Xavier Becerra, the former Biden cabinet official whose California gubernatorial campaign survived a deeply underwhelming start, has advanced to the general election, in a stunning reverse of political fortune.

If he prevails in November, Becerra would make history as the state’s first Latino governor since 1875, when California was briefly led by Romualdo Pacheco, who was born in the territory when it was still part of Mexico.

Becerra, born in Sacramento to a Mexican immigrant family, rose from the California state legislature to Congress, where he served from 1993 to 2017, to attorney general of California, taking the place of Kamala Harris when she was elected to the US Senate. He departed that role in 2021, when he was tapped by then president Joe Biden to be the health and human services secretary.

Despite his government bona fides, Becerra floundered at the start of the race to succeed the term-limited Gavin Newsom as California governor. His polling hovered around 3% in late March, and he lagged far behind three Democrats – then-congressman Eric Swalwell, former congresswoman Katie Porter and billionaire activist Tom Steyer, as well as two Republicans, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco – in the non-partisan primary.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Democrats had moved to quickly turn the page on the Biden years.

Many voters gravitated toward leaders willing to brawl on the president’s level, like Newsom. The party has sought anti-establishment outsiders and younger-generation challengers. Becerra, a mild-mannered 68-year-old political veteran, seemed hardly a match.

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There was a particular anti-Trump buzz in California after the passage of Proposition 50, a Newsom-led redistricting plan meant to blunt Republican gerrymandering in Texas, said Christian Grose, a University of Southern California political scienceprofessor.

The crowded Democratic field had also stoked concern that the party vote would be so splintered that the two Republican candidates could finish first and second in the primary, locking Democrats out of the general election top-two runoff. In March, Rusty Hicks, the chair of the California Democratic party, urged candidates without a viable path – effectively those polling low like Becerra – to drop out and help avoid the nightmare scenario of no Democrat being on the ballot for governor in November.

Becerra’s bid was dealt a blow when he failed to qualify for a planned March debate at USC. Six candidates were invited, based on a mathematical “viability” formula, to participate, but the forum was nixed after blowback that it would feature no candidates of color.

“He was a reasonably good candidate,” said Grose, who devised the formula methodology for the scrapped debate, but Becerra did not excite voters.

His odds changed, however, when the race was jolted in April by a slew of sexual sexual misconduct and assault allegations against Swalwell (the San Francisco-area representative denied the allegations, but withdrew his bid and resigned from Congress).

Becerra surged to the top of polls in the vacuum left by Swalwell.

“He had the resume. He was known to voters. So, he was an alternative to turn to that made sense,” Grose said.

The wake of Swalwell’s scandal also renewed panic about Democrats being locked out of the general election in a state where about 60% of the vote usually goes to Democratic candidates.

“It sounds strange that would be a fear in California, but Democratic voters were starting to get nervous. And so the more centrist or left-of-center voters in the Democratic party gravitated to Becerra, while the more left voters gravitated to Steyer,” Grose said.

On the campaign trail, Becerra’s speeches have often been interspersed with anecdotes about being the son of Mexican immigrants. He has linked his personal history to the current moment, as the Trump administration wages a mass deportation campaign largely targeting undocumented Latinos.

While rivals have accused him of mismanaging the care of undocumented immigrant children as HHS secretary, Becerra’s background has struck a chord with Latino voters, who regard him as relatable.

About 37% of Latino voters said they would vote for Becerra, according to a poll conducted just before this week’s primary by professors at three California universities. The two other candidates with the most support among Latinos in the poll were the Republicans, Riverside county sheriff Bianco, with 17%, and former Fox News host Hilton, with 12%.

“I think he was just the right person, the right time, the right profile,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican strategist who studies Latino voters. “Experience” came up over and over again in conversations with Becerra voters in recent weeks, he said in a recent interview. But Madrid said they weren’t only referring to Becerra’s résumé, lengthy as it was, but also to his “life experience”.

“I thought they were talking about his résumé,” Madrid recalled recently. “That’s not what it was. It was relatability … What they would say is: ‘He’s the son of a construction worker. He did construction work himself. He represented and lived in East LA.’ They’re like: ‘This guy’s one of us.’”

Becerra supporters from other California communities also mentioned his working-class appeal as a factor in their vote. Dwayne Murphy, a 35-year-old Irvine resident, told the Guardian this week he cast a ballot for Becerra, after initially considering Steyer.

“I know a lot of people were branding him as a corporate shill,” Murphy said, referring to a line of attack that has emerged about conglomerates like Chevron funding Becerra’s campaign.

Murphy, a delivery worker for Amazon, said he was drawn in by Becerra’s promises to aid the working class and facilitate first-time homeownership. “We’re just like the majority of people in California trying to find ways to survive and grow,” he said of his family.

As California’s slow vote-counting process remains underway, with an estimated 3m ballots still to be counted, it remains unclear whether Becerra will face the Republican Hilton or the Democrat Steyer in the general election.

“California, we’re just getting started,” Becerra said in a Friday video post to X, after he took the lead in the primary count, and the Associated Press projected that he would make the top two. “Let’s hit the ground running. Let’s go win this thing.”