Republicans have a problem. They can’t get above 40% in statewide elections.
The Public Policy Institute of California’s first poll since the March Senate primaries found: Rep. Adam Schiff 61%, retired baseball player Steve Garvey 37% and “don’t know” at 2%.
Republican friends keep telling me, “I think Garvey can hit a home run.” But the poll confirms what I’m telling them. He’ll be lucky to get 40%.
In 2022, here were the statewide results for the Democratic candidates: Gov. Gavin Newsom 59%, Sen. Alex Padilla 61%, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis 60%, Attorney General Rob Bonta 59%, Secretary of State Shirley Weber 59%, Treasurer Fiona Ma 59% and Controller Malia Cohen 55%. Average: 59%.
The best performing Republican by a long shot was Lanhee Chen, at 45% in his race for controller.
This year the U.S. Senate race is the only statewide contest on the Nov. 5 ballot. National issues will come to the fore. President Biden certainly has his problems on both foreign and domestic issues. It has affected his standing in the polls, while not really helping opponent Donald Trump. PPIC pegged the presidential race in California at 51% in support of Biden, 31% for Trump, 31% for someone else, 2% don’t know and 1% won’t vote.
The generally low support for President Biden shows dissatisfaction with his policies, especially with inflation the past three years. But he probably will pull near the 64% he achieved in 2020. Neither candidate will be campaigning in California except to troll for campaign cash among the wealthy. Neither side will run TV or social media ads.
There will be no attempt by Trump to win here. That will actually help Republican candidates up and down the slate. The less Republicans can be tied to Trump, the better for election purposes in California.
But another problem for Garvey is something I’ve brought up before: The top two system. In the primary election, the system elevates to a runoff the first and second place finishers, regardless of political party. Since the creation of the “top two” following passage by voters in 2010, it severely has wounded the GOP, which has won no statewide offices since.
Top two allowed Schiff to play election hanky-panky. His ads slyly tied Garvey to former President Trump, even though Garvey did not seek Trump’s support and didn’t endorse him. That helped Garvey gain votes at the expense of Katie Porter.
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The real problem is that “top two” also prevented head-to-head debates within each party. They would have pitted Garvey against Eric Early, a Trumpian Republican, and James Bradley, a health-care executive. And Schiff would have debated only Porter and Lee.
Instead, we got desultory debates among Garvey and the three Democrats. Democracy was badly served.
Just speculation. If some share of the vote was peeled away from Schiff for a third-party candidate to his left, and if Republicans ran a more energetic candidate than Garvey, a GOP victory at least would move beyond the realm of a Hollywood fantasy. But with “top two,” that’s not going to happen.
To grab this opportunity and get back in the game, Republicans need to put repealing the “top two” system on the ballot as soon as possible. Call it the Restore Democracy Initiative.
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board and blogs at: johnseiler.substack.com
