Adam Schiff Is Confident Harris Will Win, But Worried About ‘MAGA Election Deniers’

U.S. Senate candidate Adam Schiff is ready to “turn the page on this pretty dark chapter,” and he’s confident Tuesday’s election will go in Democrats’ favor.

But it could be a bumpy road to victory, the Los Angeles-area representative said in an interview with KQED.

Regardless of official vote counts, Republican nominee Donald Trump is likely to declare victory, Schiff said — raising stark concerns over the former president’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and the violent insurrection that followed.

“He has already been propagating that same big lie that he did four years ago, and we saw where that led on January 6th,” Schiff said. “So I am profoundly concerned about it.”

Though dozens of judges threw out Republican legal challenges to the 2020 election, Schiff said that this time, the GOP’s litigation could be more sophisticated.

“They have seeded some of these local elections boards with MAGA election deniers. They have tried to change the law in certain states and thankfully been unsuccessful in many cases because we have litigated against them,” Schiff said. “But the biggest concern, frankly, is we are dealing with a very different Supreme Court now where Americans just can’t have confidence in that court anymore.”

Schiff does not look or act like a candidate worried about winning his U.S. Senate race on Tuesday. The 64-year-old has spent the last few weeks traveling the state and country campaigning with Democrats locked in tough fights for the Senate and House.

Over the weekend, Schiff campaigned with Democratic House candidates George Whitesides in Los Angeles County, Rudy Salas in the Bakersfield area and Adam Gray in the Central Valley. He has also campaigned in Orange County with Democrat Derek Tran, who is challenging Republican incumbent Michelle Steel, and Dave Min, who is vying to succeed Katie Porter after she gave up the seat to run against Schiff in the Senate primary.

“They’re all ahead at the moment, so I’m pretty optimistic about all of them,” he said.

In addition to helping fellow Democrats in California win their election, Schiff is also making friends with people he hopes will be his colleagues in the Senate come January.

In the past week, he has appeared with U.S. Senators Jacky Rosen in Nevada and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, in addition to making a swing through Arizona to help Senate candidate Ruben Gallego. Gallego hopes to replace Kyrsten Sinema, the former Democrat who became an independent in 2022 and chose not to run for reelection. Schiff also attended a Democratic fundraiser in Minneapolis with Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

And he’ll need allies if, as expected, he wins this race. The 2016 retirement of Sen. Barbara Boxer, Harris’ vacating her Senate seat to become President Biden’s vice president, and the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein have left California with two relatively junior senators in a chamber where seniority helps determine committee assignments and overall clout.

Schiff said that if he wins, his top priority in the Senate will be addressing the “twin” issues facing Californians: housing and homelessness.

“We need to be building hundreds of thousands of units every year. We need to be able to build them quickly. We need to be able to build them affordably,” he said.

A Berkeley IGS Poll published Friday showed him holding a 21-point lead over his Republican opponent, Steve Garvey, 55% to 34%, with 11% undecided, a margin similar to the last two IGS polls since the March primary. He’s also vastly outraised Garvey, 75, since the March primary.

KQED’s Dana Cronin contributed to this report.