With Feinstein On Her Way Out, Can A Progressive Win Her Senate Seat?

California’s 2024 Senate race is already heating up, with campaign bids from Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.

By Norman Solomon, Truthout

After three decades in the Senate, Dianne Feinstein has announced that she will not seek re-election in 2024, giving Californians a valuable opportunity to elect a progressive to the upper chamber. In this solid blue state, three prominent Democrats in the House — Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee — are eager to replace her.

Schiff has already won a fervent endorsement from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and much of the party’s corporate establishment is lining up behind him. A frequent guest on networks like CNN and MSNBC, the Los Angeles-area representative has ably served the military-industrial complex since entering Congress in 2001, including with his 2002 vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

Schiff’s national media presence has spiked upward as a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the January 6 Select Committee. He has cultivated a reputation as a defender of freedom against the evils of the Kremlin and MAGA Republicans. But Schiff is no friend of civil liberties — he has worked to prevent constitutional rights from taking precedence over the U.S. government’s mass surveillance programs.

Corporate power would be well represented in the Senate by Schiff. Amar Shergill, chair of the California Democratic Party’s large Progressive Caucus, told Truthout that Schiff, like Porter and Lee, has pledged not to take corporate PAC money in the upcoming campaign — “a sign of progressive organizing strength in California” — but, he added, “Schiff most certainly is not progressive.”