While Rep. Adam Schiff has said that he’ll wait for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, his fellow California Democrat, to announce her likely retirement before committing to a campaign for the upper chamber, two Democratic officeholders have already filed FEC paperwork for potential bids to succeed him in his 30th Congressional District: Nick Melvoin, who is a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, and Assemblywoman Laura Friedman. Schiff’s L.A.-based seat backed Joe Biden by a 72-20 margin, so there’s a very good chance that two strong Democrats could advance out of the top-two primary if he leaves to run statewide.
We say "if" because, while many prognosticators are treating a Schiff Senate bid as a virtual certainty, we’ve seen plenty of potential candidates decide not to enter a race that almost everyone expected them to enter. Indeed, it was just days ago in Louisiana where Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser startled the Pelican State political world by announcing he’d seek re-election rather than enter a gubernatorial contest he’d seemed guaranteed to join.
And that had a ripple effect: At least two prominent Republicans had intended to run for the open lieutenant governor’s office, but Nungesser’s decision quickly upended their plans. Indeed, the development was the latest reminder that, while many would-be candidates telegraph that they plan to run for higher office, no one is actually a candidate until they actually announce they're a candidate.
It’s quite possible that Schiff will do what Nungesser didn’t and seek a promotion, a move that would leave Friedman and Melvoin with an open seat to run for. But they’d almost certainly have further competition, as Politico has identified a few other Democrats who could campaign here.
It’s a similar situation far to the north in the 12th District held by Rep. Barbara Lee, an East Bay Democrat who reportedly told the Congressional Black Caucus on Wednesday she’d run for Senate but publicly hasn’t announced anything. But rather than run down the potential fields now for those districts, as well as other possible-but-not-yet-actual open seats, Daily Kos Election will be following our longtime practice of waiting until those constituencies actually become open.
We do this in order to avoid devoting energy and space to contests that may not actually ever unfold and so that we can focus on the races that are in fact underway. After all, there are plenty of constituencies in America where pundits spend cycle after cycle guessing what would happen should a veteran incumbent retire only for that incumbent to seek re-election once again and render that speculation moot for at least another few years.
This is a guideline we follow in seats like the 12th and 30th where would-be candidates only say they’d compete if the current incumbent does not. It’s a different story in the Senate race, where Democratic Rep. Katie Porter announced Tuesday she was running regardless of what Feinstein does. If and when Lee, Schiff, and other House members give up their seats, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the contests to replace them as well, as we already have for Porter’s now-open 47th District.
However, we’ll still be writing up instances when a notable politician opens a fundraising account with the FEC, as Melvoin and Friedman have each done. While this hardly commits them to running (as we've also written about before), it does give them the chance to raise money and potentially get a head start over opponents should their seat open up.
Still, it’s important to remember that this sort of head start may lead to nothing, at least for a long time to come. In the spring of 2009, for instance, California state Sen. Joe Simitian began raising money ahead of a possible special election to succeed Rep. Mike Honda, a fellow Silicon Valley Democrat who was hoping to secure a post in the new Obama administration. A job offer never came, though, and Honda remained in the House until his career ended after another Democrat, Ro Khanna, unseated him in 2016.
Simitian, who is now a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, has yet to run for Congress, but he still has close to $500,000 stockpiled 14 years later from that special election that never was. Just last month, Simitian said that he was keeping his campaign committee “alive so that if and when the opportunity presents itself, I am ready to go.” The supervisor’s longtime political base is in the 16th District, which is held by Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, but Simitian made it clear he wouldn’t take on the incumbent should she run again.
However, given that Eshoo is 80, it's very possible she won't—but once again, we'll wait to see what happens before handicapping that race.
