Lee wins family group’s support in Senate race
Winning the battle for progressive voters will be key in California’s U.S. Senate campaign, and Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee just won an early round: She will be endorsed Monday by the Working Families Party, The Chronicle has learned.
The Working Families Party isn’t on the state ballot and is still developing its footprint in California, as opposed to other states like New York where it is a bigger player. The party — which offers full-throated support of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal — and has backed rising new Democratic House members like Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee and Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost. Last year, 35 of the 59 candidates it endorsed in California won.
Most important to Lee, it has developed connections to grassroots community groups and unions across the state. In winning the endorsement over fellow progressive Rep. Katie Porter, who also sought its blessing, Lee’s camp hopes the nod sends a message that while Lee is likely to be vastly outspent in this campaign, grassroots activists are backing her.
Energizing local supporters is her best shot against her better-funded fellow Democrats in Porter, D-Irvine, and Rep. Adam Schiff, DBurbank, who did not seek the Working Families endorsement. Schiff has secured support from much of California’s Democratic House delegation, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Porter’s backers include progressive leaders like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
While some analysts shrug at the value of endorsements, they could carry greater weight in a race where voters are looking for differences between the candidates. The Chronicle found that Lee, Porter and Schiff agreed on 94% of votes they cast in Congress over the past 4½ years.
“If (Working Families Party) is getting behind Barbara’s Senate campaign, it means that she has an immediate advantage in the all-important local organizing get-out-the-vote campaign,” said Amar Shergill, chair emeritus of the progressive caucus of the California Democratic Party and a Lee endorser.
Deciding between Lee and Porter “was a tough choice between two super qualified progressive women,” Working Families Party California Director Jane Kim told me. Usually, progressives are “choosing between the lesser of two evils,” she said. The process included candidate questionnaires, interviews and a live-streamed forum.
Ultimately, Kim said, what set Lee apart was her lived experience as a Black woman growing up in the segregated South, a single mother who raised two kids while on welfare, her lifelong fight against racism — starting with integrating her high school cheerleading team — and being the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing the United States to go to war in the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Lee is counting on this endorsement to inspire the dozens of small, community and labor groups to help get her grassroots support. It’s her best shot to be one of the top two finishers to advance to the general election in November 2024.
Lee needs help. Porter is winning 34% of liberal voters, compared to 23% for Schiff and 20% for Lee, according to a July Public Policy Institute of California poll. Among all likely voters, Porter garners 19% of the vote, followed by Schiff (16%) and Lee (13%), the poll found.
Lee trails far behind in fundraising, whose importance is magnified in California because the state’s size makes it harder to rely on inperson campaigning. Schiff has $29.8 million cash on hand, Porter has $10.3 million and Lee has $1.4 million, according to July federal campaign filings.
To overcome that gap, Lee’s campaign is hoping that it resonates among people like Sky Allen. Allen is the executive director of Inland Empire United, a collective of community leaders in San Bernardino and Riverside counties and a member of the Working Families network.
Lee isn’t well known in the Inland Empire. Only 6% of voters there support her, compared with 16% for Porter and 7% for Schiff, according to the Public Policy Institute of California survey.
But Allen said this endorsement will activate community organizations like hers, which not only makes tens of thousands of calls and texts on political issues, but has long-standing relationships in their local neighborhoods.
“It really matters to have an interpersonal conversation about someone you support over just receiving a mailer, or a TV ad,” Allen told me. “It makes it a little bit more personal and it helps people invest a little bit more into that campaign.”