Your guide to California’s attorney general primary race
The race to elect California’s next Attorney General has three candidates who are vying to become the state’s top law enforcement official. The Attorney General enacts California’s laws and can bring litigation against companies or the federal government on behalf of state residents. Since 2021, the Attorney General has also been required to investigate California police officers when they shoot and kill an unarmed person.
Currently, there are three candidates, a far more settled field than the 9 people vying to be the next governor. Whoever wins the Attorney General’s race will serve until 2030 as the state’s “top cop.”
The Attorney General has been the state’s first line of defense as the federal government has tried to strip California’s funding over issues ranging from trying to force a repeal of state climate rules to a decade-old law protecting transgender athletes from discrimination. Rob Bonta, the incumbent, has sued the White House 63 times since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, keeping up a precedent set by his predecessor, Xavier Becerra.
The job is often seen as a launching pad for higher offices. Former Vice President Kamala Harris served in the position before joining the U.S. Senate, and Jerry Brown, who previously was governor from 1975 to 1983, previously served as Attorney General from 2007 to 2011 before becoming governor again in 2012. Becerra, who served from 2017 to 2021, is now running for governor.
Who are the candidates?
Gov. Gavin Newsom first appointed Bonta, then a state Assemblymember, to be Attorney General in 2021 after Becerra vacated the position to join then-President Joe Biden’s administration. Bonta won election to the office the following year against Nathan Hochman, a Republican-turned-independent who is now the District Attorney of Los Angeles.
Bonta, a Democrat, is running for another four-year term after ruling out a run for governor amid questions about his involvement in an FBI East Bay corruption case. Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term last year, his office has filed an average of one lawsuit a week against the White House as it has tried to cut off federal funding and challenge state laws. The first Filipino-American to hold the office, Bonta has focused both on equity and collaborating with law enforcement. On his campaign website, he has pledged to continue “protecting our democracy, and holding this lawless federal administration accountable whenever it crosses the line.”
Earlier this month, his office sued Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for governor as a Republican. Bianco seized 650,000 ballots to recount votes cast in the 2025 special election, echoing Trump’s theories of rampant election fraud in Democratic states. As of Tuesday, Bianco had paused that probe as the case makes its way through a Riverside County court.
Gates, a Republican, served as the City Attorney for Huntington Beach for a decade, where he often clashed with the Newsom administration. Under his oversight, the conservative Orange County city claimed it was exempt from a state law mandating more housing production and city residents voted to ban flying the LGBTQ Pride flag outside of government buildings.
He briefly returned to the City Attorney’s Office last November after serving just under a year in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division. The Orange County Register obtained an internal DOJ memo showing he was fired from the DOJ allegedly creating a hostile work environment. In an email, Gates denied the “fake and defamatory” allegations and said he resigned before the Register published its story.
He left the city in January to focus on his attorney general campaign, where he has pledged to enforce Proposition 36, which increases penalties for certain drug and petty theft crimes; protect local governments from state laws governing housing production and land use policy; and combat fraud, waste and mismanagement in state government by scrutinizing programs like the costly High Speed Rail project.
Mikels, a retired attorney, is running as a Green Party candidate. She previously ran for a Riverside-area state Senate seat in 2004 as a Democrat, losing in the general against Robert Dutton.
The self-described peace activist said on her campaign website she first began her career in Southern California as a social worker. She later became a lawyer and spent her career “fighting fraud, and unfair illegal activities that victimize the poor, elderly, widows and orphans and those who pollute and steal our water, and devastate our environment.” Since retiring to the East Bay, she has devoted her time combatting “genocide and the global corporate military imperial machine of Death and Destruction which threatens all future generations’ life on the planet.”
Her campaign website lists seven policy priorities, including refusing to enforce a recent law addressing antisemitism on campuses because it censors critics of the Israeli government; scrutinizing Silicon Valley startups that contract with the military; shutting down the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant; prosecuting California companies that build weapons for the Israeli military; and supporting a proposed 5% tax on billionaires.
Who is funding the candidates?
Bonta has outraised Mikels and Gates by a wide margin. In 2025, he raised $1.8 million in donations, and had $6.3 million on hand, according to the latest filings. His biggest donations have come from labor unions like SEIU, the California Federation of Teachers, United Domestic Workers, and AFSCME.
As of Tuesday, Gates had raised $240,000 from business executives like former Knott’s Berry Farms partner Don Oliphant, oil advisor John McKeown, conservative attorney Erin Friday, El Sur Ranch and Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego. He also received a boost from the Reform Local Government PAC, which spent $10,000 on a voter guide slate mailer to support his candidacy.
Mikels had not reported any campaign finance filings as of Tuesday.
Who has endorsed the candidates?
Mikels has support from the socialist Peace and Freedom Party on its Left Unity slate.
Gates’s campaign website lists endorsements from the California Republican Party and legislative Republicans like Assemblymembers David Tangipa, Kate Sanchez, Carl DeMaio and Tri Ta; and Senators Tony Strickland, Brian Jones, Roger Niello, and Megan Dahle. He also boasts support from former state GOP executive director Jon Fleischmann, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, actor Jon Voight and a handful of local GOP parties up and down the state.
According to his website, Bonta has been endorsed by the state’s most powerful Democrats, including Newsom, U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President pro Tem Monique Limon.
This story was originally published April 24, 2026 at 1:20 PM.
