A small-town success story
In the 1990s, the South Pike School District, located in the small Pike County town of Magnolia in the southwestern corner of the state, had a student who clearly was an overachiever. But perhaps few could have predicted just how much she would achieve.
In high school, if there was a quarterly honor roll, she was on it. She was on the basketball team. Every year she received a few honors at the school’s annual awards day. She was one of four salutatorians for the Class of 1997.
She was a page for a week in the Mississippi House of Representatives and as a senior was chosen for the Pacesetter Azalea Court.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Jackson State University in 2001 and then began a career in union organizing for nurses, janitors and hospital employees on the East Coast. In 2009, she moved to California and began a steady climb to prominence through the Service Employees International Union.
She became president of the state SEIU council in 2013. In 2016 she was a presidential elector for Hillary Clinton. In 2018 she was appointed a regent of the University of California.
She joined a political consulting firm the same year and played a key role in Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. In 2021, she moved to Maryland to become president of EMILY’s list, a fundraising organization for female Democratic candidates.
She compiled an impressive resumé, though it’s a record that wouldn’t appeal to many residents of her conservative home state. But it was enough for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appointed Laphonza Butler, South Pike Class of 1997, to the U.S. Senate this month after the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
A story on the Politico website interviewed more than a dozen people who are close to either the governor or to Butler about the weekend when Newsom made his choice.
The governor had pledged to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein had to leave office before her term ended. At least one Black woman had made it clear she was running for the seat in 2024, but ultimately Newsom went with Butler. She switched her residence and voter registration back to California before being sworn into office.
Newsom liked the fact that Butler, at age 44, would be one of the youngest members of the Senate. He also saw her as someone who embodies the liberal California values that he believes are under attack from conservatives.
Politico said Butler’s confidants and co-workers described her as “known to be deliberative,” and “eager to take chances, yet loath to make snap judgments.”
Butler took a day to think about Newsom’s offer. She was concerned about the disruption of moving across the country a second time, and leaving a job that she believed in. Ultimately, she decided that opportunities like the U.S. Senate rarely come along, so she accepted.
It’s no stretch to predict that a Democratic labor leader would find it impossible to get elected to statewide office in Mississippi. But for anyone who is willing to look past that, there is a valuable lesson in Butler’s story.
Her early years made it clear she had potential for great achievements. A lot of young people share this, and often the results depend on what they do when presented an opportunity.
Butler clearly made a lot of right decisions when opportunities in her career arrived. These decisions carried her all the way to the U.S. Senate, and the important thing to remember about her is that anybody — even someone from tiny Magnolia, Miss. — can succeed greatly if they’re willing to work at it.
