Senate succession

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., died Thursday night, leaving questions about who will carry on her role in the 118th Congress.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, will select someone to replace Feinstein for the rest of her term, which runs through 2024. Her seat was one of 51 that gave Democrats the Senate majority, which they will retain with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.

While the sudden vacancy won’t change the balance of power in the Senate, it increases the pressure on Democratic candidates who were already campaigning for Feinstein’s Senate seat. The race unofficially began earlier this year when Feinstein announced she would not seek reelection in 2024. The field of candidates so far includes U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, former chair of the House Intelligence Committee; Rep. Katie Porter, a member of the Oversight Committee; and Rep. Barbara Lee, a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee.

As news of Feinstein’s death became public on Friday morning, Newsom announced would not fill the position with any of the current candidates, fearing that doing so would unfairly sway voters in the upcoming election. In the past, he committed to appointing a woman of color.

“I have multiple names in mind, and the answer is yes,” Newsom told MSNBC audiences in 2021 when the question came up.

In 2020 when Joe Biden selected then-Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate, Newsom picked Alex Padilla, California’s former secretary of state, to fill the role. Padilla won the seat in the November 2022 election.

Like in Padilla’s case, the governor’s appointment can go a long way toward deciding an election. For the past 20 years, an overwhelming majority of incumbents in the Senate have won reelection, according to Open Secrets. Even at the chamber's highest point of turnover during that span, 79 percent of incumbents in the Senate won their race in 2006.

Feinstein was last elected to the Senate in 2018—a race she won against Democratic challenger Kevin de León by a vote of 54.2 percent to 45.8 percent. California uses a nonpartisan blanket primary in which all candidates regardless of party appear on the ballot at the same time. In the primary, the two highest-performing candidates are selected to run against each other in the general election, so two Democrats will likely face off in November 2024 for the Senate seat.