Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, Dec. 23, and I’m writing from Los Angeles.
After months of relentless lobbying and fervent speculation, Gov. Gavin Newsom has chosen California’s next senator.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla will replace Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in the U.S. Senate, making him California’s first Latino senator.
[Read the story: “Alex Padilla to become California’s first Latino U.S. senator, replacing Kamala Harris” in the Los Angeles Times]
Newsom faced competing pressures to select either a Latino politician or a Black female politician for the role, with either choice potentially rectifying broader issues of representation: Latinos outnumber any other ethnic group in California, yet the state has never had a Latino senator. But without a Black woman chosen to succeed Harris, the number of Black women in the Senate would dwindle back to zero.
Padilla, a longtime Newsom ally, had been widely considered to be the most likely choice, even as pressure for the governor to appoint a Black woman intensified in recent weeks.
The governor took swift action Tuesday to fill Padilla’s newly vacant state office — and potentially salve some relationships — by selecting Democratic Assemblywoman Shirley Weber as California’s next secretary of state. If confirmed by the state Legislature, Weber would be the first Black woman to hold that position in state history.
Who is Alex Padilla?
Padilla, an L.A. Democrat and longtime Newsom ally, rose through local and state political office to become California secretary of state. As the state’s chief elections officer, he undertook several efforts to expand voter registration services and voting by mail.
As my Sacramento colleagues Phil Willon and Patrick McGreevy report, Padilla entered politics during the anti-immigrant tumult of the 1990s, after California voters approved measures requiring “English-only” public schools and banning immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally from government assistance and services. Padilla has said that Prop. 187 was “a big part of the reason” he went into public service.
[See also: “Prop. 187 forced a generation to put fear aside and fight” in the Los Angeles Times]
Raised in the Pacoima neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley, Padilla is the son of two Mexican immigrants. His father worked as a short-order cook at Du-Par’s, and his mother cleaned houses in more affluent parts of the Valley.
His political career burned bright early: In 1999, he won a seat on the powerful Los Angeles City Council.
He was just 26 at the time and still living at his parents’ home in the northeast Valley. His mother became a U.S. citizen two days after his election, joining his father, who had taken the citizenship oath three years earlier.
When Padilla became City Council president two years later, this paper declaredhis rise to be “nothing short of meteoric, even in an age of rapid political turnover.” At 28, Padilla became the first Latino to serve as council president in more than a century. He had moved out of his parents’ house by then, into his own place around the corner.
He graduated to state politics a few years later, as the then-youngest member of the state Senate. Padilla’s state Senate tenure, which was ended by term limits, included an emphasis on health and safety issues, as my colleagues report. He won approval of a bill that requires California restaurants to post calorie information on their menus to help reduce obesity and authored a smoke-free housing law.
Now 47, Padilla has served as California’s secretary of state since 2015. Padilla became one of the first statewide officials to tangle with President Trump over his unfounded allegations in 2016 that millions of California ballots had been cast illegally.
His Senate appointment does not require confirmation by the state Legislature, and he must win in a 2022 election to hold onto the seat.
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