The 2024 U.S. Senate race for the seat held by the late Dianne Feinstein took another turn on Tuesday when Republicans acquired a celebrity candidate: the former Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres star Steve Garvey. The 74-year-old hasn’t played the game in 36 years, but he has received some continuing publicity as an unsuccessful perennial candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame and remains relatively well known in the media footprint of the Dodgers, which Garvey helped lead to a world championship in 1981.
As a player, he came across as a paragon of square-jawed probity, though Garvey gained an unwholesome reputation shortly after retiring, as the Los Angeles Times recalled in 1989:
Control is what Steve Garvey meant off the field as well; it framed his urge to be not just a ballplayer but also a role model. He said “yes, sir” and “no, ma’am,” he didn’t drink or smoke, he made bedside visits to hospitalized kids …
And that utter control is why Steve Garvey commanded attention when his life went haywire. In February, Garvey went public with an account of his complicated romantic life — a bizarre, cross-country tangle in which he got two women pregnant and married a third.
That scandal has faded even as memories of his playing career have endured, so Garvey becomes not just the Republican front-runner in the Senate field but a candidate who might consolidate the Republican vote currently split between the two perennial candidates James Bradley and Eric Evans.
Barring some miracle, Garvey won’t win the seat since Republicans are badly outnumbered in Democratic-dominated California. But he has a decent chance of finishing second in the March 5 nonpartisan primary election and making it to the November 2024 general. That would have big implications for Democrats, whose race is currently splintered among three U.S. representatives, Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee (running first, second, and third, respectively, in the early polls).
Appointed Feinstein successor Laphonza Butler may jump in too. Butler has not announced whether she intends to run for a full six-year term next year but needs to decide quickly in order to secure a ballot spot for the primary. The odds of making the general election even if she finishes behind one of the three congressional candidates will undoubtedly weigh in her decision. Garvey’s entry into the campaign adds to the risk of a one-Democrat general election.
It’s unclear how much Garvey brings to the race other than high name ID. He has been mulling a Senate bid since at least June and has presumably lined up some financial backers to help cope with the Golden State’s insanely expensive media markets. His announcement video is heavy on baseball images and metaphors and short on specifics:
Like any California Republican, Garvey must balance party loyalty with some signals of political independence. He tried that in interviews after his announcement:
Garvey said he twice voted for Trump. He doesn’t have an opinion on who is responsible for the violent pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He opposes abortion but said he would respect Californians’ views on the matter and would not vote for federal legislation that restricted abortion rights. Asked about controversial decisions by some school districts that would require parents to be informed if their child showed signs of gender nonconformity, Garvey said it was a parental rights issue.
He’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger (the last celebrity Republican to win statewide office in California), to be sure. But Garvey adds another layer of intrigue to an already complicated Senate race. If you’re a Californian with a low tolerance for sports metaphors, you should give his campaign a wide berth.
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