San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Garvey’s ‘Seinfeld’ campaign working so far
Steve Garvey’s Senate primary campaign was the political version of “Seinfeld”: It was a campaign about nothing that was highly successful.
Don’t expect Garvey’s strategy to change now that the Republican former Los Angeles Dodger star will face Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff in November. Except that now, the Schiff-friendly political action committee that boosted Garvey with $10 million of free advertising in the primary is going to shift gears and try to crush him.
But no apologies from Garvey’s campaign for winning. To use a baseball metaphor — and Garvey loves ’em — the campaign kept the bat on its shoulder and eventually came around to score.
“We campaigned differently and it worked,” Garvey spokesman Matt Shupe told me. “People can criticize the strategy all they want.”
It is a generous interpretation of the word “campaigned.”
Garvey spent much of the campaign bubble-wrapped in the candidate protection program. He made few public appearances, doing little of the hand-shaking and selfie-taking that his Democratic rivals did. While they crisscrossed the state in the campaign’s final days, Garvey was as hard to spot on the trail as Melania Trump.
Instead of gripping and grinning with voters, Garvey spent much of the campaign snuggled with conservative media, where he leveraged his baseball fame to become virtually tied with Schiff in the latest vote count. Good luck finding a long list of Republican endorsers on Garvey’s website. Doing that could alienate independent voters and disgruntled Democrats frustrated with the crime, homelessness and housing unaffordability in California.
Yet it worked, and Garvey is unlikely to change strategy. And neither is the super PAC that supported Schiff in the primary — and helped Garvey win a spot in the November general election.
The Standing Strong PAC spent $10 million, largely to boost Garvey’s name recognition. It linked him to Donald Trump — who Garvey voted for twice — in the hope of unifying California Republicans behind him and making the 75-year-old first-time office-seeker one of the top two candidates to advance to the general election. With Democrats holding a 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration, Schiff figured that Garvey would be an easier opponent in November than Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, who finished third Tuesday.
Garvey needed the boost. His campaign raised only $2.1 million, half of what fourthplace finisher Rep. Barbara Lee, of Oakland, did and a fraction of the $31 million Schiff received.
Coupled with Republicans overperforming their turnout expectations, according to the latest results, and the electorate being disproportionately older and whiter, Garvey, if you’ll pardon the non-baseball metaphor, hit a triple-bank shot to make it into the general election.
But now it’s time for a rerack. And Standing Strong, the pro-Schiff super PAC, is about to focus even more intensely on Garvey.
It plans to focus on Garvey’s two votes for Trump, who is loathed by two-thirds of California voters. And it will pound him for his hazy plans for what he’d do in office and his lack of accessibility to voters.
“There’s going to be a lot less room to hide for Steve Garvey. He had a chance to
coast a little bit” in the primary, Kyle Layman, executive director of the Standing Strong super PAC told me. “You can’t continue to hide. That is not going to be acceptable to voters.”
Garvey’s Democratic opponents have voting records as long-standing members of the House. He didn’t.
Yet Garvey was so vague or non-committal on most issues during the primary that when I pressed him in January — four months after he launched his run — to be more specific on what he’d do as a U.S. senator, he said “I’m at the beginning of the journey. I’ll have more answers for you in June and more answers for you in August.”
Or three months after the March 5 primary.
His campaign website is full of vagaries. His plan to take on crime, which he said is a top priority: “More training, better resources, and effective crime prevention strategies are at the top of my list.” While Schiff has put forth a somewhat flawed housing policy, there’s
little mention of California’s housing affordability crisis on Garvey’s site.
While Garvey talked about touring homeless encampments during the primary debates, his plan to address the issue boils down to auditing the money that has been spent so far on homelessness. “From there, we can build a plan that truly makes a difference,” he says on his website.
Garvey is perhaps most specific about his stance on the Middle East, saying he stands with Israel “yesterday, today and tomorrow.” Schiff has also been a strong Israel ally, and opposed a cease-fire. On Tuesday, Schiff said he supports a cease-fire in Gaza on the condition of the release of Israeli hostages, a position in lockstep with the Biden administration.
Garvey has bigger challenges. He has only $758,260 cash on hand, a pittance in California. Schiff has $13.7 million. It’s doubtful whether top Republican donors will want to invest heavily in a longshot campaign in deep blue California but on Thursday, a pro-Garvey
super PAC was established.
Its name will surprise no one: “Strike Out Schiff.”
When Garvey launched his campaign in October he told me, “This is going to be a Steve Garvey campaign. A commonsense campaign.”
Voters still don’t know what “a Steve Garvey campaign” is. Many don’t know Steve Garvey. Those of us Generation Xers and older remember watching him play ball, but younger voters don’t even remember that.
More importantly, voters of all ages know little about what he’d do if he went to Washington.
Schiff criticized Garvey’s “unwillingness to articulate his positions on key issues” during a campaign stop Sunday in San Francisco. “But look, Californians are going to demand answers and you can only hide so long.”
It sounds like Garvey is going to try.