The inside story of how Newsom picked Butler for Senate

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom knew he needed a succession plan for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat. He just didn’t want to believe it.

Few people had better visibility into the late senator’s worsening condition than Newsom. And yet, he didn’t want to contemplate her dying. Even when the Senate appointment was on his agenda, Newsom viewed the hypothetical scenario as becoming a reality only if Feinstein stepped down before her term ended next year.

Early last Friday morning, as Congress careened toward a government shutdown, Newsom got a call from Sen. Alex Padilla, once an aide to Feinstein who was appointed to the Senate by the governor in 2021. Feinstein had died, Padilla told Newsom.

He was now on the clock to name her replacement. But he needed time to mourn.

The next 48 hours would come to define a transformational chapter not just in the career of Newsom, a last-term governor who is widely seen as a future White House aspirant, but also for the woman he pursued to fill the open Senate seat. Laphonza Butler, a longtime labor leader, was described by confidants and coworkers as eager to take chances, yet loath to make snap judgements.

“She is incredibly courageous and willing to take risks,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, where Butler worked for nearly two decades. “I think those two qualities suited how to think of the moment of crunch time — and how to think about making the decision.”

Newsom came into his decision with narrowed options after backing himself into a corner. He pledged to pick a Black woman. He refused to wade into the 2024 race to succeed Feinstein. He agreed to choose only an interim senator.

In once again navigating out of a vise of his own making, Newsom ended up doing something larger: articulating his vision of generational change in a state he touts as a beacon for progressive governance and a bulwark against the rightward march of red states and the U.S. Supreme Court.

“You in some ways can’t even make all of this up,” Newsom said of his appointee, saying she was so perfect for the job that he couldn’t have conjured up a better candidate from his own imagination. Speaking with reporters after announcing Butler, Newsom said she would help Democrats turn back the “rights regression” in America and lower the median age of a graying Congress. “She’s just 44 years old,” he added.

The whirlwind story of how Newsom arrived at his selection of Butler, and how she became a U.S. senator, was described in interviews with more than a dozen people directly familiar with the deliberations who were granted anonymity to reveal internal dynamics around the appointment. This includes Newsom advisers in the room for key moments and people close to Butler during the white-knuckle weekend on both U.S. coasts.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 29

As phones pinged with alerts about Feinstein’s death at age 90, Newsom’s top aides decided to give him time with his grief. He revered Feinstein, a fellow once-and-forever mayor of San Francisco, who for decades peppered him with advice. Sometimes he feared her. In recent conversations and scattered public remarks before her death, Newsom spoke about how he wished she could be remembered in her prime — crisp and commanding and miles ahead of her own staff on minutia — rather than coldly splashed across tabloids as a cautionary tale for Washington’s gerontocracy.

“This is a lifelong family friend. He didn’t want to talk about it,” a person close to the governor said. “He didn’t want to do this. He was hoping so much that it wouldn’t happen. He had that — plus, wanting it to be the right person and the reality of what was going on in D.C.”

While advisers gave Newsom space, they were getting few accommodations from the outside world. Several Newsom aides were bombarded with messages before sunrise on the West Coast. One recalled being pinged in the 4 a.m. hour with a long list of possible Senate appointments — a text message they said landed like a sack of bricks on a car hood.

Other Newsom confidants on the periphery of the selection process reported receiving a torrent of names for potential picks, from former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs (who is a man) to former California First Lady Maria Shriver (who is white). To those in the know, the irony of all the lobbying was that Newsom had quietly thinned his large herd of advisers working on the search. He wanted to avoid conflicts of interest with consultants that have formal roles with Reps. Katie Porter, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee, Democratic candidates for the Senate contest next year.

The lists of potential Senate appointees that surfaced in media reports bore some resemblance to the one kept by the governor's office, two aides confirmed, including mayors and elected officials. The advisers, however, said they were by no means comprehensive and stressed that some women on the real list never saw their names become public.

Butler’s name did trickle into a few news stories that day. She landed in Colorado for an EMILY’s List donor meeting to an avalanche of text messages. But despite attempts to connect, she and Dana Williamson, Newsom’s chief of staff, did not talk all day.

At the same time, there was pressure being applied to women by Lee’s allies not to accept the role if approached. Other Lee supporters made it clear to her camp that, if asked, they would decline the job. Lee’s colleagues issued statements urging Newsom to choose the congresswoman and warning he would regret it if he didn’t. Some in Lee’s circle pointed to the presidential primary map that runs through South Carolina, where Black women are the beating heart of their party.

Further complicating the matter for Newsom was the time crunch, as Congress raced to avoid a government shutdown while down another Democrat. On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made it clear to the governor he needed to move on a replacement, and fast. A gubernatorial adviser gave word that his Senate pick would be coming in days, not weeks.

“There was this difficult place you’re in where you want to be super respectful of the fact that a senator just passed away, someone he’s really personally close to, and the anxiousness going on in D.C. about the thin voting margin,” another aide recalled.

By that point, however, Newsom did appear to have made one major decision, advocated by strategists and advanced by Black leaders. He wouldn’t pressure his Senate pick not to run in 2024. There would be no preconditions, and it would be entirely up to her what to do. It was a reversal of his misstatement from a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when Newsom told host Chuck Todd he wouldn’t pick Lee for the still-occupied Senate seat and then agreed when Todd suggested he’d instead choose a “caretaker” for the role. Lee weaponized Newsom’s answer, arguing a Black woman should be free to run.

Newsom started the weekend with hours to close the deal. He just needed to hear “yes” from a future senator.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 30

Before Feinstein’s death, Butler occasionally heard from friends that she had come up as a possible contender. Years earlier, when Newsom took office in 2019, their political worlds collided when she worked in labor and she nearly became his chief of staff. Instead, she joined the firm of the governor's top political strategists, a job that launched Butler into the 2020 presidential race as a trusted adviser to then-candidate Kamala Harris. Butler went on to become the head of EMILY’s List, relocating to the D.C. suburbs and serving as a kind of outside advocate for Harris, by then the vice president.

Butler never knew how seriously she was being considered for the Senate seat, according to a person close to her. So when she finally spoke to Williamson on Saturday, Butler was stunned. She didn’t say no.

Williamson, who spearheaded the selection process for Newsom, was the first person to float Butler’s name to him as a possible Senate pick. Now, she was the first from his office to test the idea with Butler herself. The two have a friendship that stretches back years — they worked together hashing out major legislative deals like raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. Williamson, a top aide to then-Gov. Jerry Brown when the agreement came together, was instrumental in getting Butler appointed to the University of California Board of Regents, a plum posting held by the likes of Feinstein’s late husband, the financier Richard C. Blum.

Butler had turned to Williamson for career guidance before; after she left her job at SEIU in 2018, she asked Williamson what her next move should be. At the time, Williamson was stumped. None of the options felt big enough, she recalled telling Butler.

Five years later, Williamson had that conversation on her mind as she gauged her friend’s interest in this headlong dive into the deep end of national politics. This is big enough, she told Butler.

Butler is known to be deliberative, and Williamson understood she wouldn’t have an answer right away. But the pressure to make a choice was mounting as it still looked like Congress was barreling toward the government shutdown.

Newsom and his team worked out of his Capitol office that day, distracting themselves by churning through a tall stack of bills to be signed and keeping one eye on updates from Washington. Schumer’s staff was texting with the latest developments from the Hill. When the shutdown was unexpectedly averted, it released some pressure to make a pick in time to keep the government open, but did little to lessen the heat on Newsom.

The eleventh-hour spending bill allowed House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi to slip away from the Capitol to board a military plane, accompanying the body of her late friend to their hometown of San Francisco. A Newson adviser was in touch with Pelosi’s staff to update them on their progress, though they didn’t share any names or details, a person briefed on the exchanges said.

By then, Newsom had also gotten the Feinstein family’s permission to move ahead with his pick, and his choice was Butler. He saw her, a Black LGBTQ woman, as an embodiment of the California values that he considered under attack from reactionary forces, people he spoke with said.

The fact Butler represented a new generation — she is now the fifth-youngest senator — was a meaningful bonus, in line with his other youthful appointments like Padilla, 50, and California Supreme Court Justice Patricia Guerrero, 51.

Newsom offered Butler the job just hours after Williamson first broached the subject with her. Coming as no surprise to those who knew her, she needed some time to think.

SUNDAY, OCT. 1

Newsom started the day at home, toggling between work and family time. Even with a shutdown now delayed 45 days, political pressure intensified. That morning, the Congressional Black Caucus released its letter to Newsom from Chair Steven Horsford advocating for Lee, 77, and contending Newsom effectively sidelined her by saying he would choose someone else who was not running for Senate.

Progressives joined the choir on social media.

Meanwhile, Butler was still weighing the choice. Later, she would explain the level of disruption she was preparing for — it would mean relocating again, and leaving a job with a mission she believed in. Some of those people were moved when Butler said it would be even harder not to practice what she preached to so many women considering runs of their own, to make the sacrifices needed to serve in public office. She knew opportunities like this rarely come along.

On the phone with Newsom, she relayed her decision: She was in.

“I decided I wouldn’t let myself down by choosing to miss another opportunity to serve at my greatest potential,” Butler told a fundraising luncheon for EMILY’s List in New York a few days after her appointment. “To lead and deliver at my highest impact. To raise my voice to its highest volume on behalf of creating a better, stronger, more equitable future.”

The particulars around filling a Senate seat in a matter of days created an undercurrent of chaos that ran through the entire frenzied weekend.

The governor’s staff scrambled to find out what paperwork was needed, where it could be submitted, even when flights to San Diego were available so they could meet California Secretary of State Shirley Weber for an inked signature on the official document. Someone on staff recalled their phone dying three times on Sunday alone.

Butler brought her own inadvertent complications being in Colorado. Getting there and back left her on a plane and virtually unreachable for hours on Friday, and again on Sunday. Her trip home to Washington was almost comically circuitous. That long layover in Houston? Yes, it was a problem.

“It was ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’,” one adviser said. “It was awful, but at one point I just started laughing. Like, of course this is happening.”

Aides credited their peers for pulling it together in time, including one on the governor’s video team who had fewer than three hours to track down clips of Butler and weave a sizzle reel of her greatest hits. Even the would-be senator was pressed for time. So harried was the final crunch that Butler’s own mother learned about her surprise ascension to the Senate via news alert, two people familiar with the timeline said.

Just as that news began trickling out, major players in California and Washington started receiving courtesy calls. Henry, the powerful head of SEIU, was in San Francisco and happened to be dining that evening at Delancey Street Restaurant. She ran into John Burton, the former congressman, legislative leader and chair of the California Democratic Party.

Burton, a Feinstein contemporary who attended Newsom’s youth baseball games growing up and was always fond of Butler, asked Henry if she’d gotten word yet. “Newsom picked Butler for the Senate!” he later shouted, repeating the night’s big headline like a newsy.

“He was so excited,” Henry recalled, adding that Burton, proud of the outcome and famously sharp-tongued, said, ‘You should call her. You should call him. This is a big deal. This is a big fucking deal.'”