With just over 13 months remaining until the 2024 general election, the death of California Senator Dianne Feinstein has thrown a massive wrench into the works of the ongoing fight to succeed her when the 119th Congress begins in January 2025.
Feinstein, who passed away at age 90 after three decades representing the Golden State in the upper chamber, leaves behind a hotly contested race that kicked off shortly before she announced in February that she would not seek re-election.
Because California’s election system uses a “nonpartisan blanket primary,” all contenders vying for Feinstein’s seat run in a single primary race, after which the top two vote-getters — regardless of political party — appear on the November general election ballot.
Three prominent members of the House of Representatives — Democrats Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee — have been running for the now-open seat in the upper chamber, with Mr Schiff holding a significant advantage in most opinion polls.
But Feinstein’s death, and the vacancy it creates, now generates a political conundrum that could threaten to upend the race.
Under the terms of the US Constitution and California law, Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is responsible for appointing a replacement who will serve until a special election can be held.
Mr Newsom, who is rumoured to have designs on higher office himself, has not indicated who he might name to fill the late senator’s seat.
But in March 2021, when calls for Feinstein’s resignation first began to be made by some in the Democratic Party amid reports that she was having trouble remembering things, the governor said he would name a Black woman to fill the seat. He previously took flack from some Black Democrats after he named then-California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Latino man, to replace Vice President Kamala Harris when she resigned from the Senate three months before.
In an interview with MSNBC, he told host Joy Reid that he had “multiple names in mind”.
One of those names was thought to be Ms Lee, a veteran legislator who served as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus from 2009 to 2011.
But naming Ms Lee to the seat once held by the woman he described as “a dear friend, a lifelong mentor, and a role model” in a statement commemorating her passing would give the congresswoman a leg up on the rest of the field by immediately making her an incumbent senator.
Mr Newsom took five weeks to decide on Mr Padilla as the replace for Ms Harris after she became Vice President-elect, but because of the close margins in the upper chamber — in which Democrats now have just a one-seat advantage — he will be under pressure to choose a replacement quickly.
Earlier this month, he said in an interview on Meet the Press that he’d choose an “interim” senator to serve until next year’s election because he did not want to meddle in the ongoing primary.
“It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that,” he said.
His decision angered Ms Lee, who said she was “troubled” by the decision and called it “insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election”.
