Padilla’s appointment to Senate long overdue

SAN DIEGO — Well, Feliz Navidad to you, too, California Gov.

Gavin Newsom.

What a thoughtful Christmas gift. You shouldn’t have. Scratch that. Of course you should have. And a lot of Latinos in the Golden State are glad you did. This present is appreciated.

But let’s not invert the narrative: It’s also well-deserved and long overdue.

Newsom announced on Tuesday that he will appoint California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

That’s history, baby. And it’s about time. The 47-year-old Padilla — who is Mexican American and grew up near Los Angeles before graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an engineering degree — will be the first

Latino U.S. senator from California. Ever.

Think about that for a second. Ever since military officer John Fremont and medical doctor William Gwin swore their oaths and began serving as the state’s first U.S. senators in the mid-1800s, there’s been a parade of mostly white men occupying those seats. At different points in history, Asians and African Americans have had the chance to represent California in the U.S. Senate. But never Latinos, a group that now makes up an astounding 40% of the state population.

Plus, in 2020, we can have history and diversity without giving up on quality. The person who will break the color line — the son of Mexican immigrants, Santos and Lupe Padilla — is the real deal. To say that Alex Padilla has political experience would be an understatement. Padilla has been in politics since 1995, when he served as an assistant to the person he’ll now serve alongside: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In the ensuing quarter century, Padilla has been a member of the Los Angeles City Council, president of the Los Angeles City Council, president of the California League of Cities, California state senator, and California secretary of state.

This was always going to be Newsom’s decision to make. And sure, the Padilla choice makes sense six ways from Sunday. The governor — who needed a win in 2020 almost as much as Latinos did, since COVID-19 has been brutal to both — gets to make history, and add some diversity to the Senate with a respectable choice who has already run, and won, statewide.

Even so, I confess, as a cynical journalist who has been toiling away at my trade even longer than Padilla has been hammering away at his, I didn’t think this day would come. Once African Americans made it clear a few weeks ago that they believed the seat was their private property and that a Black woman should only be replaced by a Black woman, I thought Latinos were going to get a lump of coal in their stocking. After all, that’s what we usually get from a Democratic Party whose dominant color scheme resembles a television set in the 1950s — Black and white. Once the quest to fill the Senate seat became about racial politics, and the Black-brown competition flared up, I was sure we were going to get passed over. Again.

As I’ve said before, Latinos are good at many things, but the list doesn’t include politics. It’s a game we just don’t play well. We’re loyal to a fault, even to those who betray us, which only encourages more acts of betrayal. We don’t push, complain, pressure or demand. We take what we’re given, humbly, with head bowed and hat in hand. After all, for the most part, we’re Catholic. Whatever we don’t get in this world, we tell ourselves, we’ll get in the next. At least that’s how it has always been.

The generations of Latinos who are running the game now — X, Y and Z (which basically covers anyone from 18 to 54) — see things differently. For them, this open seat — this California seat — had to go to a Latino. It was nonnegotiable. Anything else would have been a travesty.

When you reach the point where you make up nearly half of the state’s population, and you can look back on 60 years of electing Democrats to every office in the state, you hold a big marker with the party. The only question is when you work up the nerve to cash it in.

Don’t look now. But Latinos have cashed in their marker. And California will be better off for it.