PRESSURE GROWS TO NAME SENATE PICK
Newsom is said to favor Padilla to be Harris’ successor
Since Gavin Newsom’s days as a young upstart running for mayor of San Francisco through more than two decades of public life, Alex Padilla has been a stalwart ally.
As president of the Los Angeles City Council, Padilla introduced Newsom to important local labor and Latino leaders. As a state senator, Padilla chaired Newsom’s short-lived first campaign for governor. And as California secretary of state, Padilla conferred a key early endorsement that helped Newsom win the governor’s seat in 2018.
Now Newsom is in a position to return the favor: He must appoint someone to fill the soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Although many names have been floated to succeed Harris, Padilla has emerged as the front-runner, according to more than a half-dozen advisers, political consultants and fellow lawmakers familiar with the governor’s thinking.
Yet nearly a month after Harris’ election, Newsom has not yet named a successor — and the pressure is mounting.
“Look, all roads lead to Alex Padilla,” said Nathalie Rayes, president of the Latino Victory Fund, which has waged a “Pick Padilla” campaign since August. “I think the longer he waits — well, I would have done this a long
time ago, but I’m not the governor of California.”
Since President-elect Joe Biden chose Harris as his running mate in August, the question of her successor has been a matter of high-stakes speculation. Newsom faces extraordinary crosscurrents of factional rivalry and identity politics in a state where the Democratic Party is thoroughly defined by both.
He has spoken about the Senate appointment not as a political bauble that he is eager to dispense but as a bur
densome task that is more likely to generate grudges than personal gratitude and popular excitement. Asked last week about the Senate appointment, Newsom sidestepped.
“That determination has not yet been made,” he said.
He said he hadn’t laid out a timeline for the decision, beyond that it must be made before Jan. 20, when Harris is sworn in as vice president. But, he added, “progress has been made.”
The uncertainty has
made room for lobbying by an array of aspirants and their political proxies. During some weeks it has seemed that the list of candidates for the post has continued to grow rather than narrowing toward an eventual selection.
Democratic leaders have sought to tug Newsom in different directions, playing on what they see as his shortand long-term political aspirations. Some argue that he must appoint a Black candidate if he hopes to prevail
someday in a Democratic presidential primary, others that he must name a Latino to win a comfortable re-election in 2022, still others that Harris must be replaced by another woman or that he must placate progressives if he wants to govern successfully in an ongoing fiscal crunch.
Padilla, 47, has emerged as the favorite of Latino lawmakers, advocacy groups and a number of labor officials, and his circle of political advisers overlaps significantly with Newsom’s. The middle son of Mexican-born parents — a short-order cook from Jalisco and a housekeeper from Chihuahua — Padilla worked his way through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a degree in 1994 in mechanical engineering.
But other Latino candidates also have supporters. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, 62, has run and won statewide and has represented Los Angeles in Congress; his name also has come up as a potential member of the Biden Cabinet.
And Mayor Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the city’s first openly gay mayor, has an enthusiastic base. In addition to leading what would be the biggest city in many other states, Garcia’s history-making personal biography and charisma have earned him attention in the national Democratic Party.
Still, active campaigns are under way to urge Newsom to replace Harris with a woman, particularly a Black woman. They argue that when Harris resigns and assumes her new office, the Senate will once again have no Black female members, and only three women of color.
At least two Black women in California’s House delegation are pursuing the appointment: Reps. Barbara Lee, 74, and Karen Bass, 67, although Lee is seen as mounting the far more determined campaign for the job. Bass, who was vetted for the vice presidency last summer, is under consideration for potential Cabinet jobs in the Biden administration as well.