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      Barbara Lee’s idealism inspires loyalty in her district. Can it carry her to the Senate?

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      Barbara Lee has never lost an election.That is quite a feat, given that she has built a career championing unpopular, even radical causes.Two decades ago, she was famously the only member of Congress to vote against giving the president broad, open-ended war powers following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She received hate mail and death threats from all over the country in response. Before joining Congress, she was one of the only members of the state legislature to challenge California’s “three strikes” law, which escalated sentences for people with prior felonies. She got death threats then, too.Through it all, her congressional district in Oakland and Berkeley, which Lee calls “the wokest district in the country”, has remained loyal to her, repeatedly re-electing her with more than 80% of the vote. In more than two decades in the House, Lee, 77, has become the highest-ranking Black woman in the chamber. As her aspirations turn to the US Senate, however, she may be poised to lose an election for the first time.Lee’s campaign has consistently lagged behind those of two House Democratic colleagues – Katie Porter of Orange county, and Adam Schiff of Los Angeles. More recent polls have also found her trailing the Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star of the LA Dodgers. Schiff entered 2024 with $35m in campaign funds and Porter had $13m – Lee has lagged, with just $816,000 in the bank as of January. In the state’s no-partisan primary system, only the top two candidates will advance to the general election in November.As millions of Californians start filling out their primary ballots, Lee said she has given “no thought at all” to the possibility that she might lose.“I have a record of being on the right side of issues – and fighting for that,” she said. And that, she said, “resonates with the majority of Californians”.While Schiff and Porter both made a name for themselves during the Trump presidency – the former is famous for leading the first impeachment effort against Donald Trump, while the latter became nationally known for wielding a whiteboard against hapless conservative appointees – Lee has spent her decades in the House assiduously forwarding progressive policies.View image in fullscreen“She didn’t come on MSNBC every other day,” Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressman who is co-chairing Lee’s campaign, told the Guardian soon after she launched her campaign last year. Lee doesn’t have the same name recognition, or the funds her opponents have, he said. “But she has a record of being an iconic progressive champion.”In an election where the leading Democratic candidates have nearly identical voting records, Lee’s political idealism could be what distinguishes her campaign, or what dooms it.Notably, she was the first to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. On 8 October – as Israel’s military prepared to lay siege to the Gaza Strip following the 7 October attack by Hamas – she called on the world to come together to “try to stop the escalation”.Porter initially declined to take the stance, before eventually coming out in favour of a “bilateral ceasefire”; Schiff still opposes one.“I don’t think you have to temper your message,” Lee said. “Because authenticity is extremely important for voters.”Her thought process now, she added, is very similar to what it was post-9/11, when she opposed the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that gave George W Bush sweeping anti-terrorism war powers, warning that military retaliation could spiral out of control.Back then, her views alienated her from members of her own party. Decades later, both Democrats and Republicans have expressed regret over the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “She was right. I was wrong,” Bernie Sanders said at a debate during his presidential run in 2019. “So was everybody else in the House.”Often, her ideas on domestic policy have been equally audacious – and prescient. She was an early proponent of Medicare for all in 2003, a position that has since gained momentum among Democrats and progressives. Last month, she made headlines discussing a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $50 per hour – seven times the current federal minimum wage of $7.25. She defended the idea, citing a United Way report funding that a yearly income of $127,000 was, as she said, “just barely enough” for a family in the Bay Area. Her fellow Democrats have backed a more modest (but perhaps equally improbable in Congress) proposal to increase the minimum to $20 0r $25.“I don’t think candidates should moderate their positions, because authenticity is extremely important for voters,” she said. “I’ve been consistent over the years even if I have to stand alone.”As much as her ideals may have isolated her on Capitol Hill, they have been embraced in Oakland and Berkeley. After her 2001 stand against the AUMF, she was re-elected to her office with 81% of the vote.“Here in the Bay Area, we have deep anti-war roots, spanning back to the Vietnam era,” said Aimee Allison, president and founder of the advocacy group She the People. A former combat medic, Allison left the military with an honourable discharge as a conscientious objector, during the Gulf War. “Barbara Lee is coming out of that grand tradition.”View image in fullscreenLee was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in southern California. But it was in Oakland the the Bay Area, in the birthplace of the Black Panthers and the centre of the peace movement, that she came of political age. “We’re the heart and soul of the peace and justice movement,” Lee said. “And a lot of my understanding and clarity on issues around national security and the defence budget come directly from the Bay Area.”Lee landed there after leaving an abusive relationship, two young children in tow, and was for a stint unhoused, floating between motels. “I understand the housing crisis in a way that probably a lot of senators don’t,” she said.Eventually, she enrolled as a student at Oakland’s Mills college, and began volunteering at the Black Panthers’ Community Learning Center. Back then, she didn’t believe in the national political system, which had repeatedly harmed and failed Black and minority Americans.” I was an activist. I was a revolutionary,” she said in an interview with the Kennedy presidential library. “I was not going to register to vote; there was no way I was going to get involved in politics.”Then Lee met Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to Congress – and in 1972, the first woman of colour to run for president. And she found a politician who spoke to her. Lee signed on to work for Chisholm’s presidential campaign, and then started working for the congressman Ron Dellums – the firebrand anti-war activist and anti-apartheid campaigner.In 1990, she ran for office herself. “She was asking about the seat through the 12 years I was in it,” said Elihu Harris, a former California representative who has been friends with Lee since college. “Like ‘move over, move over.’ It was a joke but she wanted to be in elected office.” When Harris stepped down as a representative to serve as Oakland mayor, Lee took his place. “It wasn’t even a close election,” Harris chuckled.View image in fullscreenShe was elected to the state senate, and then succeeded her mentor Dellums as a US congresswoman – serving 25 years. Now the activist and revolutionary who once refused to register to vote said she’s seeking a “larger megaphone” in the Senate.If elected, she would be the third Black woman to serve in the chamber. Only nine Black people have ever served in the Senate, and only two – Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and now vice-president, Kamala Harris – were women. “I made the decision to run because I think my voice as an African American woman, and my perspective, is needed there,” Lee said. “We’re really at a crossroads. And Black women really understand these crossroads – and how to fight and how to lift up those voices that haven’t been heard.”Leftist and progressive groups have generally backed Lee over Porter, both of whom are members of the Congressional Progressive caucus, in large part due to her depth of experience.Lee, at 77, has brushed off concerns that she is too old to seek office. Indeed, even in an election cycle where the advanced years of the leading candidates for president – and their mental fitness to serve – has been at top of mind for voters, Lee’s experience has especially appealed to younger voters and progressives.“Even if she comes in third, or she comes in fourth, then I’m very happy to have voted for the only candidate who is actually working to stop a genocide,” said Jonah Gottlieb, a Democratic party delegate based in Berkeley. In early October, after Lee had called for a ceasefire, but before she had signed onto a ceasefire resolution put forth by other congressional progressives, Gottlieb joined more than two dozen Jewish constituents outside her Oakland office asking her to add her name to the bill.A few days later, her staff met with them as well as Palestinian activists. On 18 October, she signed on to the resolution.“I know that she has really good relationships with progressive organisations in California, and she will work really effectively with these grassroots movements, in a way that I haven’t seen from Katie Porter and certainly haven’t seen from Adam Schiff,” said Gottlieb.View image in fullscreenLee is also known to keep things copacetic in Congress – perhaps paradoxically, given tendency to take tough stands.“Everybody is okay with her,” said Julie Diaz Waters, a former intern and board member at Emerge California, a non-profit that recruits and trains Democratic women in politics. “Something I learned from her in terms of navigating relationships – is that you don’t try to make enemies in this game.” Lee has a habit of phoning her colleagues before a vote – to let them know that she won’t be supporting their legislation. “I call it stabbing in the front, not the back,” Waters said. “It’s a commitment to transparency. It’s a respectful way to operate.”Though Lee doesn’t hold the centrist fidelity for bipartisanship, she does have a record of working with Republicans. “She’s pragmatic and she understands the legislative process, the political process,” said Harris. “So Barbara is always someone who’s willing to seek and find common ground.”Less than two years after she dramatically rejected George W Bush’s request for legal authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of 9/11, Lee worked with him on the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) – the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in the world.Bush has since made the multi-billion dollar program one of his defining legacies.Lee kept working to improve the program, including to eliminate provisions pushing ineffective abstinence-only education and restricting outreach to sex workers. In the Senate, Lee said, she remains dedicated to fighting for reproductive rights and freedoms, against a tide of restrictive policies across the US.“I’ve lived this, so I know,” said Lee, who has been open about her own back-alley abortion in Mexico. She was 16 at the time, and the Roe v Wade case establishing a right to abortions had yet to be ruled.“As someone who comes from a community that has been discriminated against – historically we had to fight for all of our freedoms,” she said. “This is in my DNA.” More

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      Snow Storm Leaves Thousands in California and Nevada Without Power

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      Up to two feet of snow fell in some areas and combined with gusty winds as the risk of avalanches remained high. Thousands of residents were left without power, and life came to a standstill for many in the Sierra Nevada region on Saturday after a winter storm dumped as much as two feet of snow overnight and created treacherous conditions.About 49,000 customers in Nevada and California were without electricity on Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. With whiteout conditions in the mountains, ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area paused operations. And highway officials shut down Interstate 80, the main artery that traverses the Sierra Nevada over Donner Summit, a key trucking route from the San Francisco Bay Area. Traffic cameras revealed semi trucks parked alongside the highway, waiting out the overnight closure.​​California Highway Patrol said there was no estimated time of reopening the freeway. The Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, a research station located atop Donner Summit, reported that 20.7 inches of snow had fallen by Saturday morning, and that 39.8 inches had fallen over the 48 hours leading up to it. Palisades Tahoe, a resort that closed ski area operations on Saturday across all terrain, reported 24 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours.Yosemite National Park remained closed at least through noon Sunday, park officials said.A maintenance worker clearing snow in South Lake Tahoe.David Calvert for The New York TimesEd Miller, a resident of Tahoma on Lake Tahoe’s West Shore, said he lost power around 10 p.m. on Friday night, before his generator kicked in a few minutes later. Mr. Miller, who has lived in the Lake Tahoe area for almost 50 years, is accustomed to power outages. He said having a generator is essential for living in the mountains, where wind gusts knock branches off trees and take down power lines on a regular basis.In the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the huge mountain range that runs along the spine of California, forecasters rated the avalanche danger as high, and they expected avalanche hazards to worsen throughout the day because of the new snow and continued winds. Overnight on Friday, winds reached as high as 171 miles per hour. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Adam Schiff Is Suddenly a Democratic Front Runner in California

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      “I have to go get a photo of Adam!”A young woman in dark glasses, a tan trench coat and a lavender bucket hat darts into the street and runs after the white Porsche convertible in which Representative Adam Schiff and his wife are slowly being driven through Chinatown as part of the Lunar New Year’s parade in Los Angeles. Planting herself several feet in front of the car, the woman snaps some pics and then calls out to the passing House member, “Thank you for all that you do!”As she heads back toward her friends, I try to stop her, asking why she is a fan of Mr. Schiff, who is running for the Senate to succeed Dianne Feinstein, who died in office last September at age 90. The woman keeps moving but gushes, with a hint of perplexity suggesting I’m an idiot for having to ask: “Everybody loves him! My mother-in-law in Madison, Wisconsin, loves him! He’s done so much!”Jake Michaels for The New York TimesAnd with that, she melts back into the crowd, not bothering to elaborate on what it is that Mr. Schiff has done. Not that she needs to. Around his home state — and beyond — the 12-term Democrat has achieved bona fide celebrity status thanks to his emergence as a prime antagonist of Donald Trump.As the House member who spearheaded Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, who played a key role in the Jan. 6 select committee and who has served as a top Trump critic on cable news, Mr. Schiff has been vilified across the MAGAverse. He has earned no fewer than three puerile nicknames from the former president: Pencil Neck, Liddle’ Adam Schiff and, my favorite, Shifty Schiff. More seriously, House Republicans booted him from the intelligence committee early last year and later censured him for his role in the Russia investigation, claiming he advanced politically motivated lies about Mr. Trump that endangered national security. All this, in turn, has made Mr. Schiff a hero to the anti-Trump masses.At multiple points along the parade route, in fact, people yell their gratitude and encouragement. “Keep it up!” urges Chris (first name only!), a tour guide visiting from Tampa, raising a fist in salute.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Newsom Faces Questions Over Panera Amid Fast Food Wage Law Exemption

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      The California governor last year said a fast-food minimum wage law didn’t apply to Panera Bread because of the “nature of negotiation.” He changed course after a scathing report suggested otherwise.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California has increasingly been a national presence, flying to Washington to meet with President Biden, appearing on Sunday news shows and targeting conservative states with ads for reproductive rights.This week, however, a more local concern abruptly drew his attention to Sacramento: allegations that the Democratic governor favored a campaign donor who owns two dozen Panera Bread franchises by pushing for a carve-out in a new minimum wage law.The controversy, triggered by a report in Bloomberg, has unleashed a flurry of charges and countercharges. The State Legislature’s Republican leaders have written to the California attorney general, demanding an investigation. Editorial boards have weighed in. (“Californians knead answers,” the Los Angeles Times opinion page declared.) A spokesman for the governor’s office dismissed the accusation of favoritism as “absurd.” Political analysts compared the furor to another restaurant-related pickle involving Mr. Newsom.“It’s hard not to think of the French Laundry,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, alluding to the 2020 haute cuisine dinner the governor had during pandemic lockdown that helped fuel an unsuccessful but still troublesome recall effort against Mr. Newsom.“It’s déjà vu all over again, although this time Newsom seems to be trying to address it before a small problem turns into a big problem,” Mr. Schnur said. “Still, his office still hasn’t provided a credible explanation for why the bill was drafted the way it was.”At issue is legislation signed by the governor in September that will increase the minimum wage for more than a half-million fast-food workers to $20 per hour starting next month. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Absurd’: Gavin Newsom hits back over Panera wage-exemption puzzle

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      Gavin Newsom is hitting back at a news report that he pushed for an exception to the state’s new fast-food minimum wage law that benefits a wealthy campaign donor.California’s minimum wage is $16 per hour. But starting on 1 April, most fast-food restaurants in the state must pay their workers at least $20 an hour under legislation Newsom signed last year. However, the law does not apply to restaurants that have on-site bakeries and sell bread as a standalone menu item.That exception puzzled some industry watchers, and was never fully explained by Newsom or other supporters of the law. Then on Wednesday, Bloomberg News reported that the exemption was linked to opposition from the Panera Bread franchisee Greg Flynn, whose company owns 24 of the restaurants in California and has donated to Newsom’s campaigns.“This story is absurd,” the California governor’s spokesman, Alex Stack, said on Thursday.Stack said that the governor’s legal team believes Panera Bread is not exempt from the law. They said that to be exempt from the minimum wage law as a bakery, restaurants must produce bread for sale on site. The governor’s office said many chain bakeries, such as Panera Bread, mix dough at a centralized off-site location and then ship that dough to the restaurant for baking and sale.Since last year, Panera Bread has been reported as a restaurant exempt from the law and Newsom’s office has not said otherwise, even when the governor was directly asked why the chain was exempt.A message left with Panera Bread about their baking process was not immediately returned.Stack said the governor never met with Flynn about the law. A message left with the Flynn Group was not returned on Thursday. Flynn told Bloomberg he did not play a role in crafting the exemption.The Bloomberg story, citing anonymous sources, says Flynn urged the governor’s top aides to consider whether chains such as Panera should be considered fast food. It does not say that Newsom and Flynn spoke directly about the law.The Flynn Group and Flynn Properties operate 2,600 restaurants and fitness centers across 44 states, according to the company’s website. Campaign finance records show Flynn Properties and Greg Flynn – the founder, chairman and chief executive – have donated more than $220,000 to Newsom’s political campaigns since 2017. That included a $100,000 donation to Newsom’s campaign to defeat a recall attempt in 2021.The minimum wage law passed in 2023. In 2022, Flynn had publicly opposed a similar proposal, writing in an op-ed in Capitol Weekly that it would “effectively kill the franchise business model in the state”.Republican leaders in the state Legislature on Thursday criticized Newsom for the possible connection.“Put simply, campaign contributions should not buy carveouts in legislation,” the Republican state senate leader Brian Jones said. “It’s unacceptable.”Assemblymember James Gallagher, the Republican leader in the assembly, said the attorney general, Rob Bonta, or another entity responsible for investigating conflicts of interest should look into the matter.“This exemption, there is no explanation for it. Someone had to push for it,” he said.The law was authored by Assemblymember Chris Holden, a Democrat from Pasadena, who told reporters on Thursday he was not involved in the negotiations over the bill’s final amendments, which included the $20 minimum wage increase and the exemption for bakeries.He said those talks happened between the business community and labor unions – groups Holden said were brought together “through the governor’s leadership”.Holden said he did not know Flynn or his status as a Newsom campaign donor. He declined to discuss if there were any legitimate policy reasons for exempting bakeries from the law.“I’m not going to try to start parceling every individual group,” Holden said. “The way that the bill moved forward, everyone who’s in is in.”Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California and the University of California Berkeley, said the issue had the potential to damage Newsom, much like when Newsom went to dinner at the French Laundry during the pandemic at a time when he was urging people to avoid public gatherings to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That issue gave momentum to an effort to recall Newsom from office, which eventually qualified for the ballot in 2021 but was ultimately unsuccessful.“The last time the governor got in the middle of a restaurant-related controversy, his hesitation to address it turned a small problem into a much bigger one,” Schur said. “It’s more than possible that there is a perfectly reasonable substantive policy-based reason for this exception. But if that reason exists, the governor is obligated to share it with the people of California. Otherwise they’ll assume that he did a big favor for a big donor.” More

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      On Covering the Arts in California

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      A conversation with Robin Pogrebin, a Los Angeles-based arts writer for The New York Times.The Frieze Art Fair at Paramount Studios in 2019.Graham Walzer for The New York TimesThough New York is often thought of as the center of the art world, there’s plenty going on in California.The New York Times has been covering California’s ambitious museums, top-notch art schools and adventurous galleries for years. Some of my favorite recent articles discussed how the Los Angeles art scene is eclipsing the Bay Area’s, how old San Francisco theaters are rethinking the size of their seats and how San Diego is finally getting its answer to the Hollywood Bowl.Robin Pogrebin, a longtime arts writer for The Times, moved to Los Angeles from New York last fall to bolster the coverage, reporting on art, architecture, music, theater and cultural institutions in California.Just this week, she published an article on the Resnicks, an L.A. couple who have made big donations to cultural organizations but have come under scrutiny for their water use, and another on the increasing recognition of Asian artists at the Frieze Art Fair, which opens today in Santa Monica.I spoke to Robin about her impressions of the West Coast art scene. Here is our conversation, lightly edited:In such a big state, how do you think about what to focus on?I had always considered the West Coast an important part of our cultural coverage, given that many important museums and galleries are here and that Los Angeles has a long tradition of producing artists. Hollywood also has the potential to feed the theater and dance worlds, and classical music as well as opera have their own vibrant followings here.Now that I’m based here, I’m exploring, discovering, learning and responding to what strikes me as newsworthy or interesting. I am out for lunches and dinners every day with people who can help me understand the cultural ecosystem here, attending events almost every night in many different arts disciplines. I’m keeping track of potential trends worth noting and individual stories worth telling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      She’s famous for taking on CEOs. Can Katie Porter win the California senate race?

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      In 2018, a political newcomer named Katie Porter defeated a two-term incumbent Republican to represent California’s 45th district in the US House of Representatives, turning the famously conservative Orange county blue.Porter, a 44-year-old law professor and Elizabeth Warren protege, had a refreshing message, vowing to stay laser-focused on addressing the ways America’s financial institutions prey on ordinary people.Over six years as the representative of Nixon’s birthplace and Reagan’s political stronghold, Porter has built a national political profile with viral videos of her confronting bank CEOs and Republican appointees with basic financial calculations, illustrating her numbers on a quickly iconic whiteboard.Now, she’s hoping her image as a fierce fighter, a savvy communicator and a champion of ordinary people against big corporations will propel her to the US Senate.Porter is one of three prominent Democrats running to fill the seat of the late US senator Dianne Feinstein come November.This time, Porter is not running as the most progressive candidate in the race. She is competing against Barbara Lee, a longtime Black congresswoman from Oakland whose sterling progressive record includes being the sole member of Congress to vote against authorizing George W Bush’s war in Afghanistan, and one of the first Democrats to call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza last year.The campaign Porter wants to run for US Senate is one focused on her economic policy record, her willingness to break with the national Democratic establishment, and her comparative youth. At age 50, Porter is 13 years younger than the Democratic frontrunner in the race, Adam Schiff, and 27 years younger than Lee – a representative of a completely different generation than most of Washington’s bipartisan gerontocracy.View image in fullscreenBut the US Senate race Porter wants to run is looking very different from the race she’s actually competing in.As the civilian death toll of Israel’s war in Gaza divides Democrats and alienates younger and more progressive voters, Porter has become the centrist candidate in a three-Democrat race with an unexpected focus on foreign policy. While Schiff has maintained a staunchly pro-Israel stance, and Lee called for a ceasefire in Gaza on 8 October, Porter initially cast blame for the conflict on the US’s foreign policy towards Iran, and then, in mid-December, belatedly broke with the Biden administration and called for a “bilateral ceasefire”, in what was seen by some progressives as a much slower and less principled response than Lee’s.Current polling for the race shows Schiff in the lead, Porter coming in second among Democrats and Lee trailing relatively far behind. But Porter is also polling neck-and-neck with a late Republican entrant to California’s non-partisan Senate primary: Steve Garvey, an ageing LA Dodgers baseball star.Garvey – a 1970s pinup-boy candidate with a widely panned debate performance and a troubled family life – has no chance of winning the general election as a Republican in California. But the state’s Republican base is large enough that Garvey does have a chance of beating Porter and advancing to the runoff, and ensuring that Schiff, the most centrist of the California Democratic candidates, can cruise to victory in November.A Pac backed by cryptocurrency investors is already hammering Porter with millions of dollars in attack ads to push her out of the race.Some California progressives say that at another moment, it might have been easy for supporters of Lee to take the pragmatic stance and vote for Porter, to ensure that California voters at least get a choice between a progressive and a centrist Democrat in the general election. But this moment is different, they say, with widespread grief and outrage over the killings of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza making many want to cast a moral vote for Lee – whether it’s strategic or not.Then there are the Democrats who are furious with Porter for entering the Senate race at all. Her purple House district, which she held on to with a margin of only 9,000 votes in a fiercely fought 2022 election, is now one of the closely contested races that will determine whether Democrats can win control of the House of Representatives.Porter’s campaign argues that her House district is less vulnerable than it appears: “This district was carried by President Biden by over 10 points in 2020,” campaign spokesperson Lindsay Reilly said. “It was particularly competitive last November because of redistricting, which meant Katie had to introduce herself to 70% new voters during a tough election year for Democrats. But in a presidential year, Democrats in CA-47 [the 47th congressional district] have a clear path to victory.”But with Porter and Schiff, both prodigious Democratic fundraisers, focused on competing against each other, they’re taking up attention and cash that might otherwise be devoted to helping vulnerable candidates in races that will not inevitably be won by a Democrat, some California Democrats argue.A San Francisco Chronicle analysis found that in recent years, Porter, Schiff and Lee have voted the exact same way at least 94% of the time. With control of the House of Representatives up for grabs during a potential second Trump presidency, how much does the variety of Democratic senator that California elects even matter?For Porter’s staunch supporters, her battle to win a US Senate seat is a fight worth fighting, even in a troubled political landscape.In a more global context, the current California Senate race might not even be considered a fight between three members of the exact same party, said Alex Lee, a young progressive Democrat who represents the Bay Area in the state assembly.The US’s two-party system has made the Democratic party “so big of a tent” that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Biden are members of one party, even though, “In Europe, they’d be two political parties apart,” he said.California has the world’s fifth-largest economy, and is home to some of the biggest and most influential corporations on earth. If the state had a truly progressive senator who was able to challenge billionaire CEOs and hold Wall Street accountable it would mean a lot, Lee said, which is why he has endorsed Porter.View image in fullscreenLee said he had been impressed to hear Porter talk about housing affordability and the problems it caused for younger people and lower-income workers in every campaign speech, before every audience.That subject – not a typical one for a national candidate – seemed to resonate, he said: even people secure in their own housing situation, like wealthy Orange county homeowners, “are concerned about their kids, their grandkids. Are they going to be able to afford this?”One of Porter’s central pledges to voters is that she “doesn’t take a cent of corporate Pac or federal lobbyist money”, as her campaign website puts it. Though she has touted in some fundraising emails that she does not take donations from executives at big oil, big pharma or Wall Street banks, the Daily Beast found that some people with high-level jobs on Wall Street had donated to her, though it found that “overall she has relatively paltry support from corporate or special-interest linked entities”, compared with other members of Congress. (Nearly 200 corporate Pacs contributed $2m to Schiff between 1999 and 2022, CalMatters reported.)Schiff attacked Porter in the last debate for taking money from “Wall Street bankers”, but his campaign received donations from two of the same Wall Street donors highlighted in the Daily Beast’s report.While Schiff has channeled his professional expertise as a prosecutor into managing Trump’s first impeachment, and becoming a national spokesperson and bestselling author on America’s crisis of democracy, Porter’s backers say she attracts a different, and more fervent, kind of political support.Kari Helgeson, a 58-year-old healthcare worker and Porter “superfan”, said she owns socks with one of Porter’s favorite slogans, “No time for bullshit”, and a whiteboard autographed by the congresswoman herself.Though she lives in Eureka, at the north-west edge of California, Helgeson has been donating “for years” to Porter’s congressional campaigns nearly 700 miles to the south.“She really is for the people, she truly is,” Helgeson said. “She is a huge advocate for the working class and unions.”Helgeson praised Porter’s brilliance in grilling people like JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, her willingness to actually show up on union picket lines, and her relatable persona.“She really is a single mom that drives a minivan and is managing two households, somehow, across the country,” Helgeson said. “She’s not fancy with her dress, she is who she is, and she’ll speak her mind, and she’s not afraid.”The fact that Porter still drives a minivan is important because it means “she’s not bought,” Helgeson said. Though Porter holds a powerful position and is known for her confrontational moments, “She’s not a bully. She is powerful with facts.”Helgeson said she was excited, but not surprised, when a strong majority of her fellow members of the National United Healthcare Workers voted to endorse Porter in the Senate primary last fall.While Helgeson said she respected Lee’s record and thought she still seemed sharp, “I don’t want to put the age thing in here, but it does kind of matter. It is a six year term.”If Porter makes it to a two-person race against Schiff, being a woman may be an advantage in a state that used to have two female senators and that, if Schiff wins, may end up having two men.“Do we need more white men, more white straight men in politics? I would say, as a progressive, we don’t,” said Fatima Iqbal-Zubair, the chair of the Progressive Caucus of California’s Democratic Party.But the experience that Porter would bring to the senate as a white woman from Orange county, Iqbal-Zubair said, is very different from the experience Lee would bring, as a Black single mom from Oakland who has spoken publicly about experiencing homelessness and domestic violence.For progressives, the chance to elect a Black woman with that life experience and an uncompromising progressive record is “so unique” and a “once in a lifetime” opportunity, Iqbal-Zubair said.But arguments that Porter should not have run for senate to protect her House district reeked of misogyny. “Women are always told to ‘wait your turn’,” she said.“I think she saw Schiff, and she thought Schiff wasn’t it.” More

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      Blizzard Is Forecast to Bring ‘Life-Threatening’ Conditions to California

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      For the second year in a row, the Greater Lake Tahoe area is expected to begin March buried in deep, powdery, windswept snow.A rare warning for “life-threatening blizzard conditions” is in effect for the mountains of the Sierra, including Lake Tahoe, for a storm that could bring a three feet of snow or more from Thursday through Sunday, according to forecasters.Blizzard warnings are reserved for the worst snow storms with whiteout conditions that could last hours or, in this case, days, with the weather likely making travel in the region treacherous. The National Weather Service in Reno, Nev., has only issued eight blizzard warnings since 2002. The last warning in the Tahoe area was almost exactly a year ago: Feb. 27, 2023.During last year’s storm, two feet of snow fell in less than 24 hours, which, combined with earlier snows, made it challenging to distinguish houses from snow banks. Winds up to 50 miles per hour combined with the light snow made it difficult to see things only feet away.

      Forecast for severe winter weather for Thursday More