California’s new activist senator

Dianne Feinstein was no centrist, but she’s likely going to look like a moderate squish compared to her replacement as United States senator from California. After her death at age 90 last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom waited barely two days before announcing his choice of Laphonza Butler to fill the seat.

Newsom’s press release announcing the appointment is a celebration of the intersectional wokeness that dominates Democratic elite discourse. The new senator will “be the first black lesbian to openly serve in Congress in American history.” In all events, she is hailed by the governor for “break[ing] glass ceilings,” as though the mere fact of her appointment is an achievement for which both can take credit.

A longtime labor union boss in California’s service sector, she currently serves as president of EMILYs List in Washington, D.C. The release portrays her as “[a]n advocate for women and girls” and says EMILYs List as “the nation’s largest organization dedicated to electing women,” but that’s a façade. In truth, EMILYs List is exclusively dedicated to electing pro-abortion Democratic women. The organization would never help a Republican woman who favors legal abortion, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, or a pro-life Democrat woman like former congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper. Its single-minded focus is to restore Roe and to make abortion legal on demand.

Can you imagine the reaction of the left and the mainstream media if the governor of, say, Idaho, appointed the president of the National Rifle Association to the U.S. Senate? The editorial pages and cable TV channels would be flooded with outrage at the idea of such a right-wing neanderthal activist taking a public office that should be a place for statesmanship, not ideological extremism. So we would be told by all of the best people. But when the governor of California appoints one of the most ardent activists on the left end of American politics to that hallowed chamber, not a peep is to be heard from these self-appointed tribunes of the people.

The calls of “Shame! Shame!” would be twice as loud if the president of the NRA lived and worked in Virginia, NRA’s headquarters, even if he were a born-and-raised Idahoan. He’d be called a carpetbagger and lawsuits would be filed challenging his residency and qualification for office. No such insults are heaped on Butler, who left California for the swamp when she took the EMILYs List job several ago. Numerous official documents and filings list her home address as Silver Spring, Md. Yet mainstream media outlets don’t seem bothered—the only one to dedicate a full story to the issue is FoxNews.com, which does so only by reporting on questions raised by a Republican congressman from California.

The media’s kid gloves for Butler are also reflected in their failure to report the obvious subtext of the appointment: 2024 Democratic presidential politics. Rumors abound that Joe Biden is not up to the job and won’t be the actual candidate representing Democrats next year. The two top names mentioned to replace him are California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and California’s former U.S. senator, Vice President Kamala Harris. So it’s hard not to notice when Newsom’s press release about his appointment of Butler mentions Harris six times—“Butler, a longtime senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris;” “the second Black woman to represent California in the Senate following Vice President Kamala Harris;” “a trusted adviser to Vice President Harris;” “a key leader of Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign.” Perhaps the appointment and praise are an olive branch. Perhaps other plots are afoot.

Indeed, California politics got a whole lot messier when Newsom publicly released Butler from his previous pledge only to appoint a seat-warmer, leaving the slot without an incumbent for election 2024. Three Democratic members of Congress—Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff—have been running and raising money for months to replace Feinstein. Now they face an incumbent with strong support from labor unions, African-Americans, women, and gays, not to mention the sitting vice president and governor. It’s a powerful package—if she wants to keep the job that Feinstein held for three decades.