This is apparently for real. I remember when he and his former wife split up in the 1980s, and both of them ended up being exposed as total village idiots.
I had never heard about that until earlier today.
He’s running for the California Senate seat previously held by Diane Feinstein. If he finishes in the top two of today’s California jungle primary, he’ll advance to the general election in November.
Should non-Californians have any idea who he is?
If one is a baseball fan of a certain age, one would definitely know who he is. He was a star first baseman for the Dodgers, then the Padres, in the 1970s and 1980s. He won the National League MVP award in 1974, went to ten All-Star Games, and won four Gold Gloves (awarded for fielding excellence).
And, as @nearwildhaven notes, Garvey and his then-wife, Cyndy, were celebrities in L.A. at that time, and their divorce was a major news story.
I looked over his campaign website, and it doesn’t seem too wackjobby to me. https://stevegarvey.com/
When I visited my parents a few weeks ago, I saw what I thought were the weirdest political ads I’d ever seen. On Fox News, there were numerous ads proclaiming “STEVE GARVEY IS TOO CONSERVATIVE FOR CALIFORNIA” and noting that “IF STEVE GARVEY WINS, IT WILL TILT THE SENATE IN FAVOR OF REPUBLICANS” and “STEVE GARVEY SUPPORTED PRESIDENT TRUMP… TWICE” and so on. On Fox News.
So… some weird reverse psychology ploy? Obviously the average Fox News supporter supports all those things.
But it got stranger–I finally got some campaign flyers in the mail, saying the same thing… but marked as paid for by “Adam Schiff for Senate”. Uh, what? Why is Schiff paying to advertise for Garvey?
And, well, it turns out it is some bizarre reverse psychology ploy. Will it work? Who knows?
My understanding is that Schiff (who has been leading the polls) is doing this, in hopes that Garvey winds up finishing in second place in the primary, rather than Katie Porter. As it’s a “jungle primary,” the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election; Schiff appears to think that he’d stand a better chance against Garvey than against his fellow Democrat, Porter.
That’s an understatement. Against Porter Schiff would have a very good chance, but could still lose. Against Garvey he would be 100% certain to win.
Yeah, that’s essentially what the linked articles say. It’s still a weird 4D chess move.
Why the reverse psychology, though? It’s a totally cynical play anyway, so why not just advertise for Garvey “straight”?
Don’t blame me, I voted for Ron Cey.
But this is truly surreal. Garvey’s image as a ball player was the all American boy next door. He was literally the spokesman for milk. Then of course he got caught with multiple women who weren’t his wife and that was the end of it.
He probably thought he’d be the next Schwarzenegger without understanding that Arnold was fairly politically smart. Garvey brings nothing.
But, yeah, outside Cali I’d think hardly anyone was aware of Garvey’s run, everyone being more aware of Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee as the pretenders to replace Feinstein as soon as she announced she would not run again.
Eh, it’s advertising, not the show’s producers putting it on, and I’m pretty sure the channel’s sales office considers everyone’s money just as green. And the Schiff-aligned PAC knows where to get the conservative eyeballs.
Well it would look kind of odd to have the papers report you put out an ad saying “don’t vote for other members of our own party, vote for this other guy that’s opposed to everything we are for”. So instead you put out ads saying “This particular guy from the opposing party is a threat and we fear him!” (while knowing [preferred to assuming] he’s no such thing) in spaces where the RW public can see, so that will lead them to say oh, yeah, let’s all vote for the guy who really scares the Libs!
I tend to not like this kind of strategy as some times it comes back to bite you in the fundament but I can see how you’d use it in a “jungle primary”.
BTW speaking of celebs from the nonpolitical world, Ben Savage of Boy Meets World is in turn running to replace Schiff in his district.
Oh, sure. I just mentioned it because I saw the ads before I knew any of the background context. I’d initially figured it was from the Garvey camp, and that they thought the ads would be more memorable like this. But it still seemed like I was missing something.
But that’s still effectively what it is. Well, I don’t know how most people interpret the ads, but like I said, I first thought they were just some odd ads from the Garvey campaign.
Anyway, obviously I understand the strategy now, and it’s understandable even if I think it’s deeply cynical. But I don’t see the need for the reverse psychology thing, unless I was right all along and it’s meant to make the ads more memorable (due to being so incongruent for Fox News).
From my old hometown. In fact, I think I remember his dad owning a gas station.
So from the official results Garvey is obliterating all other GOP contenders by almost tenfold over his nearest R, within a percent of Schiff who himself has like half again as much as his two top Dem contenders combined – to me this suggests they were headed for the finals spots even before any Jedi mind tricks, but hey… the thing though is, is this the best there is in the California GOP? Looks like the more competent California R’s figure they might as well hold on fast to the posts they DO have and let someone else immolate themselves.
Good news- he played for Michigan State. Better news- he’s not a total whack job. Best news- he has no chance.
For those outside of California:
You need to understand that a conservative (the 2020’s definition, not the 1970’s definition) Republican has nearly zero chance of winning a statewide election against just about any Democrat. On the other hand, two Democrats on the ballot would be a horse race.
Democrats hold all the statewide offices and have a supermajority in the state legislature (we just don’t get the attention deeply red states get because we keep the oppression and cruelty out of our lawmaking. Wimpy Democrats!)
So, you can pretty much pencil in Schiff for Feinstein’s senate seat.
This makes me lose a lot of respect for Schiff (who was probably my first choice among three good options) He’s really putting his political fortunes above the good of his party and country. Either he or Porter would be fine senators, and Garvey would be a disaster (tilting the Senate to the Rs). If Schiff and Porter are the top two, nothing bad can happen. If Schiff and Garvey are the top 2, something very bad could happen.
Schiff should let Porter get the second spot if she can, and they campaign against her.
It’s good that the largest state in the country isn’t going to have an election where voters are legally prohibited from expressing any kind of meaningful choice because of something that happened eight months earlier in a relatively low-turnout primary. The Republican Party should be able to have a candidate on the November ballot, and that candidate should lose. Perhaps a standard first-past-the-post election with party primaries isn’t great in a state like California, but the top-two system is just chaotic and doesn’t fix anything.
Again, it because if the ads ever got linked back to Schiff (which given the links in this thread they obviously have), then it looks better to give him the plausible deniability that he wasn’t putting out a pro Garvey ad, his was putting out and anti-Garvely ad that, who would’a thunk it, ended up helping him in the primary. Putting out a straight forward pro-Garvey ad could be seen as dirty tricks and hurt him with his base in the general.