“I have to go get a photo of Adam!”
A young woman in dark glasses, a tan trench coat and a lavender bucket hat darts into the street and runs after the white Porsche convertible in which Representative Adam Schiff and his wife are slowly being driven through Chinatown as part of the Lunar New Year’s parade in Los Angeles. Planting herself several feet in front of the car, the woman snaps some pics and then calls out to the passing House member, “Thank you for all that you do!”
As she heads back toward her friends, I try to stop her, asking why she is a fan of Mr. Schiff, who is running for the Senate to succeed Dianne Feinstein, who died in office last September at age 90. The woman keeps moving but gushes, with a hint of perplexity suggesting I’m an idiot for having to ask: “Everybody loves him! My mother-in-law in Madison, Wisconsin, loves him! He’s done so much!”
And with that, she melts back into the crowd, not bothering to elaborate on what it is that Mr. Schiff has done. Not that she needs to. Around his home state — and beyond — the 12-term Democrat has achieved bona fide celebrity status thanks to his emergence as a prime antagonist of Donald Trump.
As the House member who spearheaded Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, who played a key role in the Jan. 6 select committee and who has served as a top Trump critic on cable news, Mr. Schiff has been vilified across the MAGAverse. He has earned no fewer than three puerile nicknames from the former president: Pencil Neck, Liddle’ Adam Schiff and, my favorite, Shifty Schiff. More seriously, House Republicans booted him from the intelligence committee early last year and later censured him for his role in the Russia investigation, claiming he advanced politically motivated lies about Mr. Trump that endangered national security. All this, in turn, has made Mr. Schiff a hero to the anti-Trump masses.
At multiple points along the parade route, in fact, people yell their gratitude and encouragement. “Keep it up!” urges Chris (first name only!), a tour guide visiting from Tampa, raising a fist in salute.
When I ask what people like about Mr. Schiff, they overwhelmingly cite his fighting spirit. “He’s a trench warrior,” says Steven Alexander, a local, longtime fan. “Adam Schiff stands up when too many stand down,” he adds. Multiple supporters express particular admiration that the congressman has been “willing to put his face out there” in battling Mr. Trump, despite the personal and professional fallout.
His reputation as a leader of the resistance may have cost Mr. Schiff a committee seat in the House. But it has given his Senate candidacy a major boost, propelling him to a solid lead over the rest of the pack. This notably includes his Democratic House colleagues Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, both of whom, in various ways, would seem more representative of California’s Democratic electorate. (We’ll get to that a bit later.)
Mr. Schiff is, after all, a 63-year-old straight white man who, for much of his House career, identified as a centrist. In ordinary times, he probably would be dismissed as too conservative, too establishment, too vanilla to rep California in all its unconventional glory in the Senate. (The last time the state elected a white guy to the chamber was 1988.)
But these are Trump times, meaning ordinary is out the window. And a different form of progressivism — the fierce, fundamental defense of democracy against Trumpism — has for, many voters, overshadowed the traditional policy-based definition, along with concerns about identity politics or ideological purity. And in this category, it is hard to outshine Mr. Schiff.
“I think the term progressive, particularly this cycle, means more about protecting what we have fought so hard for,” said Betty Yee, the vice chairwoman of the state Democratic Party. People are thinking hard about “who they want in Washington fighting to keep our values intact,” she said. And while she sees all the Democratic candidates as fighters, Ms. Yee acknowledged that democracy protection was central to Mr. Schiff’s brand.
Thanks to his entanglement with the MAGA King, Mr. Schiff has serious political juice, along with the widespread name recognition that is invaluable in a sprawling state that is both exhausting and expensive to run in.
By whatever measure you choose — polling, campaign cash, endorsements — Mr. Schiff is the front-runner heading into Tuesday’s “jungle” primary, from which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to the general election. Count it as just one more way in which Mr. Trump has upended the political landscape, shifting voters’ moods and priorities even in places and races where Trumpism holds little sway.
Even a few years in, Mr. Schiff finds this whole celebrity thing “surreal” and vaguely ironic: “If you asked people in the House pre-Trump, ‘All right, one of these members is going to become this liberal lightning rod. Who do you think it will be, this bane of the right wing?’ They probably would not have picked me,” he said. “I was not the face of the resistance.”
The higher profile, he said, “has come at a cost.” The vitriol from MAGA world “takes a lot of different forms” — calls, texts — some of which go directly to his wife’s phone. “The worst was when someone sent two bullets to my office with the names of my kids on them. That was pretty awful,” he said, with an understatement that would be comic if the topic weren’t so horrifying.
As the Senate race has ground on, the Republican attacks have heated up. The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently sent out a “STOP SCHIFF” fund-raising plea, proclaiming him “the MASTERMIND of the Trump-Russia hoax.” And in a Feb. 13 tantrum on Truth Social, Mr. Trump went extra hard, dubbing him “SLIMEBALL ADAM ‘SHIFTY’ SCHIFF, one of the true lowlifes in the history of politics in America.” With every attack, the congressman’s anti-Trump street cred grows.
Mr. Schiff is a more reserved character than you might imagine from his polarizing reputation. The former prosecutor is cautious and deliberate, low-key and even-keeled. “He doesn’t rise with the highs or go down with the lows,” says Dan Goldman, a Democrat House member from New York who, before winning his seat in 2022, worked for Mr. Schiff as an investigator on the Intelligence Committee. He is less an anti-establishment revolutionary than a work-within-the-system pragmatist — more Nancy Pelosi than The Squad.
The congressman has a quirky streak. A film buff — as befitting a lawmaker representing Hollywood — he once aspired to be a screenwriter and still dabbles in standup. His humor tends to be wry and self-deprecating. As we sat down to breakfast one Sunday in February at a restaurant near his home in Burbank, I mentioned that I’d been quizzing voters about his appeal.
“They all told you it was my Ryan Gosling good looks, undoubtedly,” he fired back. Mr. Schiff is reputed to have a rich repertoire of dad jokes — though he stubbornly refused to tell me one — and is prone to quoting the 1998 cult comedy, “The Big Lebowski,” which he often cites as his favorite movie.
For most of his tenure in the House, Mr. Schiff was known as a thoughtful, not especially partisan workhorse. He spent his time on foreign policy and national security issues. He was, in short, a not-so-charismatic lawmaker whom most Americans — including many in his own district — would have had trouble picking out of a lineup.
His ideology wasn’t especially electrifying either. Elected in 2000 in what was then a Republican district, he rolled into Congress as a solid centrist. Until 2013, he was a member of the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, and he remains a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition. His voting record is more pro-military and pro-law enforcement than some progressives are comfortable with, and The American Prospect magazine did a deep dive last year into the less-progressive aspects of his early votes on economic policy.
For more than a decade now, Mr. Schiff has been easing leftward. He supports Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, and his ties to organized labor have grown stronger. In this race, he has been endorsed by unions ranging from the Actors’ Equity Association to the Teamsters to the United Farm Workers. At this point, there is little daylight between his voting record and those of his main Democratic competitors, Ms. Porter and Ms. Lee, both of whom are more identified with the party’s progressive wing.
This shift has drawn charges of opportunism and inconstancy from some on the left, and Mr. Schiff abandoned an effort last year to join the Congressional Progressive Caucus after his application caused turmoil among the members. As Mr. Schiff frames things, he has simply learned and evolved with the times.
“I think the challenges facing the country have changed, the challenges facing California have changed,” he said, and by extension, his views on what policies are needed have changed. He added, “And I think that’s true of the whole party.”
There are certainly policy danger zones where Mr. Schiff is out of step with his left wing. Notably, he has upset some progressives with his refusal to call for a cease-fire in the war in Gaza, a problem he shares with President Biden. The tension bubbled into view during the Lunar New Year parade as the congressman was periodically met with scattered boos and chants of “cease-fire now!”
This intraparty rift has not yet risen to a level among California Democrats where it is seen to be roiling the Senate race. But Mr. Schiff later voiced concern to me that it could ultimately prompt some younger people to sit out the election. This could prove devastating in other races, including the presidential.
Trying to convey the high stakes of this election writ large without freaking out voters to the point they tune it out is a constant balancing act, says Mr. Schiff, adding that he tries to end all his events on a note of reassurance and hope. “I talk about what a resilient country we are” and that “this too shall pass,” he said. “Because the gravity of all this is just so heavy that it would be easy to lapse into despair. And we don’t have the luxury of despair.”
California political watchers pretty much all agree that Mr. Trump’s return to the ballot is making voters twitchy.
“The backdrop to this race is the fight for democracy,” said former Senator Barbara Boxer, who has endorsed Mr. Schiff — as have former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the bulk of the California congressional delegation. “It is about the fact that a lot of people in California, may I say, are very worried about Trump and his dictatorial ways. And so Adam comes to the top” as “the go-to person to take on Trump.”As you might imagine, the Senate race’s other Democrats disagree with this take. Strongly. And it is clear that they cannot quite believe they are losing to this guy.
“I’m the candidate who has shown that she knows how to win and motivate voters in the very kinds of districts that are going to become very important if we have Trump on the ballot or, God forbid, a Trump presidency,” Ms. Porter said in a phone interview. This is about more than just a Senate seat, she told me. “If we have a race primarily focused on Adam Schiff and more of the same, we’re not going to engage the voters we need to have the turnout we need to win seats in California” up and down the ballot.
In many ways, Ms. Porter does seem the more intuitive fit with today’s Democratic electorate — especially with California’s diverse swirl of coalition politics. She is: 1. A single mom, 2. More than a decade younger than Mr. Schiff and 3. Brimming with the kind of economically populist, outsider energy that resonates with the party’s activist base. She and her trademark whiteboard, which she employs to devastating effect in grilling the corporate bosses who come before her in Congress, have become the scourge of big business and a darling of social media. She is a prolific fund-raiser and plays particularly well among younger voters, who like her promise to shake things up.
Bringing her no-more-politics-as-usual intensity to this race, Ms. Porter has slammed Mr. Schiff as the complacent, compromised creature of a broken system. She has gone after him for taking corporate PAC money in previous campaigns and accused him of fighting for his big donors rather than regular Californians.
During the final debate of the primary, she went after Mr. Schiff hard, accusing him of being too cozy with big corporations and taking “dirty money.” He, in turn, dinged her for imposing rigid “purity tests,” slyly noting that he had donated some of the money in question to her campaign. “And the only response I got,” he quipped, as the audience chuckled, “was, ‘Thank you, thank, thank you.’” Then he pivoted: “Look, at the end of the day, it’s about what have you gotten done. I didn’t hear anything from Representative Porter about anything she has actually accomplished.”
A House newcomer by comparison with her Democratic opponents, Ms. Porter, elected in 2018, is quick to point out all the big things that Congress has failed to accomplish during their tenures, from reforming immigration to lowering child care costs to banning stock trading by lawmakers. She tells me that people are hungry for change and that she is the contender with a proven record of “being willing to push our party to live up to its values.” Her frustration that this message has not gotten more traction is clear.
But, here again, Ms. Porter’s efforts to paint Mr. Schiff as a do-nothing establishment tool are muddled by the one big thing that a big chunk of America knows he has done and continues to do: take the fight to the MAGA king. Polls consistently show her stuck several points behind him and, more recently, fighting for second place with the Republican candidate Steve Garvey, a former baseball star.
The even more poignant figure in this contest may be Barbara Lee, a progressive icon who has represented the Oakland area since 1998. Ms. Lee has the most formidable progressive record of anyone in the field, including being the lone House member to vote against the war in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. On the Senate campaign trail, she has stressed her longstanding skepticism of the military, and she has come out in support of a cease-fire in Gaza. She has also claimed the mantle of anti-Trump fighter, reminding voters that she is a plaintiff in a civil suit seeking damages from the former president and others in relation for the Jan. 6 attack.
More personally, Ms. Lee is the only major candidate of color in the field, and her campaign has been pushing the value of her lived experience and “the unique intersectional lens” she brings to her work.
“The perspective, the lens, the representation, the experience of a Black woman from California is badly needed,” she said in a recent interview with the local NBC News affiliate, “because not only do Black women fight for our communities, and for the marginalized and vulnerable people, lifting people out of poverty, for children, for criminal justice reform. We fight for everybody, to lift everybody up.”
In her appearance at a Univision candidate forum last month, Ms. Lee said that “diversity matters,” that “representation matters.” Afterward, I asked her why those issues don’t seem to be of much concern to voters in this race. She simply tightened her smile and brightly insisted that, in fact, she was hearing a lot from voters about those precise topics. Maybe. But with Mr. Trump on the ballot, the electorate appears to have other priorities. Polls show Ms. Lee languishing in the single digits, well behind Mr. Schiff, Ms. Porter and Mr. Garvey.
For his part, Mr. Schiff is sticking with a safe, restrained campaign. During his portion of the Univision event, he spoke in smooth, soothing tones about his plan to tackle whatever issue the moderators raised, whether homelessness, crime, inflation, taxes, jobs, student debt or immigration. He pointed to the many millions of federal dollars he has secured for California and promised to bring home billions more from the Senate.
Let’s be clear. Mr. Schiff is not a shoo-in, especially if Ms. Porter makes it to the general election. Without Ms. Lee splitting the progressive vote, a Schiff-on-Porter cage match promises to be bloody and expensive, draining resources from races both inside and outside the state on which control of the House and the Senate could turn. (The Golden State, it bears noting, functions as a golden goose for the entire Democratic Party.)
Clearly, Mr. Schiff would rather face Mr. Garvey in the general election. No one seriously thinks a Republican, even a former sports star, has a shot at winning. And Mr. Garvey has thus far proved to be a not-so-dazzling candidate. For weeks, Team Schiff has been running ads denouncing him as “ too conservative for California.” That is widely seen as a cynical, if not uncommon, bit of campaign jujitsu in which a candidate tries to raise the profile of the primary opponent he thinks will be the easiest to beat in a general election.
Mr. Schiff has insisted he is simply drawing attention to the threat Mr. Garvey poses. But his Democratic opponents aren’t buying it. “What is discouraging, what is wrong, I think morally, what is inconsistent with the rhetoric of Representative Schiff about democracy and being a hero for democracy, is to lift up a Republican in order to eliminate a Democrat,” Ms. Porter tells me. “That’s not consistent with what California is as a state, and I think that has been frustrating and should be of concern to California voters. Like, do we want to send someone to Washington who is so willing to win at all costs?”
It’s a rhetorical question. But, with the specter of a vengeful MAGA king looming over the state, the matter of what Californians want most from their elected champions is far more complicated than it once was.
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