Rep. Adam Schiff, a 22-year incumbent, has spent eight years as the highest-ranking Democrat on the House’s powerful Intelligence Committee. Now, Schiff is running for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Dianne Feinstein.
But Schiff’s future has started to look murky. He’s sagging in the polls, and he’s dealing with a censure.
Earlier this month, pollsters at Emerson College used e-mail, text message, and an online panel to survey 1,056 of California’s registered voters in the Golden State.
Only 14.5 percent of respondents supported Schiff’s Senate campaign. 14.2 percent supported Katie Porter, another House Democrat.
California, like Louisiana, holds a jungle primary instead of a partisan primary. After the March 24 primary, the state will send the top two candidates — regardless of party — to the ballot for the general election.
Schiff was finishing first in this poll, despite less than 15 percent of the vote. However, a whopping 47.4 percent of respondents remained undecided, independent voters are supporting Katie Porter, and the pollsters estimated a 2.9 percent margin of error.
Schiff is watching his future become blurrier… and he’s also seen his current career take an embarrassing turn.
The House voted Wednesday to censure Schiff for comments he made several years ago about investigations into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, rebuking the Democrat and frequent critic of the former president along party lines.
In other words, Schiff became only the 25th House lawmaker ever to be censured.
He was defiant ahead of the vote, saying he will wear the formal disapproval as a “badge of honor” and charging his GOP colleagues of doing the former president’s bidding.
“I will not yield,” Schiff said during the debate over the measure. “Not one inch.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., read the resolution out loud, as is tradition after a censure. But he only read part of the document before leaving the chamber as Democrats heckled and interrupted him.
Schiff, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial, has long been walking around with a target on his back. Soon after taking back the majority this year, McCarthy blocked him from sitting on the intelligence panel.
More than 20 Republicans voted with Democrats last week to block the censure resolution, but they changed their votes this week after the measure’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, removed a provision that could have fined Schiff $16 million if the House Ethics Committee determined he lied. Several of the Republicans who voted to block the resolution last week said they opposed fining a member of Congress in that manner.
The final vote on Wednesday was 213-209 along party lines, with a handful of members voting present.
The revised resolution says Schiff held positions of power during Trump’s presidency and “abused this trust by saying there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.” Schiff was one of the most outspoken critics of the former president as both the Justice Department and the Republican-led House launched investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia in 2017. Both investigations concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election but neither found evidence of a criminal conspiracy.
“Representative Schiff purposely deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people,” the resolution said.
The House has only censured two other lawmakers in the last 20 years. Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona was censured in 2021 for tweeting an animated video that depicted him striking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., with a sword. Former Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York was censured in 2010 for serious financial and campaign misconduct.
A censure normally carries no practical effect, except to provide a historic footnote that marks a lawmaker’s career… but this GOP resolution would also launch an ethics investigation into Schiff’s conduct.
While Schiff did not initiate the 2017 congressional investigation into Trump’s Russia ties — then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican who later became one of Trump’s most ardent defenders, started it — Republicans arguing in favor of his censure Wednesday blamed him for what they said was the fallout of that probe, and of the separate investigation started that same year by Trump’s own Justice Department.
Mueller’s team spent more than $30 million on the probe, and the team did not find that the campaign conspired to sway the election. The Justice Department did not recommend any criminal charges.
Luna said that Schiff’s comments that there was evidence against Trump “ripped apart American families across the country” and that he was “permanently destroying family relationships.” Several blamed him for the more than $30 million spent by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, who led the Justice Department probe.
Schiff said the censure resolution “would accuse me of omnipotence, the leader of some a vast Deep State conspiracy, and of course, it is nonsense.”
Some Democrats rallied behind Schiff during the censure.
When it was time for Schiff to come to the front of the chamber to be formally censured, immediately after the vote, the normally solemn ceremony turned into more of a celebratory atmosphere. Dozens of Democrats crowded to the front, clapping and cheering for Schiff and patting him on the back. They chanted “No!,” “Shame!” and “Adam! Adam!”
Still, it remains to be seen whether this enthusiasm will help Schiff in the polls.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.