Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) will not join the crowded field campaigning to fill her seat for a full term next year, she announced on Thursday.
Butler has faced questions about her 2024 plans since being sworn in to fill the vacancy left by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s passing earlier this month. She was appointed to the seat amid an expensive and competitive contest to fill the role for a full term next year.
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The Democratic senator said in an interview on Thursday that while she plans to be “the loudest, proudest champion of California” for the remainder of her term, she realized that “this is not the greatest use of my voice.”
Public polling on the Senate race shows Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Katie Porter (D-CA) essentially tied for the top spot and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) not far behind, all within the margin of error in most surveys. Also in the mix are baseball legend Steve Garvey, who is running as a centrist Republican, and former tech executive Lexi Reese, a Democrat who raised an impressive $1 million in the second quarter of this year but is mostly unknown in the state.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) vowed in 2021 that he would fill Feinstein's seat, should a vacancy emerge, with a black woman after he appointed Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), a Hispanic male, to replace Vice President Kamala Harris in the chamber.
Lee, a black woman, was one of Newsom's front-runners to fill Harris's seat, though the governor wanted to avoid weighing in on the 2024 primary with his pick for Feinstein's replacement. Lee has polled slightly behind Schiff and Porter, so an appointment by Newsom would have given her the benefit of incumbency in her primary race.
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Newsom also said earlier this year he would choose a caretaker to fill the seat temporarily in the event of a vacancy to avoid throwing next year’s contest to one candidate over another, though Lee called that decision “insulting.”
While Butler is in that caretaker role, she’ll have most of Feinstein’s committee assignments, including her membership on the high-profile Senate Judiciary Committee.