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    California’s Primary Election Is Today

    The nominees for president and many other offices will be decided today, Super Tuesday, as voters in California and 14 other states head to the polls.Super Tuesday voting in 2020.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesWelcome to Super Tuesday.California and 14 other states are casting ballots for presidential nominees and many down-ballot races today, on the busiest day of the primary season.California, which used to hold its primaries in June, switched in 2020 to holding primaries in presidential election years in March in the hope of increasing the state’s influence on the national outcome. But that part of the primary is a little anticlimactic this year, with President Biden and Donald Trump already on glide paths to secure their parties’ nominations. (You can follow nationwide Super Tuesday results and the latest developments here.)What’s likely to be more interesting this time are the many other races and questions on the California ballot.Voters will have their say on State Assembly and State Senate candidates, and on a ballot measure championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that would finance mental health treatment in the state. And congressional races in the state could help determine control of the U.S. House, where Republicans now have only a seven-seat majority.California’s delegation currently has 40 Democrats, 11 Republicans and one vacant seat. And 10 of the 74 most competitive House races in the nation are in California, according to the Cook Political Report, including several in the Central Valley and Orange County.The two top vote-getters in each race today, regardless of party, will compete in the general election — effectively a runoff — in November. This CalMatters tool lets you find your district and see whether it has a competitive race.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

    “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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    Steve Garvey, Republican Former Baseball Player, Will Run for Senate in California

    Mr. Garvey, 74, announced on Tuesday that he would enter the race for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, running against at least three Democratic candidates.The former baseball player Steve Garvey announced on Tuesday that he would run as a Republican for the California Senate seat left open by Dianne Feinstein’s death.Mr. Garvey, 74, was a first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres from 1969 to 1987. He has never held elected office.His campaign announcement video, filled with references to baseball and his career, opens with a voice-over of an announcer calling a home run and ends with Mr. Garvey declaring: “It’s time to get off the bench. It’s time to put the uniform on. It’s time to get back in the game.”“I never played for Democrats or Republicans or independents. I played for all of you,” he says in the video. “Now I’m running for U.S. Senate in California, a state that I believe at one time was the heartbeat of America, but now is just a murmur.”The positions outlined on Mr. Garvey’s campaign website are standard for Republican candidates, including a promise to “take a stand against out-of-control inflation,” a statement that “rising crime is destroying our communities” and a call for “more choices” for parents in terms of their children’s education. But he has broken from Republican orthodoxy on one issue, saying he would not support a federal abortion ban.He told The Los Angeles Times that he had voted for Donald J. Trump in both 2016 and 2020.Mr. Garvey will be running against at least three Democrats: Representatives Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. A poll released last month by The Los Angeles Times and the University of California, Berkeley, found that if Mr. Garvey entered the race, he would start in a distant third place, tied with Ms. Lee, but trailing Mr. Schiff and Ms. Porter by double digits. Laphonza Butler, the Democrat who was appointed to complete Ms. Feinstein’s term, has not said whether she will run next year.“Based on his announcement, it sounds like he’s ready to take up the fight for everyone born on third base — thinking they hit a triple,” Mr. Schiff said on X on Tuesday.California’s electoral system is unusual in that it does not have separate Democratic and Republican primaries; the top two candidates in the first round of voting, regardless of their affiliation, will advance to the November 2024 general election. That means the general election could feature two Democrats and no Republicans, an outcome well within the realm of possibility in a state as blue as California.If Mr. Garvey did make it to the general election, he would face long odds. California has not elected a Republican to the Senate in more than 30 years. More

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    Steve Garvey, Former Dodgers All-Star, May Run for Senate in California

    Mr. Garvey, 74, a Republican, said he would decide in the next few weeks whether to run for the seat of Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is retiring.Steve Garvey, a perennial baseball All-Star in the 1970s and 1980s for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, said on Friday that he was weighing a run for the United States Senate in California as a Republican.He would give the G.O.P. a celebrity name in the high-profile race to replace Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, a Democrat, who is the chamber’s oldest member and is retiring at the end of her term. She has recently struggled with health problems that have prompted calls from some fellow Democrats for her to retire sooner.In heavily Democratic California, the race has drawn tepid interest from Republicans. Only lesser-known candidates have jumped in.California hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1988, and a host of prominent Democrats are waiting in the wings, including Representatives Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.Mr. Garvey, 74, one of the most prolific hitters in baseball before steroids tainted the sport’s record books, said in an interview that he expected to make a decision in the next few weeks. He noted the difficulty of building out a campaign operation.“You can imagine, it’s like getting an expansion franchise,” he said, using a sports analogy. “It’s a daunting task in California.”Mr. Garvey, whose deliberations were first reported by The Los Angeles Times, would be a long shot, but his entrance in the race could scramble the primary. Under the state’s system, the first- and second-place finishers advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.Democrats are so dominant in the state that they are widely expected to win both slots and compete against each other in the general. Having a Republican candidate with some name recognition could make that harder.Being in the public eye has sometimes brought Mr. Garvey unwanted attention. Although he cultivated a reputation for avoiding vices and philandering as a player, shortly after leaving the game he acknowledged he had fathered children by two different women, shortly before marrying a third.When asked on Friday how he felt about the glare of running for office, Mr. Garvey said that it would not discourage him.“I probably had a pretty good spring training over the last 50 years,” he said. More