Republican Steve Garvey surges to lead in latest poll

Republican baseball player and political rookie Steve Garvey has been a competitive contender since joining California’s crowded U.S. Senate race in October, but a new poll Friday found the former Dodgers and Padres first baseman pulling ahead of a pack of seasoned Democrats.

Most other recent polls have shown Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank in the lead, followed by Garvey and Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine in a close match for the crucial second-place spot. Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland has been close enough behind them to keep it interesting.

But in a surprising twist, Friday’s Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll taken just a week before Tuesday’s primary found 27% of likely voters supporting Garvey, 25% Schiff, 19% Porter and 8% Lee, with 12% split among 23 other candidates and 9% undecided.

“These findings represent a dramatic change in the standings when compared to earlier polls in the Senate race,” IGS said in an analysis of its findings, noting Garvey “is now in a statistical tie” with Schiff, the race’s longtime frontrunner.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. It was conducted online in English and Spanish Feb. 22-27 among 3,304 likely California voters.

The two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary will compete for the seat in November.

Garvey, of Palm Desert, said Friday that he was “deeply humbled by the trust and support shown by Californians in the latest poll.”

“This demonstrates that our message of addressing the real issues that Californians care about with compassionate, commonsense solutions is resonating more than the tired political bickering of career politicians,” Garvey said. “It’s clear that people are ready for new leadership that brings us together to build a brighter future for California.”

In a Friday fundraising pitch sounding the alarm to supporters, Schiff told them that “with celebrity Republican Steve Garvey surging and California Republicans motivated to turn out and vote in the GOP presidential primary with Donald Trump on the ballot, this primary’s outcome is still a tossup.”

The contest is actually two separate elections for the seat held for more than 30 years by late Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and now occupied by Sen. Laphonza Butler, a Democrat appointee who declined to join the race for the seat. Voters will be asked to decide who will serve a full, sixyear term starting next year and also who will fill the remaining months of Feinstein’s term this year after the November election.

Each race has a separate field of candidates, and in the smaller field running for a partial term, IGS found that “in that race, Garvey is now the leader” with 29% of likely voters in support, compared with 23% backing Schiff and 20% for Porter.

IGS attributed the difference in Garvey’s support in the partial-term race to having only one other Republican contender compared with nine others competing for a full term. But the pollsters found that Garvey has successfully corralled conservative voters to his camp. It noted that six weeks ago, the Berkeley IGS Poll found Schiff leading both Senate elections, with Garvey trailing behind Porter in third place.

“The large increase in voter support for Garvey over the past six weeks has occurred mainly by consolidating the support of Republican and strong conservative voters, 67% of whom now back Garvey in the fullterm U.S. Senate race,” IGS said.

A big part of that, the poll found, was that his supporters believe he will be tougher on the nation’s border crisis and immigration law enforcement than the leading Democrats, all current members of Congress, with 94% of his supporters citing that as very important to them in the Senate race.

But Garvey and Schiff also are benefiting from what IGS noted is shaping up to be a low-turnout election with mostly older voters, which IGS and other polls have found favor them.

“Both he and Schiff are the two most preferred candidates among older voters, Whites and homeowners,” IGS said.

Porter has accused Schiff of employing a “cynical” campaign strategy of focusing his campaign ads on attacking Garvey, arguing that in doing so, Schiff is giving the former slugger, whose campaign has comparatively little cash, free exposure to conservative and independent voters.

Porter has raised the alarm in fundraising appeals to supporters, including one Wednesday saying that she’s “at real risk of losing” in the primary because fellow Democrat Schiff “is spending millions of dollars to consolidate GOP support behind former L.A. Dodger

Steve Garvey.”

Schiff’s camp has declined to comment on the jabs other than to note that Porter’s campaign has done likewise with ads attacking another Republican in the race, lawyer Eric Early, and that when she ran for Congress in 2018 against several other Democrats, she too focused ads on the leading Republican in the primary.

Garvey’s narrow lead in the latest poll heading into the primary shouldn’t give him much comfort, IGS said. While three top Democrats are splitting the party’s vote in the primary, the party enjoys a 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration over Republicans in California. Political analysts consider it a “safe” seat for Democrats and give Garvey long odds in November.

IGS found that in a general election run-off between Schiff and Garvey, voters favor Schiff 53% to 38%.

“Garvey would start out as the clear underdog,” IGS said, “as he trails Schiff by 15 (percentage) points.”