ANALYSIS: Lee’s Senate Run Shows Major Divide in California Democrat Party

The flag of California in Newport Beach, Calif., on Aug. 25, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) announcing her Senate run on Feb. 21 highlighted a schism in the California Democrat Party.

Lee joined the Democrat field looking to succeed Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has been in the upper congressional chamber since 1992.

Feinstein represents a California Democrat Party that looks drastically different than when she arrived in Washington.

The shift is so noticeable that the California Democrat Party even refused to endorse her re-election in 2018.

Feinstein, 89, has gone against her party on multiple occasions over the past few years.

She has been against the far-left Green New Deal, telling children who came into her Washington office demanding she votes for it that “there’s no way to pay for it.”

And while she voted against the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020, she praised then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for his leadership.

This earned a rebuke from then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Lee and her primary opponents so far, Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Katie Porter (D-Calif.) support the Green New Deal. However, their campaign launches consisted of different focuses.

In her announcement video, Porter, who announced first and has been in Congress since 2019, talked about taking on special interests.

Schiff said in his campaign announcement video about taking on former President Donald Trump in the name of “democracy” as he was the lead House manager in Trump’s first impeachment trial, where he was ultimately acquitted.

In her video to launch her candidacy, Lee talked about her life story of confronting discrimination, being a single mother after a violent marriage, and going against the status quo such as being the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against those responsible for 9/11—which Schiff and Feinstein voted in favor of.

Lee also listed policy issues including combating climate change.

Nonetheless, the race does look to be one between progressives.

“California is not going to elect a Republican. And they’re not going to elect a centrist. The question is what kind of progressivism is most important [to the electorate],” Dan Schnur, a politics professor at multiple California universities, told The Los Angeles Times in a Feb. 20 article.

“These three candidates represent very different strains of progressivism.”

Despite claiming to be progressive, Schiff has come under fire from at least one progressive group.

“Adam Schiff plays the role of Trump antagonist on TV, but a recent book details how he stalled and undermined leaders trying to hold Trump accountable in Congress. And he never challenges corporations or the Democratic establishment,” said Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green in a Jan. 26 statement.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed—who supported the November 2021 recall of three Board of Education members whom she said had been “distracted by unnecessary influences or political agendas” as opposed to putting kids above all else—is reportedly considering jumping into the Senate race, where the top two vote-getters will advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation.

In addition, another issue likely to come into play in the Democrat primary is age. Lee is 76, Schiff is 62, and Porter is 49.

Those three are in a California congressional delegation—which is the largest of the states despite losing one seat in 2023 due to the 2020 census that showed a loss of 500,000 people—that has numerous Democrat octogenarians: former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 82, Rep. Maxine Waters is 84, Rep. Anna Eshoo is 80, and Rep. Grace Napolitano is 86.

And there are Democrat members of the delegation who are under 80 but past the eligibility age for Social Security. They include, but are not limited to, Zoe Lofgren (75), Brad Sherman (68), Mike Thompson (72), Jim Costa (70), Doris Matsui (78), John Garamendi (78), and Judy Chu (69).

Out of that group, Sherman, Waters, Napolitano, Lofgren, and Chu are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which also includes Lee and Porter.

As Punchbowl News observed on Feb. 22, “it’s clear that a number of California Democrats are closer to the end of their careers than the beginning, and their departures would contribute to turnover in the delegation.”

While the aforementioned Democrats would all but certainly be succeeded by Democrats, it is more than likely that progressives would succeed them.

Look no further than the 2022 race for Los Angeles mayor, which was won by progressive former Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) over moderate billionaire businessman and Democrat Rick Caruso.

While California is a huge state, it is clear that it has gone in a direction further leftward.

Under Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, new gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers will be banned by 2024.

Newsom has ordered a ban on gas-powered cars starting in 2035 and he signed a bill late last year legalizing jaywalking.

He has also enacted a gun law that allows people to sue gun manufacturers—a measure modeled on a Texas law that allows people to sue those who aid and abet an abortion.

As of Dec. 19, the gun law has been blocked by a federal judge.

Nonetheless, California has one of the strictest gun laws in the nation.

At the end of the day, the battle over who will succeed Feinstein is all but certain to come down to which progressive Democrat Californians want: a young progressive woman, a man who has claimed to be progressive by is loathed by some in the base, or a longtime Black progressive in her 70s.