The first step for the candidates running in next year’s California Senate race is to quietly try to spook newly appointed Sen. Laphonza Butler into not running at all.
The first step for the candidates running in next year’s California Senate race is to quietly try to spook newly appointed Sen. Laphonza Butler into not running at all.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But while they briefly paused public politicking until after the Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s funeral on Thursday – with Lee and Schiff flying there on Air Force 2 – they spent even this past week preparing to ramp up new endorsements and outreach that they hope will convince Butler there is not enough time to mount a credible campaign, and that she could risk being known now for her historic appointment to serve the remainder of the late senator’s term through January 2025 to being known for coming in third, fourth or even fifth in a race that has its first round on March 5.
(The top two candidates, regardless of party, move on to a November election, and the race is set to get another wrinkle next week, when former Dodgers and Padres first baseman Steve Garvey is expected to launch his campaign as a Republican.)
Butler had a meeting with a small group of advisers the day after being sworn in to do a preliminary review of polling data as part of what people familiar say is a push to make a decision by next week.
But Butler is well-known among California insiders, with top Democrats in the state telling CNN, “She does not do things that she cannot be successful at – so my guess is she would not have put herself in this spot if she didn’t think she had a shot at winning an election.”
Butler has multiple clocks ticking on her at once: She has to build a new staff out of the people who had stayed on as caretakers for the long-ailing Feinstein; she has to start making public appearances in the hopes of getting attention in a big state where her name ID is effectively zero; and she has to do it all while learning a complicated job in the middle of what could grow into a full-blown congressional crisis in the aftermath of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s defenestration, all without any prior experience in office.
Several California political insiders speculated that a fundraising disadvantage could be overcome if a few wealthy donors funded an independent expenditure effort on Butler’s behalf, especially given that even Schiff’s $32 million head start isn’t that much in a state where campaign operations and television commercials are so expensive.
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