The congressman from the 31st District is Xavier Becerra, a Democrat first elected in 1992. As the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, he is a member of the minority leadership team headed by Nancy Pelosi of California. Read More

The congressman from the 31st District is Xavier Becerra, a Democrat first elected in 1992. As the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, he is a member of the minority leadership team headed by Nancy Pelosi of California.

Becerra (beh-SEH-ra) grew up in Sacramento. His mother was a Mexican immigrant, and his father, who was born in the United States, supported the family with construction and other jobs. Becerra worked his way through college and law school at Stanford University, becoming the first in his family to get a college degree. He married a Harvard Medical School graduate who became vice president of California’s largest health care foundation. Becerra started his career at a legal services clinic in Massachusetts, doing work for mentally disabled clients. When he returned to California, Becerra was an aide to state Sen. Art Torres and then to Attorney General John Van de Kamp. In 1990, he was elected to the California Assembly. In 1992, when U.S. Rep. Edward Roybal, California’s first Latino congressman and a Democrat, announced his retirement, Becerra jumped into the race. His main competitor, Leticia Quezada, was a member of the Los Angeles school board. Becerra had the endorsements of Roybal and County Supervisor Gloria Molina. Becerra won the primary with 32% of the vote to 22% for Quezada. He went on to defeat Republican Morry Waksberg in the general election with 58% of the vote.

In the House, Becerra has been a consistent liberal. He has also been successful in moving into the House Democratic leadership, winning praise for his hard-working, cerebral style. Some Congressional Hispanic Caucus members dubbed him “Harvard,” though he did not attend that school. When Democrats won majority control of the House, fellow Californian and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave him the newly created position of assistant to the speaker, where he helped to set the party’s legislative agenda. In a November 2008 leadership shuffle, Becerra ran for vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, and with Pelosi’s help, defeated Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, 175-67. Pelosi also put him on the presidential deficit reduction panel formed in 2010. But he has not always seen eye-to-eye with his mentor; she was reportedly angry in 2009 when he intimated to Progressive Caucus members that the leadership abandoned a government-run “public option” for the health care overhaul bill too quickly.

President Obama also recognized Becerra as a standout and offered him the post of U.S. trade representative in 2008. But he declined after deciding that trade policy would not be a major White House priority in Obama’s early years. Becerra had been Obama’s campaign liaison to the Hispanic community and urged him to get behind a comprehensive immigration bill. He acknowledged in 2010 that Latinos regarded Obama with “a lot of suspicion” because of his failure to make immigration a priority in his first term.

Becerra was the first Hispanic to win a seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. He has advocated tax changes to curtail the overseas exodus of jobs in the entertainment industry, including a tax credit for labor costs of independent film producers. He supported normalizing trade relations with China and won House approval of a resolution supporting reunification efforts between North and South Korea. His support for free trade deals with Chile and Singapore led to local protests by union activists, and he demanded improvements in the labor standards in the Central American Free Trade Agreement in return for his support. “Trade has to be sold as something that’s good for us,” he told The Washington Post in 2007. During the health care debate in 2009, he and Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., convened a bipartisan group of lawmakers that sought in vain to find common ground on the issue.

In May 2008, Becerra won enactment of a bill establishing a commission to develop a national museum of the American Latino, which would be located on the National Mall and would be part of the Smithsonian Institution. The commission convened in 2009.

The one career setback for Becerra in recent years was his failed run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2001. He did not raise enough money to establish name recognition outside his district, and he was overshadowed by former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa. In the primary, Becerra finished fifth, with just 6% of the vote.