Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) easily defeated former Los Angeles Dodgers All-Star Steve Garvey, a Republican, Tuesday to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate term, which ends in January, and, separately, to serve a new six-year Senate term.
The Associated Press called the race for Schiff minutes after the polls closed at 11 p.m. Eastern.
Schiff has spent the past two decades in the House and rose to national prominence when he led the first impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, urging senators to remove him from office. Schiff centered his Senate campaign message on being the country’s chief Trump antagonist and promised to keep up the pressure on the Republican presidential nominee should he win a second White House term.
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Trump, in turn, called Schiff “the enemy from within” and a “sleazebag.”
“These are bad people,” Trump said. “We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yeah, they are, to me, the enemy from within.”
Trump also turned on Garvey in late October, telling Fox News that his lack of political experience sunk his bid. He also told reporters that Garvey “made a big mistake because he hasn’t reached out to MAGA, and if he doesn’t have MAGA, he’s got no chance.”
At times, Garvey seemed like a fish out of water on the campaign trail. He struggled on policy matters and skipped the California Republican Party convention and the Republican National Convention. He made a concerted effort to appeal to Latino voters, but it wasn’t enough in the end to overcome Schiff’s popularity in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.
In their first and only televised debate, Garvey painted Schiff as a “career politician” who is more concerned with personal political aspirations than helping Californians.
“This man hasn’t done anything over the last 24 years on any of these things that have given us any consistency in life,” Garvey said, claiming Schiff was too obsessed with a personal vendetta against Trump to care about the needs of Californians.
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Schiff called Garvey a “MAGA mini-me in a baseball uniform.”
Schiff was heavily criticized during the primaries for helping Garvey get on the general election ballot over Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) because he thought he had a better chance of beating him.