Rob Bonta

• Office: Attorney General
• Election Date: June 2, 2026
• Candidate: Rob Bonta
• Due Date: April 7, 2026
• Printable Version

Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the June 2, 2026 primary election! GrowSF believes in a growing, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common sense solutions and effective government.

As a candidate for state office, your day-to-day responsibilities in office will affect not just San Francisco, but California as a whole. As a representative of the people of California and of San Francisco, the policies you bring to Sacramento should reflect the best of what we have to offer.

The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco and have the expertise to enact meaningful policy changes.

We ask that you please complete this questionnaire by April 7, 2026 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.

• Your Policy Goals
• Your Leadership
• The Issues
• Personal
• Thank you

Your Policy Goals

We’d like to get some details about your high-level goals and how you intend to use your elected office to achieve them.

What policies do you hope to change or preserve by running for Attorney General? Please be specific, and list them in order of priority.

I will continue the work I’ve led for five years to protect the public safety, and hold bad actors accountable, and enforce our laws. That includes building on the success we’ve had taking down organized retail crime rings, human traffickers, drug traffickers, and gun traffickers to prosecuting employers practicing wage theft or taking advantage of workers to ensuring that municipalities around the state are building the housing we need, I will continue to champion common sense gun safety measures and remove illicit guns from our neighborhoods, fight the opioid epidemic and rid our communities of fentanyl, and hold Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Big Oil accountable if they break the law and harm our people. We are ensuring that workers are getting what they are owed for their hard work, going after problem employers who try to cheat employees out of wages, and holding the Trump Administration accountable to the law in court-- and winning.

Why those policies?

The Attorney General’s job is two fold: I’m the Chief Law Enforcement Officer and The People’s Attorney. Our team, the largest of its kind in the nation, works every day to fight for the values and the people of this state, and we ensure that everyone, no matter what your circumstance, is entitled to justice. It is important that Californians know that their DOJ is defending them in court against anyone who would threaten public safety or harm our people. From oil companies that knowingly deceive the public, to organized crime, fraud, and human trafficking, your DOJ is constantly monitoring and taking action against threats to Californians’ rights and wellbeing.

Explain why your #1 goal is your #1 goal.

My number one goal is to keep Californians safe and ensure that bad actors are held accountable when they break the law. In a state as big as ours that takes on many forms, as it should.

How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal? What obstacles will you face, and how will you overcome them? Will the power of the office of Attorney General be enough to achieve this goal?

As Attorney General, I do not concern myself with political capital-- I concern myself with the law. If someone, or an entity, breaks the law and harms Californians, then we will hold them accountable. Period.

I do believe in coalition building. I believe we are stronger when we stand united with our partners. As Attorney General, I’m proud to say my partners include local and state law
enforcement; community-based organizations; local, state, and federal leaders; advocacy organizations; and anyone who is willing to stand up to injustice and fight for the rights and well-being of all Californians.

Will the power of the office of Attorney General be enough to achieve the other goals? Yes. The power bestowed upon the Office of the Attorney General is enormous. DOJ’s team of nearly 6,000 employees works on a wide array of critical issues, from public safety to protecting the environment and our abundant natural resources to fighting for accessible healthcare and reproductive rights and defending our children. It is an incredible opportunity, responsibility, and honor to work in such a broad capacity for the state and all who live here. Importantly, “power” of the Attorney General’s office comes not just from law, but from the trust that the people of California have in our work. We consistently update the public on our work via the press, social media, and more, and we strive to be a very transparent agency. We work at the highest standards of ethics and accountability in order to ensure that the public trusts both our work and our word.

What is an "out there" change that you would make to state or local government policy, if you could? For the purpose of this question, you are not constrained to the office of Attorney General.

Your Leadership

We’d like to learn more about your leadership style and plan to execute effectively once you assume office.

Why are you running for Attorney General?

Right now our office is committed to defending California from the Trump Administration’s onslaught of deregulation and extra-legal actions to weaken our environmental protections and the rule of law. We will continue to protect civil rights, reproductive rights, and environmental justice from federal overreach, and we’ll continue holding people who violate our protections in California accountable. As we join with other Democratic Attorneys General around the nation, we will serve as a bulwark against the backsliding of Democratic norms and principles we are seeing under Trump 2.0.

In your own words, what are the core constitutional and statutory responsibilities of the Attorney General?

The Attorney General’s job is to be the Chief Law Enforcement Office and thPeople’s Attorney. I represent the State of California and the People in court. That means standing up and defending our California values and people from threats from the Federal government, as well as ensuring that we prosecute anyone harming our people, whether that is oil companies, monopolies, companies violating labor laws, or public officials abusing their office.

What makes you uniquely qualified for this position?

I have spent my life standing up for people who did not have a voice. My parents were social justice warriors who fought for civil rights, human rights, and democracy. They marched for voting rights in Selma, organized farmworkers in the Central Valley, and fought for the restoration of Democracy in the Philippines, my mother’s homeland and where I was born. I was inspired from a young age to fight back against injustice, corruption, and attacks on vulnerable communities without access to wealth or influence. That's why I became an attorney – to fight for justice and stand up for what’s right.. As California's Attorney General, I continue to take on the biggest and most important fights for justice, fairness, safety, and accountability. In my 5 years in office, we have taken on the Trump Administration, the gun lobby, corporate polluters, drug manufacturers, and exploitative employers-- and we have won, repeatedly.

What three measurable outcomes should Californians use to evaluate your success after your first two years in office?

In my first 5 years in office we have gone after opioid companies, fentanyl dealers, corporate polluters, and helped protect Californians’ housing rights. A few examples include:

• Last year we filed a landmark case against Exxon Mobil for knowingly deceiving Californians about the recyclability of plastics. Two years ago, I sued five of the largest oil companies and a trade association for a decades-long campaign of deception with regard to their role in the climate crisis.

• Sued the Trump Administration 67 times, securing a victory 80% of the time, and protecting nearly $200 billion for the state of California.

• We created the Housing Justice Team, which opened a pathway for 40,000 new units of housing across the state and is protecting tenants rights.

The Issues

Next, we will cover the issues that voters tell us they care about. We hope to gain a better understanding of your policy positions, and we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.

Fentanyl deaths remain at historic highs, and many high-volume dealers operate across multiple jurisdictions, often connected to organized trafficking groups. What is your plan to disrupt and dismantle high-volume fentanyl trafficking networks operating in California? Please include the inter-agency tools you will use, how you will prioritize prosecution of repeat/high-volume offenders, and one measurable outcome you aim to achieve by 2028.

While the fentanyl epidemic is ongoing, we have made significant progress in taking down traffickers and getting fentanyl out of our neighborhoods. Since April 2022, The Fentanyl Enforcement Program has seized more than 17 million fentanyl pills, enough fentanyl powder to make 32 million additional pills, and made more than 600 fentanyl related arrestsWe are collaborating with state, local, and federal law enforcement wherever possible in order to rid our communities of this poison. Most of this work is done through our California Department of Justice Fentanyl Enforcement Program (FEP), which was founded in 2022 with regional investigative teams placed in San Diego, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Sacramento to track and bust major fentanyl trafficking networks, and we are succeeding. Last year we seized 14 million doses of fentanyl in a single bust in Los Angeles, which tells you how big the problem really is. We will continue to dismantle these networks and work to ensure that Californians are safer everyday from people who would seek to profit off of fentanyl.

Major metro areas like San Francisco face persistent property crime driven by organized fencing operations and repeat offenders. How will you strengthen enforcement against organized retail theft and fencing operations? What measurable indicators (e.g., case clearance rates, repeat-offender prosecutions, network disruptions) will you publish to show progress?

Transparency is a key part of our work at California DOJ, which is why we publish an annual crime statistics report, and we also have a crime statistics tab on our website which allows anyone to get the most recent data. In order to combat organized retail crime, we established the Organized Retail Criminal Enterprises (ORCE) unit, which is part of our white-collar crimes unit. Throughout my time as Attorney General, we have dismantled and prosecuted retail theft rings across the state, protecting both businesses and consumers. We also signed a first-of-its-kind collaborative agreement with online retailers, which outlines specific actions to help fight online retail crime.

CEQA is frequently used to block infill housing, transit, and climate-aligned infrastructure. Do you support limiting or reforming CEQA abuse in cases where it is used to block housing or transit? How would you direct the CA DOJ to prioritize intervention in CEQA cases that delay legally compliant housing, and what success metric would you track?

In recent years, the Legislature has enacted robust CEQA exemptions for housing and transit projects. For example, AB 130 created a low-barrier CEQA exemption for infill housing development projects. SB 131 exempted rezonings that implement housing element programs and created a "near-miss" rule that tailors CEQA review for housing projects that fail to qualify for a statutory exemption by a single condition. AB 2097 (Friedman) significantly curbed local power to impose parking mandates, removing another method of
blocking housing. Additionally, as we pass the midpoint of the 6th RHNA cycle, SB 423 (Wiener), which expands SB 35’s streamlined ministerial process for local agencies that have not hit their RHNA targets, is likely to remove barriers for many housing development projects. On the transportation front, SB 922 (Wiener) made permanent a CEQA exemption successfully piloted in SB 288 (Wiener), which created a statutory CEQA exemption for a variety sustainable transportation projects in urban areas.

These are important and new reforms. For example, in just two years, SB 288 facilitated at least 15 new sustainable transportation projects. It is too early to judge the impact of AB 130 but many builders describe it as transformational. I will ensure that local governments implement these new laws faithfully. For example, I sponsored SB 1037, which imposes a monthly penalty of $10,000 to $50,000 for every month that a local agency fails to perform mandatory, ministerial actions, such as approving housing projects that meet all objective zoning and design standards. Similarly, SB 808 will significantly speed up both private and public litigation arising out of local government entitlement and permitting denials. Fast and inexpensive enforcement compliments recent reform efforts and will speed up new policy directions in the housing market and in transportation investment.

Counties cite lack of beds, unclear standards, and inconsistent legal coordination when trying to get people into mental health treatment. What steps will you take to ensure consistent legal implementation of CARE Court and SB 43 across the state? Which performance indicators (e.g., petition timelines, treatment placements, bed availability) will you track to evaluate whether counties and courts are actually complying?

The AG will oversee emerging consumer and AI safety issues. What principles will guide your enforcement of consumer-protection, data privacy, and AI-related harms? How will you measure successful enforcement?

While AI is rapidly innovating, we have issued legal advisories on the application of California law to AI. We want to make sure that companies that use AI, as well as AI developers, understand that even in this new technological space, established laws still apply–consumer protection laws, antitrust laws, data security and privacy laws, civil rights and criminal laws, and laws guarding against catastrophic risk and non-consensual images. Innovation isn’t an exemption. The first step is establishing rules of the road: do not hurt children. Prevent pernicious uses of the technology. Guard against catastrophic risk. Take responsibility for what you build. Companies need to be transparent about when a user is interacting with AI versus a real person and they need to be accountable for their products and the outcomes of using them. We need to work to limit bias in AI and any discriminatory outcomes that stem from it. We need to protect the property rights of artists, writers, and creators, and we need to consider the significant reliance on natural resources.
I recently launched an investigation and issued a cease-and-desist letter to xAI after numerous reports that Grok was being used to create images of people, especially women and girls, in sexually explicit scenarios or undressed without their consent or knowledge. I also supported Assembly Bill 1064, also known as the Leading Ethical AI Development (LEAD) for Kids Act. Although it was not made into law, I support policies that protect our children while still allowing California to be a leader in technological innovation.

I believe, and California proves, that we can have the strongest economy in the nation, the 4th largest economy in the world, and be home to the biggest most innovative tech companies while upholding some of the strongest protections on the books.

The AG must prosecute wrongdoing even when politically inconvenient. Describe a time you made a difficult, unpopular decision based on principle rather than pressure.

Every prosecution we initiate and see through is based on nothing other than whether or not a law was broken, Californians were harmed, and we have standing to take legal action. No political pressure will change that. Our team is dedicated to enforcing the law in the most just manner possible and being transparent in our work.

Personal

Tell us a bit about yourself!

How long have you lived in California? What brought you here and what keeps you here? What do you love most about California and/or your hometown?

What do you dislike the most about California and/or your hometown?

Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)

Thank you

Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!