California’s Attorney General Pick Seen as Foil in Trump Era

By Chris Dolmetsch, Billy House and Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg News

Longtime Los Angeles lawmaker Xavier Becerra, a Hillary Clinton ally who might have been in her cabinet if she had won the presidential race, was named as California’s attorney general, a post that may put him in sharp conflict with the incoming Trump administration.

Becerra will succeed Attorney General Kamala D. Harris, whose election to the U.S. Senate last month following five years as the state’s top prosecutor gave Democratic Governor Jerry Brown a rare opportunity to hand-pick the most populous state’s top lawyer.

Harris, like her predecessors including Brown, ...