Feinstein’s debate dodge may end soon
The last time Sen. Dianne Feinstein debated an opponent in a Senate election was in 2000. That means no voter under age 35 has had the privilege of deciding whom to send to Washington after seeing California’s senior senator match wits with a campaign foe.
We’re a little more than a month from election day, and so far, Feinstein’s debate-free campaign streak lives on — though maybe not for long. It’s possible she’ll actually share a stage with her opponent and fellow Democrat, state Sen. Kevin de León.
We’ve seen DiFi’s debate tap dance before. Six years ago, I asked Bill Carrick, Feinstein’s longtime campaign consultant, why she wouldn’t debate her opponent that year, Republican Elizabeth Emken, whom Feinstein was drubbing in the polls.
“I don’t know if this makes much sense,” he told me. After all, Carrick said, Feinstein didn’t debate state Sen. Dick Mountjoy in 2006, “and he was an elective officeholder.”
When I called Carrick this week, it seemed that little had changed.
“Oh, come on,” Carrick told me. “I couldn’t have got you to cover an Emken debate if I brought you there with a police escort.”
He could have at least tried. Who could turn down a police escort? Especially if he threw in a pizza.
But let’s be real: de León is no Emken.
Emken had never held political office. De León is the former state Senate president pro tem and has been endorsed by the California Democratic Party’s executive board. De León has also been endorsed by three California House members — including Rep. Ro Khanna of Fremont — along with five members of the Board of Supervisors in Feinstein’s hometown of San Francisco and the 2.1 million-member California Labor Federation.
I heard Feinstein promise The Chronicle’s editorial board in April that she would debate her opponent. Every major news outlet in the state, including The Chronicle, has offered to co-host a throwdown. De León even volunteered to travel to Washington, D.C., to debate Feinstein, since she says she has been too busy with the Supreme Court confirmation hearings to participate.
(By the way, the hearings didn’t stop fellow Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Ted Cruz from scheduling three debates with his Democratic challenger in Texas, Rep. Beto O’Rourke.)
“You’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Voters deserve the dignity and respect of a conversation about the issues that affect them,” de León spokesman Jonathan Underland told me. “In California, we hold elections, not coronations.”
Carrick insisted that “there will be a debate.” And indeed, there may be some sort of event featuring de Leon and Feinstein in mid-October. A spokeswoman for the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California told The Chronicle on Wednesday that the organization is “very close” to finalizing a date in San Francisco. Terms are still being negotiated, but it could end up being a “conversation” in which a moderator would ask questions and the candidates would have timed responses.
Whether that's a debate is a debate unto itself.
There’s one more twist to this story: De León hasn’t debated one of his opponents for legislative office since 2006. Why not?
According to Underland: “We were never asked.” Tax dodge: Speaking of waiting for things that will never happen, Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox told The Chronicle he will not release any more of his tax returns — even if he is elected governor.
The candidate whose not-too-catchy anticorruption catchphrase is, “It’s time to clean out the barn,” has shown summary pages of his 2016 and 2017 returns to reporters, along with forms that showed his interest, dividends and deductions. But the tax return barn door is about to close.
“I’m a private individual, I have a lot of businesses with a lot of partners, and a lot of people who didn’t bargain to have their information shared,” Cox told me on my “It’s All Political” podcast. “So I don’t think it’s reasonable. I released enough to give people an idea where my income comes from.”
His Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom reported nearly $1.3 million in adjusted gross income between him and his wife in 2016, according to tax returns provided by his campaign. Newsom has shown the media his tax returns dating back to 2010, but not his 2017 forms yet.
The history is mixed on this. Gov. Jerry Brown never let reporters see his tax returns during his last two gubernatorial campaigns. Govs. Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger did.
Cox sits atop a business empire that includes a legal and accounting firm, plus he owns more than 2,700 housing units in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. But we won’t be seeing the financial details of any of that going forward.
“I’m entitled to my privacy just like everybody else,” Cox said.
Even as the most visible public figure at the top of the world’s fifth-largest economy?
“My businesses aren’t in California,” he said. “It’s not relevant to anything I do as a public official.”
With the growing number of candidates refusing to open their books, the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice recommended this week that Congress “require the president and vice president, and candidates for those offices, to publicly disclose their personal and business tax returns.”
That’s long overdue.
Rock the court: With the possibility of a Senate vote coming up as early as Friday on confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, some nominally neutral groups are rallying opposition to him.
Among them is Rock the Vote, a nonprofit that tries to get young people to register to vote. It is asking its 3.7 million members to oppose Kavanaugh.
But isn’t Rock the Vote supposed to be nonpartisan?
“This is not about partisanship — this is really just about the issues that young people care about, and we represent young people,” Rock the Vote’s executive director, Carolyn DeWitt, told me on my “It’s All Political” podcast. “On basically every issue that we see young people care about, he comes out on the other side of it.”
Those issues include abortion and gun control, DeWitt said. But while young people may care about such issues, they don’t always care enough to cast a ballot — during the 2014 midterm elections, only 16 percent of people ages 18 to 29 who were eligible to vote actually did so.
Perhaps, DeWitt said, what happens Friday could juice that turnout.