Xavier Becerra, the polling leader in California's gubernatorial primary, has declined to endorse the state's plan to ban sales of new gas-powered and hybrid vehicles by 2035, splitting with outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom on one of the most prominent climate mandates in the country and drawing fire from rivals and environmental groups in the closing days of the campaign.
Becerra, the former federal health and human services secretary and former California attorney general, laid out his position in a written response to a Politico survey and then expanded on it in an interview, as the New York Post reported. His answer amounted to a conditional maybe, and in a Democratic primary, that reads like a no.
The split matters because the 2035 target is not some aspirational talking point. California regulators codified it through a 2020 mandate that required tighter emissions standards and an accelerated shift toward electric vehicles. Newsom has treated it as a signature achievement. And Becerra, the man most likely to succeed him after the June 2 primary, just told voters he won't commit to it.
Becerra framed his reluctance around practical concerns, infrastructure gaps, vehicle affordability, federal policy uncertainty, automaker cooperation, and the state's fiscal condition. In his survey response, he wrote:
"California should transition from gas-powered vehicles when it makes sense, when infrastructure and affordability are there for California families."
In the follow-up interview, he went further. He rejected the idea that any candidate could pin down a firm timeline.
"We're not going to live in a world that's make-believe. If you could tell me where those things are, I could give you a much more precise answer. And if anyone says they can give you that answer, then they're just making a lot of inflated promises."
He also offered a line that will not sit well with the environmental left: "You need Chevron, I need Chevron."
That single sentence tells you more about Becerra's political calculation than any policy paper could. He is running in a state where green orthodoxy is a litmus test, and he chose to name-check an oil company as a necessary partner. Whatever else you think of the man, that is not an accident.
Rival candidate Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist, wasted no time. He tagged Becerra with the label "Big Oil Becerra" and attacked his acceptance of oil industry donations. Steyer spokesperson Kevin Liao drew the contrast in blunt terms:
"Tom is committed to California's ambitious climate goals, and will work to overcome hurdles to the state's 2035 target. As governor, Tom will triple the state's EV tax credit, ensuring working- and middle-class households can actually afford the transition to the latest electric vehicle technology."
Steyer's promise to triple the state's EV tax credit is the kind of pledge that sounds generous until you ask who pays for it. But it does what it needs to do in a primary: it puts Becerra on the wrong side of the party's activist base.
The fracture is not limited to campaign rivals. Internal Democratic friction has become a recurring pattern, with prominent figures publicly breaking from party leadership on issues ranging from strategy to policy substance.
Clean transportation advocates reacted with alarm. Dan Sperling, director emeritus of UC Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies and a former member of the California Air Resources Board, called Becerra's stance "disconcerting and disappointing."
Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California state director for the Environmental Defense Fund, offered a more measured response, but one that still carried an edge:
"I think it's really important to have a goal, but a goal doesn't magically make things happen. If anything, it's the easiest step, and now we have to actually do the funding work, the policy work, and the coalition building to make it happen. And that goes for whoever the next governor is."
That last line, "whoever the next governor is", reads like a warning that the environmental lobby will hold any successor accountable, Becerra included.
Newsom himself has not wavered. After the Trump administration eliminated the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, the governor reaffirmed California's commitment to the 2035 target. His statement was characteristically combative:
"We won't let this illegal action by Trump and Republicans in the pockets of polluters stand in the way of common-sense policy to clean our air, protect the health of our kids, and compete on the global stage."
Newsom's framing casts any retreat from the 2035 goal as capitulation to Washington. That makes Becerra's position a direct contrast with one of Newsom's hallmark policies, and it hands Steyer and the environmental left a ready-made argument that the front-runner lacks conviction on the party's core climate agenda.
The loss of the $7,500 federal credit makes the politics even more complicated. Without that subsidy, the cost gap between electric and gas-powered vehicles widens for ordinary buyers. Becerra's emphasis on affordability and infrastructure is not irrational. It reflects a reality that millions of California families, especially lower-income ones, face every time they visit a dealership.
Democratic consultant Andrew Acosta put it plainly when he told Politico that Becerra appeared to be carving out room on affordability:
"It seems like Becerra is trying to make sure he has wiggle room on these affordability issues. Because if you do a hard phase-out of gas cars, there are a lot of people who can't afford to buy an EV tomorrow."
That is not a Republican talking point. That is a Democratic strategist acknowledging the obvious. A hard ban on new gas-powered vehicle sales by 2035 is a policy that falls hardest on working families, the people who drive older cars, commute long distances, and cannot absorb a five-figure price premium for an electric vehicle. The infrastructure to support mass EV adoption, charging stations, grid capacity, battery supply chains, does not yet exist at the scale California would need.
Becerra is not wrong about the math. He is just saying it out loud, and in a Democratic primary, that is treated as heresy.
The broader pattern is hard to miss. Even Democratic polling has shown Republicans leading in California's governor's race, a sign that the state's progressive consensus may be thinner than Sacramento assumes. When a front-runner in the bluest of blue states feels the need to hedge on the party's flagship climate mandate, it tells you something about where voters actually stand.
California's 2035 gas-car ban has always been more aspiration than plan. Setting a target is easy. Building the charging network, stabilizing the power grid, making EVs affordable for median-income families, and securing cooperation from automakers, those are the hard parts. And none of them are on track.
Becerra's critics want him to pledge allegiance to the target regardless. His response, that he won't make promises he can't keep, is the kind of answer that would be praised as honest pragmatism in any other context. In a Democratic primary, it earns you a nickname from a billionaire rival and a scolding from the environmental lobby.
The tension is not unique to California. Democrats across the country are watching their polling advantages erode, and the party's internal debates over how far left to push on energy and climate policy are a significant part of the problem.
Clean transportation advocates warned that stepping back from the 2035 target could worsen pollution and tarnish California's image as a climate leader. That framing assumes the target itself is doing the work. But as Sutter of the Environmental Defense Fund acknowledged, a goal does not magically produce results. Funding, policy, and coalition-building do. And those are precisely the areas where California's record is weakest.
The state has spent years layering mandates on top of mandates without solving the underlying cost and infrastructure problems. Now the front-runner to be governor is pointing that out, and the party's response is to call him an oil company stooge.
Other Democratic leaders have faced organized backlash from their own party for deviating from progressive orthodoxy, and Becerra's experience fits the same mold. The message from the activist class is clear: fall in line or face the consequences.
Becerra leads the polls heading into the June 2 primary. His willingness to break with the 2035 mandate suggests he believes California voters, even Democratic ones, are more worried about gas prices and grocery bills than about hitting an arbitrary emissions target a decade from now.
He may be right. But the question is whether the party's institutional machinery, the donors, the advocacy groups, the media gatekeepers, will let a candidate win on that message. Democratic primary voters have shown an appetite for unconventional choices when the standard options fail to inspire confidence.
Steyer's attack line, "Big Oil Becerra", is designed to make the front-runner's pragmatism sound like corruption. Whether it works will say a great deal about the Democratic electorate in California. If voters reward Becerra for telling the truth about affordability, it signals a party slowly reconnecting with economic reality. If they punish him, it confirms that the green lobby's grip on Democratic politics remains stronger than any kitchen-table concern.
Either way, the spectacle is instructive. The leading Democrat in the nation's largest blue state just told his own party that its signature climate policy is built on "inflated promises" and "make-believe." He didn't need a Republican to say it. The facts said it for him.