Attorney General

Bio

• The Secretary of State's certified list prints his party preference as Democratic, his ballot designation as California Attorney General, and marks him with an asterisk as the incumbent.^S1
• The Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee list his age as 54. The Bee reports he first worked as a San Francisco deputy city attorney in 2003 after stints as a private litigator and as a clerk for a federal judge in Connecticut, that he was elected to the Alameda City Council in 2010, and that he won an East Bay Assembly seat in 2012. The Times reports he served in the Legislature for eight years.^S8S9
• Governor Gavin Newsom appointed him attorney general in 2021 after Xavier Becerra left the post to join the Biden administration, and he won election to the office in 2022 with nearly 60 percent of the vote.^S8S9S5
• The Sacramento Bee reports he is married to Assemblymember Mia Bonta, who won his Assembly seat in a special election, that they live in Alameda and have three children.^S9
• His campaign describes him as the son of farmworker organizers and an immigrant mother whose parents fled the Philippines, and says he became a public attorney so that working families would have someone in their corner.^S11

Record in office

• His office has sued the Trump administration repeatedly, and the published counts differ by outlet and date. The Los Angeles Times reports more than 85 lawsuits; CalMatters reports more than 50 since the 2024 election; his campaign says more than 50 in the past year; the Sacramento Bee describes an average of about one lawsuit a week against the White House since 2024.^S5S8S9S10
• The Los Angeles Times reports his office pushed the National Guard out of California cities, successfully defended birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court took up the case, defeated the federal government's Title IX lawsuit over California's transgender athlete policies in September 2026, defeated a challenge to the ballot description his office wrote for Proposition 39, and secured early wins in its case seeking to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.^S8
• CalMatters reports that much of his first term went to enforcing housing and criminal justice laws passed in the early 2020s, including laws that compel cities to build housing. The Los Angeles Times reports Huntington Beach lost its court fight over state housing mandates and its stricter voter identification law, both cases Bonta's office brought or defended.^S5S8
• The Sacramento Bee reports the office has also turned toward technology companies, and that Meta recently agreed to pay $17 billion and overhaul how children interact with its platforms; the Bee also reports he has become the face of the legal effort to block the Warner Bros. and Paramount merger, which he argues would unfairly consolidate Hollywood into the hands of a few owners.^S9
• The Los Angeles Times reports he has called crime and public safety "Job No. 1, 2 and 3" for the attorney general and that he has claimed credit for historic declines in violent and other crime in California, while noting the drops fit within a broader national decline in crime.^S8
• His campaign says the office delivered the largest misclassification settlement in California history for workers who were wrongly treated as contractors.^S10

Positions

Endorsements

• CalMatters and LAist list the California Democratic Party, the California Teachers Association and California Environmental Voters as his key endorsements.^S5S7
• His campaign endorsement page lists featured supporters including Senators Adam Schiff, Alex Padilla and Cory Booker, Governor Gavin Newsom, Controller Malia Cohen, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, the Sierra Club and the Teamsters, and it lists Kamala Harris with the title Vice President.^S12
• The same page lists labor supporters including SEIU California, Teamsters California, the California Faculty Association, the California Nurses Association, the California Teachers Association, United Domestic Workers, the California Professional Firefighters, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the State Building and Construction Trades Council and the California School Employees Association.^S12
• It also lists public safety supporters including district attorneys Summer Stephan of San Diego County, Brooke Jenkins of San Francisco, Diana Becton of Contra Costa County and Erik Nasarenko of Ventura County, and San Diego County Sheriff Kellie Williams.^S12
• Civil rights, environmental and reproductive rights supporters listed on the page include Sierra Club California, California Environmental Voters, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, Equality California, Smart Justice California, the California Medical Association and Courage Campaign.^S12

Funding

What this could mean for your household

• Homeowners and renters: CalMatters reports much of his first term went to enforcing state housing laws that compel cities to plan and permit housing, and the Los Angeles Times reports he won court rulings against Huntington Beach when the city resisted those mandates.^S5S8
• W-2 earners: his campaign says the office won the largest worker misclassification settlement in California history, and it lists taking on corporations and fentanyl trafficking among his priorities.^S10
• Small business owners: he says the office takes on price gougers and holds corporations accountable when they break the law; neither his campaign material nor the voter guides reviewed here state a position on business taxes, fees or permits.^S11S5
• Household costs generally: nothing in his campaign material or in the voter guides and news coverage reviewed for this race states a position on electricity rates, gasoline prices or home insurance, so no effect on those bills is recorded here for him.^S10S11S5S8

Campaign website

Bio

• The Secretary of State's certified list prints his party preference as Republican and his ballot designation as Deputy United States Attorney.^S1
• The Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee list his age as 51. The Bee reports he earned his undergraduate degree from Pepperdine University and his law degree from Chapman University, according to the State Bar of California, and that he is a married father of five who lives in Huntington Beach.^S8S9
• The Los Angeles Times reports he worked in private practice before serving ten years as the elected city attorney of Huntington Beach, winning elections in 2014, 2018 and 2022, and that he then worked for the Trump administration in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division before returning to the city.^S8
• His campaign says he was a partner at an Orange County law firm defending police officers and doctors in malpractice cases before he was elected city attorney, and that as a deputy assistant attorney general he oversaw about 100 attorneys in the division's employment, voting and elections, housing and civil enforcement, and criminal sections.^S15
• CalMatters reports he was appointed a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in 2025 and left the post in November when he returned to the Huntington Beach city attorney's office. The Sacramento Bee dates his federal service between 2024 and 2025.^S5S9

Record in office

• His campaign says he established Huntington Beach's first local criminal prosecutor program in 2017, that it treated misdemeanors with the same seriousness as felonies, and that the city reported an 11.5 percent reduction in crime in its downtown area. The Sacramento Bee reports he told the Daily Pilot in 2019 that the program exceeded expectations and that data at the time showed it had recouped the city at least $85,000 in fines.^S13S15S9
• CalMatters reports that as city attorney he fought elements of the new state housing laws that would have compelled Huntington Beach to build more affordable housing, and that he challenged what he viewed as lenient criminal justice policy coming from the state capital. The Los Angeles Times reports the city lost those court battles, including over state housing mandates and its stricter voter identification law.^S5S8
• His campaign says he drafted the city's Parents' Right To Know ordinance, which the City Council adopted, and that the city sued the state over AB 1955, which he describes as a law requiring schools to keep information about a student's gender from parents.^S14
• The Sacramento Bee reports that at a June press conference he promised to work with other Republican state candidates, including superintendent of public instruction candidate Sonja Shaw, to overturn state anti-discrimination laws and to break the Democrats' hold on the Legislature and the governor's office. He is part of the California Republican Party's "Victory '26" slate.^S9
• The Los Angeles Times reports he said Bonta's lawsuits to protect federal funding would not have been necessary if the state had accepted the federal administration's interpretation of the laws the money was tied to, saying the funding "wasn't cut by the federal government capriciously or arbitrarily", and that he criticized Bonta's positions on Title IX, immigration, the Proposition 39 description and the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.^S8
• The Los Angeles Times reports he said he would look at each of Bonta's lawsuits against the federal government on its merits rather than reject them all, and that he would enforce state laws he does not like when they are consistent with the state and federal constitutions, saying "state law controls, unless there's a conflict with higher authority".^S8

Positions

Endorsements

• CalMatters and LAist list the California Republican Party, California Parents Union and the California Rifle & Pistol Association as his key endorsements.^S5S7
• His campaign endorsement page lists county sheriffs including Don Barnes of Orange County, John Zanoni of Fresno County and Michael Boudreaux of Tulare County, district attorneys Lisa Smittcamp of Fresno County and Cynthia Zimmer of Kern County, former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, and the American Independent Party of California.^S16
• The same page lists police associations including the Huntington Beach Police Officers Association, the Garden Grove Police Officers Association, the Westminster Police Officers Association, the Newport Beach Police Association, the Deputy Sheriffs' Association of San Diego County and the Sheriff's Employees' Benefit Association of San Bernardino.^S16
• It also lists Republican groups and elected officials, including county Republican parties, the California Republican Assembly, the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California Cities for Local Control, state Senators Tony Strickland, Marie Alvarado-Gil, Brian Jones and Shannon Grove, and Republican candidates including Steve Hilton for governor, Gloria Romero for lieutenant governor and Sonja Shaw for superintendent of public instruction.^S16
• Other names on the page include actor Jon Voight, Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Church Chino Hills, and several Huntington Beach city officials, including Mayor Casey McKeon.^S16

Funding

Statement summary

In his voter guide statement Gates says California needs a new attorney general, that FBI data shows California ranks sixth highest in the nation for violent crime, that fentanyl is taking children, that retail theft is closing stores families rely on and that nearly half of homeless Americans live in California, adding that crime hits working families hardest. He describes himself as a husband of 30 years and father of five and as a trial attorney and prosecutor who enforced civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. He says that as Huntington Beach city attorney he built a local prosecution program that cut crime by double digits in its first year and he credits that work with making the city one of California's safest. He says he would fully enforce Proposition 36, prosecute drug traffickers, protect victims, help people off the streets and into treatment and make sure tax dollars are spent honestly and effectively, and he writes that public safety is not a partisan issue.^S2

What this could mean for your household

• Homeowners and local taxpayers: he says he would defend the authority of cities and counties over zoning, land use and housing and push back on state mandates that override local plans and voter approved city charters, which he says force development into fire prone areas.^S14
• W-2 earners and taxpayers: he says he would investigate fraud in state programs, demand independent audits and public reporting and sue to recover misspent money, citing $32.6 billion in verified unemployment insurance fraud.^S14
• Small business owners: in his voter guide statement he says retail theft is closing the stores people count on and that he would fully enforce Proposition 36, and his issues page says he would prioritize prosecution of violent and repeat offenders and partner with local prosecutors and police.^S2S14
• Household costs generally: nothing in his campaign material or in the voter guides and news coverage reviewed for this race states a position on electricity rates, gasoline prices or home insurance, so no effect on those bills is recorded here for him.^S14S5S8

Campaign website