SAN FRANCISCO — In all of California, there may be no better political launching pad than the office of attorney general.

As the state's top cop as well as its chief consumer advocate, the attorney general resides in an electoral sweet spot; California voters tend to be tough on crime and jealous of their civil protections.

Several who've held the job, including Jerry Brown and his father, Pat, made the leap directly to the governorship. Kamala Harris parlayed the role into a U.S. Senate seat and, eventually, the vice presidency. (Part of the reason she was chosen by Joe Biden was Harris' relationship with his late son, Beau, who overlapped for a time as Delaware attorney general.)

The current officeholder, Rob Bonta, appeared well positioned for a 2026 bid for California governor, until he took himself out of the running and announced he would instead seek reelection.

Being attorney general, Bonta said recently over breakfast in San Francisco, is "powerful and ... meaningful on normal days. And in abnormal days, when you have a president who's threatening democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution, it's very important."

Bonta, who's been a party to several lawsuits seeking to rein in Trump, said the fight against his rogue-elephant administration is, in some ways, personal.

He spoke of his father's involvement in the civil rights movement and his parents' life under dictatorship in the Philippines. He mentioned his eldest of two daughters, who married a woman from Brazil, and expressed concern whether same-sex marriage will remain legal in the United States.

But first, Bonta talked about his decision to forgo the race for governor after giving the campaign long and careful thought.

He began weighing the contest, Bonta said, soon after winning election to a full term as attorney general in November 2022. (Bonta was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in March 2021, to fill the vacancy left when Xavier Becerra become Health and Human Services secretary in the Biden administration.)

Birds fly. Fish swim. Politicians, as Bonta put it, "look downfield, at what's immediately next."

With Newsom termed out and a rare open-seat race for governor availing itself, Bonta suggested it would have been political malpractice not to consider running. He conducted polls. He discussed staffing and fundraising. He thought about what his message might be and sized up other candidates, and potential candidates.

Things changed when Harris lost the White House — and not just because of the possibility she could enter the governor's race and immediately become the heavy favorite to win.

If Harris was in the White House, Bonta said, the state would have had "a great partner who loves California, who knows what our concerns and needs are." It would have been, he said, "very attractive to be a governor working hand-in-hand with a president who works for the success of California to tackle our problems."

Instead, the country has a would-be autocrat, with a Mt. Whitney-size grudge against California, seeking to establish himself as King Donald the First.

Once it was clear "what his [approach] was and the actions that he would take would be and what my critical role in addressing those is," Bonta said, "I wanted to stay" as attorney general.

A waitress came and went. Bonta, who intermittently fasts and tries not to eat before noon, was sticking to black coffee.

There is, he said, a circular nature to his legal battle with Trump and his work to thwart the wayward president's unprecedented power grab.

Bonta was born in the Philippines, his mother's country, while she and Bonta's father, a Ventura County native, were serving as missionaries.

"They had to make a very important decision, probably the most important decision ever made in my life," said Bonta, who arrived in California as a 2-month-old. "They asked themselves if they could raise me in the Philippines and guarantee that I had the things that were nonnegotiable for them: freedom, democracy, human rights, civil rights, the rule of law, due process. And their answer was, No."

(As the child of a U.S. citizen, Bonta was automatically a U.S. citizen, thus he has no personal stake in the effort to block Trump's attempt to overturn birthright citizenship.)

Bonta, who was first elected to the Alameda City Council before moving onto the state Assembly and appointment as attorney general, said his political career was inspired by his father's role as a voting rights organizer in the South and his parents' work helping unionize California farmworkers.

Funny thing: "I didn't expect that decades later I'd be in public office, fighting the rise of a dictator in a country that I came to to flee a dictator," Bonta said.

Two other issues strike home.

Bonta's daughter Reina is a soccer pro who met her wife when they played together in Brazil. Two months after a proposal, they had a hurry-up ceremony in Alameda, wanting to ensure they were wed before Trump took office. "Who knows the future of marriage equality?" Bonta said.

He also wonders whether his daughter-in-law might someday be excluded from the United States.

Trump "is willing to keep people out who used to be part of a very lawful asylum program. Some who worked side-by-side with American forces in other countries," Bonta said. "It's an attack, seemingly, on 'others,' however that's defined .... It's often, unfortunately, defined as if you're Black or brown or you're not of European descent."

From breakfast, Bonta headed to the California State Building in San Francisco, for a hearing on judicial appointees.

Apart from burying the Trump administration in litigation, there's plenty to keep Bonta busy on top of his regular workload. He also has a reelection campaign to run; while a second full term seems likely, it's not guaranteed.

And he didn't foreclose a future bid for governor, keeping the possibility propped open with this rhetorical doorstop: "Never say never."

At age 52, Bonta has plenty of opportunity ahead of him. And in Trump he has, for now, the perfect foil to pad his political resume.

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