U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Architect of the Capitol)
Welcome To The Jungle: Schiff, Garvey And Porter Fight It Out In The Senate Primary
Schiff, Garvey currently lead in polls
By Evan Symon, March 5, 2024 3:25 am
For most of 2023, the narrative of the next year’s Senate election was expected to be Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) facing off against Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-CA), with Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) having a decent showing for the far-left and Lawyer Eric Early (R) giving a good show for the right. Early polls showed that that was how Tuesday night was supposed to go down. Even after news broke in June that former baseball player Steve Garvey (R) was thinking of running and giving the race a typical California celebrity boost, those polls stayed the same. The jungle primary wasn’t going to be that much of a jungle at all.
Then came a one-two punch in late September and early October. Senator Dianne Feinstein died in office, with both her possible endorsement and her interim replacement not being one of the three major candidates, throwing everyone for a loop.
And then Garvey officially entered the race. He got 10% out of the gate and quickly rose. While Democrats couldn’t agree on a single candidate to back, with distant fourth Lee actually becoming the closest to getting the Democratic endorsement, the GOP quickly consolidated behind Garvey, with a few contingents still pulling for Early and Businessman James Bradley (R).
By December, thanks to the Democrats still being fractured three ways with the far left backing Lee, progressives favoring Porter, and the rest pulling for Schiff, Garvey cruised into second place in polling. While Garvey stumbled in the first debate, he surprised everyone by winning the second. Schiff was fine with this, as Democrats still had a big majority and he was in first. Garvey was ecstatic. Porter was furious. Lee was apparently still a candidate. When the first polls post-second debate came out, both Schiff and Garvey were surging. The jungle primary was finally living up to it’s name.
Team Porter quickly upped their ad blitzes across the state and did well in the third debate. A PPIC poll from late January actually had her one point ahead of Garvey. But that was the last time she was ever in second place in polling. Schiff’s strong ad campaign blasted Porter into oblivion, with Garvey biding his time and letting the Democrats keep spending their money like that and essentially do the campaigning for him while his campaign saved up money. After over a year of all but a few outlets focusing just on the top three Democrats, Garvey’s name was now everywhere.
Schiff/Garvey
Schiff’s plan actually worked a little too well, as the recent IGS poll actually found that Garvey may actually come out in top in the primary, being up by a few points and actually leading Schiff in half the regions of California and leading in support amongst both white and Latino voters – the two largest racial groups in the state. In a weird roundabout way, the Schiff-Porter matchup was actually happening again, but this time for second place and Schiff far in the lead, with Porter being third in every poll since late January.
And this is where we are before everyone goes to the polls. Aggregate sites like 538 and Realclearpolling have Schiff generally coming in with around 25%-26% of the vote, Garvey at 20%-21%, and Porter at 18%. Take into account this late surge by Garvey and independent and undecided voters leaning to both Schiff and Garvey, they are the likely two.
As the Globe pointed out today, the GOP needs to buckle down and win races in California. While the Senate race in November will likely be Schiff up just on registered Democrats alone, Garvey polling at 38% for November already before undecided voters and independents are taken into account spell possible trouble on the horizon for Democrats. Many political experts told the Globe to look for that 40% threshold. Should Garvey go to November and get above that, it would be the first time since the 1994 Senate election that a Republican in California would get that much in a U.S. Senate race. Just like Porter and Lee don’t want to be known as the Democrats who gave up their House seats to lose a Republican in the primary, Schiff doesn’t want to be known as the Democrat who had the weakest showing since Major League Baseball was last on strike.
Going into Super Tuesday, it is looking more and more likely that Schiff and Garvey are going to make it. We just need to know by how much.
Welcome to the jungle California.
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December 15, 2023
Well, we already know that our incumbent liar has been Democratically preprogrammed for conflict, foreign and domestic.
Let’s hope that our new freshman senator, whoever wins the popularity contest, will exercise the adaquate level of restraint in office to actually prevent unnecessary political provocation and military adventure.
Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, the pathological liar who looks like a creepy groomer, has been strikingly absent from the national fentanyl conversation. According to Peter Schweizer’s new book “Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans” Schiff has “financial connections to individuals involved with criminal networks in Southern California, many of whom are tied to money laundering and the drug trade.”
Schiff represents California’s 30th Congressional District, which includes Burbank, Hollywood, Glendale, and Pasadena. Schweizer notes that the fentanyl crisis is rampant in upscale Burbank where at least seven high school students had overdosed on the deadly synthetic opioid in 2022 alone. Now, schools in the Burbank Unified School District are required to carry naloxone in the event of overdoses. The effects in the city have been far-reaching. The LA area saw fentanyl deaths skyrocket “by a stunning 1,208 percent from 2016 to 2022,” Schweizer reports.
However, during Schiff’s tenure as House Intelligence chair during the 116th and 117th Congresses, the committee “did nothing” to address the issue of fentanyl, according to Blood Money. “If you go to the Intelligence Committee’s webpage that describes its work under his tenure, the word ‘fentanyl’ yields no results,” Schweizer reveals. “That is to say, the Intelligence Committee under his leadership, by its own account, did nothing on a topic that the Obama administration had declared a threat to our national security in 2017. A search of Schiff’s congressional webpage yields a lone mention of ‘fentanyl,’ a brief reference to a single piece of legislation.” Schweizer emphasizes that “Schiff was outspoken on the far, far less dangerous outbreak of monkeypox, demanding more action on a vaccine, even though it has killed no one in the United States at the time of this writing.” “Why Congressman Schiff has little to say about the deadly fentanyl crisis is an abiding mystery,” Schweizer writes. “Part of the reason may be that raising the issue might cause undue attention to his financial connections to individuals involved with criminal networks in Southern California, many of whom are tied to money laundering and the drug trade.”
Allied Wallet – a “sketchy firm” that “was tied to money laundering, with a major footprint in China” – made one of the top donations to a joint fundraising committee that Schiff established with then-Sen Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in 2017 called PAC for a Change, Schweizer alleges. The $95,000 contribution from the company – which “made money processing credit card payments” for clients described as “‘high risk’ online retailers that traditional financial institutions avoid” – was followed by donations from individual company executives to Schiff’s Congressional campaign, according Schweizer’s Blood Money. One donation came from the company’s head, Andy Khawaja, a dual U.S. and Lebanon citizen who would be embroiled in a federal investigation.
“Schiff’s congressional campaign took in at least $36,000 in donations from executives at Allied Wallet,” Schweizer notes. “Another $16,100 came from Khawaja, and two additional $10,000 contributions came from two other executives of the company. While Schiff was accepting those donations, it was publicly known that Allied Wallet had been under FBI investigation. It was not the first time: in 2010, Allied Wallet had been forced by federal authorities to forfeit $13 million for its involvement in an illegal gambling scheme.” Schweizer states that Khawaja was seeking “political access,” and with Schiff, he “clearly gained” it.
“At the time Schiff accepted donations from the executives, the company was being investigated for its ties to ‘illegal pharma’ companies around the world. Khawaja threw a lot of money around, clearly in search of political access,” Schweizer writes.
Schweizer also points out that Democrat mega-donor Ed Buck – who was convicted of two counts of distribution of controlled substances resulting in the death of two male prostitutes in 2022, was another donor to Schiff’s campaign and was also “a social acquaintance” of the representative.
Moreover, according to Blood Money, China UnionPay – a Chinese state-owned company through which triads launder money – and Allied Wallet had a partnership. China UnionPay, “a card brand that ‘is often seen as an arm of Chinese state policy,’” has “close ties to the CCP,” Schweizer reports. “UnionPay has been used by organized crime groups and drug traffickers all around the world, including the Chinese triads. Allied Wallet seemed to function ‘as a sort of credit card processor for fraudsters, swindlers, and rip-off artists bilking the public out of more than $100 million.’”
Schiff served as a California state senator before being elected to Congress in 2000. Schweizer writes that “some” of Schiff’s work in the California state senate “fueled financial crimes in his district.”
“One bill related to Medi-Cal created a gateway for considerable fraud, which an organized crime syndicate in his district seized upon, perpetuating the largest Medicaid fraud case in history at the time. California business leaders warned Schiff about the fraud they were witnessing, but he appears to have ignored it,” Schweizer writes. “In 2010, four hundred FBI agents executed a massive investigation and arrested seventy Armenian mobsters. The criminals ran 118 phantom clinics, many of them in Schiff’s district. The ringleader, Armen Kazarian, lived in Schiff’s district.”
Schiff voted against legislation in the U.S. House that would have further empowered the federal government to combat “gang violence by creating ‘an antiracketeering statute similar to the one used against the Mafia dons to prosecute criminal street gangs,’” Schweizer writes.
(https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2024/03/02/blood-money-meet-adam-schiff-who-looks-away-from-the-deadly-fentanyl-crisis-in-his-backyard-while-taking-donations-from-money-laundering-operators-tied-to-the-drug-trade/)