By Jeffrey Taylor
Kamala Harris’s ascent to the vice presidency has touched off a furious battle in California to fill her Senate seat, with calls escalating for Governor Gavin Newsom to name the state’s first Latino U.S. senator.
California is nearly 40% Latino and advocacy groups see the departure of Harris in January as an opportunity to better represent the state’s diversity in Washington.
“The highest chamber in Congress must represent the communities it serves, and California is long overdue to have a Latino voice in the halls of the United States Senate,” said Nathalie Rayes, chief executive officer of the Latino Victory Fund, which backs Latino candidates nationally and is supporting California Secretary of State Alex Padilla for Harris’s seat.
Control of the U.S. Senate won’t be clear until after January run-off elections in Georgia, but the California seat won’t tip the balance either way since Newsom is sure to replace Harris with another Democrat. The incoming senator will face voters in 2022 and the governor is being encouraged to make a statement with his pick.
Some point to California’s history, dating to 1992, of having two female senators and urge Newsom to consider a female candidate such as Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis. She is a former ambassador and prodigious fundraiser who’s close to Harris and co-chaired events that raised more than $11 million for the Biden-Harris ticket in the critical weeks leading up to the presidential election.
No Latinas currently serve in statewide elected positions.
Others whose names are circulating as candidates include U.S. Representatives Ro Khanna, Karen Bass, Barbara Lee and Katie Porter. But with the Democratic majority in the House narrowed, it is unlikely a Democratic House member would be chosen. California officials in the mix include state Senate President Toni Atkins, Controller Betty Yee and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez.
Newsom acknowledged that he’s being lobbied by numerous candidates for the position -- and their advocates inside and outside government -- and says he hasn’t set a timetable for making a choice.
“The process is just beginning to unfold,” Newsom said last week. “We are working through the cattle call of considerations related to what’s the profile, the right choice, to replace Senator Harris.”
Advocacy organizations including Latino Victory and the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have coalesced to support Padilla. The two-term secretary of state has close relations with California’s senior senator, Democrat Dianne Feinstein, for whom he once worked as an intern. Padilla was statewide chair of Newsom’s first run for governor in 2009.
Latino Victory’s support for Padilla comes with a seven-figure ad buy.
Others are backing Kounalakis, who was an early endorser of Harris’s presidential campaign last year, or California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Becerra, is the first Latino to serve as attorney general and has staked out a high public profile waging a legal war with the Trump administration over issues ranging from the environment to immigrant rights.
Democratic strategists say the pressure to name a Latino senator is intensifying as people of Hispanic origin become a larger and more important part of the Democratic base in California, now accounting for about 30% of all eligible voters in the state.