Rob Bonta, the Democratic incumbent, is running for re-election as California Attorney General in November 2026 against Republican challenger Michael Gates, after leading the June 2026 primary with about 55% of the vote to Gates’s 41%. Bonta was appointed Attorney General in 2021 and elected to a full term in 2022; during his tenure he has pursued environmental litigation against oil companies, established an Office of Gun Violence Prevention, and by early 2026 had filed 54 lawsuits against the second Trump administration, winning final rulings or preliminary injunctions in most of them, including a ruling blocking a National Guard deployment in California. His campaign centers on opposing what he calls unlawful federal power grabs, defending immigrant communities and reproductive rights, and corporate accountability, and he has been endorsed by Governor Gavin Newsom and numerous labor and advocacy organizations. Gates, a former Huntington Beach city attorney who later served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division helping lead a push for expanded access to state voter data, is campaigning as a law-and-order alternative critical of Bonta’s enforcement priorities.
