Republican Senate challenger and former baseball star Steve Garvey is getting a campaign boost from an unlikely source: Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a leading rival in the race for the seat once held by the late senator. Dianne Feinstein.
Schiff's campaign released a new ad portraying Garvey, a political newcomer considered unlikely to win the coveted seat, as his biggest competitor in a tight 2024 Senate race that includes two other top Democrats: Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine and Barbara Lee of Oakland. .
“Two outstanding candidates for the Senate. Two very different visions of California,” one narrator intones, later noting that Garvey “is too conservative for California” and voted for Donald Trump twice.
While the message will turn off Democratic voters in the state, it may increase the former baseball player's appeal to Republican voters, as it is designed to do, according to two political strategists.
“It's pretty clear that Schiff is trying to bolster Garvey's credibility as his runoff opponent and then Schiff can take the rest of the summer off,” said Democratic political consultant Garry South, who managed the governor's successful re-election campaign. Gray Davis in 2002.
Due to Democrats' overwhelming voter registration advantage in the state and California's open primary system, where the two candidates who receive the most votes in the March 5 primary advance to the November general election Regardless of party, the Senate race is effectively split. on whether Schiff and a Republican take the top spots on March 5.
Porter, who is battling Schiff to win a spot in the general election, criticized the announcement as a political ploy.
“Adam Schiff knows he will lose to me in November. That’s what this blatantly cynical ad is all about: promoting his own political career, excluding qualified Democratic candidates, and pushing a Republican candidate to do so.” she wrote in X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “We need honest leadership, not political games.
Schiff's campaign argued that voters need to know Garvey's record given his recent rise in the polls. In the last UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies In the poll, co-sponsored by The Times, Garvey finished in third place with the support of 13% of likely voters. She was behind Porter and Schiff, who had 17% and 21% support, respectively.
“Steve Garvey will be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump's extreme agenda if elected,” said Schiff spokeswoman Marisol Samayoa. “California voters deserve to know the differences between the two most voted candidates.”
The announcement began airing on television Thursday morning. Samayoa declined to reveal how much he had spent on the campaign, but said it was a multimillion-dollar statewide advertising purchase.
California is home to some of the most expensive media markets in the country, so mounting an effective statewide television campaign is incredibly expensive.
Schiff's campaign has the resources to finance such an effort: It reported having $35 million in the bank at the end of 2023 in a campaign finance disclosure filed with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday. Barring a massive fundraiser in January or an infusion of some of his wealth into his campaign, Garvey won't be able to finance a broad statewide television buyout with the $308,000 in cash on hand he reported in his FEC filing. .
Garvey spokesman Matt Shupe called Schiff's announcement “divisive rhetoric aimed at driving us apart.”
“Steve Garvey's campaign has always been and will continue to be about uniting all Californians in pursuit of compassionate, common-sense solutions to today's real problems, not trite political platitudes,” Shupe said.
However, similar efforts have been used successfully in previous California campaigns, including the 2018 gubernatorial race. Democrat Gavin Newsom's campaign elevated the gubernatorial candidacy of little-known Republican John Cox by ostensibly criticizing him for his support of Trump and the right to bear arms, and for his anti-abortion views in an advertisement.
Republican voters rallied behind Cox, giving the businessman a strong enough showing in the primary to overtake Democrat and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to finish second and face Newsom in the November election. Newsom defeated Cox in that election.
Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who worked on Villaraigosa's 2018 gubernatorial campaign, called Schiff's campaign ad a “smart move.” “The best way in this two-top primary system in California that we have is to elevate a Republican.”
He hoped the move would succeed in removing Porter and Lee from the race.
“What's happening more and more is that the Republican is becoming a pawn in the Democratic primary to checkmate the person in second place,” Madrid said. “That's what happened with Antonio, and it seems to be happening with Porter and Lee right now.”
