A generation of CA politicians owe their careers to Newsom

from Robert GreeneCalMatters

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The governor’s race looked so tight for Democrats earlier this year that many began criticizing Gov. Gavin Newsom for not telling them how to vote.

Thinking seems to be a large field of small candidates i needed a big brother to step incrown an heir and banish the challengers. Otherwise, Democrats could cancel each other out and leave no one but two conservative Republicans on the runoff.

Newsom refused and election results suppose he was wise to do so. The The Democrats got a runoff candidateand Newsom avoided looking like a king.

Yet he is, so to speak, a maker of princes and princesses. No California governor in living memory has held more statewide elective offices or so thoroughly put his stamp on major elective offices. An entire generation of employees owes their current jobs and political prospects to Newsom. The phenomenon is due in part to President Joe Biden’s decisions.

As a candidate, Biden promised to select a black woman as his running mate and ultimately settled on the US senator. Kamala Harris. The ticket was successful, so Harris gave up his Senate seat to run for vice president in 2021.

To fill the vacant Senate seat, Newson chose a secretary of state Alex Padilla. Padilla was widely seen as a potential Senate candidate and was a close ally of Newsom. He was Newsom’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign chairman before Newsom bowed to Jerry Brown and ran for lieutenant governor instead.

Padilla’s appointment left a vacancy for California secretary of state. Newsom chose Assemblywoman Shirley Weber.

Then Biden picked California attorney general Xavier Becerra to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, leaving another vacancy. Newsom chose Assemblyman Rob Bonta, who was widely known to be eyeing a possible run for AG.

After the death of Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2023. Newsom appointed union organizer and Harris ally, Lafonza Butler, to fill the vacancy. For a brief period, both US Senate seats and a third of the state’s constitutional offices—all elective positions—were held by Newsom (including Newsom himself).

Having fulfilled the conditions of their predecessors, Weber and Bonta won the conditions themselves in 2022.

So did Padilla, but with a twist. As appointed by the Senate, had to run twiceto satisfy legislation intended to satisfy judicial interpretations of the 1913 constitutional amendment that gave voters, not state legislatures, the right to elect senators. Under the new law, the appointment lasted only until the November election, so Padilla was on the ballot once to serve in Harris’s place for two months until her term ends and simultaneously for another six-year term.

It was different for Butler. Newsom was criticized for not replacing Harris in the Senate with another black woman, then vowed to choose a black woman to succeed Feinstein, who was under pressure to resign. Newsom also said his appointee had to promise she wouldn’t run for a full term, but then said she could.

At her appointment, however, Butler said she would not. Instead, Adam Schiff won election to a full term, Butler resigned his seat, and Newsom appointed Schiff to fill the brief period between the end of Butler’s short term and the beginning of Schiff’s own term, giving him a measure of Senate seniority.

So Newsom ended up making three Senate appointments.

Most of his appointments broke through. Padilla is the first Latino senator from California. Butler was the first openly LGBTQ senator. Bonta was its first Filipino-American attorney general and Weber its first black secretary of state. If Newsom’s goal was to ensure that his appointments encompassed a range of long-marginalized communities, he succeeded.

Along the way, Newsom also filled vacancies on eight county boards of supervisors. Nine, actually, if you include the San Francisco supervisor he appointed years earlier when he was mayor of that city and county.

In addition, he has appointed three justices of the seven-seat state Supreme Court and is He is expected to appoint a fourth any day.

In his 16 years as governor, Jerry Brown appointed more Supreme Court justices, but neither he nor any other governor in the past 100 years can match Newsom’s high volume of appointments. It’s also worth noting, however, that Brown helped start the cascade of Newsom appointments by selecting Becerra as AG when Harris was elected to the Senate. After Harris and Becerra moved into the Biden administration, Newsom filled their vacancies.

Is any of this a big deal? Of course, for two reasons. First, appointments and expanded access to high office are an important part of the lasting stamp Newsom will leave on the state. And secondly, he will probably run for president in two years. If he’s vying for the Democratic nomination against other Californians — Harris, for example — it wouldn’t hurt to have a cadre of elected officials loyal to him. And it wouldn’t hurt to remind voters that he helped shatter a set of glass ceilings, much in the same way that made same-sex marriage a political reality during his term as mayor.

It won’t hurt to be able to push back against the “tough on crime” Republicans who point out, as they surely will, that Newsom appointed George Gascon as San Francisco Police Chief and then San Francisco District Attorney. “What of it?” Newsom can tell. “Those were good dates, and besides, as were all my many others.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.