{"id":30161,"date":"2020-12-22T16:56:27","date_gmt":"2020-12-23T00:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=30161"},"modified":"2020-12-22T16:56:27","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T00:56:27","slug":"governor-newsom-picks-padilla-for-california-senate-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=30161","title":{"rendered":"Governor Newsom picks Padilla for California Senate seat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>California Gov. Gavin Newsom has selected Alex Padilla, his secretary of state, to fill\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/11\/23\/gavin-newsom-pressured-to-pick-woman-of-color-to-fill-senate-seat\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the Senate seat vacated<\/a>\u00a0by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, he announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Padilla, a close ally of the governor, will be the first Latino to represent California in the Senate, a state where Latinos make up 40 percent of the population.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement released alongside the announcement, Newsom hailed Padilla as the right choice based on both his personal and professional background.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe son of Mexican immigrants \u2014\u00a0 a cook and house cleaner \u2014 Alex Padilla worked his way from humble beginnings to the halls of MIT, the Los Angeles City Council and the State Senate, and has become a national defender of voting rights as California\u2019s Secretary of State,\u201d Newsom said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, he will serve in the halls of our nation\u2019s Capitol as California\u2019s next United States Senator, the first Latino to hold this office,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n<p>Since Harris was tapped by President-elect Joe Biden to join the Democratic ticket in August, Padilla has consistently appeared as a leading contender for the job.<\/p>\n<p>Citing allies,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2020\/11\/07\/biden-rush-harris-senate-california-434981\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Politico reported<\/a>\u00a0in November that the governor wanted his pick to be one of historic significance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>California Gov. Gavin Newsom has selected&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30163,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30161\/revisions\/30163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}