Michael R. Blood/AP Photo
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks to supporters at the headquarters of advocacy group Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, February 17, 2024.
Donald Trump, now confirmed for presidential balloting, will all but clinch the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday, when 15 states and one territory hold their primaries. But voting tomorrow actually begins primary season for the House and Senate, with the nation’s first contests in five states: Texas, California, Alabama, North Carolina, and Arkansas.
There aren’t many contested Democratic primaries in four of those states. North Carolina’s supreme court gerrymandered House districts into oblivion, and the remaining Democratic seats are held by incumbents without real opposition. No Democrats are competitive in Arkansas. There is a likely Democratic open seat in Alabama that was made plurality-Black after a Supreme Court redistricting fight: The top two will likely go to an April runoff in the crowded primary (read the Prospect’s analysis of that race here). Texas’s Senate race, one of the only remote chances for a Democratic pickup, is not very interesting because Colin Allred is virtually certain to win the nomination. In the Texas House, Sheila Jackson Lee might lose to her former intern, but that’s probably headed to a runoff as well.
The real action is happening in California, featuring familiar dynamics that pit ideological progressives against centrists with big money looming in the background, something we will see play out throughout primary season. While many of the ultimate outcomes in November are not in doubt, who makes it to Washington and what issues they care about really do matter. This low-turnout primary (one of the sleepiest I can remember in my home state) will set the stage. Here’s a rundown:
CA-Sen: In statewide races in California, money and name recognition dwarfs everything as a deciding factor; sadly, issue divergence or grassroots operations have limited resonance. Combine that with the top-two primary, where everyone votes on the same candidates regardless of party and the top two advance to the general election, and the fact that Republicans have no current path to statewide victory, and a pattern emerges: The person with the most money effectively donates a portion of their stash to single out a Republican they think would be easy to beat in November.
That’s the predictable display happening right now. Rep. Adam Schiff and his super PAC allies (including one made up of Indian casino owners) have outspent the entire rest of the field on advertising by more than 2 to 1, and 60 percent of those ads mention Steve Garvey, the Republican former baseball player who hasn’t run a single ad on his own behalf. This elevation of Garvey—which calls him “too conservative” for California in ways that attract conservatives—has consolidated the Republican vote; one poll last week showed him in first place.
Rep. Katie Porter, is contending with this box-out tactic while also getting hammered by a $10 million crypto super PAC campaign tying Porter to “corporate” money rather dubiously. (One of the allegedly corporate donors was from a tiny community development organization.) Despite the conviction of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto cash will play a significant role in Democratic primaries once again, as we’re seeing in Texas (where candidate Julie Johnson, seeking Allred’s open seat, loudly endorsed crypto on her website and got an immediate $1 million super PAC investment) and Alabama (where Shomari Figures has received nearly $2 million in support from the same crypto PAC as Johnson).
At least one poll has shown Porter still within striking distance of second place, but fighting a multifront war with Schiff’s cynical in-kind donation to Garvey on one side and crypto billionaire half-truths on the other is probably going to be overwhelming. Barbara Lee has been unable to galvanize support because of money. There is grumbling about Lee and Porter failing to consolidate the progressive vote, but some real talk: If any race in the country can be an advertisement for public financing of campaigns rather than fake “reforms” that merely facilitate clever campaign tactics, it’s this one.
CA-12: The race to replace Barbara Lee in Oakland in the House was over largely before it began, with former Kamala Harris aide and transit official Lateefah Simon, with Lee’s support, waltzing into the top two against likely token opposition. This is an example of the invisible primary, as Simon locked up support months ago and her opponents are accusing her of refusing to debate. Low-turnout primaries in safe seats often wind up this way, especially in California, where the top politicians use the same consultants and endorsements get steered toward a favored son or daughter.
CA-16: There is a free-for-all in this Silicon Valley–area race to replace longtime Rep. Anna Eshoo, with more money spent than any contest in California. Unlike in Lee’s case, Eshoo’s endorsement of former state Sen. Joe Simitian didn’t clear the field, which includes San Jose’s former mayor Sam Liccardo, Assemblymember Evan Low, Palo Alto City Councilmember Julie Lythcott-Haims, and Peter Dixon, a veteran who co-founded a PAC called With Honor, who is getting significant support from donors and a multimillion-dollar independent expenditure campaign connected to that PAC. With Honor PAC’s most notable donor is Jeff Bezos, who has given $10 million to the organization, but there’s also money coming in from the Walmart family fortune and Michael Bloomberg. Having billionaire elites buy a safe House seat is unadvisable, but could become reality.
CA-22: The top-two primary again plays a role in this key Central Valley swing seat in November. Incumbent Republican David Valadao barely defeated former Assemblymember Rudy Salas, a conservative Democrat, in 2022. But far-right Republican Chris Mathys almost beat Valadao (who voted to impeach Trump after January 6th) in the primary that year, and Democrat state Sen. Melissa Hurtado is in the race. (She says she got in because of EMILYs List polling showing she could win, but she hasn’t been able to raise much money.) With two viable Republican and two viable Democratic candidates, each side is worried that the votes will line up in a way to block their party out of the general election.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is actually taking sides in the primary with nearly $1 million in ads boosting Salas, who is bizarrely going after Hurtado for missing abortion votes in 2022. (The abortion rights group that dinged Hurtado that year gave her an A rating in 2023.) The lockout potential is a function of a top-two primary that does not always reflect the will of the voters.
CA-29, CA-34: Here are a couple of seats with a progressive split. Rep. Tony Cárdenas is retiring from his Northeast San Fernando Valley seat, and has endorsed Assemblymember Luz Rivas, who also got the Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsement. But Angelica Dueñas has run against Cárdenas from the left twice before, and is a Berniecrat/Medicare for All supporter. Both are likely to advance to the general election.
In CA-34 in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles, Rep. Jimmy Gomez, also a Progressive Caucus member, has barely survived two past challenges to his left from David Kim, an immigration attorney. Gomez won 53-47 in 2020 and 51-49 in 2022. They’re both on the ballot again.
CA-30: This is the race to replace Adam Schiff, and there are 15 candidates on the ballot. The most prominent, all Democrats, are state Sen. Anthony Portantino, Assemblymember Laura Friedman, former city attorney Mike Feuer, and L.A. school board member Nick Melvoin. Also, the guy who played Cory in Boy Meets World is running.
One issue in the race is Azerbaijan’s attack on the Armenian-held territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which makes sense if you know that Glendale, part of the district, is home to a significant number of Armenian Americans. This will be an unpredictable race: Friedman is the only woman and has a progressive record, but Portantino has labor support, and all four have raised enough to compete.
CA-31: Another open seat in L.A. to replace Rep. Grace Napolitano, this race is notable for one big-money entrant: Gil Cisneros, a former lottery winner who self-funded his way into Congress for one term in a swing district before losing in 2020. Between his $4.3 million in new self-funding, Napolitano’s choice of state Sen. Bob Archuleta (who has an alleged sexual harassment case hanging over him), and center-left state Sen. Susan Rubio, it’s slim pickings here. Cisneros is playing the Schiff tactic of accusing a rando Republican candidate of being “too conservative,” to boost him and lock Rubio out of the general election. Rubio responded by elevating a different Republican. Fun stuff.
CA-47: Katie Porter’s old seat has gotten a lot of attention because of AIPAC’s first foray into 2024 primaries, spending millions to knock out state Sen. Dave Min. I wrote about the race, and the puzzling AIPAC attack, last month. The important thing to know is that this is a road test of AIPAC’s strength in 2024; they reportedly have $100 million to spend and plan to be very active (an AIPAC ally, Democratic Majority for Israel, has endorsed Rivas in CA-29). Most House candidates can’t survive these kinds of assaults. But will this flip a Democratic seat in November? Joanna Weiss, the indirect beneficiary of the Min attacks, is a first-time candidate, and it’s not certain she will get the same support against staunchly pro-Israel Republican Scott Baugh if she reaches the general election. In this sense, EMILYs List, which supported Weiss early, could be boosting a Republican flip.
That’s the rather grim picture in California: millionaire candidates, pro-Israel and crypto money everywhere, bizarre bank-shot campaign posturing to help Republicans earn a general-election spot. This has backed the question of what candidates will do in office to the sidelines. Welcome to politics in 2024.
