Weber set to take charge of elections
Shirley Weber first Black Californian to become election official
Seventy years ago, sharecroppers David and Mildred Nash refused to back down in a dispute with a white farmer, and fled from a lynch mob in Hope, Arkansas. With their 2-year-old daughter in tow, they found a new home out west in a place so different her grandfather, who would die without ever being able to vote, called it a “foreign land.”
This year that toddler, Shirley Weber, is slated to become the first Black Californian to become the state’s top election official.
It’s easy to imagine that poignant bit of historical symmetry was on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mind when he announced Weber’s nomination late last month.
With Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris on their way to different wings of the White House, Newsom was given the opportunity — or the headache — of picking Harris’ replacement. Three days before Christmas, the governor finally brought the California-wide guessing game to a close: Secretary of State Alex Padilla would sit out the remainder of Harris’ term and become California’s first Latino U.S. Senator.
Padilla’s appointment opened up its own vacancy. A few hours later, Newsom made another announcement: Weber, a Democratic assemblywoman from San Diego.
The rollout of the onetwo appointment was almost certainly meant to appease different constituencies of the state electorate. Latino activists had spent weeks reminding the governor that the state’s largest ethnic group had never been demographically represented the state in the U.S. Senate. Many Black Democrats and other progressives — Weber among them — urged the governor not to allow Harris’ departure from the Senate to leave the nation’s most esteemed legislative body without a single Black woman.
Weber’s appointment was not widely anticipated like Padilla’s. But her biography indicates life experience relevant to the job of California’s top election administrator. Voting, denied to the Webers in the South, became a precious, fiercely guarded and unfailingly exercised right for the whole family.
A university professor and a school board member before joining the Legislature in 2012, Weber’s most notable legislative achievements have focused on education policy — where she’s often ticked off the state’s teachers unions — new regulations on when police can use lethal force and racial justice. Last year, she carried bills to place a repeal of California’s ban on affirmative action on the ballot (it failed) and to create a committee to study possible reparations for California’s descendants of slaves.
Here’s a conversation with her, condensed and edited for clarity:
Q
We all saw the video of the call in which the governor offered Secretary Padilla the job. I’m curious, did you receive a phone call? Was it an email? What was that ask like for you?
A
I didn’t have the same experience that Padilla had with the tears and so forth and so on. I had gotten a phone call I think the night before when the governor made his decision as to what he was going to do.
Q
Was this something that you were pushing for? Were you seeking out the position?
A
No, no. It was not even on my radar, initially. It was not something I was pushing for, not something that I had asked for. I know others had….I knew there were others who had been called in to discuss the position…I was approached in a very general way — a “what do you want to do with your life?” sort of conversation. But I didn’t connect the dots that it was about the secretary of state position until it became more apparent.
Q
You’ve accomplished a lot in the Legislature. When you were offered the position was there a voice in the back of your mind saying, “I don’t necessarily want to leave this behind”? Or were you ready to jump on it?
A
You know, whether you’re in the Assembly or at a university or any of the various other things I’ve done, you kind of come to the realization of your own mortality, that this won’t last forever. And I only have another term (in the Legislature) to go… then I’m termed down.
But I always recognized the fact that you have to do what you can while you’re there, and you have to make it count. But equally important, at least in my world, is that you have to empower other people to do the work. Because most folks are afraid to take on the challenges that I took on, OK? What I have always tried to teach, to demonstrate to others, is that you can be a change agent, you can be the voice, you can be that strongback, you can be that person and still have the respect of everybody in the room…So if I can spark that in the (legislative) members that are there now, and they’re doing some of it and if I can even support them in some of their efforts — you know, because I’ll be just across the street — that would be worth it.
•••
You know, I had one member come to me and say, “I want to be a badass like you.” I said, “I didn’t know I was! I’m just a little old lady.”
Q
Do you remember who that was?
A
(Thinking) Who wanted to be a badass…? Oh, it was (Assemblymember Kevin) McCarty (a Democrat from Sacramento). That was early on in the game. He’s a badass now.