California Democrat turns to TikTok to reach Hispanic voters in governor's race

A Democratic candidate for governor of California will be giving TikTok a go, but with a caveat: He'll only post videos in Spanish.

At least for now.

Former Biden administration Health Secretary Xavier Becerra is embracing the popular short-video app to target Spanish-language users. His campaign and surveys note that Hispanic adults use TikTok in much higher numbers than Black and white adults.

Congress last year passed a ban on TikTok, but President Joe Biden, who signed the bill into law and was Becerra's boss at the time, announced before leaving office that he wouldn't enforce it. After the Supreme Court ruled the ban constitutional, President Donald Trump suspended it on his first day in office to give the China-based company ByteDance time to find a new buyer.

Trump, a Republican, had tried to ban dealings with ByteDance during his first term, but he joined the platform last year and has millions of followers. He has repeatedly extended the deadline for ByteDance to find a buyer and hinted occasionally that there was a deal in place, but without offering details. The White House started its own TikTok account last month.

Becerra's new approach is part of an effort by Democrats to counter the rightward swing that was seen last year both in red states such as Texas and Florida and blue states such as California, New Jersey and New York, where Trump improved his numbers among Latinos.

The idea is to lock in a key user base by pushing out content early on a platform politicians are still largely experimenting with. The effort comes when the Trump administration is phasing out multilingual services as part of the president's push to make English the official language of the United States.

Candidates running in the 2025 elections in New Jersey and Virginia are already adapting their campaigns to appeal to Hispanics, who may have stayed away from the polls or voted for Trump based on his economic promises. But strategists say that it’s still very much up for debate whether the trend will hold.

“It’s critical to communicate in the language and on the platforms where voters spend their time and get their information,” Becerra said in a statement.

A 2024 Pew Research Center survey concluded that while TikTok has seen significant user growth in a short time, the demographics were different depending on race and ethnicity. Nearly half of Hispanic adults reported using it compared with 39% of Black adults and 28% of white adults.

Becerra’s campaign says it will push out a mix of videos with him speaking directly to the camera, policy explainers and behind-the-scenes clips from the campaign trail. It also plans to collaborate with influencers and publish videos created by supporters. All in Spanish.

“The working-class Latinos Democrats need to win back aren't necessarily going to a Spanish-language website, but they are scrolling and watching vertical video in their free time,” said José Muñoz, a Democratic strategist advising the campaign and a former press secretary at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In the New Jersey governor's race this year, both Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill and Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli are participating in Spanish-language town halls on Univision, where Hispanic voters will ask the candidates questions. In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger speaks Spanish in a radio ad about being a mother of three girls who attended public school.

“I know how difficult things are for families these days,” she says in Spanish.

One of Becerra’s challengers in the 2026 California governor's race, Katie Porter, has quickly established herself as a leading contender in the Democratic primary and has already built a sizable following on TikTok, with more than half a million followers, compared with about 200,000 followers on Instagram and 164,000 on Facebook.

In his introduction video, Becerra says his priority is to make housing more affordable and reduce health care costs.

“I am the only candidate in this race who will speak to you in Spanish on this platform,” he said. “But I want this to be a two-way conversation. I want to learn what worries you the most and what you want from the next California governor.”