Liberal online news host Uygur considering run
Liberal news host Cenk Uygur is considering running against Sen. Dianne Feinstein next year, according to a California elected official who has talked with him about the race.
Uygur , the host of the popular online show “The Young Turks” and cofounder of The Young Turks Network, is “seriously looking at” the race, the elected official said. “A lot of his audience is writing him saying he should run.”
CNN reported last week that Uygur’s co-host on “The Young Turks,” Ana Kasparian, was thinking about running. But Uygur is now also considering running, according to the elected official, and it’s expected that both hosts won’t run.
Uygur did not respond to a request for comment about the Senate race. But on his live show Thursday afternoon, he suggested some kind of announcement is coming.
“Don’t miss the show next week,” he said in the first minutes of the broadcast. “Interesting. Just don’t miss it. I’ll leave it at that.”
A household name among many supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Uygur launched “The Young Turks” in 2002 as a radio talk show and built it into a progressive media network with more than 3.4 million subscribers on YouTube.
If he does decide to get in the race, Uygur would add a jolt of liberal energy to the field of challengers taking on Feinstein, who has rep- resented California in the Senate since 1992. State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León announced Sunday that he is running against Feinstein. San Francisco philanthropist Tom Steyer and Los Angeles entrepreneur Joe Sanberg are also considering jumping in.
Uygur, 47, is the cofounder of Justice Democrats, a liberal group that is recruiting primary challengers to establishment Democrats. Corbin Trent, a spokesman for the group, declined to confirm whether Uygur is considering running for Senate.
“We’d be excited if Cenk were to express interest in running,” Trent said. “He’s exactly the candidate Justice Democrats would be willing to back.”
The group isn’t supporting de León, who has won plaudits from other national liberal organizations. Trent said he thought de León’s decision to run “seems too much like a campaign for political purposes and not enough like a campaign to promote policy.”
Uygur — whose name is pronounced “Jenk You-grr” — was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and emigrated to New Jersey with his family at age 8. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School, and worked as a lawyer in New York and Washington, D.C., before going into the news business.
After stints in talk radio, he co-founded “The Young Turks,” which became one of the first internet video news shows and attracted a huge following on the political left. Uygur, who lives in Los Angeles, has alsoworked for MSNBC and Current TV.