California voters were poised Tuesday to decide the historic election to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a race in which Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank faced off against Republican and former Dodger All-Star Steve Garvey.
After an expensive and bitter Democratic primary, the race for the seat was sleepy and almost boring.
Schiff and his allies spent more than $35 million on ads during the primaries calling Garvey “too conservative for California.” The move helped consolidate Republican support behind Garvey and propel him past fierce rival Katie Porter, a Democrat from Orange County, who finished a distant third.
Read more: California 2024 election results
Schiff remains a heavy favorite in the race and has led Garvey by a wide margin in recent polls.
Garvey, 75, hosted few public events and struggled to gain traction with voters in a state that hasn’t elected a statewide Republican in nearly two decades.
With a healthy lead in the polls, Schiff turned his attention to boosting Democrats in swing states, raising money for California House of Representatives candidates and traveling out of state to meet Vice President Kamala Harris and his future to support colleagues in the Senate.
Read more: Polls are closing in some battleground states, while elections continue in California
“If this had been the 2000 Senate race, the competitive nature of California politics and Garvey’s relatively recent sports successes could have made him a very competitive candidate,” said Dan Schnur, a professor of political communication at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine. “But given the way the state has changed and how many years have passed, it became almost an impossible uphill climb for him.”
A Senate seat, one of the most coveted in California politics, rarely comes available. The late Senator Dianne Feinstein served in the Senate for more than three decades, and Senator Barbara Boxer for nearly a quarter century.
A Senate seat can also be a launching pad for higher office, as was the case for Harris, President Nixon and California Governor Pete Wilson.
Read more: “The primaries were the elections.” California’s sleepy Senate race is almost over
The California vote included two Senate questions. One of them asked voters to select Schiff or Garvey to serve out the remainder of Feinstein’s term, which ends in early January. The other asked voters to select one of the men for a subsequent six-year term in the Senate.
Election results in California will have to be certified before the winner can be sworn in, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.
Regardless of who wins, California will have two male senators for the first time in more than three decades. Senator Alex Padilla was elected in 2022 after being appointed to his post the year before when his predecessor, Kamala Harris, became vice president.
Garvey and Schiff entered the Senate race with name recognition and national profiles created in very different arenas: Garvey in Chavez Ravine and Schiff on Capitol Hill.
During 18 years as a first baseman for the Dodgers and San Diego Padres, Garvey was known as “Mr. Clean” for his swinging home runs and his wholesome image.
Garvey toyed with the idea of running for Senate shortly after his retirement in 1988. But instead he became embroiled in scandals, including mounting debts, lawsuits and backlash from two illegitimate children.
He finally decided to run for office last year, he said, after deciding that the dysfunction in Washington was too much to bear.
Read more: Your guide to the battle for the U.S. Senate in California: Garvey vs. Schiff
Garvey leaned heavily on nostalgia to promote his campaign among California’s older voters. He sold autographed baseballs for $100 on his campaign website and appeared at fundraisers under a banner showing him hitting a baseball.
As an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Schiff won the conviction of Richard Miller, a former FBI agent charged with passing classified documents to the Soviet Union. After serving as a law enforcement Democrat in the California Legislature, he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2002 and rose to national prominence 15 years later as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, where in 2016 he investigated the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. .
As lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial in the House of Representatives, the Burbank Democrat — once derided by the former president as a “pencil neck” — used Trump’s vitriol to propel himself to national prominence. His role in the impeachment made a great impression on him among fellow Democratsdemonized him among Republicans and sowed his campaign for Senate.
Both men regularly appealed to Trump during their campaigns.
Schiff criticized Garvey for voting for Trump three times, including during this year’s primaries, and tried to include him among Trump’s most unpopular policy proposals, including mass deportations of people living in the country illegally.
California voters, Schiff said, don’t want “some MAGA mini-me in a baseball uniform.”
Garvey called Schiff a liar for telling the American people there was evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. He also accused Schiff of waging a vendetta against Trump to boost his own career.
“How can you think about and focus on one man every day when you have to take care of millions of people in California?” Garvey said during the only debate between the candidates last month: “I think it’s unconscionable.”
Read more: Five lessons from the sharp debate in the US Senate between Schiff and Garvey
Garvey repeatedly said he voted for “the best man for the job” but did not seek the former president’s endorsement, which Trump described as a “big mistake.”
The sharpest elbows of the race were thrown during the primaries, when California Democrats were forced to choose between Schiff, Porter and Representative Barbara Lee of Oakland, all popular Democrats in their own right.
Schiff focused on his decades of experience, including his high-profile work leading Trump’s first impeachment trial and his role on the Jan. 6 House committee that investigated the 2021 attack on the Capitol. Lee leaned on her longstanding progressive, anti-war credentials. And Porter struck a populist tone, vowing to resist corporate influence in Washington.
Garvey portrayed himself as an antidote to what he called California’s failed liberal leadership.
Times staff writer Paige St. John contributed to this report.
Sign up for Essential California to get news, features, recommendations from the LA Times and more delivered to your inbox six days a week.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
