California attorney general’s worldview was shaped by his upbringing as the son of activists Rob Bonta was less than a year into the job of California attorney general when he found himself at odds with one of the state’s most affluent communities. To get around a requirement to build more housing, Woodside had declared that the entire town was a mountain lion habitat. Bonta fired off a letter accusing the Silicon Valley enclave of breaking the law.
The son of two lefty activists from a Sacramento suburb, Bonta is facing off against Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, a billionaire’s son who grew up in Woodside. Initially treated almost as an afterthought, Bonta’s antitrust lawsuit has become a major obstacle to Ellison’s ambitions and a source of neck-bulging outrage among Ellison’s supporters. Charles Gasparino, the conservative New York Post financial columnist, recently blasted Bonta as “a guy no one ever heard of.” He has also suggested that Bonta is motivated by animus toward President Trump, by the prospect of campaign donations from celebrities and from Paramount’s tech industry rivals, and by the need to “make a name for himself” in order to run for governor.
Bonta has also come under pressure from political allies to settle the case, including from his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, who is in line to become California’s governor in January. Bonta has defied that pressure, at least thus far. He canceled a settlement meeting with Paramount last week and accused the company of “playing games” by leaking details of the talks. (Paramount vehemently denied that it did so.) “For him to come in as forcefully as he has — not just filing the lawsuit, but steadfastly in the face of political pressure, saying, ‘No, these guys are breaking the law and we need to stop it’ — that is remarkable,” said Alvaro Bedoya, a senior adviser at the American Economic Liberties Project who previously served on the Federal Trade Commission.
After Sept. 30, it will be on the hook to pay Warner Bros. shareholders $7 million a day — a figure that will grow to more than $1 billion by the time the antitrust trial begins next March. Though 11 other attorneys general are also involved, it will be largely up to Bonta to decide whether any settlement agreement is sufficient enough to allow the merger to go through. If not well known on Wall Street, Bonta’s life story is familiar in California political circles.
When he was a toddler, his family lived in a trailer at the United Farm Workers headquarters in the Tehachapi Mountains near Bakersfield. His parents, Cynthia and Warren Bonta, were missionaries and social justice activists who were drawn to the state’s signature civil rights struggle of that era. I don’t know if they were created by photos that I looked at later when I was older, or by images put in my head by conversations at the dinner table.
But that time was formative in my family’s life and in my life.” LISTEN to the full interview with Rob Bonta on Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast When he was still young, the family moved to Fair Oaks, a middle-class community outside Sacramento. His mother, a Filipina immigrant, remained a lifelong activist, protesting the Marcos regime in her homeland and trying to block the eviction of Filipino tenants in San Francisco. His father stayed true to his roots as well, working to establish community health clinics for the state Department of Health Services and serving on committees for diversity and racial equity.
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