“The son of Mexican immigrants — a cook and house cleaner — Alex Padilla worked his way from humble beginnings to the halls of MIT, the Los Angeles City Council and the State Senate, and has become a national defender of voting rights as California’s Secretary of State,” Newsom said in a statement. “Now, he will serve in the halls of our nation’s Capitol.”
Harris is expected to resign her seat before she is sworn in as vice president on Jan. 20.
Padilla filled a number of Newsom’s criteria for the choice, including recent political success in statewide races. He will have to defend the seat in two years, a quick turnaround in a vast, expensive state in which to campaign. In 2018, Padilla won more votes than Newsom on the ballot.
Newsom was also under pressure from Latino organizations to choose a member of the state’s largest ethnic group. Latinos are a powerful voting bloc in the state, even if not always as liberal as the rest of the Democratic Party here.
In addition, Latinos have suffered disproportionately this year from the coronavirus pandemic. Accounting for about 40 percent of the population, Latinos have made up 60 percent of the state’s coronavirus cases, many essential workers in the service economy.
“From those struggling to make ends meet to the small businesses fighting to keep their doors open to the health-care workers looking for relief, please know that I am going to the Senate to fight for you,” Padilla said in a statement. “We will get through this pandemic together and rebuild our economy in a way that doesn’t leave working families behind.”
Padilla has been one of Newsom’s most loyal political allies over the years, one of the very few who endorsed the then-mayor of San Francisco in his unsuccessful run for governor against Jerry Brown (D) in the 2010 election. He is also from the Los Angeles area, bringing slightly more geographic diversity to a state where many of its most powerful positions are filled by Bay Area politicians.
Padilla, for weeks a leading candidate for the post, emerged as the clear front-runner this month after President-elect Joe Biden chose Xavier Becerra, the state’s attorney general, to serve as the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Becerra, along with Long Beach, Calif., Mayor Robert Garcia (D), were the two other Latinos seen as the most likely picks for the job.
But Padilla’s selection is likely to upset a number of groups that lobbied for an African American woman to replace Harris, who was only the second Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.
Rep. Karen Bass, who is from the Los Angeles area, and Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland were championed as strong candidates to fill the post. Both have years of Washington experience, unlike Padilla, but neither has won a statewide race.
The pick of Padilla — and Becerra’s selection for the Biden Cabinet — now gives Newsom two top, elected posts to fill by appointment: the secretary of state, which oversees elections, and the attorney general.