Like nature itself, politics abhors a vacuum. So the hole in the California Democratic gubernatorial field caused by front-runner Eric Swalwell’s sudden, scandal-driven withdrawal from the race (and resignation from Congress) created a whole new dynamic. And now, there’s growing evidence that Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary and California attorney general, is exploiting this situation to leap into contention in the state’s nonpartisan top-two primary. Until very recently, Becerra was mired in the low to mid-single digits in the polls, one of several Democratic candidates who were the object of pleas from party leaders to drop out of the race to avoid the disaster of a Republican “lockout” in the general election (the top-two candidates, regardless of party, win ballot lines in November).

Becerra has a long résumé of service in Sacramento and Washington, but he was running a poorly received gubernatorial effort punctuated by a scandal wherein two high-level political operatives were charged with embezzlement of Becerra campaign funds, apparently taking the candidate by surprise. Pundits, Democratic activists, and voters appear to have given Becerra a second look after the Swalwell self-immolation, with a batch of recent (if not exactly gold-standard) polls showing him moving up into double digits, as the New York Times California reporter Laurel Rosenhall explains:

Mr. Becerra, whose polling numbers had languished for months, has jumped into the top tier of Democratic candidates since Mr.........

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