[guest post by JVW]
Progressive darling Katie Porter (D-Irvine) was walloped in Tuesday’s night California Senate Primary Election, finishing a distant third to fellow Representative Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) and to the 1974 National League MVP, former Los Angeles Dodger and San Diego Padre Steve Garvey (.294/.329/.446). Because Rep. Porter was beloved by the young and insufferable woke left who is reflexively disdainful of capitalism and worships at the altar of the regulatory bureaucracy, her media acolytes are incapable of contemplating that she was a smug, phony, self-important, and dishonest clone of her mentor Elizabeth Warren (minus the made-up exotic background) and instead are insisting that their heroine got done in by patriarchical collusion. Here are some stellar examples (bolded emphasis by me):
Jill Cowan at The New York Times
Had there been screens blaring the news, supporters would have seen a Democratic rival, Representative Adam B. Schiff, advance to California’s general election runoff in November. And shortly thereafter, they would have watched Steve Garvey, a Republican and former baseball player, take the other spot — in no small part because of a stratagem by Mr. Schiff that sidelined Ms. Porter at the earliest opportunity.
Daniela Altimari at Roll Call
But Porter’s ability to raise campaign cash lagged behind Schiff’s, who brought in $32.8 million to Porter’s $28 million. Schiff’s gambit to run ads focusing on Garvey boosted the Republican’s underfunded campaign and effectively blocked Porter from winning one of the November ballot slots.
Ryan Bort at Rolling Stone
The real race was between Schiff and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). Schiff, who burnished his profile by leading Trump’s first impeachment, enjoyed a fundraising apparatus so formidable that he and his allies were able to spend $11 million to boost Garvey, the Republican, in order to ensure he didn’t have to square off with Porter in the general election.
Christopher Cadelago and Melanie Watson at Politico
Schiff advanced to the general election in November. He also managed to boost Republican Steve Garvey into the race with him and box out Democrat Katie Porter.
[. . .]
The most robust advocate for Garvey was Schiff, who blanketed the state with ads portraying the Republican as too conservative — a clear signal to the state’s GOP voters to back him. Schiff, a despised figure among Trump fans for his role in the former president’s first impeachment, motivated his biggest critics into picking the opponent he wanted for the fall.
And there you have it, folks. That Machiavellian genius Adam Schiff plucked from out of nowhere this obscure retired ballplayer who played nineteen seasons in California, won a World Series title with the Dodgers, was the two-time NLCS MVP, and was selected to ten MLB All-Star Games, and introduced him to the general public. Never mind the fact that Mr. Garvey won 32.2% of the vote in a state where Republicans and No Party Preference registrants together account for 46.2% of registered voters. Never mind the fact that Donald Trump, as odious as he is to California progressives, took 31.6% of the vote in the Golden State in the 2016 election and then 34.3% in the 2020 election. Never mind the fact that the worst showing for a GOP nominee for Governor of California in recent times has been 38%. No, according to the dominant news narrative, Mr. Garvey was the creation of the Schiff campaign and if not for that $11 million spent by Team Schiff on his behalf then Katie Porter — who incidentally spent $28 million dollars on her own campaign — would likely have swapped out her anemic 13.9% showing for something much closer to Mr. Garvey’s current total which amounts to twice that of her own, 1.2 million votes to 550,000 thousand votes.
It’s simply impossible for the media left to acknowledge that Katie Porter is generally unlikeable outside of their shared parochial echo chamber, even to fellow Democrats. She is given credit for flipping her Congressional district from red to blue, but that ignores the fact that she was fortunate to run during the Trump Era and that her margin of victory was narrowing. Moreover, it would seem that most Democrats who live outside of California’s 45th Congressional District — a district which boasts the seventh highest median income among all California Congressional districts and the thirteenth highest median income in the entire United States Congress — find her to be the typical tiresome academic scold who games the system for her own benefit then criticizes anyone else who dares to do the same. Her base also consists of younger voters, who are traditionally unreliable and who apparently did not bother to get out and vote in this primary election. Lieawatha Light can head back to her cushy sinecure in Irvine, teaching impressionable Millennials that the system is rigged against them, that capitalism is a shell game, that every social problem can be fixed so long as educated bureaucrats are empowered to enact change, the money supply is infinite, and those pesky legislators and voters stay in their lane.
But cheers to getting one of the more obnoxious characters out of Congress. In November I will unenthusiastically vote for Steve Garvey, who turns 76 years old three days before Christmas. He’ll lose anyway, and Adam Schiff will vote in the Senate probably 98% the same way that Katie Porter would have voted, but I’ll be slightly glad that it is he and not she casting those votes.
– JVW
