Laphonza Butler’s Work at Airbnb Betrayed Everything She Ever Stood For
Laphonza Butler, California’s newest senator, went from heading a major union to leading lobbying for Airbnb. In that position, she oversaw the company’s efforts to fight off local governments' regulations — directly exacerbating the US housing crisis.
California senator Laphonza Butler conducts a news conference after the Senate luncheon in the US Capitol on October 4, 2023. (Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
As Laphonza Butler makes history taking the late Dianne Feinstein’s seat in the US Senate, the question for California workers is: Which Laphonza Butler will they be getting?
Will it be the Laphonza Butler who served nine years in the California Service Employees International Union (SEIU), first as the cotrustee of its long-term care workers’ branch, then for six years as its president? That Laphonza Butler fought fiercely against austerity measures by both Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic governor Jerry Brown, succeeding in warding off anywhere from hundreds of millions (under Brown) to billions (under Schwarzenegger) of dollars in health care cuts that would have devastated California’s poor, as well as the care workers she represented.
Or will it be the Laphonza Butler who, toward the end of her SEIU tenure, moved into the insular Bay Area political clan responsible for the upward career trajectories of California neoliberals like Gavin Newsom (who appointed her to her Senate seat) and Kamala Harris (“Laphonza stuck with me from the beginning through the end,” Harris said of Butler’s behind-the-scenes efforts to get the union behind her in 2010)?
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