Latest sacrifice...

Steve Garvey is the latest sacrifice being offered up to California Democrats

By Alec Regimbal

California Rep. Adam Schiff should cruise to election in the Senate now that his opponent in November’s general election is former professional baseball star Steve Garvey.

On Tuesday evening, Schiff was leading a pack of several candidates in California’s primary election for the Senate seat vacated by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. As of just after 9 p.m., he had earned 37% of votes and the Associated Press's call of victory. Garvey, a Republican, was in second with just shy of 30% of votes, edging out California Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, who won 15% and 7%, respectively.

Schiff, a Democrat, will face Garvey in the general election this fall. In a state where Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters nearly two to one, it should be a slaughter.

A Republican hasn’t won statewide office in California since 2006. In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid for re-election against Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle was called for Newsom just two minutes after polls closed, and Sen. Alex Padilla thrashed his Republican opponent by more than 20 percentage points.

Schiff has realized his chances against a Republican are good, as evidenced by the money his campaign spent on ads meant to gin up support for Garvey in the weeks leading up to Super Tuesday. By painting Garvey as “too conservative for California,” Schiff was hoping the state’s Republican voters would coalesce around Garvey and, as a result, knock Porter and Lee out of contention for the general election.

It’s a familiar strategy in California. The leading Democratic candidate in a race will often try to prop up one of their Republican opponents, knowing that the state’s top-two primary system — in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general — can mean a tricky path to victory in November unless a Republican also advances.

That’s especially true in this race. Porter and Lee are prominent Democrats who have garnered a lot of support during their time in Congress. They also fall to the left of Schiff on the ideological spectrum. Had one of them advanced with Schiff, the two would have likely split the state’s Democratic electorate, and the outcome of November’s election would be much less clear.

Still, it’s notable that a Republican candidate earned enough votes in California to move to the general election. While Newsom, Padilla and state Attorney General Rob Bonta each faced Republican opponents in the 2022 midterms, that’s not always a guarantee. In 2016, Vice President Kamala Harris, who at the time was California’s attorney general, faced a Democrat in her bid for the Senate; Feinstein also faced a Democratic opponent in her last re-election contest in 2018.

Schiff also won Tuesday’s separate upper-chamber race to fill out the remainder of Feinstein’s term, which was set to expire at the end of this year.

The general election in November will decide who will serve the next full six-year term. Unless Garvey pulls off a miracle, it’s a race Schiff is now poised to win.