Any biographer of California Gov. Gavin Newsom is sure to focus on Newsom’s unanticipated power to appoint a host of figures to the state’s most important elected positions. That biographer will surely also note that this has repeatedly plunged Newsom into the middle of the state’s racial and ethnic rivalries.
In 2020, with the accession of Sen. Kamala Harris (a Black woman) to the vice presidency, Newsom appointed the state’s secretary of state, Alex Padilla (a Latino), to the Senate, to which Padilla was subsequently elected. He then appointed veteran State Assembly member Shirley Weber (also a Black woman) to be Padilla’s successor as secretary of state, a post to which she was also subsequently elected. The following year, when state Attorney General Xavier Becerra (a Latino) joined the Biden administration as secretary of health and human services, Newsom appointed longtime Assembly member Rob Bonta (of Filipino descent) to take Becerra’s place as AG, to which Bonta later also won election.
Newsom’s appointment of Padilla to succeed Harris marked the first time a Latino had represented California in the U.S. Senate. It rankled some in the African American community, however, as Harris had been the only Black woman in the Senate. As a way of placating his critics, Newsom then pledged that if the other Senate seat (Dianne Feinstein’s) were to come open on his watch, he’d be sure to appoint a Black woman as Feinstein’s successor.
More from Harold Meyerson
Newsom needed no help understanding that as California governor in the early 21st century, he was inescapably in the crosshairs of long-standing rivalries over racial representation. Politically, over the past half-century, the state, not to mention Newsom’s own Democratic Party, has gone from white-majority/Black-minority to one where whites and Latinos share demographic majority status, with the rapidly growing Asian American community constituting the third-largest racial…
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