The Green Lining To Schiff's Garvey Playbook

SACRAMENTO, California — Environmental groups have mixed feelings about Rep. Adam Schiff's success in elevating Republican Steve Garvey to face off in November's Senate election.

On the one hand, they’re breathing a sigh of relief that instead of having to parse the differences between two closely aligned candidates on climate, they can save their time and resources for swing seat House races in California and other Senate races across the country.

“We are relieved in a way that there won't be a competitive race for the Senate,” said California Environmental Voters deputy campaigns director Matt Abularach-Macias. “Now we get to really turn our attention to focus on the House races that are going to be incredibly competitive for California.”

At the same time, the falling away of Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee could be a missed opportunity for a more robust climate debate between Democrats who largely steered clear of it in the primary.

Environmentalists are also wondering how a Schiff versus Garvey snoozefest might affect voter turnout, especially with a potential climate bond on the November ballot as well as an oil industry-backed measure to overturn a law banning neighborhood oil drilling.

“We've been debating a little bit whether it would juice Democratic turnout to have Schiff versus Porter on the ballot,” said R.L. Miller, political director of Climate Hawks Vote, ahead of the results Tuesday.

The last time California saw a Democrat-versus-Democrat Senate primary was 2018, when then-state Sen. Kevin de León challenged Sen. Dianne Feinstein against a backdrop of high Democratic turnout and anti-Trump fervor. De León got key endorsements, including the California Democratic Party, but it didn't turn into an all-out spending war: He ended up raising a little under $2 million as many of his supporters, including labor and environmental groups, focused their spending on House candidates.

A competitive Porter versus Schiff race could have been another story. “It's an open seat versus an incumbent. I think that's the critical difference,” said Miller. “If it’s Schiff versus Porter, national groups who haven't yet endorsed will want to weigh in and spend on behalf of whichever candidate fits their ideological prescriptions, and they will spend time and money boosting Schiff or Porter. If it's Schiff versus Garvey, they can just forget about the race.”

A Schiff-Porter race would have posed a tough choice for environmentalists. Both candidates put out climate plans well ahead of the election. (Lee put hers out on Friday.) Schiff's focused more on wildfire insurance, while Porter went into fixing the National Flood Insurance Program. Porter tried to position herself as tougher on fossil fuel oversight, while Schiff touted his work to protect public lands and promote renewable energy.

“Each of them just covered different aspects,” said Miller. “But I would not be prepared to say that one of them is substantially better than the other.”

Now that it's Schiff-Garvey, “environmental groups and many other groups will be essentially assured that Adam Schiff is going to win, and the money can go to more competitive races where it's not clear whether a Democrat or Republican will win,” said Jessica Levinson, a law and politics professor at Loyola Marymount University. “Schiff versus Porter would have been a much more expensive race all around.”

But a robust climate discussion would have been no guarantee. “In terms of a full airing of the issues, you have a more nuanced conversation if it's Schiff versus Porter,” said Levinson. “But given the level of the rhetoric, I'm not convinced that it's going to be this grand debate on environmental policy … In political debate in general, I don't hear a lot of nuance. I hear a lot of headline-worthy attacks, but I don't hear a lot of details.”

An earlier version of this report first appeared in the California Climate newsletter. Sign up here!