California Democrats send Feinstein a pointed message by not endorsing her

Photo: Irfan Khan, TNS Sen. Dianne Feinstein is running for re-election and being...

SAN DIEGO — California Democrats sent a loud message to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, one of the nation’s best-known and longest-serving politicians, by not endorsing her for re-election at their state convention that ended Sunday.

Feinstein, the state’s senior senator, didn’t just fall short of winning the endorsement of her party’s activist core — she nearly lost it to her main challenger, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León. In a sign of how rapidly the Democratic Party is moving to the left in reaction to President Trump, barely a third of delegates backed Feinstein, while the underfunded de León — running as a potential leader of the resistance movement — fell just six points short of the 60 percent needed to win the state party’s backing.

If nothing else, the snub produced a burst of embarrassing national attention for Feinstein, a senator since 1992 and a fixture in Democratic politics on the local, state and national levels for five decades. And it gave de León, who trails Feinstein in the polls, a badly needed credibility boost.

The delegates also offered no endorsement in the race to replace termed-out Gov. Jerry Brown. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom came closest, with 39 percent. He was followed by state Treasurer John Chiang (30 percent) and former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin (20 percent). Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — who is near Newsom at the top of recent polls — finished far back, with 9 percent.

Delegates did reach the 60 percent endorsement threshold in some high-profile congressional races where several candidates are running. National Democratic leaders are targeting at least seven GOP-held seats in districts that Hillary Clinton won in 2016 as part of their strategy to flip 24 seats in November and take control of the House.

Party leaders hope the endorsements might help push to the sidelines some of the Democrats who didn’t receive them. They see a danger in some winnable districts of too many Democrats splitting the party’s votes in the June top-two primary, potentially allowing two Republicans to advance to November.

“We have an overpopulation problem,” state party Chair Eric Bauman told delegates Sunday. He encouraged them to gently steer their friends out of the race by saying, “Isn’t there another office you want to run for? Isn’t there some other way you can express your public service?”

The big endorsement shocker was the rejection of Feinstein, and de León, D-Los Angeles, seized on it. “The outcome of today’s endorsement vote is an astounding rejection of politics as usual, and it boosts our campaign’s momentum as we all stand shoulder to shoulder against a complacent status quo,” he said.

Unlike Feinstein, de León supports single-payer health care and opposes extending permission for the National Security Agency to obtain Americans’ email and other personal records without obtaining a warrant. Both stances endear him to party activists, who are generally more left-leaning than the larger universe of rank-and-file Democratic voters.

The endorsement votes represent the ascendency of the more progressive wing of the party that’s aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt.

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“What this shows is that we’ve won the war of ideas within the Democratic Party,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses United, a 150,000-member union that has endorsed de León. “I think the times have moved the party.”

Many Berniecrats have won seats on local central committees in the past year and attended the convention as delegates, and the vote on a Senate endorsement “is an expression of that,” said Dave McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University.

“Something is going on with the Democratic Party — it’s becoming way more liberal,” McCuan said.

Photo: Jae C. Hong, Associated Press State Sen. Kevin de Leon addresses supporters in Los Angeles late...

“It’s not unusual that Dianne Feinstein would have a difficult time winning over Democratic activists at a state party convention,” he added. “She’s a centrist, she’s signaled her interest in working with the (Trump) administration, and she doesn’t give them any red meat.”

But, McCuan added, “This is the high-water mark for the de León campaign. Where does he go from here?”

Winning the party’s nomination outright could have meant an estimated $2 million in additional fundraising, according to party insiders, plus a boost in de León’s anemic statewide name recognition. In an interview on The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast, de León said many potential donors — and pollsters, vendors and others important to a campaign — have told him that they’d like to help him but fear losing other political business by crossing Feinstein.

“That’s biggest crock I’ve heard in my life,” Feinstein’s top political strategist, Bill Carrick, said Sunday. “He owns his own fundraising problems.”

Carrick downplayed the significance of Feinstein’s poor showing at the convention, saying, “We didn’t have ambitious goals. We wanted to make sure he didn’t get the endorsement.” With that accomplished, he said, “we feel that we are in pretty good shape.”

That’s because the race’s fundamentals remain largely the same.

While virtually all likely California voters know Feinstein, polls show, two-thirds don’t know de León. Feinstein led de León by 46 percent to 17 percent in a January survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Nearly two-thirds of likely Democratic voters responding to the survey preferred Feinstein.

And Feinstein is way ahead of de León in the money race. Her campaign has nearly $10 million on hand — de León has $359,261 — and Feinstein has additional millions in personal wealth that she can tap.

While the delegates’ vote will give an adrenaline boost to de León’s campaign, Feinstein has been here before.

In 1990, she was booed at the state Democratic convention for supporting the death penalty when she was seeking the party’s nomination for governor. That year, delegates endorsed the more liberal state Attorney General John Van de Kamp. It didn’t matter, as Feinstein won the primary before losing the general election to Republican Pete Wilson.

On Saturday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has endorsed Feinstein, downplayed the value of endorsements in high-profile races.

“While these are important for the base of activists, I think most people don’t look at many endorsements,” Garcetti said. “For those high-level races, they (voters) figure out who you are. I think it’s important for this activist base, but I don’t think it decides elections.”

Then Garcetti paused and said with a smile. “I don’t know if I should say that at the California Democratic Party convention.”