The Race to Succeed Dianne Feinstein in California Gets Even More Crowded

(Bloomberg Government) -- California Rep. Barbara Lee, an anti-war progressive who’s one of the longest-serving women in Congress, on Tuesday joined the race for the Senate seat that’s been held since 1992 by fellow Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the latest in what could become a long list of contenders.

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In her announcement video, Lee talked about a difficult early life, including an abortion and single motherhood. “But by the grace of God, that didn’t stop me,” she said.

Lee, 76, has represented part of the San Francisco Bay Area since 1998. “To those who say my time has passed, well when does making change go out of style,” she says in the video.

Reps. Adam Schiff (D) and Katie Porter (D) already are in the race, and Rep. Ro Khanna (D), who’s from the same part of the state as Lee, has said his entry into the March 2024 primary would in part depend on whether Lee builds “a strong team with a clear plan to win.”

Though “probably less known” than Schiff and Porter, “she has been a progressive icon in the Bay Area for years” on civil rights issues, said Rose Kapolczynski, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist who ran campaigns for ex-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Lee’s campaign announced endorsements from the Congressional Black Caucus PAC and from Northern California political figures including San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Willie Brown, a former California Assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor.

California is the most populous state and has 13 media markets, so Senate campaigns are far more expensive than House races. Lee will need to significantly ramp up her fundraising to disseminate her message to a statewide audience: she had just $52,000 cash-on-hand in her House campaign account as 2023 began, compared with $20.9 million for Schiff, $7.4 million for Porter, and $5.3 million for Khanna.

Lee will get outside help from a super political action committee called She Speaks For Me, which may receive funding from some wealthy progressive donors who want to overhaul the criminal justice system. Super PACs may raise donations in unlimited amounts.

Feinstein, 89, will retire at the end of this term. She’s the Senate’s longest-serving woman and its oldest member.

Under California’s “Top 2" primary rules, all candidates appear on one ballot and the two leading vote-getters advance to the November general election, regardless of party affiliation.

With no top-flight Republican having yet announced in staunchly Democratic California, it’s possible two Democrats will again advance to the general election. That happened in 2016, when Kamala Harris defeated then-Rep. Loretta Sanchez, and in 2018, when Feinstein beat then-state-Sen. Kevin de León.

Chisholm a Mentor

Lee was born and grew up in El Paso, Texas, where her grandfather was the city’s first Black letter carrier. At her Southern California high school, Lee was the first Black cheerleader. She was a single mother of two and president of the black student union at Mills College in Oakland when her path in life veered into politics.

Lee has written that she wasn’t even a voter when Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.), the first Black woman ever elected to Congress, spoke on campus. Inspired, Lee registered to vote, became an organizer for Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign, and attended the Democratic National Convention as a Chisholm delegate.

“The rest is history,” Lee wrote in 2021. “She became my mentor, inspiration, and confidant when I began my public service career as an intern and then a senior staff member in the office of our beloved, the late Congressman Ron Dellums.”

“Congresswoman Chisholm showed me the power of `unbought and unbossed’ women of color to change our country,” Lee wrote in a book of Chisholm interviews. “Her words guide my work in Congress every day, and her vision for America is one that we all should continue striving for, with the hope it will soon be realized.”

Lee spent more than a decade on the staff of Dellums (D-Calif.) before pursuing elective office on her own.

In 1990, she was elected to the California Assembly and was the first Black woman to represent a state legislative district north of Los Angeles. She won a seat in the state Senate in 1996. In February 1998, Dellums resigned from Congress and endorsed Lee, who easily won the April special election to succeed him. She hasn’t faced serious opposition.

Lee is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a former Congressional Black Caucus chair.

Three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she attracted nationwide attention — and death threats — after she was the lone House member who voted against authorizing military force against those who perpetrated the attacks.

“I didn’t quit when I refused to give the president completely unlimited war powers after September 11,” Lee said in her announcement video.

In 2021, before the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that the established abortion rights nationally, Lee disclosed at a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing she obtained a “back alley” abortion in Mexico after a teenage pregnancy pre-Roe.

Lee surely would be succeeded by a Democrat in California’s 12th District, a stronghold for the party that includes Oakland and Berkeley.

There are no Black women in the Senate; the last was Harris, who vacated California’s other Senate seat in January 2021 to become Joe Biden’s vice president.

See also:

• Porter running for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat

• Schiff says he wants to succeed Feinstein in the Senate

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Giroux in Washington at ggiroux@bgov.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Katherine Rizzo at krizzo@bgov.com; Loren Duggan at lduggan@bgov.com

(Updates with Breed and Brown endorsements in the sixth paragraph.)

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