California’s next governor, Xavier Becerra, is a 36-year political veteran — and an enigma.

He’ll need to steer the world’s fourth-largest economy through a grinding cost-of-living crisis and relentless attacks from the Trump administration. But even officials who’ve known the soft-spoken Stanford grad for years say they aren’t sure what he’ll do.

That’s largely the result of his low-key campaign. After surviving a chaotic primary, the Democrat mostly avoided large rallies, gave few in-depth interviews and made few promises, other than standing up to President Donald Trump. He cast his Republican opponent — Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and aide to UK Prime Minister David Cameron — as a Trump acolyte wrong for deep-blue California.

It worked. Becerra cruised to victory, in a contest that was called shortly after polls closed in California by both the Associated Press and NBC News.

He will become California’s first Latino governor in more than 150 years, an historic milestone. And yet he lacks the larger-than-life persona of such predecessors as Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan.

“He is an incrementalist by nature — he’s not an ideological warrior,” said Mike Madrid, a moderate Republican strategist who backed Becerra in the election.

Becerra’s ideas hew close to the Democratic center, much like termed-out Governor Gavin Newsom. Becerra has called for unspecified guardrails on artificial intelligence, streamlined healthcare billing and support for rural hospitals, lowering the cost to build housing and giving low-income residents up to two hours a day of free electricity from the state’s solar power plants.

“I am not going to make inflated promises,” Becerra told reporters in August. “We’re going to make sure we can deliver results.”Becerra will have to fight the federal government on many of his priorities. He’s fond of pointing out that as California’s attorney general during the first Trump term, he sued the administration more than 120 times.

Becerra has shown little of Newsom’s flair for political theater, making a similarly public feud with Trump seem less likely. The president has routinely derided the governor as “Gavin Newscum,” while Newsom has fought him over immigration raids and the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, often mocking Trump’s combative style on social media.

“I’ve never seen a president from either party that has had such a visceral dislike for California,” said former US Senator Barbara Boxer. “But you can’t totally alienate the executive branch, either. The challenge will be walking that line.”Born in Sacramento to a working-class, immigrant household, Becerra was the first member of his family to graduate from college, starting Stanford University in 1976. Dennis Romero got to know him freshman year, when both were living in Casa Zapata – a dorm for Latino students where residents decorated the walls with posters of Che Guevarra and Cesar Chavez.

“There were actively angry people,” said Romero, now an attorney in New Mexico. “I would not include Xavier in that group. ... He was not so radical, but quite expressive and supportive of farm workers and activist, left-wing politics.”After graduating from Stanford Law School in 1984, he spent several years working for the state attorney general before being elected to the California Assembly in 1990 representing part of Orange County. From there, he made the leap to the US House of Representatives in 1993 and stayed 24 years before returning to California government as the attorney general. Most recently, he served as US secretary of health and human services under President Joe Biden.

Those who know him say that for all his years in office, his views remain shaped by his blue-collar childhood. He emphasized those roots on the campaign trail, saying he wanted to level the playing field for Californians. In recent weeks, he’s been most visible in television ads attacking a state ballot proposition that would require citizens to show identification to vote, a move Democrats fear would disenfranchise low-income residents.

“He very much thinks that there is a juxtaposition of basic household settings across the country and the table is not even,” said Melanie Fontes Reiner, a public healthcare executive who worked with Becerra in the attorney general’s office and in his federal job. “That colors everything he does.”Despite his resume, Becerra’s gubernatorial bid at first looked like a long shot. Former Vice President Kamala Harris’s decision not to run left a crowded field of Democratic names struggling to consolidate support.

Bay Area Congressman Eric Swalwell emerged as the frontrunner only to be forced out of office by sexual misconduct allegations. That left Becerra and firebrand billionaire Tom Steyer vying for Democratic votes. Becerra, seen as the more moderate choice, prevailed as Hilton received Republican support in California’s open primary, advancing to this week’s election.

Unlike Steyer, who backed the state’s proposed wealth tax, Becerra courted business leaders, becoming the first Democrat to win the California Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement for governor. Companies that donated the maximum $39,200 to his campaign included Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Chevron Corp. and Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. Meta Platforms Inc. donated $1.2 million to independent expenditure committees supporting Becerra’s campaign, while Uber Technologies Inc. gave $1 million.

“The Chamber can take much more credit than labor” for Becerra’s victory, Madrid said. Many of the state’s powerful unions, he noted, had gone all-in for Steyer. “But he’s in a unique position” where he doesn’t yet need to be very specific, Madrid said. “He’s beholden to no one, which is quite remarkable.”On a list of 11 policy priorities on Becerra’s website, healthcare comes first — not surprising, given his recent federal role.

He is particularly focused on maintaining insurance for people impacted by federal and state funding cuts. While he offers few specifics on how to cover those costs, he says he wants to extract savings from throughout the healthcare system, for example byg joint purchasing agreements with other states to buy pharmaceuticals, increasing their leverage to negotiate better prices.

Housing rates number three on his list, just after “fighting Donald Trump.”He will be following a failed promise by Newsom in 2019 to build 3.5 million new homes by 2025 and ease a housing shortage in a state with some of the country’s most expensive real estate. At a recent tour of a modular housing construction site near San Francisco, Becerra pushed a measure that would raise more than $11 billion from bond sales to fund affordable housing, saying “it puts money into the hands of developers for projects that have already penciled.”He also wants to cut city-imposed fees and expand down payment assistance.

But ultimately, Becerra is facing many forces that are beyond his control, said Jerry Brown, who served as California’s governor over four nonconsecutive terms dating back to the 1970s. Tariffs and war, for instance, are pushing up consumer prices, he said.

“You think the governor of California can lower health prices?”Brown said in an interview. “All these things are embedded in our capitalist economy that is only to a limited degree subject to state regulation.”Brown suggested Becerra’s lack of big campaign promises may reflect caution in an uncertain economy. California’s taxation structure makes the state budget particularly prone to booms and busts. “I would imagine that’s why he hasn’t staked out a lot of different policy positions, because it isn’t clear what kind of money he’s going to have,” Brown said.

The uncertainty of the moment may, however, be one of the reasons Californians chose Becerra over Steyer and Hilton, both of whom struck more brash, populist tones in the campaign.

“He’s a smart, centered nice guy with good values,” said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Federation of Labor Unions, who initially backed Steyer. “Is that so bad?”