The race to fill Dianne Feinstein’s senate seat has reached the final round. Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey were the top two vote getters in California’s March 5 primary as they eliminated Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and others. Consequently, they will duke it out for eight months leading up to the Nov. 5 national election.
Most talking heads believe that Steve Garvey (R) has little chance to defeat a career politician such as Adam Schiff (D). However, stranger things have happened in the unpredictable world of electoral politics. Very few thought that Donald Trump would earn a victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Most folks were shocked when Ron DeSantis won a second term as Florida governor by an overwhelming landslide in 2022.
There are many examples of candidates who overcame the odds to win surprising victories over candidates who had name recognition and outspent them many times over. In sports, we see incredible upsets of higher seeded teams, especially in the upcoming March Madness of NCAA basketball. At the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, no one except for the USA hockey team believed it could earn a medal. The USA’s “Miracle On Ice” gold medal was first an incredible upset of the Soviet Union in the semi-final, and then a defeat of Finland in the final game.
Steve Garvey played baseball and football at Michigan State University and starred in baseball. Following his college years, he competed for almost two decades in Major League Baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres (1969–87). He was the MVP of the National League in 1974 and was part of the Dodger team that won the World Series in 1981. He was also an All-Star ten times.
In order to succeed in professional sports, an individual must possess not only athletic skills but also a dogged determination and focus to endure long seasons and travel. They have to survive changing managers and players, contract disputes, fickle fans, nagging injuries, and trade rumors. Through all of these pressures, Mr. Garvey had a consistently productive baseball career.
After baseball, Mr. Garvey entered the fields of commercials, marketing, and motivational speaking. That grounding in the private sector was beneficial in helping him understand business and what business owners experience on their path toward either failure or success. Perhaps that is why he is pro-business and understands that reasonable regulations and taxes facilitate business and employment growth.
Mr. Garvey has also stated that he favors limited government spending, a secure Southern border, greater energy autonomy, a robust national security posture, and firm support for Israel. If the federal government lives within its means and tackles deficit spending, the chances for reducing inflation are magnified.
In contrast to Mr. Garvey, Mr. Schiff is a career politician. He has been a prosecuting lawyer, a California state senator (1996–2000), and a member of the House of Representatives since 2001. Similar to Mr. Garvey, Mr. Schiff is a staunch supporter of Israel, but he favors ceasefire pauses to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a state senator, Mr. Schiff endorsed tough-on-crime policies, but most of his proposals were shot down. He has stood up for Armenian causes since his district has large numbers of Armenian Americans.
However, Mr. Schiff’s track record favors big government spending, border insecurity, energy dependency, and tax hikes on corporations and upper income earners. Although some of his domestic and foreign policy positions have been moderate, he rarely opposes the left-liberal policies of the Democratic Party.
Over the past seven years, Mr. Schiff has been fixated on attacking Donald Trump whenever he has the opportunity. Who can forget his participation on the partisan House Select Committee on Intelligence panel that attempted to impeach Donald Trump for alleged conspiracies with Russia and Ukraine?
Mr. Schiff censored and distorted the facts, suppressed evidence from reliable witnesses, and churned out a one-sided narrative that was knowingly false. He carried out the same type of disinformation while investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, events at the Capitol. Last June, Mr. Schiff was censured by the House of Representatives for his role in falsely smearing Donald Trump and other officials. The reprimand was appropriate because he willingly created fabrications and lacked transparency during and after the hearings.
Recently, Mr. Schiff brazenly impugned the motives of Special Council Robert Hur, who investigated President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified information while he was a Senator and Vice President. Is this the type of pontificating individual that Californians want as their senator? Democrats claim that Mr. Garvey is too conservative for California, but isn’t that for the voters to decide? California could benefit from common sense solutions to the persistent challenges facing the state.
Mr. Schiff has been in politics a long time, and the temptations for financial and moral corruption increase the longer one remains in the political system. Don’t most voters want a representative that will tell the truth and not be sucked into frivolous witch hunts against political opponents?
Mr. Schiff will likely outspend Mr. Garvey during this campaign, but will his big government agenda resonate this time around? Although Mr. Garvey appears to be a down-to-earth rookie politician, perhaps there lurks a steely determination to put the ball in play and win over swing voters. Both candidates will generate campaign ads and barnstorm the state. Both lack charisma and have personal flaws, but they now both have a chance to hit a home run. Whoever plays hardball, runs the best campaign, and crafts a vision that resonates with the majority of California voters will emerge victorious.
