By Maeve Reston
As he sought to wrest the California Democratic Party’s endorsement away from longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein, her upstart challenger, Kevin de León, made an impassioned argument to state delegates Saturday that the time had come for a new generation of leadership in the Senate.
While he was not able to earn their endorsement outright, he did secure enough votes (54%) to prevent one for Feinstein, who received just 37 percent of the delegates’ votes.
In an aggressive speech at the California Democratic Party convention, De León said Democrats deserve a progressive senator who fights on the “front lines,” who doesn’t “equivocate on the sidelines.”
“I’m running for US Senate because the days of Democrats biding our time, biding our talk, are over,” said De León, who is the leader of the California Senate. “Leadership comes from human audacity, not from congressional seniority.”
He faulted Feinstein for her initial approach to President Donald Trump — which infuriated Democratic activists here — mocking her for saying last August that she believed Trump “can be a good president” if he had the ability to “learn and to change.”
Charging that Feinstein is out of step with the progressive direction of the party, De León pointed to a litany of issues where he said he disagrees with the senior senator, including school vouchers, allowing federal agents to spy on American citizens, and her past support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said he would never have supported prosecuting 13-year-olds as adults “in a criminal justice system propped up by institutional racism” (an apparent reference to her support for the 1994 crime bill). De León also chided Feinstein’s approach to immigration, charging that he would never use the so-called Dreamers “as a bargaining chip.”
“We demand passion, not patience. We speak truth to power,” said De León said. “And we’ve never been fooled into thinking that Donald Trump could be a good president. … Being good sometimes is not good enough.”
Feinstein did not mention her Democratic opponent at all.
In the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, she focused her remarks on her decades-long advocacy for an assault weapons ban, which was phased out in 2004. She criticized Trump for suggesting that teachers should be armed.
“I thought after Sandy Hook there would never be another school shooting, yet after Sandy Hook, 400 people have been shot in over 200 school shootings,” Feinstein said. “Last year, 26 of us in the Senate introduced a new assault weapons ban, and passing it now is my quest. It’s my mission. I am absolutely committed to achieving this.”
“Now is the time to take those weapons of war off our streets,” she said to applause.
De León got a far warmer welcome than his opponent on the convention floor. But he had to receive 60 percent of the delegate votes to get the Democratic endorsement, a threshold he did not meet.
De León enjoys a close kinship with many of the state delegates, who tend to be far more liberal than the average California voter.
Even had De León notched the endorsement, Feinstein is still heavily favored to win in November — in part because of her nearly unlimited resources, and her support among California independents and some Republicans.
Dan Newman, a Democratic strategist for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and US Sen. Kamala Harris, said a party endorsement for De León would be “the apex of his campaign,” but that it was unlikely to have an impact on the outcome in the
Senate race because of Feinstein’s near universal name recognition.
“He still faces an electorate that largely doesn’t know who he is, and the tremendous amount of respect and reverence for Senator Feinstein because of her decades of work, particularly on the issue that is energizing Democrats more than any other right now,” said Newman, who supports Feinstein.
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