Steve Garvey steps to the plate for California Senate seat
Quin Hillyer
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Republicans gained a significant political opportunity today by putting a U.S. Senate seat in ultra-liberal California at least somewhat in play in 2024. Former Los Angeles Dodgers star first baseman Steve Garvey announced his candidacy on Oct. 10, giving the GOP at least a fighting chance if Democratic candidates prove too radical.
Garvey is a serious man and (apart from a messy, long-ago brouhaha involving a moral failing common to pro athletes and entertainers) generally reputed to be a “good guy,” quite obviously intelligent and with a long history of charitable endeavors. The latter obviously has gone beyond mere public relations into active, hands-on management work. And of course he was an absolutely superb baseball player, about as close to Hall of Fame quality as possible without (yet) making it. As a league MVP, a four-time Gold Glove winner, and a ten-time All-Star, Garvey spent a decade and a half as one of the nation’s most recognizable and popular players.
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He will be running as a centrist conservative in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1988. He doesn’t shy away from sounding conservative when talking about supporting law enforcement, getting tougher on the border, and supporting school choice and parental rights. Garvey’s tone, though, is moderate, and he is already making an appeal to be a unifier rather than an ideologue.
California obviously has a history of electing celebrities, choosing actors Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and George Murphy as governor, governor, and U.S. senator, respectively. And there are signs that the state’s voters are getting restive, as San Francisco recalled soft-on-crime District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022, and in 2020 voters statewide rejected an attempt to once again allow state colleges to give preferential admissions based on race.
All the Democrats in the race — no need to name them right now — hail from the left-most wards of the political spectrum. Appointed senator Laphonza Butler, the radical head of a national pro-abortion political pressure group, has not yet announced if she will seek a full term. If she does, though, she could conceivably push her way past other Democrats into a general election battle with Garvey. If so, she could be vulnerable due to her radicalism, the unsavory connotations of her job as a big-money pressure group head and, not least, as an actual resident of Maryland, not California, until her appointment.
Even then, Garvey, as a Republican, probably would be considered an underdog. But he could at least make things interesting, and he would force Democrats to use resources to beat him that they would otherwise use to support other candidates across the country.
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And, in the end, Garvey just might win. As he showed as a World Series champion on a perennial contender, that’s what Garvey does: he wins.
Republicans haven’t hit a home run with Garvey’s candidacy, but at least they have a runner in scoring position.