California Democrats have few major electoral concerns, given their one-party rule in the Golden State. For Democratic donors in the state, that leaves them only one thing to care about: identity politics.
About 150 of the state’s top female donors are joining with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to demand that Gov. Gavin Newsom appoint a woman of color to fill the Senate seat that will be vacated by Kamala Harris. As Brown said, “There’s no way that Gavin Newsom should allow anyone other than a black woman to fill the seat.” White women (and all men) need not apply.
Meanwhile, Newsom is also being pressured by Latino groups to appoint the first Latino senator in the state’s history, with Secretary of State Alex Padilla as the current front-runner. LGBTQ groups are also touting two of the state’s LGBTQ politicians. The decision could be the “one of the politically diciest” of Newsom’s governorship.
This is the pathetic state of California’s politics.
The bizarre obsession with race and gender that we see in our politics and in establishment media is amplified in California, where identity politics has rotted the brain of basically everyone in state leadership. The race and gender of Newsom’s Senate pick are somehow likely to provoke more political backlash than his blatant hypocrisy on coronavirus protocols.
This is something that California voters simply do not care about. Voters rejected the identity politics-driven campaign of Kevin de Leon in his 2018 attempt to unseat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, even though the California Democratic Party endorsed de Leon. Voters also rejected the reintroduction of affirmative action in the state, despite state Democratic leaders pushing for it.
California has the nation’s highest poverty rate and second-highest rate of homelessness. Both residents and businesses are packing up and moving out due to the high cost of living and tax burden. Coronavirus lockdowns have exacerbated the problem. State leaders are violating coronavirus protocols to hold indoor dinners for lobbyists or fly to conference with them in Hawaii. Yet somehow, this is the issue backing Newsom up against a wall.
None of California’s actual issues matter to the state’s political leaders and Democratic state donors. Their real concerns are race and gender, and whether their new senator will check all the cosmetic boxes. This is how identity politics rots your brain, and California is showing no signs of getting better.
