenic confidant of the president-elect, Mr. Murthy will become one of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers on medical issues and will lead much of the public outreach on the pandemic.
Jeffrey D. Zients, an entrepreneur and management consultant who served as the head of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council and fixed the bungled rollout of the health law’s online insurance marketplace, will become a coronavirus czar in the White House, leading efforts to coordinate the fight against the coronavirus pandemic among the government’s sprawling agencies.
Source: New York Times , Jonathan Martin contributed reporting from Washington, and Shawn Hubler from Sacramento.
