Pick to fill Feinstein seat familiar with politics
Emily’s List chief led labor union, advised Harris
Laphonza Butler, president of Emily’s List and a former labor leader, is California Governor Gavin Newsom’s choice to fill the Senate seat of Dianne Feinstein, who died at 90 on Thursday in Washington, D.C. The selection was announced Sunday.
Although Butler, 44, has never held elective political office, she has been a fixture in California politics for nearly 15 years as a former leader of the state’s largest labor union, as a partner at a top-flight political consulting firm, and as an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris during her 2020 presidential bid.
Newsom pledged in early 2021, after naming Alex Padilla to succeed Harris in the Senate, that if another seat were to become vacant, he would name a Black woman, a promise he kept by naming Butler.
In choosing her, the governor bypassed Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat who has long been a leader in the state’s Black community and who is already running for the Senate seat in next year’s election. The governor said that he did not want to tip the scales in that race, which also includes Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, by appointing one of the contenders to fill the seat in the interim.
Harris is expected to swear in Butler on Tuesday at the Capitol.
Butler was born in Magnolia, Miss., and grew up in a workingclass home. Her father received a diagnosis of a terminal illness and died when she was 16, and she told The New York Times in 2021 that after that, her household was supported largely by her mother, who worked, among other jobs, as a security guard, gas station cashier, home-care worker, and teaching assistant.
In an interview with Elle Magazine in 2021, Butler said that her family wasn't the type "that talked about elections or politics at the dinner table, but we were the family that talked about what it meant to be in service to others."
Butler received a bachelor’s degree in political science and government in 2001 from Jackson State University, a historically Black college in Mississippi. Several of Butler’s college instructors were veterans of the civil rights movement, she told The Los Angeles Times, adding that they instilled in her a drive for activism and a commitment to social justice.
“What are you doing for freedom? That was always the question,” Butler said. “What are you doing for freedom today?”
Butler will be the second Black woman to represent California in the Senate, after Harris, and will be the first openly LGBTQ+ senator from the state.
Butler rose to political prominence in California through labor activism, and led the union representing 325,000 workers in nursing homes and home-based care for more than a decade, according to Newsom’s office. During her time as president of Local 2015 of the Service Employees International Union, she pushed for policies that included raising the state minimum wage to $15 and increasing income tax rates paid by the state’s wealthiest residents.
Butler told The Los Angeles Times in 2015 that labor unions were “building collective power in service of our broader society.”
“We have to figure out how to build the broadest possible movement on behalf of solving big problems,” Butler said in the interview. “We have a climate crisis. The criminal justice system is broken. We have poverty. No longer are our problems bilateral, between one union and one factory. It’s going to take the collective voice to solve those problems.”
Butler made connections at the highest levels of California government during her time at the union. She was appointed to the University of California Board of Regents in 2018 by Governor Jerry Brown and served until 2021.
In 2019, she left the union to become a partner at SCRB Strategies, a top political consultancy in California that is now known as Bearstar Strategies. The firm advises Newsom and Harris. The firm also is working for Schiff in his 2024 race for the Senate.
While Butler was at SCRB Strategies, she was retained by the ride-share giant Uber in 2019 as the company battled labor unions over legislation governing pay and work conditions for drivers, The Los Angeles Times reported.
In September 2020, Butler was named the director for public policy and campaigns at Airbnb, the online home-sharing platform, where she worked for about a year.
In 2021, Butler became the first Black woman to take the helm at Emily’s List, the fundraising organization dedicated to electing female candidates and supporters of reproductive rights. An endorsement from Emily’s List has long been one of the most sought-after for Democratic women.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Butler released a statement saying the decision would have “sweeping consequences for millions of Americans” and that it had moved the country backward.
“Today is a tragic day,” she said. “But this decision will not end the debate on this issue. We will take this fight to the ballot box. We are the majority in this country and we will fight back.”
In announcing Butler’s appointment Sunday, Newsom said that “as we mourn the enormous loss of Senator Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for — reproductive freedom, equal protection and safety from gun violence — have never been under greater assault.”
Butler, he said, “will carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings and fight for all Californians in Washington, D.C.”
Butler said in a social media post Monday that she was “honored” to accept the appointment.
“No one will ever measure up to the legacy of Senator Dianne Feinstein, but I will do my best to honor her legacy and leadership by committing to work for women and girls, workers and unions, struggling parents, and all of California,” she wrote. “I am ready to serve.”
Butler will serve until California voters elect a successor to Feinstein in November 2024. She could run in that election herself, but has not yet indicated whether she would do so.
Newsom said Monday that he told Butler immediately that she could make her own decision about running for a full term.
If she were to run, Butler would not have much time to build a campaign team and raise money before the California primary March 5. She would start with the advantage of a brief incumbency, but without the funds needed to run a statewide campaign in California, the nation’s most populous state.