Rep. Katie Porter, who accused her main Democratic rival in the Senate race of cynicism for attempting to prop up a Republican in the contest, is now doing the same.

The Irvine congresswoman, who is battling with Republican former baseball player Steve Garvey to come in second place in the March 5 primary, is running digital ads touting the conservative credentials of one of Garvey’s GOP rivals.

The Facebook ads argue that Eric Early, an attorney and perennial candidate who polls in the low single digits in the Senate contest, is the true conservative in the race.

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“Who’s the real Republican threat in the California Senate race? MAGA Republican Eric Early proudly stands with Donald Trump, while Steve Garvey refuses to tell us who he supports. Garvey claimed he might even vote for Joe Biden. Get the facts,” the Facebook post says.

Though the ad ostensibly criticizes Early, it is similar to other recent Democratic efforts to boost a Republican’s standing in an election, a byproduct of the state’s open primary system. The top two vote-getters in March move on to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. While Democrats dominate California voter rolls, if Republicans consolidate behind one candidate in a crowded field, he or she could win one of those two spots.

If Porter’s ad increases support for Early among GOP voters, that would eat into Garvey’s support, possibly allowing Porter to win the second spot.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) appears assured to win the top spot in the primary based on polling. His campaign as well as a super PAC backing his bid are spending millions of dollars running television ads highlighting Garvey.

“Two leading candidates for Senate. Two very different visions for California,” a narrator intones in a Schiff campaign ad, noting later that Garvey “is too conservative for California” and voted for former President Trump twice.

At the time, Porter denounced the effort as a political ploy.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

If there was a Museum of Horrifying Political Mistakes, California’s top-two primary would have its own wing. Possibly its own building.

The top-two primary was created by an initiative, Proposition 14, approved by voters in 2010. The idea was to eliminate political party primaries, have all the candidates on the same primary ballot, allow voters to choose any candidate from any party regardless of their own party registration, and send the top two vote-getters to the November ballot.

So that’s what we’ve got, except for presidential races, which are still party primaries.

The oddities of the top-two primary were on display in last Monday’s debate between four of the 29 candidates who are seeking the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Three of the candidates who stepped onto the debate stage at USC are Democratic members of Congress, all of them abandoning their House seats to run for a six-year term in the Senate. At the end of this election cycle, if not sooner, at least two of them will be looking for work.

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The fourth candidate on the stage was Southern California baseball legend Steve Garvey, the 10-time All-Star first baseman who famously played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres.

He may not be popular with Giants fans, but San Francisco would never vote for a Republican anyway.

Yes, Garvey says he’s a Republican, though he seems a little unsure about it. When debate moderator Elex Michaelson asked him, “Is there anything that you disagree with your party on in the Senate?” Garvey answered, “Just about everything.”

“Just about everything?” Michaelson asked.

“No,” Garvey said.

Artfully done. That answer deserves its own display case in the top-two primary wing of the museum.

You see, there are not nearly enough registered Republican voters in the state of California to elect a Republican to a statewide office. Therefore, a Republican candidate has to win some support from non-Republican voters. Garvey rushed to distance himself from the Republican party and then backed off quickly as if he was only joking, before Republican voters had time to be insulted. Speed is everything.

Now let’s move on to the next exhibit. In this display case, we see the three Democratic candidates for Senate sniping at each other like jealous middle-school students while being careful not to lay a glove on Garvey. He’s barely grazed by a few gentle zingers, nothing like the knockout punch to the face that professional fighters in this weight class can deliver.

What’s that about?

That’s about Steve Garvey’s endorsement.

Even though there are not enough registered Republican voters in California to elect a candidate to statewide office, there’s a pretty reliable 35% who would vote for a pickled herring if it had an R next to its name. A majority of California voters would vote for a pickled herring with a D next to its name, but what happens if they have to choose between two Democrats who finish first and second in the primary? The endorsement of the third- and fourth-place finishers might determine which fish becomes the next U.S. senator from California.

“You were a hell of a ballplayer,” front-running Democrat Adam Schiff told Garvey during the debate, the first truthful thing he has said in eight years. We may need another display case.

If not for the museum-quality, horrifying political mistake of the top-two primary, we would still have party primaries for Senate, Congress, state Senate and Assembly. Democrats would run against Democrats and Republicans would run against Republicans. One candidate would emerge from each party primary and move on to November along with any candidates nominated by other political parties.

Instead, we have a nauseating level of Machiavellian intrigue. A candidate, or allies of the candidate, can buy advertising to promote the candidacy of a very weak rival in the hope of knocking a stronger one out of the top two. Then as soon as the primary is over, the advertising stops. Voters who fell for it are left wondering why their sinking candidate isn’t running any TV ads during the general election campaign.

The next exhibit in the museum shows media polls during their transformation into self-fulfilling prophecies. Please stand back, stay behind the ropes. If you’re within the margin of error, no one knows what might happen.

With 29 candidates in the U.S. Senate race, it’s obviously necessary for editors, reporters and debate organizers to make decisions about which candidates will get coverage, air time and invitations. Then publicity drives up poll numbers.

“The following candidates have received the most media attention,” wrote Ballotpedia’s election analysts, citing CalMatters and the Los Angeles Times, “Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey.”  Those are the four that were invited to Monday’s debate, after a poll.

Missing the cut and not happy about it were Republican Eric Early and self-described “Independent Democrat” Christina Pascucci.

“If I were on the debate stage, I would not have stood by as Schiff lied about Russian collusion and how packing the Supreme Court will protect democracy, as Katie Porter blathered the same canards about not being controlled by big money, as Barbara Lee bragged about policies which have turned her home of Oakland into a war zone, and as the Joe Biden Republican Steve Garvey, well, Steve Garvey will let you know,” Early wrote in an op-ed published in these pages.

He’s right.

“That was so frustrating to watch,” Pascucci said in a statement, “You have the three Democratic establishment candidates who are pointing the finger at Washington — they ARE Washington.”

She’s right, too.

Click here to read the full article in the OC Register

For a guy who had 2,599 hits in his two-decade baseball career, Steve Garvey — as a Republican U.S. Senate candidate — is not going to take a lot of swings. 

Not at his opponents. Not at detailed policy proposals. And not even at a second term. The 75-year-old Palm Springs resident told me Thursday that he will serve one six-year term if elected. And, no, he’s not concerned that power in the Senate is all about seniority. He’s banking on his personal brand of celebrity to be able reach consensus with others.

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“If I can’t do what I can do personally in six years, then I’ll pass the baton to somebody else,” Garvey said. “This could be the legacy of my life, the ability to represent the people of the state that I love so much.”

So don’t expect many specifics when Garvey and the three leading Democrats, Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff square off at 6 p.m. Monday in Los Angeles for a statewide televised debate. 

Instead, as Garvey said during a campaign stop in Pleasanton, his goal is to “show humanity.” 

“I’m at the beginning of the journey,” Garvey said. “I’ll have more answers for you in June and more answers for you in August.”

But people are going to start voting next month for the March 5 primary. 

“Well, you’ll see what happens in March,” Garvey said. 

What the polls are increasingly showing is that Garvey, who has never sought elective office, could have a shot at being one of the top two finalists to advance to the November top-two general election. He is pulling 18% of the vote, according to an Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics survey out Thursday, trailing only Schiff with 25%. Porter has 13% and Lee 8% in that poll. A Berkeley IGS survey released this month showed Garvey in third place with 13%, trailing Porter with 17% and Schiff with 21%.

If he can consolidate the 24% of registered California Republicans behind him, Garvey has a decent shot of making the cut as Democrats split their votes.

So look for Lee and Porter to come out swinging Monday. Garvey promises he won’t return fire. Nor would he explain why he is a better candidate than fellow Republican Eric Early, a Los Angeles attorney.

Garvey is all about playing the happy warrior, much like his old friend, Ronald Reagan — whom he introduced at a San Diego campaign rally in 1984.

A happy warrior without a 10-point plan. Or even a three-point plan in some cases. What he’s about, as he stressed several times in our chat, is that he’s open and willing to talk and listen to anyone. Even if he doesn’t have a lot to offer in return beyond surface-level ideas. 

“Maybe what I’ll be able to establish right from the beginning (of the debate) is civility. I think the people of California are so inundated with the snarkiness among politicians, that I think that maybe I might be refreshing in that I am who I am,” Garvey said. “It’s important for me to have to be able to look into the camera, and tell Californians what I believe.”

Garvey, like many first-time politicians who run because they’re frustrated with the system, is an expert in explaining in anecdotal terms what he believes is wrong.

But as for specifics about what he’d do differently? Not so much.

Take housing affordability, a top problem for many Californians. What would Sen. Garvey think the federal government’s role should be in helping more people buy a home? .

“Now there’s such a rush to make decisions, a rush to throw money at whatever it may be,” he said. “I think sometimes we’ve got to step back and we have to look at the broader picture of where society is now. And then to be able to determine, is probably a federal, state and local influence on housing.” 

Right now that broader picture is that 16% of Californians could afford to buy the $830,620 median priced home last year, according to the California Association of Realtors.

So back to the federal government’s role. 

“I think it starts with the economy, affordability and free-market capitalism. I always say, reach for the moon and if you fall short, you’ll be a star. But you’re probably going to gain the ability to improve the quality of your life,” he said. 

So, then, no role for the federal government? 

“Not the primary role,” he said. That is best left to “the state and local decision-making process, the ability to open up areas to develop in. It gets back to deregulation and opening up areas caught up in red tape.”

Garvey was more definitive, in a way, on immigration policy. His solution: close the southern border and “take a step back.” As in close it without any incoming immigration. Then figure out how to get back to a manageable level.

As for the 11 million undocumented people who are living in the U.S., Garvey wants to “reprocess” them, sift out criminals, and then put them on the “process” — a word he used instead of “pathway”— to citizenship. He thought former President Donald Trump’s proposal to mass-deport undocumented citizens to be “too costly” and impractical. Again, not a lot of details about what he’d do.

As for Trump, Garvey isn’t going near that minefield for a candidate running a state where Trump is loathed by two-thirds of voters. Asked twice by reporters Thursday about whether he’d accept an endorsement from Trump, Garvey declined to answer.

“I’m more concerned about the single most difficult race in America right now for a conservative moderate like myself,” Garvey said. “I don’t have time to worry about it.”

So what’s a “conservative moderate”? Think former California Gov. Pete Wilson. 

“He and I are very, very, very similar,” Garvey told me. 

That analogy will endear Garvey to some Republicans and give others agita. Wilson campaigned for reelection in 1994 on the back of Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot measure that sought to deny health care and education to undocumented immigrants.  While 60% of Californians approved it, a federal court deemed it unconstitutional. The ensuing backlash from Latino voters killed the Republican Party, as they left the GOP in droves. For years afterward, Wilson’s Prop. 187 commercial — with its ominous signature line, “They keep coming” — was played to jeers at Latino get-out-the-vote rallies.

On climate change, Garvey veers more to the right. He believes it’s real. He objects to the “rush to judgment” to address the problem. Like California’s plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars starting in 2035. Or as Garvey mischaracterized it, “when you tell people that in 10 years you all have to drive electric vehicles.”

Reality check: The sale of what regulators called the “cleanest-possible plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles” — meaning cars that still run in part on gas — would still be permitted after 2035. Older gasoline-powered cars would still be allowed on the road after 2035, and people could sell them on the used-car market.

“What are they going to do to you if you still have a gas vehicle then?” Garvey said. “They’re going to tax you to death for it.” 

We made it through nearly our entire chat without Garvey making a hacky baseball analogy, as he has throughout his campaign — and as I did at the start of this column. (“He told me to keep it down” around me, Garvey said, pointing to his media spokesman.)

But he saved one for the end. It goes, inadvertently, to how Democrats shouldn’t sleep on Garvey. 

Click here to read the full article in the SF Chronicle