Oct. 30, 2023 (SFChronicle.com)
California’s once-in-a-generation U.S. Senate race is likely to be the most important state election for voters in 2024. With an abundance of candidates and a few elements of unpredictability, it’s not clear who will make it out of the primary to the general election. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s appointee to fill the seat following the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Laphonza Butler, announced in October she will not seek a full term.
Democrats have five top candidates running: three members of Congress, a Silicon Valley tech executive and a Los Angeles broadcast journalist.
Republicans have three largely lesser-known candidates: former Los Angeles Dodger Steve Garvey, Los Angeles attorney Eric Early and Laguna Niguel (Orange County) businessman James Bradley.
About one-third of voters said they remain undecided, according to an August Berkeley IGS-Los Angeles Times poll.
Democratic similarities
California voters have their work cut out for them when it comes to weighing the three top Democratic candidates for Senate, given their similar resumes and positions on most issues.
Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland, Katie Porter of Irvine and Adam Schiff of Burbank are all Democratic members of Congress. On the campaign trail, they have sought to differentiate themselves by highlighting their ethos and individual policy goals.
But the candidates have split on individual votes a few times during their tenures in Congress, and those rare disagreements reveal when their positions could make a difference in an increasingly divided Senate.
A Chronicle analysis of their voting records found that while the candidates overwhelmingly vote the same — they agreed on at least 94% of votes over the past four and a half years — they disagreed most often on foreign policy, the military and immigration.
Most recently, they had a rare moment of disunion over the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas. Schiff expressed unequivocal support for Israel while Lee called for a cease-fire and offered prayers for both Israelis and Palestinians killed. Porter stood out by taking an unusual position for a Democrat — attributing some of the blame to American inaction in Iran.
“There are lost lives in Gaza. There are lost lives in Israel. And it is because the United States has allowed terrorism to flourish, and has refused to take a strong enough stance against Iran, who is backing Hamas and Hezbollah,” Porter said at a candidate forum Oct. 8.
Porter also disagrees with Schiff and Lee on the role of earmarks — the practice that Congress uses to steer money into hometown projects without going through the normal appropriations process — calling them “a system with a history of corruption and backroom deals that waste tax dollars.”
Schiff and Lee both embrace earmarks and criticize Porter’s stance as one that hurts her constituents by not doing all that she can to fund projects that could help them. Porter did, however, leave the door open to reconsidering whether to use earmarks if elected to the Senate.
There are other, long-shot Democratic candidates in the race (for now). One is Silicon Valley tech executive Lexi Reese. She has shown little previous interest in political activism and doesn’t have the same extensive voting record as the top three candidates, making her more of an unknown quantity for voters.
Many of Reese’s positions align with the other top Democrats in the race, including support for Medicare for All, investments in renewable energy and term limits for Supreme Court justices. Unlike her main competitors, she is proposing 12-year term limits for senators and House members. She has a six-point plan to curb gun violence that includes stronger regulations against those that manufacture and sell guns.
Her pitch to voters is focused less on her take on the issues and more on how she would provide a different perspective as a political outsider.
“The same type of seasoned politicians taking the same approach feels a lot to me like bad reality TV that does nothing to help California families,” Reese told the Chronicle earlier this year. “We need that to change.”
Her challenge: Reese has raised $1.8 million, including $534,216 out of her own pocket, and has only $682,478 cash on hand. That won’t go far in bumping up her name recognition among voters.
In October, Los Angeles TV journalist Christina Pascucci entered the race as a Democrat. Pascucci, who has never held elective office, wants to provide a centrist option, something her campaign believes is missing among the top candidates.
While Pascucci may have some level of name recognition from her journalism career, she doesn’t have a fundraising network of the scale it would take to compete in a statewide race in some of the nation’s most expensive media markets. Nor does she have a political network to recruit volunteers to spread her message just four months before Californians begin voting.
Demographics
Despite his fundraising advantage, Schiff has an only-in-California challenge, starting with something he can’t change: He’s a straight white guy running in the nation’s most diverse state — one where race, gender, age and the differences between being a progressive and a moderate Democrat will be under the microscope.
Complicating matters for Schiff is that California was represented in the Senate by two women from 1993 to 2021. Feinstein and Barbara Boxer were the first women elected to the Senate from California in 1992. Kamala Harris replaced Boxer after she retired in 2016 and served until she was sworn in as vice president in early 2021. California’s other senator is Sen. Alex Padilla, who is the first Latino to represent California. Some female voters want the state to retain at least one female senator.
Lee often invokes the historic nature of her candidacy. Until Newsom appointed Butler, only two Black women had ever served in the Senate. Lee often points to her lived experience as a Black woman who grew up in the segregated South, who received an abortion in the pre-Roe v. Wade era, and who raised two children as a single mother on public assistance as a survivor of domestic violence as ways that she can connect with many of the struggles voters face.
Porter regularly invokes her life as a single mom of three school-age children — a rarity in Washington — as a way of connecting to everyday struggles many voters have. She was raised on a farm in Iowa before attending Yale University for undergraduate studies and Harvard Law School.
Age will be a factor, too, especially given national concerns about President Joe Biden, who is 80; Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who is 77; and Feinstein, who was 90 when she died and battled health problems her last few years in office. Lee is 77 and Garvey turns 75 in December.
Republican wild cards
There are nearly twice as many (47%) registered Democrats in California as there are Republicans, so it’s a long shot that a GOP candidate will be the first Republican to represent the state in Washington since 1992. But that doesn’t mean they won’t affect the race.
Garvey, the longtime Dodgers and San Diego Padres All-Star, is the big unknown here.
Garvey jumped into the race in early October, months after the top contenders had been raising money and campaigning around the state. He’s never held elected office, and his campaign has been light on specifics and heavy on baseball nostalgia. Much of Garvey’s introductory ad shows him in his baseball uniform — even though his playing days ended during the Reagan administration. Perhaps that’s why 59% of likely voters had no opinion of him, according to an August Berkeley IGS poll.
Top California GOP officials say Garvey has a better shot than Early, who has run failed campaigns for state attorney general and Congress in recent years and registered only 5% in the Berkeley IGS poll that included Garvey, who scored 7%. Early has $86,846 cash on hand, according to a September federal filing, which would be paltry even in a state Assembly race, let alone a statewide contest.
California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson told the Chronicle in October that donors “will definitely be excited about someone like him running for statewide office,” referring to Garvey. But will they be excited enough to give him the money to compete with the $32 million that Schiff has on hand?
Still, if Garvey is able to consolidate a decent amount of the GOP electorate behind him — and that is a huge “if” given the tight time frame — he could nudge one of the top Democrats out of the race. Lee’s supporters believe she needs to win over 1.5 million to 2 million voters — or roughly about 25% of the March 5 primary vote — to advance to the general election in November.
Money and endorsements
The winner in the money primary is clear: Schiff has $32 million cash on hand, nearly three times as much as Porter, his closest money-raising competitor, who has $11.9 million. Lee ($1.4 million cash on hand), Reese ($682,478) and Early ($86,846) are in serious trouble in terms of being able to get their message out. That’s because it costs roughly $4 million a week to air TV ads statewide. The Los Angeles market alone could run a candidate $2 million.
Porter is trying to mitigate that difference by noting how she raised her money. Unlike Lee and Schiff, she says, she has never taken donations from corporate political action committees or federal lobbyists.
Endorsements have been split. Schiff has picked up the most (seven) statewide union endorsements, while Porter snagged her first in October, from the National Union of Healthcare Workers.
Schiff counts more than half of the California Democratic House delegation in his corner, most prominently Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, whose fundraising network Schiff has tapped into.
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Lee touts nods from the Congressional Black Caucus and big-city mayors including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. She is also supported by six of California’s statewide officeholders and the Sen. Bernie Sanders-inspired Our Revolution organization. Porter packs a big-name endorsement from her college law professor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Democrats looking to see who the California Democratic Party is going to endorse may be disappointed. Scoring the party’s endorsement requires winning support from 60% of the caucus — a feat highly unlikely given the crowded field.
Ballot confusion
More than a few California residents may be confused simply by what and who is on the ballot.
Stay with us here: Voters will be asked to weigh in on two Senate contests for the same seat on both their primary and general election ballots. That’s because Feinstein died toward the end of her term. By law, California must hold a special election to replace her. But because of the timing of her death, that special election will be consolidated with the regular election for the next term.
Voters will see one race on the ballot to fill the last month or so of the current term and another to fill the seat next term, likely with very similar if not identical slates of candidates running for both. In theory, that means voters could elect two different candidates for the seat. Schiff, Porter and Lee plan to run in the special election to serve out the end of the current term, their campaigns told the Chronicle.
If that happens, we could see as many as three new senators within a year: Butler, whoever wins the special and whoever wins the general.
Staff writers Cynthia Dizikes and Sophia Bollag contributed to this report.
Reach Shira Stein: shira.stein@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @shiramstein, reach Joe Garofoli: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @joegarofol
Written By Shira Stein
Shira Stein is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent, covering national politics and policy with a particular eye to the impacts on California. She was previously a health care reporter and received several awards for her work covering the COVID-19 pandemic for Bloomberg. She also covered the fall of Roe v. Wade, including being the first to report President Joe Biden’s consideration of a public health emergency for reproductive rights; the Trump administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices; and the third legal fight to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
She previously interned at the Washington Post, Bloomberg Law, and the Colorado-based Durango Herald. She is a native of the Bay Area and a graduate of American University.
Written By Joe Garofoli
Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, covering national and state politics. He has worked at The Chronicle since 2000 and in Bay Area journalism since 1992, when he left the Milwaukee Journal. He is the host of “It’s All Political,” The Chronicle’s political podcast. Catch it here:
He has won numerous awards and covered everything from fashion to the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings to two Olympic Games to his own vasectomy — which he discussed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” after being told he couldn’t say the word “balls” on the air. He regularly appears on Bay Area radio and TV talking politics and is available to entertain at bar mitzvahs and First Communions. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and a proud native of Pittsburgh. Go Steelers!
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