When voters in California head to the polls on Tuesday they will find two U.S. Senate races on their primary ballots.<\/p>\n
The races are for the same Senate seat held for three decades by Dianne Feinstein (D), who died in September. After her death, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) appointed Laphonza Butler to fill the seat until a special election could be held.<\/p>\n
A few days after Butler was appointed to the seat, she announced she would not run for a full senate term. That helped set off races for a rare open Senate seat in the heavily Democratic-leaning state. Dozens of people jumped at the chance to run.<\/p>\n
Under a California law enacted in 2022, if a senator vacates their seat more than 148 days before the next regularly scheduled statewide primary, the state is required to hold a special election on the same day as the regularly scheduled primary election.<\/p>\n
The special election will determine who will serve the remainder of Feinstein\u2019s term, which ends in January. The regularly scheduled primary is for the full six-year term that begins with the next Congress.<\/p>\n
The leading candidates in the race include Democratic House members Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee as well as former Major League Baseball player Steve Garvey, who is a Republican. In California primaries, the top two vote-getters advance to November\u2019s general election, regardless of party.<\/p>\n
Holding two races for the same seat on the same primary ballot is enough to make even the most seasoned political veterans\u2019 heads spin, let alone voters who may not realize there\u2019s an additional Senate race before heading to the polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get confused of what\u2019s going on, and I\u2019m the head of the California Voter Foundation,\u201d Kim Alexander, founder and president of the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose goal is to improve voting in the state. \u201cIf I\u2019m having questions when I\u2019m voting, it\u2019s probably much harder for the typical voter out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Senate races are \u201ctaking up a lot of ballot real estate,\u201d Alexander said. She added that having to explain how to vote takes away time and resources that candidates and activists could dedicate to addressing any number of issues facing California right now.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cIt\u2019s a waste of people\u2019s time and attention,\u201d since the special election is for a Senate term that only lasts a few months.<\/p>\n
Because of the double-billing on the ballot, Senate candidates had to lobby voters for their support and also educate them on how to vote.<\/p>\n
Schiff posted a minute-long video on his campaign website where he walks voters through the ballot. \u201cThis is super important so I\u2019m going to try to be really brief,\u201d Schiff says in the video, standing in front of a giant sample ballot.<\/p>\n
Porter, famous for using whiteboards to make visual points during congressional hearings, used them again to educate voters on her website and on social media. And Lee has made \u201cVote Twice\u201d part of her bio on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite a bit of our campaign has been about educating voters,\u201d Lee told The Washington Post on Monday, referring to her record and the voting process. \u201cIt\u2019s up to candidates to drill down a bit,\u201d she said. Lee also said she\u2019s had success explaining the voting process to voters. \u201cWe clarify that for voters,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Schiff poured a large amount of money into the race, including ads that focused on Garvey, seemingly to help elevate the Republican candidate to the general election race rather than one of his Democratic challengers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When voters in California head to the polls on Tuesday they will find two U.S. Senate races on their primary ballots. The races are for the same Senate seat held for three decades by Dianne Feinstein (D), who died in September. After her death, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) appointed Laphonza Butler to fill the seat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}