California Latino Voters Would Be Wise to Remember Xavier Becerra’s Herbalife Scandal

Xavier Becerra wants to be the first Latino governor of California in more than 150 years. He is running on biography, on representation, on the idea that a son of Mexican immigrants who climbed from a one-room apartment to the Biden Cabinet is uniquely positioned to fight for working Latino families against corporate exploitation and Republican villainy.

It is a powerful pitch. It also raises an uncomfortable question for the voters he is courting most aggressively: when Latino families in his own backyard were being systematically separated from their savings by a multi-level marketing operation headquartered in his congressional district, whose side did Xavier Becerra take?

The answer is on the public record, and it is not the side his campaign website would have you believe.

The Company at the Center of the Story

Herbalife sells protein shakes, nutrition supplements, and weight-loss products. It does not sell them in stores. It sells them through a network of “distributors” who buy product, recruit other distributors, and earn commissions on the chain of sellers below them. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman famously called it a pyramid scheme in 2012 and bet a billion dollars that it would collapse. He spent more than $50 million publicizing the case against the company.

The accusation that drew the most blood was demographic. Herbalife had aggressively targeted Latino communities, sponsoring telenovelas, signing on Latino political figures, and recruiting in working-class neighborhoods where the promise of “be your own boss” landed hardest. By the early 2010s, roughly 65 percent of Herbalife’s U.S. sales were to Latino consumers. Latino civic groups began collecting horror stories of distributors who lost their savings, drained their retirement accounts, and ended up with garages full of unsold shakes.

The FTC eventually agreed something was deeply wrong. In a 2016 settlement, the agency ordered Herbalife to pay $200 million to defrauded distributors, restructure its compensation model from top to bottom, and stop rewarding distributors for recruitment over actual retail sales. Roughly 350,000 people received refund checks.

The FTC’s complaint documented that half of Herbalife’s “sales leaders” earned less than five dollars a month on average. The agency’s chairwoman pointedly declined to call Herbalife “not a pyramid scheme,” telling reporters her focus was not on labels but on the deceptive practices themselves.

The Money

Herbalife moved its corporate headquarters into Becerra’s Los Angeles congressional district in 2008. The political relationship that followed was not subtle.

According to OpenSecrets data, Herbalife’s PAC and employees combined to give Becerra more than $20,000 during the 2011-2012 election cycle, making the company his third-largest contributor. No other federal candidate received more from Herbalife that cycle. Only the Republican National Committee took a larger share of the company’s political giving than Becerra did. Herbalife’s PAC also contributed to Becerra in 2010 and 2014, and made its first-ever donation to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s BOLD PAC in 2013, the same year lobbyists hired by Ackman were trying to get CHC members to demand an FTC investigation.

This is the pattern political journalists describe as a member becoming a company’s “friend” in Washington. Becerra was, by any reasonable definition, Herbalife’s friend.

The Cover

The most consequential thing Becerra did for Herbalife was not vote on a bill or sponsor legislation. It was the quiet act of running interference inside his own caucus.

By late 2013 and early 2014, Rep. Linda Sanchez of California was circulating a letter asking the FTC to investigate Herbalife. Lobbyists working for Pershing Square were courting signatures from members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the very members whose constituents made up the bulk of Herbalife’s customer base. According to reporting at the time by OpenSecrets and Politico, Becerra urged his CHC colleagues not to sign on, asking them not to rush to conclusions until all the facts were known.

The facts, of course, were already known to anyone who cared to look. Latino civic organizations had been documenting them for years. Local journalists in Boyle Heights had been documenting them. The League of United Latin American Citizens had been documenting them. Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey had received complaints from constituents who lost their entire 401(k)s. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus did not need to wait for more facts. It needed a chairman who was not on Herbalife’s donor list.

The Verdict, and the Vindication of His Critics

Two years after Becerra cooled the CHC’s appetite for an investigation, the FTC delivered its $200 million verdict. The agency confirmed almost everything the Latino civic groups had been saying. The compensation structure that Becerra had asked his colleagues not to second-guess was the exact compensation structure the federal government ordered Herbalife to dismantle.

Three hundred fifty thousand refund checks went out. Many of the recipients were the very Latino constituents Becerra now asks to make him governor.

It is worth pausing on the moral arithmetic. The choice in front of Becerra in 2013 was not between two close calls. It was between a billionaire’s lobbying campaign on one side and a documented pattern of harm to working Latino families on the other. Becerra chose the side that was writing him checks.

The Pattern Keeps Repeating

The Herbalife episode might be defensible as a one-time misjudgment if it stood alone. It does not. Politico reported in November 2025 that Becerra’s longtime chief of staff and other close aides allegedly siphoned $225,000 from his campaign accounts over a two-year period. Becerra was not personally accused of wrongdoing, but federal investigators reportedly approached him before he noticed the money was gone. Earlier in 2024, reporting surfaced that he was paying $10,000 a month for “campaign reporting” out of a dormant state account, an arrangement campaign finance experts described as extraordinarily expensive for what it purportedly produced.

His record at Health and Human Services compounds the picture. White House officials, on background, described him as absent during the COVID response. His agency’s handling of the 2022 mpox outbreak drew sharp criticism. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children were placed in homes that HHS subsequently lost track of, with some later identified as trafficking victims. Becerra’s defenders argue he was given an unclear portfolio. His critics argue that a man who could not keep track of children he was responsible for, or money flowing out of his own campaign, is not the man California needs running a $300 billion state government.

What This Reveals About How He Will Govern

Politicians often ask voters to judge them on their best speeches. Voters are usually wiser to judge them on their hardest tests. The Herbalife episode was a hard test, and Becerra failed it in the direction the donor wanted him to fail it.

He had every reason to know what was happening. The company was in his district. The victims were in his district. The civic organizations sounding the alarm were organizations he had every other reason to listen to. He chose the donor anyway, and he used his position of trust within the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to make sure other members did not break ranks.

Isaiah warned of leaders of exactly this kind. Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. The verse is uncomfortably specific. Princes who love gifts. Princes who follow rewards. Princes who do not take up the cause of those who actually need defending.

California Latino voters are being told that Xavier Becerra is the candidate who will fight for them in the governor’s mansion. The most relevant data point in evaluating that claim is what he did the last time fighting for them required pushing back against someone writing him a check. He did not push back. He ran interference for the check writer. The voters he is asking to trust him already received the Becerra treatment once. They should think hard before signing up for it again.