Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

John Chiang, California’s bespectacled treasurer, is a finance man.

His two decades in public office have been all taxes, budgets, bonds and pensions.

It’s a resume that Mr. Chiang, a Democrat, hopes will persuade voters that he is the governor California needs as it wrestles with a housing crisis and gaping income equality.

He’ll need to outshine two bold-name rivals in the 2018 race: Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor, and Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles.

Mr. Chiang, 55, grew up in a suburb of Chicago, the son of immigrants from Taiwan.

He studied finance at the University of South Florida and law at Georgetown University, before relocating to the Los Angeles area in 1987, where he lives today.