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The 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein still hasn’t abandoned the possibility of a reelection bid, but “as far as California is concerned, the race is on, it is happening,” Los Angeles–based progressive strategist Anna Bahr told Vanity Fair. Two House Democrats—Orange County’s Katie Porter and San Gabriel Valley’s Adam Schiff—have already officially entered the race; others are waiting in the wings. Bahr predicts a messy, “elbows-out” race, given the state’s top-two primary system in which Californians can cast votes for anyone regardless of party registration, and the state’s expensive media market. The price tag of running for any viable candidate will likely be in the range of $40–$50 million, according to several California-based strategists Vanity Fair spoke to. “Democrat-on-Democrat contests are ugly and expensive and this isn’t just any Senate seat, this is California,” California-based political strategist Max Szabo said. “It will be bruising.”
The early jockeying postdates a string of reports last year questioning Feinstein’s fitness to serve in the Senate; colleagues of Feinstein’s have raised issues about the senator’s health, specifically her memory and mental acuity—noting a deterioration relative to earlier in her career. Among Democrats, a Feinstein retirement has increasingly become a question not of if but when. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre statement last week, that in the event of Feinstein not seeking reelection she would back Schiff, was a testament to that. Still, Feinstein is taking her time. A spokesperson for the California senator said she would make a decision within the coming months.
For the ambitious, a vacant Senate seat in the Golden State is too enticing to hold back for a near-nonagenarian. “A truly competitive race for an open Senate seat doesn’t happen very often here; it hasn’t happened in a while, obviously,” California-based Democratic strategist Dan Newman said in an interview. Given the politics of the deep-blue state, winning a California Senate seat is “essentially a lifetime job in the most exclusive club, so pretty coveted and exciting,” he added. “A lot of people have been circling, lining things up, and getting ready for it for a long time.”
While she has yet to make anything official, Barbara Lee has reportedly told fellow lawmakers that she intends to make a run to succeed Feinstein. When asked last month by Politico about her plans, Lee demurred. Noting her respect for Feinstein, the House member said, “We’ll let them know when I intend to go to the next step. But now’s the time not to talk about that.”
Congressman Ro Khanna told Vanity Fair that he’s “been honored to hear from progressives and Bernie supporters that they want me to run.” He said that he will make a decision by the second week of April and added, “I am also deeply grateful for Speaker Pelosi’s guidance over the years and of course respect her decision to weigh in on the race.”
Feinstein’s wannabe successors are going out of their way to show deference to the senior senator. “The senator can take all the time she needs, she has earned that,” a Schiff spokesperson said of Feinstein. Schiff, this person added, wouldn’t be running if “we didn’t feel like we had her blessing to do it.” Porter struck a similar tone. “Dianne Feinstein is such a trailblazer for women in politics,” she told V.F. “Part of being a trailblazer is creating a path for others to follow and it is really in that spirit that I have entered into this race.”
Within political circles in California, though, there has been speculation about the possibility that Feinstein would run for reelection and then resign before the end of her six-year term, leaving the governor to appoint her replacement. Governor Gavin Newsom subsequently indicated that he would name a Black woman to the seat, with Lee viewed as the top pick in such a scenario—a notably different tack than Pelosi took.
Given the stakes of an open Senate seat, the political power centers in California are girding for battle. Progressive activists in the Golden State don’t want to forfeit a Senate seat to a candidate who falls short on their approved bona fides. “California could provide a much-needed new senator, but that will hinge on whether the base of the party prevails against California’s mainline Democratic establishment, which would be well represented by Adam Schiff,” California-based activist Norman Solomon, who served as a delegate for Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions, said in an interview. “Hopefully progressive candidates don’t unduly split the vote.”
Battle lines have begun to come into focus among the two Democrats officially in the mix for the Senate seat. Schiff arguably cuts the best-known silhouette among potential Feinstein successors. In his announcement video, he nodded to being the manager of Trump’s first impeachment and serving on the January 6 committee. “I wish I could say the threat of MAGA extremists is over…It is not. Today’s Republican Party is gutting the middle class, threatening our democracy. They aren’t going to stop. We have to stop them,” he said. Pelosi’s quasi-endorsement certainly served as a shot in the arm for Schiff too. Schiff’s camp also released a list of dozens of other Democrats who have indicated their support for the 62-year-old lawmaker. (Schiff was not available for an interview; his spokesperson said Pelosi’s statement stood on its own.)
Porter, meanwhile, is setting herself up as a political outsider. “She’s not from the establishment…She spent her career for this moment, where authenticity is key,” a Porter strategist said in an interview. In a sense, the fact that Pelosi and a large swath of the Democratic caucus have lined up behind Schiff fits with Porter’s pitch that she’s unbeholden to the party establishment. “I think I have a strong track record in my short time in Congress of standing up to special interests, of being willing to call out corrupt politicians, to call out corporations that are cheating Americans, corrupt government officials,” Porter told Vanity Fair. Now in her second term, Porter has carved out a somewhat niche reputation within the party: a single mother, armed with a whiteboard, ready to embarrass corporate executives in hearings, who can win in a purple district. She is blunt in her Senate ambitions. “Let me put it this way, this race is a good thing for California. It is important that we have people engaged and that we are giving them choices and that we are having a vigorous conversation about what we want these bodies, what we want the Senate and House to look like going forward.” And Porter is not without her own notable endorsements either, Senator Elizabeth Warren among them.
But despite California’s perception as a blue bastion, its politics are complicated. It is easy to overlook the reality that both Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi hail from California. “I think the question is whether there is a candidate who will be able to thread the needle between a San Francisco resident and a Bakersfield resident,” Bahr, who has publicly come out in support of Porter, added.
“Traditionally Northern California candidates [Newsom, Feinstein, former California senator and now vice president Kamala Harris, former governor Jerry Brown, and erstwhile senator Barbara Boxer] have fared better,” Newman, who has worked for Governor Newsom, said. “This could be an advantage for Lee—particularly if she can consolidate progressives and others frustrated that only two of the more than 2,000 US senators have been Black women—and none currently.”
And of course there is always the possibility that a deep-pocketed Republican or Democrat-lite—(à la Rick Caruso, a California businessman who ran for Los Angeles mayor last year and lost to Karen Bass)—jumps in and shakes up the Senate primary. Both Schiff and Porter are prolific fundraisers. Only McCarthy raised more than Porter in the House; Pelosi raised the third-greatest sum for a House member. The second-term congresswoman brought in about $25.6 million during the 2022 election cycle and has approximately $7.4 million on hand. Schiff raised roughly $25 million, and has a staggering $20.9 million in his war chest.