California Senate 2024 - Schiff (D) vs Garvey (R)

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

I don't expect Dianne Feinstein to run for reelection (her declining the office of president pro tempore is a sign that even her people realize now that she's no longer fit to hold office) and even if she were to run I doubt that she would win.

When did she decline President Pro Tempore?

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

https://twitter.com/sarahnferris/status/1592977190064365568

Endorsed. One of my favorite House Dems.

I like him too, he's been relentless in investigating 1/6 and trump's criminality, but I would rather have a woman replace Feinstein.

That's why I'm not too sure why Schiff is getting in. Even his own district is gonna be filled with Katie Porter or Ro Khanna voters (one of them will likely defer to the other, prolly Khanna cuz he could easily win Gov in 2026 against a much weaker field, i.e. kounalakis). It also sounds like there is a nonzero chance that Barbara Lee is getting in, which doesn't make too much sense to me given her age, but also would make her imo the easy frontrunner.

If she doesn't, there will be a huge incentive to a nonwhite candidate to get in. There may be an incentive to a Latino candidate regardless. At any rate, I don't really know who Adam Schiff's constituency is that makes him this confident about mounting a Senate bid

That’s a really good point. He’s basically just a generic Dem without any demographic bonus. He’s more well-known among political junkies thanks to his investigations of Trump, but idk that that’s enough in CA.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Where is the proof that Porter is actually terrible to her staff? The entire hubbub about those texts seemed like there was a lot of missing context and the full story wasn't really put forth (shockingly!)

Yeah, I’m wondering if this is just this one incident or if it is part of a bigger, concerning pattern.

I think that Lee is just too old, especially when we’re talking about replacing the oldest Dem in the senate. Like, I think she could serve through 2030 just fine, but I’d wonder about after that should she win and run for re-election.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Where is the proof that Porter is actually terrible to her staff? The entire hubbub about those texts seemed like there was a lot of missing context and the full story wasn't really put forth (shockingly!)

Yeah, I’m wondering if this is just this one incident or if it is part of a bigger, concerning pattern.

I think that Lee is just too old, especially when we’re talking about replacing the oldest Dem in the senate. Like, I think she could serve through 2030 just fine, but I’d wonder about after that should she win and run for re-election.

Her office has a very high turnover rate, if you look at the thread I linked earlier on there are several other complaints about abusive behavior to her staff, a lot of them are anonymous and hard to verify but the sheer number of them doesn't paint a good picture,
https://twitter.com/DWS________/status/1608683804394393603

Thanks for sharing that!

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

If it’s Dem v Dem, we’ll definitely need to look at the previous Dem v Dem races to get an idea what the map will look like. There will probably once again be significant undervotes in the Republican strongholds, with actual votes going for whomever isn’t the Dem establishment candidate. See Kevin De Leon’s performances in the north state despite probably being more progressive than DiFi. Lee/Porter and Porter/Schiff will probably be the two most interesting/least predictable maps/outcomes imo.

Lee/Porter: Two progressives that probably wouldn’t appeal to the Republicans, but also potentially somewhat at odds with the establishment. There would probably be something of a north/south divide.

Porter/Schiff: Two SoCal representatives would make things less predictable. I might give Porter the overall advantage. Schiff is hated by Republicans, but loved by the establishment Dems. The optics of Porter not being the establishment Dem might swing a few Republican votes her way, but the “strongholds” are not highly populated and only really matter for map coloration. Hard to say which of the two would do better in the Bay and Sac areas.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

his alternative lifestyle

This almost had me in tears.

Good primer on Garvey. Had no idea who he was. (Go Giants!)

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Looks like this potential self-funder is getting in as a Democrat, her pollster is Lake Research which has a middling reputation at best and is the firm that tends to get lower-tier Democratic candidates especially in statewide races.

https://twitter.com/ccadelago/status/1669334397814996994?s=20

why

Who?

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Replacing the vice-president requires a majority vote in both houses of Congress.

And that is how we ended up with President Manchin

We did it, Joe!

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

LA Times compiled a list of names Newsom might appoint.

They are:

• Angela Glover Blackwell
• Lateefah Simon
• Mayor London Breed
• Secretary Shirley Weber
• Laphonza Butler
• Controller Malia Cohen
• Judge Leondra Kruger (who was under consideration for Biden for SCOTUS)

Not interested in an appointment are:

• Mayor Karen Bass
• Supervisor Holly Mitchell
• Congresswoman Maxine Waters
• Oprah Winfrey

Looks like the LA Times was on to something. Could’ve sworn I saw her name mentioned somewhere else in this thread. Maybe an embedded tweet.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Dark Gavin Rises

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

So Newsom endears himself to Labor, Women, and the LGBT probably ending slightly disfavored to even with black voters, and pissing of progressives and labor.

We’ll see how this plays out.

This progressive is perfectly happy.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Might be jumping the gun a bit but I'll say now that the race is probably over. Butler has had several high profile roles, is fairly young but not too young, and has no reason not to run for re-election.

And the campaigns of Schiff, Porter, and Lee are designed as campaigns for an empty senate seat. They're not remotely designed as campaigns for challenging an incumbent senator who's a well-qualified mainstream Democrat with plenty of experience in Californian politics and a lesbian black woman.

They'd all probably be best off dropping out and running for re-election to their House seats– maintaining Senate campaigns just wouldn't look good in the new circumstances

Schiff has £32 million in the bank and very high ID- why drop out when he’s virtually nailed into getting in the final two?

What's he even going to campaign on? "I'm a mainstream Democrat like the incumbent but I'm also a white man"?
Funding doesn't mean anything if there's no reason for voters to go for you– imo the final two will be Butler and a Republican

Schiff can point to being an anti-Trump attack dog. I’m also doubtful that a Republican will make the top two. Who’s even running on the GOP side?

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1708865281110454759

Interesting.  I never noticed until now that Mississippi is the one state where both of its senators were initially appointed (that is, until Butler is sworn in later this week.) 

This streak is actually longer that you would think, too, as Thad Cochran technically also joined the senate via an appointment (he won an election in 1978, and got to start his term early after James Eastland resigned in December.  Eastland's retirement was to give Cochran a seniority advantage over the large 1978 senate class, which I'm surprised hasn't become a more common gimmick in the years' since.) 

I think the rules have been changed since then to eliminate just this type of gamesmanship among newly elected senators.

That would make sense; I saw that a number of the Californian senators did that back in the 60s and 70s.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

That's such a good troll endorsement.

lmao yeah. Reminds me of the infamous "Eric" endorsement.

I’m getting New York Times 2020 Dem primary vibes.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

I hate electoral-vote.com's long-standing pet theory that Republicans will flock to Adam Schiff in a Schiff-Porter general because he is more moderate. Porter has always been an inconvenience for the GOP, nothing more, and a win for her may yet clear the path for them to reclaim one of their sought-after Orange County House seats. Schiff is possibly the Republican Party's least favourite moderate House Democrat and his competition in 2022 was a Democratic drag queen called Maebe A. Girl who never looked like winning.

Would a Republican rather have six years of a flipchart-wielding progressive who has largely avoided controversy for herself, or six years of the guy who led the efforts to impeach a Republican President (who also happens to be on the Presidential ballot that cycle)?

Yeah, to me, a Schiff-Porter runoff would very much be shades of 2018 with Feinstein-de Leon. Most Republicans will probably not vote and those that do will probably go for Porter over Schiff precisely because of what you said.

Quoting myself from another thread:

To reiterate what others have said, the Republicans that did vote, did vote for de Leon, while a significant number didn’t vote in that race. Total votes for the Senate race were about 1.3 million lower than the concurrent gubernatorial election that was Dem vs Rep.

I’ve added a graph that shows the correlation between the difference in the number of votes cast between gubernatorial and senatorial races (undervote) compared to the votes received by the Republican (Cox) in the gubernatorial election by county. The quickest (and dirtiest) measure of correlation, R-squared, is extremely high as you can see.



In the event of a Porter-Schiff race, I’m guessing there will be broadly similar patterns among Republican voters (those that do vote will go Porter). I’m thinking that Porter could pull it off, but that of course remains to be seen.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

The x-factor is that Porter will have to campaign for several months by actively running to Schiff's left, so that will likely blunt any Republican support she gets. But I'm also guessing Schiff will open up a big lead against Porter among Dems, so the Republican vote will likely be irrelevant.

That’s fair and I think another factor is that Porter won’t be seen to be as quixotic of a candidate as de Leon was. I don’t doubt that he really wanted the job, but Feinstein was such an entrenched incumbent that running against her was uhh… difficult and almost seemed like he was a protest candidate. The fact that it’s an open seat could go either way for Porter. She’ll be seen as a serious candidate with a serious chance at winning, which could help on the left, and hurt on the right (meaning more undervotes since I agree with the idea that Republicans are more prone to hate Schiff, but still might not want to support another Dem).

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Smart moves by Schiff lately.

What did Porter wrong that her campaign seems to flop that badly? She was considered a or the favorite a few months ago.

Nothing. People saw her as the favorite cause she would win round 2 in November VS Schiff through a Frankenstein coalition of assorted interests. I don't think we ever got a poll of her coming on top in Round 1. And that still could be the case if she makes it to round 2, she has the money to not be totally swamped by Schiff, and the reasons voters would favor her for their own reasons in a 1 v 1 are all still there.

What has changed is not on her. GOP voters can vote in the Blanket primary like anyone else and they now have a candidate with enough of a presence to congregate their votes. They also now have the likely voter screen, and pollsters expect a electorate with more GOP voters than usual - at least comparing normal primary turnout to a normal GE electorate. Which is sensible given the state of the two Presidential primaries, but it may end up a overcorrection given how much energy is focused on getting out Dem voters by the Senate primary campaigns, and how many Dem voters are gonna get ballots mailed to them without any effort on their part.

That’s actually a really good point. Sure, it is the primary for all of the races (unlike I want to say 2008 when there were two primaries), but the big race on everyone’s mind will be the senate races. While Schiff might be trying to pick his opponent as others have noted, it would be hard to do if the Republicans vote how they’ve been voting in contests like this: a lot of random people getting a percent or two here and there. Eric Early and James Bradley, two Republican candidates for other statewide offices of late, are also on the ballot, which could draw away from Garvey. With three mainstream Dems on the ballot, I suspect that random Democrats will be taking less than random Republicans.

Ultimately, due to the dearth of real candidates, polling the CAGOP side of things is difficult.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

I already turned in my ballot for Porter. My dad is going to vote for her as well. Not sure if my mom will vote Schiff or Porter.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Just got polled by UC Berkeley IGS; looks like they’ll have one last poll out before the primary next week.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Will Schiff face Porter or Garvey?

Heart wants to say Porter, but I think Garvey has the advantage. At least in polls, he’s managed to consolidate enough of the Republican side.

I’d say 60% chance of Garvey, 40% chance of Porter.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

F**king hell. A once in a generation opportunity to advance progressive power in the Senate and we blew it. And congrats California Republicans for blowing your shot at stopping Schiff too. You might have actually decided the race if Porter had made it through, but oh well.

In a way I'm glad the margin is so large, though. Won't have me agonizing over what-ifs.

This is about where I’m at. For the sake of party unity, I’m glad it’s looking to be a blowout. Schiff isn’t bad, I just thought CA could do better.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

I've had a few people even ask me why there were two Senate races with the same people on the ballot, and they're consistent voters. The general will have more "low info" voters compared to last night's primary that I expect will vote for the same person in both match-ups, so I don't expect much of a discrepancy in the results for the special and the full term.

TBH, it’s pretty ridiculous that there’s two in this case. I get it if it’s two or four years, but a two month term is kind of a waste of time for an election.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

We're about half way counted in CA and the makeup of the Senate race is

D 57.3%
R 41.0%
Other 1.7%

From what I remember, I think it will oscillate a bit between a blue mirage and red mirage at this point after the in-persons were redder, but I feel like the last few cycles have been a bit confusing and all over the place in their trajectory compared to long ago, so who knows.

Just an awful performance by Porter and Lee though.

~53% in now, I think yesterday morning it was at like 47 or 48%. Slight inch up for Ds:

57.5% D
40.8% R
1.7% Other

~58% in now; so far a mini-blue shift. We've gone from D+16.3 to D+17.5 so far

D 57.9%
R 40.4%
Other 1.7%

It'll go from 16.3 to 21 or so back to 19, if it follows the same pattern as last year.

Counties completely in so far are Kings and El Dorado, according to NYT. Kings is Valadao's home turf.

Kings:

2020 Pres: Trump +12.3
2022 Gov: Dahle +30.2
2024 Sen: GOP +32.7
2022 House Primary (CD 13): GOP +26
2022 House General (CD13): Valadao +12
2024 House Primary (CD13): GOP +24

El Dorado:

2020 Pres: Trump +8.8
2022 Gov: Dahle +22.1
2024 Sen: GOP +16.4

From this, ballpark is D +19/20 in the end. Valadao might be a little weaker, given the primary margin slippage. El Dorado doesn't look that great for the GOP either.

Hmm so Dahle actually had a pretty great performance.

Newsom just has middling popularity. I don't know Dahle's reputation, but he seems pretty generic and is from a from a forgotten part of the state, so I doubt he was why it was only D+18 statewide.

Dahle is the state senator for the district (SD-1) with El Dorado County, though Dahle is from 150 miles to the north (big district). As a side note, Dahle beat Kevin Kiley (effectively the more local candidate) in the 2019 special election for the seat. That state senate district covers most of the northeastern part of the state, basically part of what people were trying to make into the state of Jefferson. So, there could be a bit of a bonus, but hard for me to say how much.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

So what explains the fact Adam Schiff got 144,000 fewer votes in the special than he did in the regular primary? The special actually had 82,000 more total votes and there were far fewer minor candidates to siphon off votes so you would think everyone's total would go up and in fact every other candidate in the special did get more votes than they did in the regular primary. Is it as simple as Democratic voters giving Lee or Porter a sort of consolation prize?

To be clear I don't think this has any significance, I just found it an oddity.

I’ve heard speculation that some voters thought it was something of a ranked choice and voted for their second choice. It is strange though.

I do remember some counties had what seemed like tabulation errors, but I assume that those have been resolved.