42%

California Democrats out of step with their voters on Dianne Feinstein, poll says

Eric Ting

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is now extremely unpopular among her state’s voters, with two-thirds of Californians stating she is no longer fit for office, a new poll found.

The 89-year-old senator recently returned to Congress after a monthslong absence due to a shingles hospitalization. She has remained in the news thanks to an encounter with reporters in which she apparently forgot she was gone in the first place, as well as reports that she was in worse shape than her office initially let on; in addition to shingles, she also had encephalitis and Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Encephalitis can cause confusion, and even before her shingles hospitalization, questions about her mental acuity abounded.

Amid the health concerns, a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released Thursday found that 67% of California voters agree with the statement, “Feinstein’s latest illness underlines the fact that she is no longer fit to continue serving in the U.S. Senate.” A plurality of Californians (42%) believe Feinstein should resign, while 27% say she should stay, and 31% said they were not sure.

The 42% figure would be higher if more California Republicans believed she should step aside. Just 22% of the state’s Republican voters said they think should resign, while 34% said she should serve out the remainder of her term and 44% were unsure. The pollster attributes this result to the question’s wording — respondents who think Feinstein should resign must agree with the statement “Feinstein should resign from office and allow Governor [Gavin] Newsom to appoint her successor.” California Republicans despise Newsom, and seem likely to prefer the historically centrist Feinstein over whomever the governor might appoint.

Most California Democrats, meanwhile, want Feinstein gone. Fifty-two percent of the state’s Democratic voters called for her ouster, while 24% said she should stay and another 24% were unsure.

The poll isn’t likely to influence Feinstein — a biographer who knows the senator well told the Los Angeles Times he can’t see her caving to pressure and leaving — but the survey results may prompt more California Democrats to call for her ouster.

To put it lightly, when 52% of a state party’s voters want something, but only one of the party’s 40 members in the House of Representatives publicly backs the thing voters want, that typically means the party’s elected officials are out of step with voters. Granted, that one outlier — Bay Area Rep. Ro Khanna — has said that many of his House colleagues agree with him privately but are afraid of speaking out publicly.

There really isn’t much left to say about the Feinstein situation. The poll shows that most Californians see the saga as an embarrassment, and Feinstein is well on her way to tarnishing her legacy — just 29% of the poll’s respondents view her favorably, while 52% view her unfavorably and 19% said they were unsure. Those are absolutely horrific numbers for a Democratic politician with a long and storied career in a deep-blue state.

The only serious argument in defense of Feinstein keeping her seat at this point is that Republicans would refuse to allow Democrats to replace her on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would put the party back in the position of being unable to confirm judges who can’t can’t garner any Republican support. This argument was recently made by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but two Republicans on the committee have said they would replace her, and as Slate’s Jim Newell explains, refusing to replace Feinstein would create more long-term procedural grief for the GOP than would halting certain judicial nominees.

The Berkeley poll also surveyed the race to succeed Feinstein, but because the race is so far out — the primary is 10 months away — a plurality of voters (42%) did not select any of the candidates included. Eric Early, the only Republican included in the survey, led with 18% support, and was followed by the trio of Democrats in the race: Rep. Katie Porter had 17% support, Rep. Adam Schiff had 14% support and Rep. Barbara Lee had 9% support.

If Early remains the only major Republican in the race and subsequently lands the California Republican Party endorsement, he’s a good bet to advance to the general election, where he’s all but assured to lose to one of Porter, Schiff or Lee (call it the Paper Bag Theorem of California politics).

You can check out the full poll results from Berkeley IGS.