Katie Porter’s fate comes down to the wire in California Senate race

The California Senate race is coming down to the wire for Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) as she looks to eke out a second-place showing and advance into November’s runoff in the state’s “top two” primary.

Polling has shown Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) leading the crowd of California Senate contenders, with Porter and Republican Steve Garvey hovering around second place. All the candidates, regardless of party affiliation, will be placed on the same ballot, with the top two vote-getters advancing to November.

But low voter turnout is threatening to end Porter’s congressional career early as data shows the voters casting ballots being older and whiter, which could push Garvey into the runoff with Schiff for a red-blue showdown.

“All along, this race has been Adam Schiff’s to lose,” said California-based Democratic strategist Kate Maeder, arguing the low turnout “absolutely” benefits the frontrunner.

“The only people really voting are older, white voters who have seen Adam Schiff on CNN and MSNBC for years, so he has this sort of built-in advantage heading into the race,” Maeder said.

Schiff, Porter, Garvey and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) are running to serve a full term that was vacated by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and is temporarily being filled by Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), who decided against running for a full term.

The four Senate front-runners are among 27 candidates running for the seat, whose term begins in January, but they are also among seven candidates running in a special election to decide who will briefly take over from Butler, the temporary appointee who will serve through November, until the next term starts.

Schiff has amassed a sizable war chest, beginning the year with nearly $35 million in the bank. He has enjoyed high name recognition as the lead House impeachment manager in former President Trump’s first trial, as well as for serving on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Porter — best known in the House for her iconic whiteboards during committee hearings and for flipping a red Orange County House seat to blue in 2018 — started the year with a smaller but still notable cash on hand of $13 million.

Lee, who is known for her time volunteering for the Black Panthers and for bucking her party at times, including on her lone vote against the Afghanistan war, has trailed in the polls and fundraising as she started this year with less than $1 million in the bank.

Democratic strategist Maclen Zilber said Schiff has fared well in most public polling because of his high profile and the sheer financial advantage he has over his opponents.

“It’s going to be tough for someone else to gain ground or supplant you if you’re also meaningfully outspending the field in a state where it takes a lot of money to move voters a little bit,” he said.

A University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) poll, which was co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times and released Friday, showed 27 percent of likely voters backing Garvey, 25 percent backing Schiff, 19 percent backing Porter, 8 percent backing Lee, and 12 percent backing someone else. Undecided likely voters made up another 9 percent.

Because the Garvey-Schiff split falls within the poll’s margin of error, which is 2 percentage points, the pair are essentially tied.

Meanwhile, an Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics/The Hill survey released Thursday found Schiff at 28 percent, Garvey at 20 percent, Porter at 17 percent and Lee at 8 percent. Another 17 percent said they were undecided.

One variable that’s scrambled the calculus in the primary is low turnout. Data from Political Data Intelligence (PDI), a research firm that compiles California turnout data and tracks voting trends, found just 11 percent of the state’s mail-in ballots returned as of Friday.

Of those returned ballots, PDI data shows 25 percent are voters aged 65 and older and 14 percent are white — voters who are more likely to skew toward Garvey than Porter. In comparison, just 3 percent of 18- to 34-year-old voters and 5 percent of voters between 35 to 49 have cast their ballots; 10 percent of Asian voters and 9 percent of African Americans have voted.

“It’s really going to be on the cusp of possibly being the lowest-percent-turnout election in the state’s history,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of PDI, who added the stark age divide is “shocking.”

A Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll released last month showed Schiff leading Porter by 13 points in the 45-and-older age bracket, while Porter was ahead by 12 points among voters younger than 45. But the turnout data suggests the younger Californians who favor Porter aren’t the voters who are turning in their ballots at this point.

About 11 million ballots have been mailed to registered voters aged 50 and older, as well as to voters younger than 50, according to PDI data, making the Golden State’s age groups roughly the same size. But while close to two million Californians aged 50 and older have already voted, fewer than 500,000 voters younger than 50 have done the same so far.

“It’s like a hall of mirrors where two people go in and they’re the exact same height, and then they come out the other side, and one is eight times larger than the other. Because that’s what’s happening here — there’s an eightfold increase in the percentages of old people to young people,” Mitchell said.

Porter has expressed concern that those low numbers could keep her from being on the runoff ballot against Schiff in November.

“We’re on track for a low turnout election, even by primary standards. Polls show I tend to do well with younger voters, who tend not to show up in low turnout contests, so this is a worrying sign,” Porter wrote on her weekly Substack.

Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin, who’s worked with the likes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took the turnout data with a grain of salt, noting that early voters are usually older, though he added lower turnout overall “obviously means a more challenging path for Porter.”

An older, whiter turnout could also make it easier for Republican candidate Garvey to join Schiff in the top two.

Underscoring the competitiveness of the race, Schiff and a super PAC supporting him have emphasized Garvey in their ads in the hopes of pushing Porter into third place. Meanwhile, Porter’s campaign has boosted GOP long shot Eric Early, which could hurt Garvey enough to have Porter swing into second place.

“No one in this race has fought harder than Adam when it comes to protecting our democracy, our economy, and our planet,” Schiff campaign spokesman Marisol Samayoa told The Hill, defending the ads around Garvey. “Steve Garvey will be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda if elected. California voters deserve to know the differences between the two top-polling candidates.”

Porter’s campaign has attacked Schiff for elevating Garvey in the primary, but Schiff has called Porter hypocritical for using a similar tactic. Strategists largely expect a Democrat-Republican runoff to be an easier win for Schiff, hence the push to knock Porter out of the running.

“It’s disappointing that Rep. Schiff, a self-described defender of democracy, is playing a cynical game to avoid a competitive election and deprive Californians of a real choice in November,” Porter campaign spokeswoman Lindsay Reilly told The Hill.

“Instead of campaigning on the issues, Rep. Schiff is spending millions of dollars to end this race before it starts. That’s bad for our democracy and bad for Democratic races down ballot, which will see higher Republican turnout numbers if Steve Garvey makes it to the general.”

The ads have also been criticized by the Republican candidates.

Mike Netter, an Early campaign spokesman, told The Hill in a statement, “Katie Porter’s ads calling Eric Early too MAGA and too dangerous for California, correctly state that unlike Steve Garvey, Early proudly supports former President Trump and the Second Amendment.”

“Porter’s ads (predictably) fail to mention however, that the danger Eric Early poses is not to California, but rather to Katie Porter’s, Adam Schiff’s and the entire far-left’s Socialist/Marxist agenda for America.”

Still, experts say the tactic is working for Schiff.

“The results suggest that Schiff’s strategy of boosting Garvey’s candidacy to allow an easier race in the November run-off election appears to have worked, perhaps even better than Schiff’s campaign had envisioned,” said Eric Schickler, the IGS co-director, in a release on the new poll.

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