Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California
newsletter. It’s
Wednesday, Aug. 12, and I’m writing from Los Angeles.
The weeks of frenzied guesswork, oppo research dumps and speculative think pieces have finally come to an end, as all things must.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden named his onetime rival Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first woman of color to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket. The California junior senator had been considered a top contender for VP since she
dropped out of the presidential race last December.
We live in historic times, and the selection of any of the women on Biden’s shortlist would have resulted in various history-making firsts. But the list is particularly long with Harris. She is, among other things, the first person of Indian descent, the first Black woman, the first Asian American woman and the first HBCU grad (Howard University, class of 1986) to appear on a major party ticket.
As politics reporter Melanie Mason explained in her story, Harris’ statewide experience as California attorney general and almost four years in the U.S. Senate positioned her as among the most conventionally qualified of the half-dozen or so women who were under consideration. (
South L.A.'s own Rep. Karen Bass was an unlikely member of the final contenders club.)
As Melanie puts it, Harris is “a safe pick — broadly popular in the Democratic Party and well acquainted with the rigors of a national campaign.” But, she continues, the pick is not without risk, particularly in this fraught political moment. Harris faces lingering distrust from the party’s more progressive faction, and “her record as a prosecutor has at times been a political millstone, particularly as attitudes on law enforcement and mass incarceration have dramatically shifted to the left.”
The California of it all
California has not launched a candidate onto a national ticket since Ronald Reagan, which is an awfully long political drought for the nation’s most populous state. (Harris, 55, was in high school when the actor-turned-politician won his first term in the White House.) And considering that the current occupant of the Oval Office has
all but declared war on the Golden State, having a Californian situated a heartbeat away from the presidency would be quite a change of pace.
The matter of succession — and a potentially open Senate seat — is no small thing. If the Biden-Harris ticket emerges victorious, Gov. Gavin Newsom will be faced with the politically perilous prospect of choosing her replacement. Yes, that’s a big if, and yes, we are now getting way ahead of ourselves in talking about the particulars of anything on the other side of Nov. 3.... But what is politics, if not a game of big ifs and even bigger speculation?
Anyway, as Sacramento reporter Phil Willon
explains in a thoughtful story, the path ahead could be a bit of a no-win zone for the governor, with the risk of “upsetting some of the most powerful forces within the Democratic Party no matter what he decides.” A wrong move could also have ramifications for Newsom’s legacy and presumed White House ambitions.
Phil talked to Democratic insiders and strategists about who might be in Newsom’s top tier of replacement picks. The wide-ranging list includes everyone from Reps. Adam Schiff, Karen Bass, Barbara Lee and Katie Porter to Secretary of State Alex Padilla, along with the mayors of Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Long Beach. In his story, Phil explains how different choices might help Newsom reach back to his political roots in the Bay Area or shore up support in Southern California, along with myriad other concerns.
And what of Harris’ personal state geography? The self-described “proud daughter of Oakland” has deep ties to several California cities, and the Berkeley/Oakland battle to claim hometown ownership of the vice presidential candidate has
already begun. For the record, Harris
was born at an Oaklandhospital, largely
raised in Berkeley and
forged her nascent political career in San Francisco. (To better understand San Francisco’s political culture and its ability to produce an outsize number of the state’s most powerful leaders, I highly recommend reading
this 2015 story by my colleague Mark Z. Barabak.)
Despite her Northern California roots, Harris now resides in Southern California. Well, inasmuch as any top-tier national politician
lives anywhere beyond green rooms, airports and the Beltway, but her actual house is in the tony Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. She isn’t widely associated with the city as a resident, although numerous people, including uber-producer Brian Grazer,
have spotted her at the Brentwood Country Mart.
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