Newsom’s case for a quick Senate pick

Sep 29, 2023

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and California Gov. Gavin Newsom stand before reporters.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (left), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (center), and California Gov. Gavin Newsom stand before reporters at the Tahoe Summit on August 20, 2019. | Benjamin Spillman/Imagn Content Services

MOVING FAST: Gov. Gavin Newsom has several strong incentives to move quickly on replacing Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Feinstein was indispensable to the 50-50 Senate split, and Democrats need every vote they can get to avert an impending government shutdown, confirm judges, and generally advance President Joe Biden’s agenda. “We cannot afford to be one down,” Sen. Tim Kaine told POLITICO. Newsom would escape pressure from Washington by getting the Democrats back to 50 ASAP.

Rep. Barbara Lee. There is a mounting pressure campaign by allies of the California congress member, the only Black woman running to succeed Feinstein, to appoint her to the interim position. Newsom could short-circuit the intensifying Draft Lee campaign but making an expeditious appointment.

Everyone else. Beyond Lee, Newsom’s team is fielding texts and calls from a host of other potential replacements and their supporters. Unconfirmed names in the mix range from Bay Area Rapid Transit board member and House candidate Lateefah Simon to Secretary of State Shirley Weber. Newsom would put that frenzy to rest by acting fast to name Feinstein’s temporary successor.

While Newsom typically enjoys the spotlight, appearing on cable news to play Biden’s attack dog against Republicans like Ron DeSantis, this is one time where the California governor would rather not have all eyes on him.

Newsom is also sensitive to the need for a mourning period honoring Feinstein’s monumental legacy – he has a longstanding relationship with her.

Given all these considerations, Newsom is likely to act soon. But the drama won’t end there for the governor. There's no choice that would make everyone happy.

Welcome to this special Friday edition of California Playbook PM, a POLITICO newsletter that serves as an afternoon temperature check of California politics and a look at what our policy reporters are watching. Got tips or suggestions? Shoot an email to jwhite@politico.com or send a shout on Twitter. DMs are open.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

START YOUR ENGINES: Behind-the-scenes jockeying for the Senate seat left open by Feinstein’s death started just minutes after the news began spreading. At least one Newsom confidante — who declined to provide details — was contacted by someone making a pitch for a potential appointment, POLITICO’s Melanie Mason, Christopher Cadelago and White report.

Newsom has committed to selecting a Black woman but said he would choose a short-term replacement rather than elevate one of the candidates running to replace Feinstein. That creates a complicated political calculation: Newsom must find a candidate who is both qualified for the job but would also be satisfied with a brief tenure and willing to give up any current elected position.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is less than a year into her first term and denied interest in a temporary Senate post earlier this year. San Francisco Mayor London Breed is focused on tackling homelessness and property crime while building for a reelection bid, said a person familiar with her thinking. Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell said in an interview that she was flattered to be considered but was focused on a county of 10 million people, citing “tons of critical work to do here.” And Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said she had no interest in a Senate appointment.

JUDICIAL IMPLICATIONS: Democrats already struggle to fill crucial judicial vacancies. Feinstein’s death could make that process even more difficult, writes POLITICO’s Katherine Tully-McManus.

Democrats could need 60 votes to replace Feinstein on the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, leaving controversial judicial nominees in limbo until then.

Senate Republicans are signaling they won't try and block Feinstein's committee seats from being filled. That’s something they’ve done in the past.Back in April, Republicans blocked Democrats from appointing a temporary replacement for Feinstein as she was ailing with shingles and unable to return to Washington for months.

OUTLOOK IN ANAHEIM: News of Feinstein’s death came just as California Republicans gathered in Anaheim for their fall convention, our Lara Korte reports on the ground.

The atrophied CA GOP hasn’t won a statewide office since 2006, and even though the Feinstein vacancy is one of the biggest opportunities for political gain in years, Republicans here have been unable to produce a viable 2024 Senate candidate.

The top contender is Eric Early, a perennial candidate and member of the party’s ultra-conservative grassroots base. Retired Dodgers All-Star Steve Garvey was once reported to be meeting with fundraisers and party leadership, but has yet to launch a campaign.

Should Early — or any other Republican — consolidate the conservative vote in the primaries, they could make it into the general race. But Carl DeMaio, chair of Reform California, said the chances of that happening with the current field are slim, given recent polling.

“It is a difficult one,” he said.

DIFI’s LEGACY: Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco on one of the most traumatic days in its history and went on to become one of the more industrious legislators in the U.S. Senate, POLITICO’s David Cohen writes in an obituary for the legendary senator.

“Toughness doesn’t have to come in a pinstripe suit,” Feinstein would say, asserting her determination to defy gender stereotypes to become a leader.

Feinstein “got shit done by working with people on both sides of the aisle and refusing to get caught up in unnecessary nonsense,” John Burton, a former California Democratic Party chair, said when Feinstein had announced her intention to retire from the Senate on Feb. 14, 2023.

She actually had come close to giving up politics in 1978, convinced she was never going to be elected mayor of San Francisco. Instead, she was thrust into the position that November when Mayor George Moscone and fellow City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay elected official, were shot to death in City Hall by a fellow politician. After that horrifying event, she would lend a healing calm to her city — and then guide it through the AIDS crisis that followed.

DISPATCHES FROM POLITICO MAGAZINE:

LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING: James Haas was a San Francisco land use attorney, and a gay man who was not yet out in 1970, when he became an informal adviser to Feinstein.

In that role, he authored the city’s most abiding epigram about Feinstein’s relationship to the gay community: “Dianne Feinstein doesn’t care who you sleep with,” he famously quipped, “as long as you’re in bed by 11 o’clock.”

The one-liner helps decode Feinstein’s complex, half-century of interactions with gay people — gay voters, gay colleagues and the gay community writ large, writes Jerry Roberts, who authored a 1994 biography on the Senator.

Politically, Feinstein was among the nation’s first, tiny handful of officeholders to advocate for gay rights and anti-discrimination laws, a throughline of her career. As a personal matter, however, her square and straightlaced sensibilities — shaped by her Catholic school girl education, 1950s-era wife and motherhood, wealth and privilege — recurrently clashed with gay culture and aspirations in the public arena.

POLITICS OF MORTALITY: There is a phenomenon in politics whereby if someone is old and infirm but remains alive for a while in a diminished state, they can almost persuade people that they are immune to death, POLITICO’s Alexander Burns writes in a column.

So it was with John McCain, who died at 81 from a vicious brain cancer that left no hope of recovery, but whose actual death still sent a deep shudder through the political world. So, too, was it with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death at 87 after multiple battles with cancer shattered her admirers and pitched the Supreme Court rightward.

Feinstein’s death should be more than startling. It should be a warning to the people in both parties who believe they can bend their own mortality to an electoral calendar or a personal timeline for legacy-building.

WHAT WE'RE READING TODAY

DEFIANT TO THE END: There was another, more admirable side to that stubbornness and refusal to quit: A ramrod determination and unsinking resilience that girded Feinstein through a lifetime filled with maelstrom. (Los Angeles Times)

DIFI’S SF DAYS: Before Dianne Feinstein began her long career in the U.S. Senate, she spent years in California and San Francisco politics. The Chronicle’s archive has numerous photo negatives of Feinstein during her early political career in the 1960s and ’70s, including some that haven’t been seen since they were originally published. (San Francisco Chronicle)

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