There have been several diaries criticizing recent remarks by Senator Dianne Feinstein including her speech at the Commonwealth Club when she urged patience with Trump and stated that Trump could be a good president if he learned and changed, her opposition to single payer, agreeing that DACA is on shaky legal ground, and her cooperation, as Ranking Member on the Judiciary Committee, in processing Trump’s judicial nominees. In the diaries and comment sections there have been discussions about the possibility of a successful primary challenge of the four term senior Senator from California. After participating in the comment sections of those stories I thought the topic, can Senator Feinstein be replaced in 2018 with a more progressive Democrat, would a good subject for one of my rare diaries.
I am a 60 year CA resident, and a 40 year political junkie, with seven years in the MSM, in the 70s/80s. Hopefully Senator Feinstein will retire. She is currently the oldest member of the Senate at 84, and would be more than 90 after another full term. However, indications are that she will run for a fifth full term (she served a partial term from 1992-1995). She is actively raising money, including a late August $1,000 a plate fund raiser hosted by long time CA Speaker of the California State Assembly, and former San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown, at the Epic Steakhouse on the San Francisco waterfront.
While it might be possible for Senator Feinstein to lose in a Democratic primary, we don’t have party primaries in CA. In 2010 voters approved Proposition 10 which installed a “gorilla” primary where all candidates, from all parties, run in the same primary and the “top two” then meet in the general election. When Kamala Harris won her Senate seat in 2016 she was opposed in the general election by another Democrat, Loretta Sanchez, a member of the House of Representatives.
if Senator Feinstein decides to run she is, in my opinion, unbeatable in part because of the primary system here in CA. Even if a more progressive Democrat received more votes from Democrats in the primary, there is no way given Senator Feinstein’s name recognition, and bipartisan political support, that she would not make the final two. In the general election, given Senator Feinstein’s cross party appeal, she can’t be beat by a more progressive Democrat because Feinstein will receive most all the GOP vote, a majority of the Indies, and some of the Democratic vote.
One of the real challenges of anyone thinking of running against Feinstein is the cost of campaigning against a well-know incumbent in California. In our state a successful candidate has to run TV ads in four major media markets, Los Angeles/Orange County, San Francisco Bay Area (SF, Oakland, San Jose), San Diego, and Sacramento, to try and establish name recognition on a state-wide basis. CA is so large that retail campaigning has little impact so it’s nearly all TV, radio, and direct mail, and that’s expensive.
Feinstein has always been an accomplished fundraiser, and this election will be no different. In addition, Senator Feinstein has a net worth of $50-100 million, and her husband David Blum has a net worth of nearly $1 billion. So I believe that Feinstein can raise and self-fund as much as $50 million, if that’s what it takes to keep her seat.
There have been several Democrats who have been eyeing a Senate run should Feinstein retire, including CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla, CA State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin DeLeon, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, and US House members Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. While there will be other Democratic candidates on the 2018 Senate primary ballot most political pundits don’t believe that any high profile Democrats, including the five I named, will challenge Feinstein should she run. No challenger will receive any funds from Democratic Party committees or other formal party sources, which makes fund raising a very heavy lift.
I know that many here wish that a well-known, progressive Democrat would challenge Senator Feinstein in 2018. My view is that it would be a waste of very limited resources when we are defending 23 Senate seats (plus 2 Indies who caucus with Democrats) while the GOP defends only 8. As Katherine Spillar, Executive Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation states, regarding an expensive primary campaign and a hotly contested general election between two Democrats, “It would be foolish, but it would also be a waste of precious resources in a year when we need to take back the House, to take the Senate, or both”.