Senator Dianne Feinstein’s career was filled with firsts, including first woman mayor of San Francisco and one of two of the first women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s career was filled with firsts, including first woman mayor of San Francisco and one of two of the first women elected to the U.S. Senate from California.
Caretaker is way better. “I’ll put a black woman in as a placeholder until a real senator can be elected” sounds horrible.
I mean, it’s a very pro-democracy move to make an explicitly temporary appointment and not distort the election. It’s also a very progressive move to fill the seat with a highly qualified member of an under-represented group. High marks on both counts. It’s just hard to describe the coincidence of those goals in a way that doesn’t sound like tokenism.