Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday announced the selection of California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to be California’s next United States senator, filling the term being vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

The governor also said Tuesday that he will submit to the State Legislature the nomination of San Diego Assemblymember and Chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus Dr. Shirley N. Weber as the next California secretary of state once Padilla assumes office in the United States Senate.

The selections serve as two firsts: Padilla will be the first Latino to represent California in the United States Senate and the first Southern Californian in nearly three decades, while Weber will be the first-ever African American to serve as secretary of state in California.

“The son of Mexican immigrants — a cook and house cleaner — 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’s Secretary of State. Now, he will serve in the halls of our nation’s Capitol as California’s next United States Senator, the first Latino to hold this office,” said Gov. Newsom. “Through his tenacity, integrity, smarts and grit, California is gaining a tested fighter in their corner who will be a fierce ally in D.C., lifting up our state’s values and making sure we secure the critical resources to emerge stronger from this pandemic. He will be a senator for all Californians.”

Secretary of State Padilla was sworn in as California’s first Latino Secretary of State on Jan. 5, 2015, and pledged to bring more Californians into the democratic process as the state’s top elections official.

He was re-elected in 2018 and received the most votes of any Latino elected official in the United States.

“I am honored and humbled by the trust placed in me by Gov. Newsom, and I intend to work each and every day to honor that trust and deliver for all Californians,” said Padilla. “From those struggling to make ends meet to the small businesses fighting to keep their doors open to the health care workers looking for relief, please know that I am going to the Senate to fight for you. We will get through this pandemic together and rebuild our economy in a way that doesn’t leave working families behind.”

Since taking office, Secretary of State Padilla has worked to make California’s elections more accessible and inclusive, while fighting to protect the integrity of our voting systems.

Under Padilla’s leadership, voter registration is at an all-time high – more than 22 million Californians are registered to vote (an increase of more than four million from the day he took office) and the highest rate in nearly seven decades.

He also implemented innovations like same-day registration, online pre-registration for 16- and 17-year olds and automatic voter registration, also known as “California Motor Voter,” and oversaw the upgrades and replacement of voting systems in all 58 counties in the state to systems that meet California’s newer, higher security standards.

Padilla also served as Chairman of the California Complete Count Committee, where he led efforts to reach hard to count communities and worked with community based organizations to secure a safe and fair Census count.

Growing up, Padilla’s mom and dad relentlessly emphasized hard work and a good education as key to a better future. With just an elementary school education, Santos worked as a short order cook for forty years before retirement. He liked to boast that his kitchen “never failed an inspection.” For the same forty years, Lupe worked tirelessly as a housekeeper for a group of families in the affluent communities of Studio City and Sherman Oaks.

Santos and Lupe raised their three children, Julie, Alex and Ackley, in a modest home in Pacoima. In the 1980s, the neighborhood became one of the more violent areas of Los Angeles and gang activity, prostitution and open-air drug dealing were rampant. Going to sleep to the sound of police helicopters was not uncommon.

Padilla attended local public schools, keeping his focus on books and baseball. He worked his way into the starting rotation at San Fernando High as a senior. The same year, his countless hours of study paid off and he won admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering. He worked his way through college doing a variety of janitorial and administrative jobs while mentoring younger students back home to follow the same path.

It was the conditions in his neighborhood growing up and the feeling that the Northeast San Fernando Valley wasn’t adequately served by government that awakened his interest in political activism. As a teenager, Padilla’s family helped organize neighbors to take back the streets from crime. He and his mother would periodically join community leaders to protest environmental injustice and demand the closure of the Lopez Canyon Landfill.

In 1994, after California voters passed Proposition 187, the sweeping anti-immigrant measure, his parents finally applied for citizenship and Padilla, now a recent MIT graduate, resolved to put an engineering career aside and dedicate his life to public service.

Demanding a fair share of opportunity and resources for the people of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, Padilla was elected to the Los Angeles City Council as a political outsider at the age of 26. As a member of the City Council, he worked to expand after-school programs to serve 16 schools in his district, worked to reduce class sizes and built state-of-the-art libraries and a children’s museum.

He worked to retain and create more local job opportunities through industrial, commercial and residential development and community reinvestment. And he championed citywide measures to improve air and water quality while directing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to dramatically increase procurement of renewable energy sources.

In 2001, Padilla’s colleagues elected him the youngest Council President in Los Angeles history. As president, he provided citywide leadership at critical times. He was Acting Mayor during the tragedy of September 11, 2001. He assisted in the interview and selection of William Bratton as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and helped negotiate the approval of LA Live and the modernization of Los Angeles International Airport. In 2005, his colleagues throughout the state elected him President of the California League of Cities.

In 2006, Padilla was elected to the State Senate to represent the more than one million people in the San Fernando Valley. As a state senator, he would go on to author more than 70 bills signed into law by both Republican and Democratic governors, with his major legislative efforts fighting climate change, expanding educational opportunities, fostering healthier communities and harnessing innovation.

Padilla lives with his wife Angela, a mental health advocate, and their three sons in the San Fernando Valley.

Governor to submit Weber nomination for secretary of state to state Legislature

In selecting Dr. Weber as Padilla’s successor as secretary of state, the governor said she has been a champion for civil rights and police reform, authoring a landmark law setting new, higher standards on the use of deadly force by police.

Dr. Weber has been fighting for civil rights her entire life – and she knows that ensuring every Californian has the right to vote is the fundamental building block for progress, the governor’s office said.

An Assemblymember since 2012, former president of the San Diego Board of Education and a retired Africana Studies Department professor for 40 years at San Diego State University, Dr. Weber will become the first-ever African American to serve as secretary of state in California.

The governor said she has been a voice of moral clarity in the Legislature, one who her colleagues have looked to for leadership on issues of social justice, including authoring the California Act to Save Lives, landmark legislation passed and signed by Gov. Newsom in 2019 setting new, higher standards on the use of deadly force by police.

Her nomination is subject to confirmation by the California State Assembly and Senate within 90 days.

“Dr. Weber is a tireless advocate and change agent with unimpeachable integrity,” said Governor Newsom. “The daughter of sharecroppers from Arkansas, Dr. Weber’s father didn’t get to vote until his 30s and her grandfather never got to vote because he died before the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. When her family moved to South Central Los Angeles, she saw as a child her parents rearrange furniture in their living room to serve as a local polling site for multiple elections. Now, she’ll be at the helm of California’s elections as the next secretary of state – defending and expanding the right to vote and serving as the first African American to be California’s chief elections officer.”

“I am excited to be nominated for this historic appointment as the secretary of state of California. I thank Gov. Newsom for the confidence he’s placed in me and his belief that I will stand strong for California. Being the first African American woman in this position will be a monumental responsibility, but I know that I am up for the challenge. Expanding voting rights has been one of the causes of my career and will continue to motivate me as I assume my new constitutional duties,” said Dr. Weber.

Dr. Weber was born on a 100-acre farm in rural Hope, Arkansas where her father, David, was a sharecropper. Though he had a sixth-grade education and, according to Weber, could barely read, he instilled in Weber and her siblings a belief in the power of education. The family fled the farm and moved across the country when Weber was just three because her father refused to back down in a dispute with a white farmer, and a lynch mob threatened his life.

Soon after the family moved to the Pueblo Del Rio housing projects in South Los Angeles in 1951, Weber began school. She is a proud product of California public schools – district schools in Los Angeles through high school, and later at UCLA, where she earned three degrees, including her Ph.D., at only 26 years old.

As one of the few Black women in Southern California navigating academia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dr. Weber ascended to become one of the youngest-ever professors at San Diego State University, where she helped found the Africana Studies Department.

Prior to being elected to the Assembly, Dr. Weber served as the mayor's appointee and Chair on the Citizens Equal Opportunity Commission. She has also served on the Board of the NAACP, YWCA, YMCA Scholarship Committee, Battered Women Services, United Way, San Diego Consortium and Private Industry Council and others. She served as a member of the San Diego Board of Education from 1988 to 1996, including a stint as president.

Her commitment to advancing civil rights and equality also compelled her to serve in public office – first on the San Diego Unified School Board, and, since 2012, representing District 79 of the California State Assembly.

Dr. Weber has translated her lifelong commitment to service into an ambitious legislative agenda, including bills on education, civil rights, public safety, food insecurity, protections for persons with disabilities and voting rights.

Dr. Weber has served as chair (and currently as a member) of the Elections and Redistricting Committee, where she has helped to oversee California’s elections and campaign finance law for the last several election cycles. She authored AB 2466 extending voting rights to people on parole – more than 50,000 Californians – and has sponsored legislation to ensure that those on probation and parole are aware of their voting rights and able to cast their ballots.

She was the author of, and chief advocate for, the California Act to Save Lives, landmark legislation passed and signed by Governor Newsom in 2019 setting new, higher standards on the use of deadly force by police. She also passed first-in-the-nation legislation to provide transparency and accountability around the harmful and unjust practice of racial and identity profiling, while improving public safety and police-community relations.

A national and state leader on criminal justice issues, Dr. Weber has passed several pieces of progressive reform legislation, including AB 2590 which made California’s sentencing framework more flexible and effective by giving judges discretion to apply restorative justice principles in certain cases.

In 2015, Dr. Weber became the first African American to chair the Assembly State Budget Committee in California, the 5th largest economy in the world. In her current leadership role, she chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety.