Why Sen. Laphonza Butler did something shocking for D.C.: Give up power
Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., says she has spent her short time in oce pursuing “what kind of life I want to have, what kind of service I want to offer and what kind of voice I want to bring forward.” Stephanie Scarbrough/Associated Press
Politicians rarely do the unexpected. It’s too risky. And risk translates to their greatest fear: losing power.
Yet last week, Sen. Laphonza Butler, whom Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed a little over two weeks ago to fill Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat after her death, surprised many Californians by choosing to give up power and not seek a full six-year term. And she did so for the right reasons — humble ones — and perhaps that’s why her move was so surprising. And inspiring.
Many Democrats were excited about the possibility of Butler running. If Democrats created a Senate candidate in a lab, it might be Butler.
She has longtime ties to labor through her years as a leader in the Service Employees International Union, where she helped raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. She is wired to big-money donors through her leadership of Emily’s List, the fundraising powerhouse that backs Democratic women who support abortion rights. She knows education through her service on the UC Board of Regents. And she has been lauded by the party’s most loyal voters as being the first Black LGBTQ person to serve in the Senate.
And she is only 44 years old. Young enough to be a daughter to most senators.
Yet, even with her ties to labor and donors, Butler would have faced an enormous challenge to scale up a statewide campaign
and raise at least $20 million just four months before Californians started voting.
But that wasn’t the reason Butler cited when announcing Thursday that she wouldn’t run for the full term.
“I’ve always believed elected leaders should have real clarity about why they’re in office and what they want to do with the responsibility and power they have,” Butler said.
Since her appointment, Butler said, she has spent the past “16 days pursuing my clarity — what kind of life I want to have, what kind of service I want to offer and what kind of voice I want to bring forward.”
Her reference to “pursuing my clarity” is what resonated with A’shanti Gholar, president of Emerge, a national organization that recruits and prepares Democratic women to run for office.
“She really focused on having clarity around what was really good for her, and that is just a key tenet of leadership,” Gholar told me. “Just being so clear about asking, ‘Is this the right moment in time for me to be impactful to use my voice?’ That was just so Laphonza right there.”
Gholar said she and Butler have become close as “sister presidents” of organizations that recruit Democratic women to run for office. (Both are also the first Black women to lead their respective organizations.) Gholar said it is important that Butler said, “Knowing you can win a campaign doesn’t always mean that you should run a campaign.”
“That was her saying that this is not the right time — right now. And those are things that all candidates think about even if they’re running for the first time, or for reelection,” Gholar said, noting that Butler will still be serving for another year and “her voice is going to be so impactful in the Senate, just having a Black woman there and LGBTQ woman there.”
Gholar and others who recruit women to run don’t think Butler’s decision will discourage other women of color from running for office.
“I don’t think this will be problematic for women of color at all,” Molly Watson, deputy director of California Donor Table and a board member for the Black Women’s Democratic Club of Los Angeles County, told me. “Sometimes we don’t have enough examples of people who we know who say when it’s time to run or not run. I think that Laphonza is showing us how to be brave and courageous and know how to make a decision.”
Butler had other concerns that informed her decision. Earlier this month, Butler told Los Angeles TV reporter Elex Michaelson that within days of being sworn into office, she had already received hate mail and “a stranger has shown up at my door.”
“I’m thinking about my family, the divisive nature of the harassment that is happening both online and in real life,” Butler said. “My mother is 70 years old — she didn’t sign up for this. My daughter is 9 — she didn’t sign up for this. And so I’m thinking about my family, my family’s safety.”
That is a real concern that Gholar and Watson tell women who want to run for office.
“It’s not just you in that seat. It’s your family, it’s your extended family, it’s whatever private thing you wanted to keep private
that everybody gets into,” Watson said. “It’s a big, big, big change in your life.”
Butler would have been one of few Washington politicians with a school-age child. Of the 541 voting and nonvoting members of the House and Senate, only 37 are moms with kids younger than 18. Only three of those are in the Senate, according to the Vote Mama Foundation, which tracks parents running for office.
Eye-opening stat: There are more than three times as many men named John in the Senate as there are mothers of kids under 18. (Rep. Katie Porter, a single mom who is running for Senate, has three school-age kids.)
“It’s another way that she’s going to be able to drive conversations in the Senate, being a mother of a young child,” Gholar said of Butler. “And we have to think about that when just looking at so many of these political bodies that have never had women with young children serving.”
That goes back to how so many elected leaders don’t know when to let go of power. Just look at the Senate, where the average age is 64. Start with Feinstein, who with all due respect clung to her office long past her prime.
Then there are Senate candidates who might have benefited from a bit more introspection before launching a bid. Start with Republican Senate candidate and retired Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Steve Garvey. When I asked Garvey what his top issue was, he said, “it’s tough to pick the No. 1 issue. It’s part of a starting lineup of issues that affect the quality of life.”
Garvey is apparently incapable of answering a question without including a baseball metaphor. As for specifics of what his campaign is going to focus on, he told me, “This is going to be a Steve Garvey campaign.”
And then there’s Christina Pascucci, a Los Angeles television journalist who announced last week, to the surprise of the entire state, that she is running for Senate.
Most surprising was that a journalist should know what it takes to mount a Senate campaign in the most expensive state to do so. Especially when you have zero name recognition statewide, no proven ability to raise $20 million in literally a matter of weeks, and no visible connections to the Democratic Party structure — a must in deep-blue California — an oversight that was evident when Pascucci billed herself in interviews as an “independent Democrat.” Those are as rare as purple llamas.
There’s no shortage of people who look in the mirror and say, “I can do better than those losers in D.C.” But it takes more than self confidence, unfortunately, in our flawed money- and connections-driven political system.
That’s what made Butler’s decision so powerful. She has access to money and power, and she chose not to run. This time.
But what about the race for governor in 2026, when Newsom is termed out? None of the announced or still pondering candidates in the race — Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Attorney General Rob Bonta, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond or former state Controller Betty Yee — are scaring off the competition. The most foreboding element in the field is Kounalakis being supported by the wealth of her father, Sacramento developer and longtime Democratic Party donor Angelo Tsakopoulos.
After a year as a senator, Butler will have bumped up her name identification among California voters. Plus, she will receive extra attention given the historic nature of being only the third Black woman and first Black lesbian to serve in the Senate.
“What is most important about (Butler’s) statement is what she didn’t say: She never said that she may not run in the future. That is key,” Gholar said.
Like, say, for governor? Butler might be able to get more stuff done in Sacramento as opposed to Washington, where we’re watching dysfunction hit new lows with Republicans’ inability to take advantage of their hold on the House by picking a new speaker.
Butler, Gholar said, “will be a strong candidate for anything.”