Lee, who is from Oakland, Calif., released a video kicking off her run, which has been expected for weeks. “No one is rolling out the welcome mat, especially for someone like me,” she says in the video, which goes on to detail hardships she has endured during her life. The announcement comes during Black History Month, a deliberate move by Lee.
Lee is the third U.S. House member to enter the unpredictable race to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has held the seat for three decades. Though Feinstein’s seat is seen as a safe Democratic hold because of the deep blue complexion of California’s electorate, Lee is facing two Golden State titans: Rep. Adam B. Schiff — who became a darling of Democrats and a cable news fixture as one of the key players in the two impeachment trials of President Donald Trump — and Rep. Katie Porter, a former law professor whose fierce interrogations of Wall Street CEOs and Trump nominees made her a viral sensation and prodigious fundraiser in Democratic circles.
Even before the contest has begun in earnest, many Democratic voters here say they are conflicted about the choice among three politicians who have earned the admiration of the party faithful. Under California’s primary system, the top two contenders will advance to the general election regardless of party — meaning two Democrats could be pitted against one another in November 2024. Because of the cost of advertising in California media markets to capture the attention of the state’s nearly 22 million voters, the race is expected to be exorbitantly expensive, and in that regard Lee starts at a major disadvantage.
Schiff, who is 62 and has notched the influential endorsement of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former House speaker, boasts a war chest of nearly $21 million, according to recent campaign finance reports. Porter, who is 49, had more than $7.4 million in cash on hand after her hard-fought race to win reelection last year following the decennial redrawing of California’s congressional map. Lee, 76, had about $52,000 in available campaign funds, according to the most recent report. But her Northern California roots could give her a different kind of edge over Schiff and Porter, because voters from that region often turn out in higher numbers than those in Southern California.
“Can she raise the money to be competitive? You can’t judge that based on what she has in her House account,” said Rose Kapolczynski, who managed Democrat Barbara Boxer’s successful Senate runs. “She needs to get out there and start raising money, and then that will be a measure of her potential.”
Lee’s allies expect her to embrace the profile of a scrappy underdog campaign as she seeks to set herself apart from her Democratic rivals. Fresh off his experience in Trump’s impeachment proceedings, Schiff is running as a leader who has been “on the front lines of the fight for the heart and soul of our democracy.” Porter, who is from Irvine, has sculpted her political image as a suburban single mom whose dogged consumer advocacy is driven by her understanding of the crushing economic pressures facing many lower and middle class Americans.
In news interviews and conversations with colleagues as she prepared to run, Lee highlighted the facts that there are no Black women serving in the U.S. Senate and that there have only been two — Harris and former senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) — who have served in the chamber’s nearly 250-year history.
“Can you imagine how the lens, and the perspective and the experiences of Black women have been lost?” Lee said in a Tuesday interview. “Black women have had a history of challenging power and the status quo. So not only does the Senate need myself there doing that — not just for Black women or women of color or people of color — but for the country. Because the country still has not lived up to its creed of liberty and justice for all.”
In a state as left-leaning as California, the lack of diversity in the Senate could become a major factor in the contest, particularly after California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) disappointed some voters in his party by passing over Lee and several other prominent Black leaders including then-Rep. Karen Bass, who is now mayor of Los Angeles, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, when he appointed Alex Padilla to replace Harris as California’s junior senator.
Padilla, who was secretary of state at the time, became the first Latino to represent California in the Senate. Newsom promised that he would appoint a Black woman to the Senate if Feinstein stepped down before the end of her term. (The senior senator has said she plans to finish out her term in 2024.)
Lee’s announcement video, which she narrated, portrayed her as an outsider who had fought to be heard at each stage of her life.
The video alluded to her upbringing in segregated El Paso and to her fight with the local chapter of the NAACP to integrate her high school’s cheerleading squad after her family moved to San Fernando, Calif. It also touched on the difficulties she faced as the single mother of two boys who was forced to rely on public assistance — experiences that she has said informed her policy work and has given her a unique understanding of her constituents.
“I couldn’t drink from the water fountain. I had an abortion in a back alley when they all were illegal. I escaped a violent marriage, became a single mom, a homeless mom; a mom who couldn’t afford child care and brought her kids to class with her,” she said in the video. “They didn’t want to hear my voice or anyone who wasn’t like them. But by the grace of God, I didn’t let that stop me.”
Before the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion, Lee spoke candidly and publicly about her decision to have a “back-alley abortion” in Mexico in the mid-1960s when she was just 16 — pronouncing herself “one of the lucky ones” to survive a procedure that took the lives of other women and girls because of unsafe conditions.
Lee’s first brush with politics was working on the presidential campaign of Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.), and she served as a Chisholm delegate at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She pursed a master’s degree of social work from the University of California at Berkeley and founded a community alliance focused on providing mental health services to clients in the East Bay. Lee also worked for Rep. Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) for 11 years, rising to become his chief of staff. She then served in both the California State Assembly and the State Senate before being elected to Congress in 1998.
Her allies often note that she played a central role in passing every major piece of HIV/AIDS legislation during her time in Congress and point to her extensive work to curb and mitigate the effects of poverty.
She noted those and other accomplishments in her announcement video as she argues for easing the “burden” on the middle class and finding a solution to poverty and homelessness. She described her role at the forefront of social change — from writing California’s first Violence Against Women Act “when there weren’t protections for survivors of domestic violence” to helping craft the Hate Crimes Reduction Act “when it was legal to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community.”
But she is perhaps best known for being the only member of Congress to vote against authorizing the use of military force after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In that moment, she called for the “use of restraint” in a speech on the House floor and a pause to “think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control.”
Dylan Wells in Des Moines contributed to this report.
