With Kamala Harris set to become vice president come January, Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide with whom to fill California’s Senate vacancy — only the second in nearly three decades. In the bluest state in the union, Senate seats are basically lifetime appointments, and California’s new top-two primary system all but guarantees that incumbents are invincible. Whomever Newsom chooses, we can assume that person will occupy the seat for decades.
Below is the list of likely picks in order of least awful to most abysmal.
London Breed
San Francisco would be worse off without its mayor, but she would be an upgrade from Harris in the Senate. Like Newsom, Breed was caught partying at The French Laundry during the pandemic, but unlike him, she has an admirable record to run on.
A YIMBY-ist, pro-business Democrat, San Francisco’s best mayor in decades has made all the right enemies by pushing back against the city’s anti-housing liberals. Breed started preparing medical equipment and PPE for the second-densest city in the nation in January, warning residents that the coronavirus would lead to disruptions, at the same time Bill de Blasio was still telling New Yorkers to hit the town. The results are conclusive. San Francisco suffered just 17 per 100,000 coronavirus deaths per capita, whereas New York City suffered 285.
Breed could bring a pro-supply focus on housing to the national Democratic Party and a sensible (and proven) willingness to buck the radical Left. In the last few months alone, Breed has taken to task the “Defund the Police” movement, teachers unions renaming problematic schools while still barring students from them, and rioters. Still, take a warning — if Breed does get the job, San Francisco schoolchildren might not go back to school until 2024.
Alex Padilla
California’s secretary of state has been touted as Newsom’s most likely choice, for no real particular reasons other than that he won’t ruffle too many feathers and he’s Latino. Padilla is … not totally terrible. Sure, he’ll probably be one of the most left-wing senators if appointed to the Senate, but unlike some of the other characters you’ll meet on this list, he probably wouldn’t weaponize his post.
Padilla authored emphatically pro-choice laws as a state senator, but he was arguably liberal in allowing anti-abortion activists to try and bring new initiatives to state ballots. Padilla has drawn flak from the Left for being insufficiently supportive of free healthcare, but that’s not saying much, considering how expansive MediCal already is in the state. However, Padilla did support Measure J, a Los Angeles proposal to reallocate millions away from law enforcement to “direct community investment.”
Barbara Lee
Harris’s exit will leave the Senate without a single black woman, so Newsom can hardly avoid considering one of his state’s black congresswomen. Lee is the less awful of the pair — a sign of how bad they both are. Lee has notably palled around with anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan for years, only condemning his “comments” in 2018, more than a decade after she was caught on video hugging the racist who then called her “my sister.”
Lee also has the rare distinction of being one of the 17 House members to oppose a resolution condemning that racist boycott, divest, and sanctions movement against Israel. One nation she doesn’t support increasing sanctions on? Iran.
Gavin Newsom
Given the sheer magnitude of California’s dense cities and the state’s wildfire crisis, Newsom actually deserves some credit for handling the coronavirus less terribly than other blue-state governors such as Andrew Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer. Newsom is also a creepy weirdo whose career was bankrolled by the Gettys and kickstarted by his well-connected daddy.
Newsom had an affair with his best friend’s wife, paid her off with $10,000 from a public fund meant for city employees with life-threatening illnesses, and then blamed the whole thing on his being an alcoholic. He still drinks to this day.
A year later, as the 39-year-old mayor of San Francisco, Newsom dated a literal teenager.
As mayor, he spent $1.5 billion on homelessness only to have San Francisco’s epidemic worsen. As lieutenant governor, he presided over the closure of California’s last working nuclear power plant. Even before he enacted arbitrary and economically fatal shutdowns that neither followed the science of the coronavirus nor reduced the pandemic spread, Newsom blocked zoning reform that would have increased high-density housing for the working class and signed the disastrous AB5 into law.
Newsom is a mess, and choosing himself as Harris’s replacement would probably prove a political nightmare for him. Unfortunately, Newsom is just narcissistic enough to consider it.
Karen Bass
During his eventually victorious presidential campaign, Joe Biden briefly considered tapping congresswoman Bass as his running mate. Within days, the oppo dumps effectively took her out of the running. Bass, who represents one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Los Angeles, has pledged lifelong fealty to communist dictators, visiting Fidel Castro’s Cuba in her youth and then lionizing the late autocrat upon his death as the “Comandante en Jefe.” Commiefornia would take a turn for the literal if Newsom were to select Bass.
Adam Schiff
Russiagate. Need I say more?
