Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Sunday that he appointed Laphonza Butler to fill the late Dianne Feinstein’s U.S. Senate seat through the end of 2024.
The appointment was made three days after the 31-year senator died in her Washington, D.C. home, the oldest sitting U.S. senator at the time.
Butler will make history as California’s first openly LGBTQ United States senator and the first Black lesbian to openly serve in Congress in American history, and the second Black woman to represent California in the U.S. Senate, following Vice President Kamala Harris. She is a longtime senior advisor to Harris.
“An advocate for women and girls, a second-generation fighter for working people and a trusted adviser to Vice President Harris, Laphonza Butler represents the best of California, and she’ll represent us proudly in the United States Senate,” said Newsom. “As we mourn the enormous loss of Senator Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for — reproductive freedom, equal protection and safety from gun violence — have never been under greater assault. Laphonza will carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings, and fight for all Californians in Washington D.C.”
Butler is president of EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest organization dedicated to electing women who support abortion rights, but will step down from that role to serve in the Senate. She ran political campaigns for and led strategy efforts for Harris and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
For more than a decade, she served as president of Service Employees International Union Local 201, which represents more than 325,000 nursing home and home care workers in California and is the state’s largest labor union, and she held other leadership positions in the union.
Butler was the director of the Board of Governors of the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve System. In 2018, she was appointed to the University of California Board of Regents by Gov. Jerry Brown, where she served until 2021. She served in various other roles, including as a board member for the National Children’s Defense Fund, BLACK PAC, and the Bay Area Economic Council Institute, and as a fellow for the MIT Community Innovators Lab. Butler was named a “Champion for Change” by President Barack Obama.
She received a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Jackson State University.
Butler is married to her wife, Neneki, and together they have a daughter, Nylah.