Why Adam Schiff and Katie Porter won’t wait for Feinstein as they jump into California’s Senate race

Representative Adam Schiff of California announced his candidacy for California’s Senate seat on Thursday, making him the second candidate to announce their run.

Schiff joins Representative Katie Porter, who represents Orange County, who announced earlier this month. This came despite the fact that Senator Dianne Feinstein, currently the eldest Senator at 89, has not announced whether she will seek another term in Congress.

During votes on Thursday, I asked Mr Schiff about why he announced despite Ms Feinstein not making a decision. He told me that he had spoken to Ms Feinstein before his announcement.

“She was very gracious and more than understood, my desire to get out and start talking to people up and down the state,” he said. But the respect and admiration doesn’t mean he isn’t waiting around for her.

Many Democrats have criticised Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco who became one of the first female senators from California, for being too unwilling to challenge Republicans (multiple news articles have abounded about her mental acuity in her advanced age). But Feinstein rose through the ranks when California was still a hotly contested state; a state that elected Ronald Reagan as governor of California and voted for him for president twice.

Conversely, Schiff and Porter have become heroes to a certain wing of Democratic voters during Donald Trump’s presidency. Schiff, who represents a safe district that encompasses parts of Los Angeles and Hollywood, earned adoration during his time as the top Democrat on the Hous Intelligence Committee and leading Trump’s first impeachment trial in the Senate.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced this week that he would boot Schiff from the committee he once led partially because of his role in probing Trump because of his comments about the Steele Dossier. Ironically, might have given him more impetus to run for Senate because he would have a diminished role. Trump responded by calling Schiff “pencil-neck” and later “watermelon head,” to which Schiff responded by saying “he used to call me pencil neck. Now it’s watermelon head. Let me just say pencil neck and a watermelon head. That’s a pretty tough balancing act”.

Schiff had considered seeking a role in House leadership, paving the way for Hakeem Jeffries to become minority leader. Not being on the Intelligence Committee or a chance in leadership gives him all the more reason to join the upper chamber.

Conversely, Porter flipped California’s 45th district, which includes the wealthy suburbs in Orange County, which had long been a Republican stronghold but became ripe for Democrats during Trump’s presidency.

Since then, she held the district in 2020 (but underperformed Joe Biden) and won the newly redrawn 47th district. Since then, she’s become famous for her use of a whiteboard during committee hearings while grilling members of the Trump administration or corporate executives. That has earned her many of the same plaudits that progressives would give her former professor and mentor at Harvard Law School, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

More recently, liberals swooned over her reading a book entitled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck amid the Republican fracas to nominate a speaker. Conversely, as a single mother raising two kids, she’s criticised her party for not understanding the impact of inflation on working families and has burnished an image as a self-described “mom with a minivan.”

But most notably, both of them are far more pugnacious in approaching Republicans. Feinstein has been seen as more conciliatory toward Republicans. Most notably, she infuriated many liberals during Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination hearing when she praised then-Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and gave him a hug.

In addition, the day after Senator Raphael Warnock won his runoff race against Herschel Walker, she offered a word of caution for Democrats now that they had 51 seats.

“It’s terrific. And they can work if it’s used, but there’s a danger in it as well. And that’s being too aggressive,” she said.

But many Democrats see that approach as insufficient after Mr Trump’s presidency, which is why they might be shopping for candidates who take a more aggressive approach.