Three Biden Cabinet Alumni Won Governor Primaries. None of Them Are Running Ads With His Name.

Three former Biden administration officials won Democratic gubernatorial primaries in the past three weeks, and not one of them has put the former president's name or face in a campaign ad. According to the Associated Press, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in New Mexico, former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in California, and former White House senior adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia each claim their Biden-era experience as a credential while carefully managing how much of Biden himself they put in front of voters.

The calculation is not subtle. AP-NORC polling found that only about 25% of adults rated Biden a "good" or "great" president when he left office, one of the lowest exit approval ratings in modern history. Republicans in all three states are already planning to use the Biden connection as an attack line.

The Primaries Are Over. The Biden Question Is Not.

Haaland won the New Mexico Democratic primary on June 2, dispatching Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman by a margin of roughly 72% to 28%, with the race called within 30 minutes of polls closing. She will face Republican Gregg Hull, the former mayor of Rio Rancho, in the November general election, running on an all-female ticket with lieutenant governor nominee Maggie Toulouse Oliver.

In California, Becerra secured roughly 27% of the vote in the June 2 all-party primary, edging past Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Democrat Tom Steyer, a billionaire activist who poured more than $216 million of his personal fortune into the race. Becerra's November opponent has not yet been determined. In Georgia, Bottoms won the Democratic nomination on May 19, positioning herself to potentially become the first Black woman elected governor in U.S. history. She faces the winner of the Republican runoff between Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and healthcare executive Rick Jackson, scheduled for June 16.

Each Candidate Has a Different Answer to the Same Problem

The three candidates are not running identical campaigns, but they share a common structural challenge: how to use four years of federal executive experience as a selling point without activating the roughly three-quarters of the country that does not view Biden favorably.

Haaland has taken the most direct approach. She has called Biden "absolutely an asset" to her campaign in interviews and praised him as a "true partner" to New Mexico and Indigenous communities, pointing to conservation work and wind and solar projects in the American Southwest. But her ads focus on her biography and her record at Interior, not on Biden by name. Becerra has gone further in the other direction: he highlights administration achievements in speeches without naming Biden directly, leaning instead on his own 35-year record in public office as state attorney general, 12-term congressman, and federal health secretary.

Bottoms sits somewhere in between. She publicized Biden's endorsement but keeps her stump speeches anchored to her mayoral record and pivots quickly to policy. On CNN, she said she asked for the endorsement and was "honored to have it," adding that "people are missing Joe Biden more and more each day." That framing works for a Democratic primary. Whether it holds in a general election in a state that swung from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 is a different question.

Biden Endorsed Bottoms. He Stayed Out of the Other Two Races.

Biden's endorsement of Bottoms, announced May 1, was his first since leaving office. He did not endorse in New Mexico or California. The selective nature of that choice reflects the complicated political math around his post-presidency profile: recent Biden family public activities, including Hunter Biden's legal saga and Jill Biden's memoir, have drawn criticism from some Democrats who would prefer the party look forward rather than relitigate 2024.

For Bottoms, the endorsement carried real value in a crowded Democratic primary where name recognition matters. She led the Democratic field at 32% in a late-March 20/20 Insight poll, with the other candidates clustered between 10% and 15%. She won outright on May 19 without a runoff. The endorsement did not hurt her. Whether it helps her in November against a Republican nominee who will almost certainly make Biden a central theme is the more consequential test.

Republicans Are Already Loading the Weapon

All three candidates are heading into general elections where their opponents plan to run the same basic argument: these are Biden Democrats, and Biden failed. Republicans have signaled they intend to highlight the Biden ties as a weakness in each race. Becerra is particularly exposed on this front: during the primary, he faced criticism from former Biden administration colleagues who argued that his Cabinet tenure raised questions about his ability to manage California's bureaucracy, and he dealt with headlines about guilty pleas by two former consultants who stole funds from a dormant Becerra campaign account.

The candidates' collective bet is that governing experience, framed as competence against Trump-era chaos, outweighs the drag of Biden's approval numbers. That argument is easier to make in New Mexico, where Democrats hold every statewide office, than in Georgia, where no Democrat has won the governorship since 1999. California sits somewhere in between: Becerra is the heavy favorite if he faces only Republican Steve Hilton in November, but the race got there through a messy primary that exposed real vulnerabilities.

The next major decision point is Georgia's Republican runoff on June 16, which will determine whether Bottoms faces Jones, the Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor, or Jackson, the self-funded billionaire who led the GOP field. That matchup will shape how aggressively Republicans deploy the Biden line of attack in the state where it is likely to land hardest.