A Democratic candidate for governor of California might be giving TikTok a go, however with a caveat: He’ll solely submit movies in Spanish.
A minimum of for now.
Former Biden administration Well being Secretary Xavier Becerra is embracing the favored short-video app to focus on Spanish-language customers. His marketing campaign and surveys observe that Hispanic adults use TikTok in a lot larger numbers than Black and white adults.
Congress final yr handed a ban on TikTok, calling it a possible nationwide safety menace, however President Joe Biden, who signed the invoice into regulation and was Becerra’s boss on the time, introduced earlier than leaving workplace that he wouldn’t implement it.
After the Supreme Court docket dominated the ban constitutional, President Donald Trump suspended it on his first day in workplace to offer the China-based firm ByteDance, which opposed the ban, time to discover a new purchaser.
Trump, a Republican, had tried to ban dealings with ByteDance throughout his first time period, however he joined the TikTok platform final yr and has tens of millions of followers. He has repeatedly prolonged the deadline for ByteDance to discover a purchaser and has hinted sometimes, as lately as Monday, that there was a deal over the way forward for the social media app, however with out providing particulars. The White Home began its personal TikTok account final month.
Becerra’s new method is a part of an effort by Democrats to counter the rightward swing that was seen final yr, each in pink states resembling Texas and Florida and blue states resembling California, New Jersey, and New York, the place Trump improved his numbers amongst Latinos.
The concept is to lock in a key person base by pushing out content material early on a platform politicians are nonetheless largely experimenting with. The hassle comes when the Trump administration is phasing out multilingual providers as a part of the president’s push to make English the official language of the USA.
Candidates operating within the 2025 elections in New Jersey and Virginia are already adapting their campaigns to enchantment to Hispanics, who could have stayed away from the polls or voted for Trump based mostly on his financial guarantees. However strategists say that it’s nonetheless very a lot up for debate whether or not the development will maintain.
“It’s crucial to speak within the language and on the platforms the place voters spend their time and get their data,” Becerra mentioned in an announcement.
A 2024 Pew Analysis Heart survey concluded that whereas TikTok has seen vital person progress in a short while, the demographics had been completely different relying on race and ethnicity.
Practically half of Hispanic adults reported utilizing it in contrast with 39% of Black adults and 28% of white adults.
Becerra’s marketing campaign says it can push out a mixture of movies with him talking on to the digicam, coverage explainers, and behind-the-scenes clips from the marketing campaign path. It additionally plans to collaborate with influencers and publish movies created by supporters. All in Spanish.
“The working-class Latinos Democrats have to win again aren’t essentially going to a Spanish-language web site, however they’re scrolling and watching vertical video of their free time,” mentioned José Muñoz, a Democratic strategist advising the marketing campaign and a former press secretary on the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee.
Within the New Jersey governor’s race this yr, each Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill and Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli are collaborating in Spanish-language city halls on Univision, the place Hispanic voters will ask the candidates questions.
In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger speaks Spanish in a radio advert about being a mom of three ladies who attended public college.
“I understand how tough issues are for households nowadays,” she says in Spanish.
Considered one of Becerra’s challengers within the 2026 California governor’s race, Katie Porter, has shortly established herself as a number one contender within the Democratic major and has already constructed a large following on TikTok, with greater than half one million followers, in contrast with about 200,000 followers on Instagram and 164,000 on Fb.
In his introduction video, Becerra says his precedence is to make housing extra inexpensive and scale back well being care prices.
“I’m the one candidate on this race who will communicate to you in Spanish on this platform,” he mentioned. “However I need this to be a two-way dialog. I wish to be taught what worries you probably the most and what you need from the following California governor.”
