Enter email address You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. After months of relentless lobbying and fervent speculation, Gov. Gavin Newsom has chosen California’s next senator. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla will replace Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in the U.S. Senate, making him California’s first Latino senator. Advertisement Newsom faced competing pressures to select either a Latino politician or a Black female politician for the role, with either choice potentially rectifying broader issues of representation: Latinos outnumber any other ethnic group in California, yet the state has never had a Latino senator. But without a Black woman chosen to succeed Harris, the number of Black women in the Senate would dwindle back to zero.