More than two years before the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) promised to appoint a black woman to replace the senator should Feinstein resign. Predictably, the 90-year-old senator never did, instead dying in office last week, leaving the governor in the same predicament…
More than two years before the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to appoint a black woman to replace the senator should Feinstein resign. Predictably, the 90-year-old senator never did, instead dying in office last week, leaving the governor in the same predicament as then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020.
Considering that black women comprise fewer than 3% of the Golden State's population and a similar share of its state legislature, Newsom struggled to find the requisite candidate to check off his diversity boxes. In fact, Newsom struggled so much that he had to appoint a Maryland resident for the seat.Laphonza Romanique Butler, California's newest senator-designate, only spent about a decade in total living in the state.
Just as Biden boxed himself into the mandate of choosing Harris as his running mate, Newsom didn't have many options once he promised at the altar of identity politics to pick a black woman to replace Feinstein. Hispanic people, not black people, compose a plurality of California's population at nearly 40%, with white people making up another third and Asian Americans another sixth of the state's population. Only five black women occupy the state legislature's 120 seats.
So Newsom did the truly unprecedented. Forgoing the nearly 40 million people living in California, Newsom went to Maryland to make a Mississippi-born union organizer a 1-in-100 member of the world's greatest deliberative body.
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