LEE JOINS RACE FOR FEINSTEIN’S SENATE SEAT
Congress member from Oakland is 3rd to announce bid
Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee launched her bid Tuesday to become California’s next U.S. senator, touting her history as an unwavering champion of liberal causes as she underscored the importance of electing a Black female senator to a chamber that has had none since Kamala Harris resigned in 2021 to become vice president.
Lee, who is from Oakland, released a video kicking off her run, which has been expected for weeks. “No one is rolling out the welcome mat, especially for someone like me,” she says in the video, which goes on to detail hardships she has endured during her life. The announcement comes during Black History Month, a deliberate move by Lee.
Lee is the third U.S. House member to enter the race to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has held the seat for three decades. Though Feinstein’s seat is seen as a safe Democratic hold because of the deep blue complexion of California’s electorate, Lee is facing two Golden State titans: Rep. Adam Schiff — who became a darling of Democrats and a cable news fixture as one of the key players in the two impeachment trials of President Donald Trump — and Rep. Katie Porter, a former law professor
whose fierce interrogations of Wall Street CEOs and Trump nominees made her a viral sensation and prodigious fundraiser in Democratic circles.
Even before the contest has begun in earnest, many Democratic voters say that they are conf licted about the choice among three politicians who have earned the admiration of the party faithful. Under California’s primary system, the top two contenders will advance to the general election regardless of party — meaning two Democrats could be pitted against one another in November 2024. Because of the cost of advertising in California media markets to capture the attention of the state’s nearly 22 million voters, the race is expected to be exorbitantly expensive, and in that regard Lee starts at a major disadvantage.
Schiff, who is 62 and has notched the influential endorsement of Rep. Nancy
Pelosi, D-San Francisco, the former House speaker, boasts a war chest of nearly $21 million, according to recent campaign finance reports. Porter, who is 49, had more than $7.4 million in cash on hand after her hardfought race to win re-election last year following the decennial redrawing of California’s congressional map. Lee, 76, had about $52,000 in available campaign funds, according to the most recent report. But her Northern California roots could give her a different kind of edge over Schiff and Porter, because voters from that region often turn out in higher numbers than those in Southern California.
“Can she raise the money to be competitive? You can’t judge that based on what she has in her House account,” said Rose Kapolczynski, who managed Democrat Barbara Boxer’s successful Senate runs. “She needs to get out there and start raising money and then that will be a measure of her potential.”
Lee’s allies expect her to embrace the profile of a scrappy underdog campaign as she seeks to set herself apart from her Democratic rivals. Fresh off his experience in Trump’s impeachment proceedings, Schiff, of Burbank, is running as a leader who has been “on the front lines of the fight for the heart and soul of our democracy.” Porter, who is from Irvine, has sculpted her political image as a suburban single mom whose dogged consumer advocacy is driven by her understanding of the crushing economic pressures facing many lower and middle class Americans.
In news interviews and conversations with colleagues as she prepared to run, Lee highlighted the fact that there are no Black women serving in the U.S. Senate and there have only been two — Harris and former senator Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill. — who have served in the chamber’s nearly 250-year history.
In a state as left-leaning as California, the lack of diversity in the Senate could become a major factor in the contest, particularly after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom disappointed some voters in his party by passing over Lee and several other prominent Black leaders when he appointed Alex Padilla to replace Harris as California’s junior senator.