Followers of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, or its long, cantankerous aftermath, know well that Republicans hate Democrat Adam Schiff. Trump hates him so much he even gave him a nickname, Shifty Schiff—rare treatment for a politician who hasn’t even had the temerity to run against Trump in an election. After Republicans retook the House of Representatives in the beginning of 2023, one of Kevin McCarthy’s first moves as speaker was to keep up the contempt with an official congressional censure of his fellow Californian.
But the feeling isn’t mutual. The right’s villainization did nothing but help Schiff. The congressman parlayed his role as House impeachment manager into a national profile and a near permanent guest slot on MSNBC; he used his censure vote to appeal to Democratic donors nationwide, amassing a $35 million war chest. For a House rep who has never run a competitive race, that’s unthinkable cash—money that is underwriting his current Senate campaign. And now, as that race’s election day in California nears, Schiff is using those millions to … elevate his Trump-voting Republican opponent and juice Republican turnout.
It’s a diabolical election gambit made possible by California’s jungle primary system, a crowded Democratic field, and the one-party nature of California politics (along with a little bit of Schiff’s own shamelessness). Rather than the traditional, discreet Democratic and Republican primaries leading to a red-vs.-blue November general, the race to replace the deceased Dianne Feinstein will be a November runoff between the top two vote getters in March 5’s primary, regardless of party. Schiff is working hard to ensure that he’s in the top two; he’s working even harder to ensure that Republican Steve Garvey is also.
According to seemingly all available polling, Schiff holds a narrow lead over fellow congressional Democrats Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. California is effectively a one-party state, and only a Democrat can realistically win statewide, aided by the fact that the state’s Republican Party is largely dysfunctional. Facing a Republican in the runoff would be a sure victory for any Democrat. But if Schiff heads to a runoff against Porter or Lee, the race will be competitive and brutal; some polling shows Schiff losing to Porter head-to-head.
And if the state’s GOP infrastructure is bad, Garvey is abysmal. He’s one of its least formidable candidates for higher office in recent memory. He face-planted at the recent debate; he hasn’t bothered to come up with a platform, or any real policies, or even decide whom he’ll back for president. With only $300,000 on hand, Garvey has a stockpile that, at less than 1/100th of Schiff’s, is laughable. As Alex Schultz wrote in Slate this week, Garvey is not at all a serious candidate. He’s not even trying.
So Schiff’s campaign is working tirelessly on his behalf, effectively running the Garvey campaign by proxy. In high-budget prime-time TV ads—literally the most expensive California airtime money can buy, including in the Los Angeles media market during the Grammys and the Bay Area during the San Francisco 49ers NFC championship game—Schiff has blasted Garvey’s name and face all over the airwaves, in a not-at-all-subtle appeal to Republicans. The first half of this 30-second spot, a straightforward attempt to consolidate the GOP vote around Garvey, focuses entirely on Garvey: “Steve Garvey, the leading Republican, is too conservative for California. … He voted for Trump twice.” The Trump line is particularly rich, given that Garvey—at least understanding his state’s basic voter makeup—has been quietly trying to distance himself from Trump on the campaign trail. It’s a coy move from Schiff, drawing in conservatives—who likely know and know to hate Schiff, and who might be inclined to sit out this race—to direct their vote not to one of the candidates who might actually beat him, but to Garvey, who stands no chance.
California may be a state without a functional Republican Party, but it’s not without Republicans. Trump got clobbered there in 2020, but he still pulled in 6 million votes. In a race in which every candidate is polling in the teens and 20s, that’s more than enough vote share to tip the balance.
But the ad is not all Schiff is doing. In an expensive, glossy direct-mail campaign, Schiff is also sending mailers to Republican voters highlighting Garvey. The top of one flyer features side-by-side headshots of Schiff and Garvey and highlights Garvey as getting 19 percent of the vote compared to Schiff’s 28 percent, well within striking distance, beneath the header “Two Leading Candidates for United States Senate.” There’s not a mean word about Garvey on the front; flip it over, and there’s Garvey’s curriculum vitae, “a former Major League Baseball player, currently a businessman and philanthropist … voted for Donald Trump twice.”
“I wonder how much Adam Schiff is spending sending mail to high-propensity Republican voters?” posted Republican California Assemblymember Joe Patterson on X upon receiving one of these mailers. Only at the very bottom is any indication that the flyer hasn’t come from the Garvey campaign itself.
Because, you’ll recall, the Garvey campaign couldn’t afford to do any of this stuff. With his fundraising pittance, Garvey can’t get anywhere near television, certainly not during the very most watched live prime-time broadcasts, meaning some of the very most expensive ad slots outside the Super Bowl. It’s unlikely he could even fund a sustained, targeted high-end direct-mail effort statewide given the state of his “campaign.”
All’s fair in politics, but it’s still a little surprising and more than a little cynical that the man who raised millions from Democrats after his censure vote for “fighting back” against the “MAGA base,” in his own words, is now using those very same millions to elevate the political prospects of a Trump-voting Republican. In other words, Schiff is now using his coffers to fight for the MAGA base. And not only in this race.
Although this plan might work out for Schiff personally, there are plenty of downside risks for Democrats elsewhere. If Schiff succeeds in juicing Republican turnout for Garvey, it stands to reason that those Republicans will also vote Republican down the ballot. Garvey himself has no shot of winning, but there may well be closer races in purple House and state legislative districts, school boards, and more that could be swung by a surge in Republican turnout that Schiff is spending millions to stoke. By contrast, given California’s deep blueness, in a runoff between Schiff and Porter or Lee, down-ballot voters would have a much lower risk of threatening future Democratic control of Congress or gaining a stronger foothold in Sacramento, even in a presidential election year. It would also plainly be a better exercise of the democratic process for a Democratic state to choose between two very different Democratic politicians. Schiff has for decades held down the right-most flank of the Dem caucus; Lee has an equal tenure on the party’s left flank; Porter, though younger, has actual progressive bona fides too. Purely as a matter of small-D democratic representation, this runoff ought to be a rare opportunity for the state’s supermajority to express its preference.
If Garvey does squeak into the top two, it will be a much greater triumph of the Schiff campaign than if Schiff himself finishes No. 1. The question California voters will have to ask themselves, then, is whether the man who made himself the face of anti-MAGA accountability should be propping up shadow Republican campaigns for MAGA-loving politicians and doing their dirty work with money that Democrats could very well use in competitive races elsewhere.
