News Idiots: Schiff Used Garvey to Clobber Porter
[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
I thought she gave up her seat after her leaked nudes that showed her getting stoned and fooling around with an intern?
Time123 (75c363) — 3/7/2024 @ 7:48 amI thought she gave up her seat after her leaked nudes that showed her getting stoned and fooling around with an intern?
Go google an image of Katie Porter clothed and see if that makes sense to you.
Kevin M (8676e4) — 3/7/2024 @ 8:24 amPorter won in 2018 because the high-income residents of her district were upset with their steep tax increase from the loss of SALT deductions in President Trump’s tax “cut.” Her GOP opponent had 52% of the vote in the primary, but could not hold onto her support in the general.
She’s held onto the seat with narrowing margins, and was probably going to lose this year anyway.
Kevin M (8676e4) — 3/7/2024 @ 8:29 amI think this terrible dirty trick by Schiff is reason for Democrats to vote for Garvey in protest.
Kevin M (8676e4) — 3/7/2024 @ 8:32 amKatie Porter said, after having her clock cleaned:
Apparently, it’s not just the media that couldn’t accept the fact that Porter was an unlikeable and lousy candidate. Porter herself blamed her loss on a rigged election. Heh.
Dana (8e902f) — 3/7/2024 @ 9:58 amThat was Katie Hill.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/7/2024 @ 10:10 amI think this terrible dirty trick by Schiff is reason for Democrats to vote for Garvey in protest.
I was telling Dana and Patterico that Porter strikes me as someone who is just that vindictive, especially if she has decided that she is done with Washington DC politics (though I find that nearly impossible to believe).
JVW (1ad43e) — 3/7/2024 @ 10:34 amPorter herself blamed her loss on a rigged election. Heh.
I think it was NRO who pointed out that Democrats excoriated Donald Trump (and rightfully so) for bellowing on about “rigged elections.” It will be interesting to see if we get their usual response where Rep. Porter’s claim is concerned: “But that’s different.”
JVW (1ad43e) — 3/7/2024 @ 10:36 am@5: The press in California just has it in for progressives.
Kevin M (8676e4) — 3/7/2024 @ 10:45 amFYI: Porter’s current district is the 47th, since 2023, due to redistricting. When I lived there in the 60s and 70s, it was Goldwater country. Then came UCI…
Kevin M (8676e4) — 3/7/2024 @ 10:52 amAdam Schiff set up Garvey as a strawman; he did few campaign events and didn’t run any advertising on his own-at least none that I saw. Schiff wanted the Republicans to vote for Garvey rather than sit out the race, and they took the bait. I call it the Br’er Rabbit strategy: “Don’t elect that candidate-he’s wrong for California.” Schiff got the opponent he wanted.
As of February 14th, Garvey entered the home stretch with around $758,000-hardly enough to run a campaign in California. Schiff had $13M cash on hand.
Also, the crypto-backed super PAC Fairshake ran millions of dollars of ads against Porter. Given that most California voters prior to the primary probably had no idea who Katie Porter was, running millions of dollars of negative ads does define a candidate (and in this case they were true).
I don’t think that Schiff “plucked out” Garvey, he volunteered. Schiff would have run the same campaign against any other Republican candidate.
Sometimes the dominant media narrative is true.
Oh please-Schiff will continue to tie Garvey to Trump, and there is no way that Porter’s (or Lee’s) voters will want to turn over safe Democratic Senate seat to Republicans just because they don’t rough politics. They will think it’s brilliant.
There is a difference. Trump claims that voter fraud and Democratic cheating did rig the 2020 election against him, Porter claims the election was “rigged” by dark money spending by billionaires.
It’s getting so that Trump has redefined the words “rigged” and “insurrection” so they can’t be used in any other context.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/7/2024 @ 11:09 amLOL!
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/7/2024 @ 11:09 amMy prediction is that Garvey won’t receive more than 40% of the vote in the general election. Some day the Republicans will offer serious candidates for the statewide elections.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/7/2024 @ 11:48 amSchiff wanted the Republicans to vote for Garvey rather than sit out the race, and they took the bait.
Again, where I disagree is that Republicans needed to be prodded by Schiff into voting for Garvey. Were there probably a few Repubilcans who saw Schiff’s commercials and said to themselves, “Hey, I should vote for this Garvey guy in the primary?” Sure, probably a few. But did Schiff’s commercials really add 10% to Garvey’s vote? No way. And were there a bunch of people who voted for Garvey who otherwise would have voted for Katie Porter? No way.
In other words, if Adam Schiff had never once mentioned Steve Garvey I am willing to bet he would still have received at least 25% of the vote and ended up in second place anyway. So for Adam Schiff fans to claim that their man ingeniously promoted a weak opponent to the detriment of a strong competitor, or for Katie Porter fans to claim that without Schiff’s meddling that their gal would have finished much closer to 25% or 30%, is utter and complete nonsense.
JVW (30c6d5) — 3/7/2024 @ 12:44 pmAll Democrats, including Adam Schiff, grossly overrated Katie Porter’s appeal to anyone who isn’t an Elizabeth Warren acolyte (did you know that Ms. Porter named her daughter Betsey, after her Harvard mentor?). And we all recall how Lieawatha flamed out in the 2020 Democrat Presidential Primary and demonstrated that her appeal is limited to prissy New Englanders who listen to NPR and hate banks. I guess it’s a chest-thumping thing by Schiff partisans to pretend that their man just pulled a huge coup, and it’s blame-shifting by Porter partisans to pretend that their candidate wasn’t manifestly unlikeable. But I just find it to be complete bullshit, so typical of the smug and self-satisfied hyper-political hacks who run Democrat campaigns these days.
JVW (30c6d5) — 3/7/2024 @ 12:50 pmThanks RIP. I guess a got them confused.
Kevin, always remember Rule 34. At this point I don’t make assumptions.
Time123 (ff8ba2) — 3/7/2024 @ 1:27 pmI am surprised at the shade thrown adam shifty schiff here. Maybe because he lied and said he had irrefutable evidence that trump had colluded with putin.
asset (eb630b) — 3/7/2024 @ 2:11 pmWithout Schiff’s commercials no one (not including political junkies) would have known Garvey was running. His campaign was invisible.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 3/7/2024 @ 2:29 pmPorter’s subsequent clarification that she didn’t mean there was fraud when she said “rig”, but rather that billionaire money tipped the election to Schiff, isn’t that helpful. It still causes people to despair, and think that there is something wrong with our system.
The only thing wrong with the system is voters themselves.
norcal (5bad9a) — 3/7/2024 @ 3:41 pmSteve Garvey was polling third. I think he finished first.
Promoting him with negative ads didn’t, of course, take away votes from Katie Porter but did take away votes from other Republicans or gave Republican inclined voters a person to vote for. (Katie Porter responded by trying to promote a different Republican.)
That maybe all this was not necessary for Adam Schiff to defeat Katie Porter, but this was his strategy, and he saved himself a possibly difficult general election campaign.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 3/7/2024 @ 3:54 pmEveryone in this race was hated by a different constituency: Schiff by Republicans; Lee by everyone to the right of Hugo Chavez; Porter by everyone who’s ever heard her talk; and Garvey by his ex-teammates and baby mommas. To my sensibilities, Garvey and Schiff were the least objectionable of a bad lot. I’m satisfied with the results.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 3/7/2024 @ 4:00 pmPromoting him with negative ads didn’t, of course, take away votes from Katie Porter but did take away votes from other Republicans or gave Republican inclined voters a person to vote for.
The other Republicans on the ballot combined for about 7% of the total. Are people assuming that if the total GOP vote share of 39% had been divvied up among other candidates, nobody would have received more than Katie Porter’s 14%?
I am probably more of a baseball fan than the average reader at Patterico’s Pontifications, but honestly I just can’t understand why some people think that nobody had ever heard of Steve Garvey until Adam Schiff started running his ads. The whole point of Garvey not needing to spend a lot of money on the primary is because he already had that name recognition. And I didn’t watch the debates, but from what I read about them he did a decent job of differentiating himself from the Democrats without taking positions that would ruin him in the Golden State. He was always going to beat Katie Porter (and Barbara Lee for that matter); she really is that awful. It’s crazy to pretend otherwise.
JVW (1ad43e) — 3/8/2024 @ 8:25 amThe only thing wrong with the system is voters themselves.
Hear, hear! Thanks norcal, this is 100% correct. People who believe that corporations somehow magically trick people into voting against their interests are only arguing that people are irredeemably stupid.
JVW (1ad43e) — 3/8/2024 @ 8:30 amI heard somewhere that it was the Aspen millionaires. (Not worth explaining.)
The hyperplastic ego that makes these crapweasels believe that they can run a country is not going to allow them to admit that they cannot even run a successful campaign. It has to be somebody else’s fault.
nk (751953) — 3/8/2024 @ 8:55 amThe point was for most part no one knew Garvey was a Senate candidate, as he didn’t run any of his own campaign commercials.
Rip Murdock (3eea61) — 3/8/2024 @ 12:05 pmIf you’re a voter under 60, it’s “Steve who?”
Rip Murdock (a6b579) — 3/8/2024 @ 1:05 pmIf you’re a voter under 60, it’s “Steve who?”
Rip Murdock (a6b579) — 3/8/2024 @ 1:05 pm
Just by the hair of your chinny chin chin, Rip.
If I were just a few months younger, I could call bs on this. Alas, I am 60.
I remember Garvey well. And Ron Cey. And Dusty Baker. I remember the 1977 (or 1978?) World Series when the Dodgers played the Yankees. At one of the games in L.A., Linda Ronstadt sang the national anthem while wearing a Dodgers jacket. As a teenager who loved Ronstadt’s music, I thought this was the coolest thing ever.
norcal (a5b268) — 3/8/2024 @ 2:30 pm