A dream of some African American women in California for the last three years has been getting one of their own into the U.S. Senate.
Black women have been there before, in the persons of Carole Moseley Braun, of Illinois, who served from 1993 to 1999, and California’s own Kamala Harris from 2016 until her 2020 election to vice president. For almost four years since the accession of Harris to the nation’s second-highest office, though, there were none.
That left a void the Gov. Gavin Newsom three years ago vowed to fill if another vacancy arose in a California Senate seat — and he named Laphonza Butler quickly after the pioneering Dianne Feinstein’s death in late September. Butler was sworn in less than five days after Feinstein passed away.
Newsom thus kept one promise, but by not requiring that Butler commit to just filling the seat and being a caretaker he broke another prior commitment. Now Butler has chosen to essentially be the caretaker, seat-filling senator that Newsom also promised.
Butler’s decision was a favor not only to Newsom but to all the other Democrats in this Senate race: That includes the three Democratic Congress members running with substantial poll leads over all Republicans in the field.
Every survey has found Burbank’s Adam Schiff, a longtime nemesis of former President Donald Trump, leading fellow Democrat Katie Porter, of Irvine, and Oakland’s Barbara Lee, who was the only Black person running before Butler’s appointment. Those polls were all taken before former baseball great Steve Garvey entered the race as a Republican and Donald Trump supporter and before Christina Pascucci, a longtime TV news anchor on Los Angeles station KTLA, joined as a Democrat.
Newsom’s stated reason for promising to name a caretaker was to avoid interfering in the ongoing campaign. Butler’s entry into the race could have changed things radically, though. Joint entries by Butler and Pascucci may have splintered the Democratic vote even more than it now figures to be.
What once appeared sure to be a general election race next fall of Democrat versus Democrat could easily have become any of the Democrats facing Garvey. Butler’s contribution to the splintering could have been to divide the Black-woman vote now considered Lee’s property and to further fracture “we-want-a-woman” voters, who still could split among Lee, Porter and Pascucci.
That Garvey, who had “explored” a run since last spring, actually got in only after the Butler possibility arose may be no accident. No statewide primary race with more than three Democratic contenders has produced an all-Democrat runoff election since California adopted its Top Two, “jungle primary” system via the 2010 Proposition 14.
The party’s voters have been too divided for that. There appeared a good chance the pattern would continue if Butler opted to enter the race. A Republican-Democrat race remains a strong possibility. As the former head of the nation’s leading women’s political funding group, Butler knew all this but still spent weeks pondering the race.
She also had to know that her fairly recent move to Maryland — one she reversed immediately upon getting Newsom’s nod — would harm her in a California Senate race.
So a Butler entry into this contest was never extremely likely. There was one other possibility, though, however slim it appeared: Lee could have dropped out and urged supporters to vote for Butler. That kind of move never materialized, though, as Lee has hankered for the Senate for many years.
At 77, Lee adopted a beaming, almost celebratory look when Butler was sworn in as a senator by Harris. Lee’s stated goal in running was to give Black women representation in the Senate, and Butler was then there even if Lee was not. Perhaps Lee knew all along that if she did not drop out, Butler would. That is, after all, what happened.
The political and mathematical reality is that by not running, Butler avoids diluting Democratic votes to the point where a Republican like Garvey would stand a good chance of making next November’s runoff and possibly squeaking into the Senate.
Even if she were self-aggrandizing, which Butler has never been, that could have assured a future Republican Senate majority, something she has fought against for years.
Email Thomas Elias at [email protected], and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.