Kamala Harris wanted Laphonza Butler’s endorsement. It was 2010 and Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, was in a crowded primary field running for California state attorney general. So she traveled to the Los Angeles office of Butler, who was then the president of a powerful labor union representing long-term care givers. Harris also impressed Butler during the day she spent working alongside one of the SEIU home health care aides in Oakland; the union delivered a key endorsement; and Harris squeaked out a general election win by 0.8%.
Butler, 45, has been a member of Harris’s innermost circle ever since. She is adept at big-picture strategy—for instance, in the words of The Washington Post, providing “the road map for Team Harris: Punch back at Trump’s extreme remarks, then return to pocketbook issues.” She can also assess the granular details of intra-ethnic swing state political dynamics.
Those skills are the product of a career that has taken unexpected turns. After leading a labor union, Butler advised Uber and held a top job at Airbnb, companies not exactly known as friends of organized labor. She went on to be the president of EMILY’s List, which boosts female candidates and pro-choice initiatives. Last fall, California governor Gavin Newsom appointed Butler to fill the remaining 15 months of the late Dianne Feinstein’s US Senate term—a seat Butler quickly announced she would not campaign to win for a full term.
Butler will not lack for employment prospects when her Senate stint ends, especially if Harris defeats Donald Trump, and would be on the short list for a top post in a Harris administration. It is a long way from growing up in Magnolia, Mississippi, population 2,400. “We talk a lot about how things have changed from when we first got started,” Butler tells me when I ask what she and Harris talk about these days. “And we talk about how to solve where we are, as a country.”
Vanity Fair: When you spoke on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, the video screen behind the podium showed an enormous photograph of Vice President Kamala Harris hugging your daughter. I’m guessing that image will be your Christmas card this year.
Senator Laphonza Butler: It’s definitely one of those photos that gets framed. Nylah might have been four or five in that picture. She’s about to be 10, so it’s not as cool to her anymore.
Your DNC speech included a reference to the fact that you and the VP are proud graduates of historically Black colleges. The conservative commentator Megyn Kelly wrote on social media, “Imagine the white person up there: I’m proud to tell you I went to a mostly white university!” Kelly’s agenda is quite clear. But if she’s sitting here instead of me, what do you say to her?
I think I would want to start from a place of curiosity: Megyn, have you ever been on the campus of a historically Black college? Do you know the history of why historically Black colleges were founded in the first place? Do you know the contribution that historically Black colleges make in the spaces of physicians and lawyers and judges and teachers? My assumption is that the answers are no. But I really want to start from this place of genuine curiosity as opposed to judgment, as I would have hoped that she would have done with me if she were actually interested in our nation’s historically Black colleges.
My assumption is that she does know the history and wrote what she did anyway.
Look, I think she probably does, but if I model the behavior I want my daughter to experience, then that’s what I can be held responsible for.
You were much more in demand at the convention with Harris instead of President Joe Biden as the nominee. Did you end the week exhausted, excited, apprehensive?
I had 30 press hits while I was there. I’m exhausted from the amount of work required to execute constantly. I’m energized because it was contagious. I’m anxious because this is still something that the country has never done before. And even if you put the historical nature of the race aside, it still is a very polarized time in our country. And we have this Electoral College system, so it means that to win, you need fewer people in fewer states. And I just can’t imagine what my daughter’s life would be if we as a nation had one more term of Donald Trump.
The Harris campaign had an amazing first month. How does it try to sustain the momentum?
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