Newsom challenged to address lack of diversity

California Gov. Newsom weighs his pick to replace Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ Senate term.

SACRAMENTO » Should California get its first Latino U.S. senator or should the 100-member chamber maintain one Black woman’s voice?

That’s a weight on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s shoulders as he considers his pick to serve out the rest of Vice Presidentelect Kamala Harris’ Senate term through 2022. That the choice is left to one governor has some observers frustrated with the persistent lack of racial diversity in the Senate and what they view as both parties’ failure to do much about it.

“It’s a false choice and it’s not good for democracy, and it masks the historical exclusion of both communities in the Senate,” said Sonja Diaz, founding director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA.

Without Harris, the only Black woman in the Senate, the chamber has:

• Two Black senators, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina.

• Two women of Asian heritage, Democrats Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

• Four people of Hispanic heritage, Republicans Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas and Democrats Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico will join the Senate in January.

That amounts to 9% of the Senate, while roughly 40% of the U. S. population identifies as a person of color. California is nearly 40% Latino and about 6% Black.

The disproportionate whiteness of the chamber isn’t necessarily about too few diverse candidates but about too few diverse candidates who are winning. The South saw its highest number of Black Senate candidates ever this year, but none won races outright. In Georgia, Democrat Raphael Warnock, who is Black, is in a January runoff against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

The only Black woman to be a major party’s nominee for Senate this year — Marquita Bradshaw in Tennessee — was not supported by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Bradshaw, an environmental justice activist, surprised her party by defeating the establishment’s preferred candidate for an open seat, a win she said demonstrated voters’ appetite for a candidate with working- class roots.

But the party committee decided the race wasn’t competitive after a popular former Democratic governor lost in 2018 and because Bradshaw hadn’t raised much money.

She won 35% of the vote against Republican Bill Hagerty. She raised just $1.6 million, less than 1% of what Jaime Harrison, another Black Democrat running for Senate, raised in his long-shot race in South Carolina. He also lost.

Bradshaw said the national party should treat any candidate who wins a primary as viable.