It’s impossible to be too cynical about Gavin Newsom, the Brylcreem-topped governor of California who lusts after the Democrats’ nomination for president, even as he publicly mouths support for Biden. This is a man who bedded his best friend’s wife, after all.

Caligula looks on in envy at the brazenness of Newsom’s designation of Laphonza Butler to fill the remainder of Dianne Feinstein’s Senate term, expiring in January 2025. As a way of mocking the institution, Caligula only joked about appointing his horse Incitatus as consul, a role reserved for senators, while Newsom has actually appointed a longtime Maryland resident and registered voter to represent California in the Senate, a body the Constitution designated to represent that sovereign states in the federal government.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Emily’s List President Laphonza Butler to succeed the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Butler, 44, a Democrat and longtime labor leader in California, heads up the group, which funds female candidates who support abortion rights for office. She will be the first Black and openly gay woman to serve in the U.S. Congress, according to Newsom’s office. She is expected to be sworn in as early as this week.

“Laphonza will carry the baton left by Sen. Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings, and fight for all Californians in Washington, D.C.,” Newsom said Sunday night.

Butler currently lives with her family in Maryland, where she is registered to vote, according to a spokesman for Newsom. She owns a home in California and will re-register to vote there, he said.

Butler will take a big pay cut to join the Senate, which pays $174,000 for non-leadership solons. The top-paid executive at Emily’s List reportedly earns $950,000, almost five-and-a-half times what a Senator earns, and more than 30 times the average income in the United States. But don’t expect the usual critics of CEO compensation to utter a peep.

I wonder if Senator-designate Butler has kept her extra home in California vacant, or if a family is renting it? Housing is notoriously in short supply in California, so keeping the home vacant would be contributing to the homelessness crisis that has filled cities there with tent cities and befouled the sidewalks and streets with human excrement. Is she so heartless as to keep needed housing vacant?

But if her home has tenants, is she going to evict them suddenly in order to obtain immediate residency -- purely on paper? Is her 8-year-old daughter Nylah going to leave school in Maryland and enter a new school in California, accompanied by Butler’s partner Neneki Lee to care for her while Butler works back home in DC?  All this for an interim appointment intended to last only barely more than a year?  Or is this promised registration to vote in California a mere charade to fool voters and mock the Constitution’s requirement of state residency?

If they exist, do the current tenants have a lease? Would she brazenly use an address currently occupied by renters to claim residency if the potential tenants refuse to move? If they are in a city with rent control, they could easily delay eviction for many months or even years, given California’s propensity to offer renters rights that logically belong to owners.  

By appointing Butler, Newsom fulfills his racist pledge to fill Feinstein’s seat with a black woman. Of course, this by definition makes Butler a token chosen because of her race, not necessarily her qualifications.  The talent pool is shallow minus 97% of the populace; black women constitute only 3% of California’s population, but among them is Barbara Lee, the far-left Congresswoman from Berkeley, who must be fuming that she was not given a leg up in the primary by taking Feinstein’s seat. The blow is doubly painful because if Butler decides to run for the nomination, she will split the vote inclined to favor a black female.

Newsom has avoided angering the national constituency of black women by failing to fulfill his pledge of a black female senator. He needs them if he has any hope of obtaining the presidential nomination, especially given the mammoth role the black vote plays in the South Carolina primary. He also gets points from abortion enthusiasts, including many Democrat office holders who have been beneficiaries of Emily’s List’s donations.

But for residents of California, he has ceded one of their two Senate seats to Maryland, which now, as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya quipped, has 3 senators. But not to worry: the state’s media will make no point of it, and many ballots will be filled out for the Democrat running for Senate in 2024 no matter what voters think.

Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped)