A week after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, California representative Barbara Lee became the only member of Congress to vote against granting the White House sweeping powers to use military force to fight the war on terror. In an emotional speech, Lee said she had “agonised” over her decision and, knowing that the measure would pass, urged that the powers be used with “restraint”.
The stand made her an icon of the left and cemented the life-long activist’s reputation as a fighter — with her more moderate colleagues in the Democratic party often serving as her sparring partners.
Now Lee is fighting again, this time for the US Senate seat occupied for more than 30 years by Dianne Feinstein, who died in September at the age of 90. On Tuesday, the 77-year-old Lee will be on the Super Tuesday primary ballot in California against two of her fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff.
All three are liberal Democrats. But each one could be seen as representing different strands of the party that President Joe Biden will need to bind together as he seeks a second term in office.
Lee is a Black woman from the activist left who was steeped in the fights of the civil rights era. Porter is a progressive in the mould of Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator who is a vocal advocate for regulation. Schiff is a former prosecutor from Los Angeles who long occupied the centre, but has moved left along with his party.
Fernando Guerra, a political-science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said the three Democrats’ differences were on display at a recent debate when each was asked what the US should do about the war in Gaza — a thorny issue for Biden within his party.
“Barbara Lee was for a ceasefire with no conditions. Katie Porter was for a ceasefire with some conditions, and Schiff said there should be no ceasefire until Israel is ready,” Guerra said. “On that one question, you had three different positions.”
There are concerns among Democrats that the differences over Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could split the coalition he built in 2020 to defeat Donald Trump. But Mike Madrid, former political director of the California Republican party, said he expected these intraparty rifts to diminish by the general election in November as Democrats’ focus turned to defeating Trump.
“Every lane in the Democratic party is overshadowed by the anti-Trump lane — whoever’s perceived as the most anti-Trump is the candidate people want,” Madrid said. “Whoever can establish themselves as the most credibly anti-Trump is the candidate that Democrats want.”
In California’s case, that candidate appears to be Schiff. He is polling well ahead of his fellow Democrats, which analysts say is thanks to his role as lead prosecutor in then president Trump’s first impeachment trial. It made Schiff a national figure and, for Democrats, a leading light of the Trump resistance.
He was also officially censured by Republicans in the House of Representatives last year for comments he made about past investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia. Afterwards, Schiff said he would wear the official reprimand as a “badge of honour”.
Schiff’s emergence as a target of Trump and his allies in Congress had boosted his Senate candidacy, Madrid said.
“Democrats were watching and said, ‘Oh, that’s the guy that Trump hates the most? Then that’s my guy’,” Madrid said.
In California’s non-partisan “jungle” primary on Tuesday, the top two vote-getters will advance to the ballot in November. A poll released on Friday by the Institute of Governmental Studies showed Schiff in a statistical tie with Steve Garvey, a former Los Angeles Dodgers baseball star who leads the Republican pack by some distance.
The poll found that Porter is in third at 19 per cent and Lee trails with 8 per cent. It is a crowded field, with 27 candidates running in the race. Turnout is expected to be historically low for a California primary election.
Garvey has risen dramatically in the polls in recent weeks — thanks in part to Schiff, who appears to prefer running against a neophyte Republican in November to one of his Democratic colleagues. In a recent advertisement, Schiff’s campaign referred to himself and Garvey as “the two leading candidates” for the California Senate seat — elevating Garvey while implying that his Democratic rivals were irrelevant.
Porter said the “brazenly cynical” ad intentionally left out “qualified Democratic women candidates” while also boosting a member of the opposing party.
But Madrid said the ads were tactically brilliant because they galvanised Republican support for Garvey — there are several other Republicans on the ballot on Tuesday — making it more likely that Schiff would face him in November.
For Schiff, the calculation appears to be that it would be easier to beat a Republican opponent in the heavily Democratic state than rivals in his own party, analysts say. The IGS poll found that Garvey trails Schiff by 15 points in a general election run-off.
“If Garvey comes in second on Tuesday, the election’s over,” said political-science professor Guerra.
For Lee, a loss on Super Tuesday could spell the end of a long career in politics, since she has given up her safe Congressional seat to run for the Senate. “Lee has played a great role in the election, reminding Democrats in California of the leftist perspective,” he said.
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