Thanks again to the California Globe for running this piece. You can visit the website at: https://californiaglobe.com/ .
Well, at least I got the initials right - https://californiaglobe.com/fr/about-last-week-4/
Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newson tapped Laphonza Butler to fill Dianne Feinstein’s senate seat.
Butler, 45, is currently a resident of Maryland but plans to register to vote in California – where she already has a house, though she hasn’t called it home for at least two years – before taking office.
Per Newsom’s pre-appointment vow, Butler is a black woman. She is also a lesbian, an identity politics bonus, and leader of EMILY’s List, a fund raising and advocacy political group that exclusively backs pro-abortion candidates, another progressive feather.
Additionally, she is a former union organizer, having led California’s 400,000-member SEIU Local 2015, the union compromised of nursing home, assisted, and home health care workers. If the state is paying you to stay home to take care of grandma, that’s the union you have to join.
It is quite possible Butler’s appointment was in some manner tied to Newsom’s vetoes over the weekend of two bills near and dear to Big Labor – paying strikers unemployment benefits and making every household that employs domestic helps subject to CalOSHA regulation.
In other words, he was able to veto those bills that would damage his not-running-for-president presidential campaign because he was literally appointing a union boss to the United States Senate.
Butler has close ties to Newsom politically, having worked as a partner at the political consulting firm that has run Gavin’s campaigns in the past.
And she even has ties to Vice President Kamala Harris, ties she might not want to be reminded of. Butler helped guide Harris’ disastrous 2020 presidential run, which saw her leap out of the gate with scads of money and happy press only to drop out before even a single vote was cast.
While Harris is a terrible candidate and reportedly abusive to her staff, Butler playing an important role in that debacle does raise concerns about her political acumen.
She does have other California roots, though – Jerry Brown made her a regent of the UC system and she worked for Uber and Airbnb as a consultant in the past.
While Newsom kept his promise to appoint a black woman to fill Feinstein’s seat, he may not have stuck by his plan to appoint a “caretaker” for the seat. In making the announcement, the Governor’s Office made it clear that Butler is perfectly free and able to run for now re-election to the seat, a statement that has to rankle Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff – the top three current candidates in the race.
Butler has – at most – about two months to decide if she will throw her hat in the ring, though if she does – considering her union, Silicon Valley, and pro-abortion movement connections – she will be able to raise piles of money in nanoseconds.
Butler, it seems, is central casting modern woke Democrat: black lesbian union leader with deep tech world connections who helps guide pro-abortion campaigns.
It doesn’t get more diverse than that.