{"id":31942,"date":"2024-02-22T12:48:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T20:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=31942"},"modified":"2024-02-22T13:16:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T21:16:48","slug":"porter-schiff-attack-each-other-in-final-senate-debate-is-it-a-november-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/02\/22\/porter-schiff-attack-each-other-in-final-senate-debate-is-it-a-november-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"Porter, Schiff attack each other in final Senate debate. Is it a November preview?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Shira Stein<\/a> Feb 20, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rep. Adam Schiff, left, and Rep. Katie Porter, take part in a debate for California\u2019s Senate seat on Jan. 22 in Los Angeles. The candidates met again Tuesday night in the final debate before the March 5 primary.Damian Dovarganes\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The top four candidates for the open California Senate seat made their last pitch to voters Tuesday night in the final debate before the March 5 primary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evening was either Rep. Katie Porter\u2019s last gasp, or a preview of what the next eight months will look like if she and Rep. Adam Schiff face off in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter, D-Irvine, spent much of the debate trying to goad Schiff, D-Burbank, into a fight \u2014 and it worked. Schiff is in the lead in both polling and fundraising, and Porter is duking it out with Republican former baseball player Steve Garvey to advance to the general election. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has been in fourth place in multiple polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Schiff\u2019s best-case scenario would be facing Garvey in November, essentially guaranteeing he would become California\u2019s next senator. If he faces Porter, it will be an expensive, bruising battle for a safe Democratic seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In answering the first question of the NBC4-Telemundo 52 debate about how they would address inflation, Porter immediately went on the offensive, hitting Schiff for saying he wants to bring down child care and housing costs, but not signing onto legislation aiming to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schiff was ready. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing easier than putting your name on a bill. Where you see the real legislators is they write their own legislation,\u201d Schiff said. (Cosponsoring or writing legislation doesn\u2019t guarantee that it will become law.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter also repeatedly took aim at Schiff for his support of earmarks<\/a> \u2014 the once derided, then revived practice that Congress uses to steer money into hometown projects without going through the normal appropriations process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFor too many decades, Washington gave sweetheart deals to certain defense contractors through earmarks. And there is a candidate on this stage who has done that again and again, getting earmarks for his private corporate donors who are big defense contractors,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schiff took the moment to highlight his similarities with California\u2019s long admired (and later criticized) senator, Dianne Feinstein, who died last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a strong disagreement over whether senators should bring back resources for their state. I believe that they should. Rep. Porter doesn\u2019t believe they should. She prefers a political talking point. But look, I want to bring back billions, just as Feinstein did.\u201d Later, he said he would \u201cget things done\u201d like Feinstein had. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two also traded barbs over fundraising. Porter has made taking on corporate special interests a key part of her case to voters and regularly brings up that she has never taken money from corporate political action committees (Schiff and Lee no longer accept them).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schiff attacked Porter on a claim made last week by a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC, alleging that she has in fact taken money from corporate special interests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fairshake, a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC funded by billionaires including San Francisco\u2019s Ron Conway and Silicon Valley\u2019s Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, purchased $2.9 million worth of anti-Porter advertising that says, \u201cShe claims not to take corporate PAC money. No. Instead, Katie Porter takes her campaign cash directly from Big Pharma, Big Oil and the Big Bank executives. More than $100,000.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They cite the fact that Porter has taken money from executives at Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Wood Oil Company and Royal Business Bank. But the first two aren\u2019t members of their industry\u2019s lobbying groups and the bank doesn\u2019t meet the definition of what\u2019s known as a systematically important financial institution. In other words, those donors might come from powerful industries, but not necessarily powerful companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Rep. Porter has been fully clear about her own record of taking thousands of dollars from people in the oil industry, thousands from Wall Street bankers, thousands from people in (the) pharma industry,\u201d Schiff said. \u201cThe problem with a purity test \u2014 as Representative Porter (would) like to establish \u2014 is invariably the people establishing them don\u2019t meet them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter shot back at Schiff and the ad, pointing out that the Sacramento Bee\u2019s fact-checkers<\/a> rated the claim as \u201cmostly false.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night had two other standout moments \u2014 all four candidates said they would\u2019ve voted against a bipartisan border and foreign aid deal (the deal collapsed<\/a> after some Republican senators withdrew support), and Porter took aim at a candidate who wasn\u2019t even present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schiff, Porter and Lee said they would have voted against the border deal because it wasn\u2019t comprehensive in their view, lacking a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Garvey said \u201cthere were too many things packed in there, too many things hidden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, Garvey was asked to defend former President Donald Trump\u2019s foreign policy agenda and when he didn\u2019t articulate a clear answer, Porter took the opportunity to ding Republican Eric Early, who was not part of the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMr. Garvey has been unclear on where he stands with regard to Donald Trump. He\u2019s even said he might vote for Joe Biden. There is a Republican that is dangerous in this race and that\u2019s Trump Republican Eric Early, who has said he will be 100% MAGA at all times,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter\u2019s campaign has been raising Early\u2019s profile<\/a> in an effort to split the 24% of registered Republicans in California so that she can make it into the top two (Garvey would need to coalesce that group to beat Porter and make it into the general election).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reach Shira Stein: shira.stein@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @shiramstein<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feb 20, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Shira Stein<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s consideration of a public health emergency for reproductive rights; the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to lower prescription drug prices; and the third legal fight to overturn the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She can be reached at shira.stein@sfchronicle.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shira Stein Feb 20, 2024 (SFChronicle.com) The top four candidates for the open California Senate seat made their last pitch to voters Tuesday night in the final debate before the March 5 primary.  The evening was either Rep. Katie Porter\u2019s last gasp, or a preview of what the next eight… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31942"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31948,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31942\/revisions\/31948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}