California’s U.S. Senate candidates have started reaching for mud to sling

The race for the U.S. Senate seat among Reps. Barbara Lee, Adam Schiff and Katie Porter is turning into a catfight.

This was the week that the U.S. Senate candidates Went There.

The Senate race in California finally lit up last week, and given that ballots go out next week, it’s not a moment too soon.

For months, the race has been gripped by torpor. There has been precious little actual political exchange, just a studied disengagement, a careful exercise in avoiding headlines, conflict or any real way to differentiate among Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. As for nonpolitician Steve Garvey, his disengagement was put on glaring display during the debate at USC a week ago.

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Rep. Schiff, a man of chronically cool temperament, dropped a commercial that framed the race between himself and Garvey, his wish-upon-a-faded-star-dream opponent because that match-up would allow Schiff to chill in Burbank and sit on the beach until the Nov. 5 general election.

Rep. Porter was having none of that, saying, “Adam Schiff knows he will lose to me in November. That’s what this brazenly cynical ad is about — furthering his own political career, boxing out qualified Democratic women candidates and boosting a Republican candidate to do it. We need honest leadership, not political games.”

Let’s review. Porter called Schiff brazen, cynical, sexist, dishonest and a........

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