Peter Dreier / Research & Analysis / Players
Democrats
Should Not Underestimate Steve Garvey
The
former baseball star
wants to fill Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat in California, and his
celebrity
status might just give him a chance.
By
Peter Dreier and Kelly
Candaele
The
Nation
October
18, 2023
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/democrats-should-not-underestimate-steve-garvey/
“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,”
former baseball star Steve Garvey said in his video announcement
that he was running for the US Senate seat to replace Diane Feinstein.
The
74-year-old retired
athlete has been weighing a run for months, talking to donors and
Republican
Party leaders along the way. In June, when he registered as a
Republican, he
told reporters he was considering a Senate race. Few took his bid
seriously.
After all, of the state’s 22 million registered voters, 49 percent are
registered Democrats, 24 percent are registered Republicans, and 22.5
percent
are of “No Party Preference,” according to a recent report by the
California
secretary of state. The last time a Republican won a statewide race in
California was in 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger beat Democrat Phil
Angelides
for governor.
Republican
leaders know
that Garvey’s odds of winning the seat are slim, but they are
nevertheless
drooling at the possibility of a Garvey campaign. They understand that
his
celebrity candidacy would boost Republican turnout in the March primary
and, if
he comes in first or second, in the November runoff too. That would
help GOP
candidates in six
battleground House races in
the state. This includes Congressional District 47, which Democrat
Katie Porter
is vacating to run for the Senate, and 13, 22, 27, 41, and 45, where
Republican
incumbents John Duarte, David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Ken Calvert, and
Michelle
Steel, respectively, are running for reelection. The outcome of those
contests
could determine whether the Republican Party can hold onto their
slim—221 to
212—House majority, or whether the Democrats can take back the lower
chamber in
the November election.
Under
California’s
nonpartisan system, if no candidate achieves 50 percent of the vote in
the
March primary, the two top vote-getters, regardless of political party,
advance
to a runoff in November. Before Garvey threw his hat in the ring,
Democratic
Representatives Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, and Katie Porter had already
launched
their campaigns. If these three split the Democrats’ vote, and Garvey
garners
almost all Republican voters and some baseball-loving independents, he
could
conceivably advance to the runoff.
A
UC Berkeley/Institute for
Government Studies poll conducted
in late August found that Adam Schiff and Katie Porter were leading the
field
with 20 and 17 percent of voter support, respectively. Garvey was tied
at 7
percent with Lee and Republican candidate James Bradley. Republican
Eric Early,
who has tried and failed to win public office many times, was at 5
percent. Now
that he’s officially in the race, Garvey’s numbers will surge, likely
pushing
Bradley and Early to drop out. One in three likely voters were
undecided, which
is not a surprising finding with eight months before the March primary.
It
isn’t clear if Senator
Laphonza Butler, a Democrat and former labor leader whom Gavin Newsom
appointed
on October 1 to fill the remainder of Feinstein’s term, will enter the
primary
for a full six-year term. If she does, she would further divide the
Democratic
electorate, take votes away from Schiff, Porter, and Lee, and make it
even more
likely that Garvey makes it into the general election.
Garvey,
a baseball icon,
played baseball and football at Michigan State, was drafted by the Los
Angeles
Dodgers in the first round of the 1968 draft, and made his big league
debut in
1969. He played for the Dodgers (1969–82) and San Diego Padres
(1984–87) in the
two largest voter-rich metropolitan areas in the state. Last week, he
told
the Los
Angeles Times that he decided to jump into the
race after “a Giants fan came up to me and said, ‘Garvey, I hate the
Dodgers,
but I’ll vote for you.’”
Garvey
was a 10-time All
Star and the National League Most Valuable Player in 1974. He led the
Dodgers
to a World Series championship in 1981 and the Padres to the National
League
pennant three years later. He was also the MVP in the National League
Championship Series in 1978 and 1984.He earned four Gold Gloves as
baseball’s
best-fielding first baseman, had a lifetime .294 batting average, and
had 2,599
hits during his 19-year career, ranking him 84th among all players.
As
a professional, he was
popular with fans, cultivating an image as an “All-American boy” who
didn’t
smoke, drink, or use drugs. He was good-looking, polite, and always
available
to reporters, who returned the favor with positive coverage.
In
1981—still a player
then—Garvey talked
about a
future in politics, including a possible run for Senate. California is
a much
different, and bluer, state than it was back then. But Garvey appears
willing
to be a loss leader for the GOP if he can help the party’s
congressional
candidates beat Democrats in the key swing districts while also getting
back
into the media spotlight. One can already see Garvey’s ads: Dodger Blue
and
Padres Gold with an arm draped around his former Black and Latino
teammates in
a shallow attempt to appeal to California’s cultural diversity.
“It’s
extremely expensive
to establish name ID in a statewide race in California—up to $10
million if you
are unknown to voters in order to start being heard,” Ray McNally, a
longtime
Republican consultant in California recently noted. “Garvey doesn’t
have to do
that—because of his celebrity he’s also going to receive a ton of free
media.”
While
many young voters may
not know Garvey, he has drawn on his career to remain in the public
eye—sometimes with much controversy. Described on his speaker’s bureau
website
as a “Future Hall of Famer and Marketing and Media Consultant,” he
frequently
gives motivational talks on the corporate lecture circuit. For a fee of
at
least $10,000, he will explain how to apply “the principles of
teamwork” to
enhance professional performance. He has earned substantial payments
for promoting
everything from reverse mortgages—where you can “hit a grand slam”— to
“Exercise in a Bottle” diet supplements. (Garvey, and the company he
was
representing were sued by the Federal
Trade Commission in
2000 over false claims made in diet commercials.) He has a history
of financial
recklessness,
extramarital affairs resulting in children, and stiffing vendors and
employees,
all while living a luxury
Garvey,
who twice voted for
Trump, recently told supporters that he would campaign on “quality of
life”
issues, including education, housing, crime, and the cost of living.
“As a US Senator,
I will serve with common sense, compassion, and will work to build
consensus to
benefit all of the people of California,” he said in a statement
announcing his
Senate run.
The
United States, and
particularly California, has a long history of celebrities jumping into
the
political arena and winning public office, including actors Ronald
Reagan,
George Murphy, and Clint Eastwood, as well as athletes such as
basketball stars
Bill Bradley and Kevin Johnson, football star Jack Kemp, Olympic
athlete Bob Mathias,
and wrestler Jesse Ventura. A baseball career has been a significant
launchpad
for would-be politicians, too. Since the early 1900s, more than 100
former
professional ballplayers have been elected to public office, including
two
governors, three members of the House, and two US senators—most
recently Hall
of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning from Kentucky, who served in Congress from
1987 to
2011. But a number of Hall of Famers, including Walter Johnson, Cap
Anson, Nap
Lajoie, and Honus Wagner, struck out trying to get elected.
For
years, Garvey has been
campaigning unsuccessfully to get elected to the Hall of Fame. He can
only hope
that California voters have a better opinion of him—as a ballplayer and
as a
person—than the baseball writers. (He’s been on the Baseball Writers
Association of America ballot for the Hall of Fame many times, and
always
failed to reach the 75 percent required for induction.)
One
might be tempted to
view Garvey as just another narcissistic hollow man who has lived a
life in
adulation and simply can’t give up the limelight. But in the age of
Donald
Trump, it is clear that, unfortunately, financial and sexual scandals
do not
automatically disqualify someone from running for, and winning,
political
office.
Garvey
might not be
measuring the drapes in a future Senate office, but Republicans are
measuring
his potential impact in helping the GOP hold on to the House, which
would mean
at least two more years for the Marjorie Taylor Greene/Matt Gaetz/Jim
Jordan
clown show running the circus. There is only one major takeaway here,
and it’s
that Democrats should take Garvey seriously.