It happened to her as if by accident, out of the blue, becoming California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber told us.
She had been a member of the Assembly from San Diego after a long career as an academic and school board member. The opening came up when former Secretary of State Alex Padilla was appointed to the United States Senate in the wake of Kamala Harris becoming vice president.
“What in the world did I get myself into?” she told the editorial board. “For a good portion of my life I was a college professor with a lot of flexibility in my time. But the governor saw something in me.”
Related: Our full list of endorsements
Indeed, Gov. Gavin ɫ̳om called and was insistent that she was a perfect fit for the job, overseeing California’s elections, campaign finance issues and lobbying of lawmakers, among other tasks.
And you know what? ɫ̳om was entirely correct, and we are pleased to heartily endorse Weber for election to a full term in her office in November.
She brings a fierce intelligence to the job, honed through a life story that saw her growing up in the projects in South Los Angeles after her Black farmer father was essentially run out of rural Arkansas by White neighbors. “These are critical times that demand a sense of fairness and justice in an extremely important job that defends democracy,” Weber told us. “I realized this would be a unique opportunity for someone who has been on both sides of the tracks, who has had a family who had their voting rights denied.”
With a fresh start in California, Weber went on to earn three degrees from UCLA and was a professor in the department of Africana Studies at San Diego State for 40 years.
Becoming secretary of state, she found the bureaucracy in a bit of disarray. “I came to this organization and found that they had not filed financial documents in years. We have rectified that,” she told us. “Our staff is doing a great job on taking care of important things they had never taken care of before.”
A department spokesman was more circumspect: “There were statewide challenges migrating data when the state moved to the FI$Cal accounting system,” he told us. “As a result, the agency was three years behind in filing End-of-Year reports to the State Controller’s Office and the DOF. We made it a priority to ensure we had the expertise on hand to fulfil those obligations. We are now up-to-date on our filings and early on our most recent filing.”
In any case, Weber’s making sure the office is functioning as it should.
None of this is a surprise to us. As a member of the Assembly, Weber established herself as a natural leader with a high level of integrity and a willingness to tackle politically contentious issues. From an unsuccessful but noble effort to reform teacher tenure (much to the chagrin of the teachers unions), to successful work improving police use-of-force standards, Weber has worked to make California a better place and her work today is an extension of that.
Her opponent, Republican Robert Bernosky, declined to offer any significant, unfixable criticism of the work Weber is doing as secretary of state. Frankly that’s because there’s not much to criticize.
Shirley Weber is doing her important job with vigor and should be returned to office to keep up the good work for Californians.
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