A trio of former Biden White House officials running for governor in 2026 are striking a delicate balance, pointing to their experience in the administration without leaning too aggressively into their connection to a former president still facing a raft of bad headlines.
Those three candidates — former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in New Mexico, former Health Secretary Xavier Becerra in California and former White House Office of Public Engagement Director Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia — often mention their experience in the administration as a credential for running their states.
But they’ve also rarely mentioned Joe Biden by name at campaign events, and none have cut any ads in their primaries or general election campaigns that refer directly to him or include his image. It’s a notable difference from how Republican candidates up and down the ballot have completely bear-hugged Donald Trump and his record in recent years, including between his two terms.
Meanwhile, Biden has been fighting through tough, new headlines since leaving office, putting his name and legacy back in the foreground for Democrats.
Lately, that has included the long-awaited release of the Democratic National Committee’s “autopsy” of the 2024 election. Former first lady Jill Biden recently told CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” that she feared her husband was “having a stroke” during his disastrous summer 2024 debate, which ultimately led him to abandon his re-election effort. Biden left office with historically low approval ratings.
Becerra, who is running in a competitive all-party primary in California’s race for governor, has aggressively pointed to his time as Biden’s health secretary. That, as well as his tenure as the state’s attorney general and his 12 terms in Congress, is part of a message casting him as an experienced and steady leader ready to handle the biggest state in the country.
Becerra also frequently refers to Biden administration achievements including expanding Medicare, negotiating lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and capping the monthly out-of-pocket price of insulin.
But he has rarely mentioned Biden himself at campaign events — and not at all in any of his ads.
Complicating the dynamic is the fact that Becerra has faced significant and frequent blowback from former administration colleagues for taking credit for those achievements. Biden hasn’t endorsed in the California governor’s race, and while former Vice President Kamala Harris put out a slate of endorsements in races up and down the ballot in her home state, she didn’t do so in the race for governor.
Some of Becerra’s competitors have criticized him for how he handled major challenges like the Covid pandemic, the surge of unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, a pandemic-created shortage of baby formula and a 2022 outbreak of the mpox virus. But he hasn’t faced criticism over his ties to Biden.
Becerra campaign spokesperson Jonathan Underland said the campaign has “struck a great balance” on framing the candidate’s experience in the Biden administration, and he suggested that California voters were far more concerned with Becerra’s individual accomplishments and identity — not about this association with the former president.
“People in California are electing the next governor based on who they are, not necessarily who they worked for or who they’re tied to,” he said. Underland added that Becerra, as a state attorney general and a member of Congress prior to his Cabinet post, “can stand on his own in many rights.”
“We’re responding to what voters are looking for, which is for their governor to have the experience and the accomplishments, and to be able to do things on their own,” he added.
Meanwhile, Haaland, who is the strong favorite in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New Mexico, has spoken glowingly of Biden, telling NBC News in an interview that he is “absolutely an asset” in her campaign and praising him as a “true partner” to New Mexico and Indigenous people across the U.S.
“I’m grateful to have been a partner with a president who cares about people and who wanted to understand our history more,” she said, referring to Biden’s historic apology for a forced Native American boarding school policy that caused the abuse and deaths of children.
She has often discussed her accomplishments as interior secretary related to conservation and wind and solar projects in the American Southwest.
Haaland, who doubled down on her comments to The New York Times last month that “once all the dust settles, people are going to say that he was one of the best presidents we’ve ever had,” has been more outspoken about Biden on the campaign trail, though none of her ads mention him by name. The ads focus predominantly on the history-making aspect of her candidacy and on fighting Trump and his policies. Biden, who has only issued a small handful of endorsements since leaving office, hasn’t waded into this race.
Campaign spokesperson Hannah Menchhoff said Haaland hasn’t asked for an endorsement and was instead “focused on local New Mexico endorsements.”
Bottoms, on the other hand, was the recipient of Biden’s very first post-presidential endorsement, and her campaign worked hard to publicize it. She has mentioned it in various interviews and said that Georgia voters she’s spoken with expressed appreciation for specific things the administration accomplished, like student loan forgiveness and small-business support. She has also, in various recent podcasts and interviews, praised Biden as a “great man” who “cares deeply about people” and explained feeling “very proud of serving the Biden administration and very proud of what that administration delivered to this state.”
Nevertheless, Bottoms, who won the Democratic nomination in Georgia earlier this month, hasn’t put her Biden administration experience in campaign ads. Both of her potential Republican opponents — Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson will face off in a June GOP primary runoff — have signaled that they’re itching to make her ties to Biden a central part of their message.
Responding to questions for this article, campaign spokesperson TaNisha Cameron said, “Keisha is running to lower costs and stand up for Georgians against the chaos from Donald Trump and Washington. She is proud to have earned the support of the president and leaders across Georgia.”
Democratic strategists interviewed by NBC News said that in each case, the Biden relationship isn’t the top thing state voters know about these candidates, who were all experienced and well-known political commodities in their states years before their time in the administration.
Haaland, for example, was the first Native American woman elected to Congress, where she served one term representing the Albuquerque area. She also chaired the state Democratic Party. And Bottoms is mostly known across Georgia as the former mayor of Atlanta.
“All three have very deep records in their own states that they have been running on,” said Joshua Marcus-Blank, a Democratic strategist who has worked for Senate and gubernatorial campaigns across the country.
Time will tell whether the Biden connection affects swing voters in November, especially in battleground Georgia, where both Republican candidates have leaned heavily into a Trump-centric message and have aggressively targeted MAGA voters.
But Marcus-Blank said Democratic voters were far more concerned with how their candidates were framing their fight against Trump and his policies than they were about any association, for better or worse, with Biden.
“What people are looking for is someone to stand up and fight Trump. What is driving those decisions a lot more so than the past administration or various moments from 2021 through 2024 is showing how I am fighting high gas prices, and the guy who’s done nothing about it,” he said.
