The Former College Dropout Who Would Be Dianne Feinstein

[brooklynite]

Politico:

SANTA ANA, Calif.—Fourteen people and three rescue cats were awaiting Kevin de León when he pulled up to a PetSmart and stepped inside through drizzling rain. In his briefing folder, an aide had included a note titled, “Cat puns you can use, if you’re feeling festive!” De León hit nearly all of them. “Meow is the time,” he told the members of Kitty Devore Rescue, describing himself as an “alley cat.” Grateful for de León’s attention, a woman beamed back at him, “Someone knows our name!”

It had been two weeks since de León impressed a crowd on a more brightly lit stage. In a coup at the California Democratic Party’s annual convention last month, de León—until Wednesday the Democratic leader of California’s state Senate—deprived Dianne Feinstein of her own party’s endorsement by outpolling the state’s senior senator by 17 percentage points in the delegate vote. Although de León fell short of the 60 percent threshold necessary to claim the party’s backing himself, he embarrassed Feinstein and put a California institution on her heels.

For de León and his supporters, the convention marked a turning point not only in his quixotic campaign to unseat Feinstein, but also in a generational struggle among Democrats in the nation’s most populous state. For decades, Feinstein and her centrist brand of politics have appeared as immovable as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and California’s fourth-term governor, Jerry Brown. For once, a restless, more progressive class of Democrats had unsteadied the establishment. De León skewers Feinstein for her moderation and depicts her as unfit to battle President Donald Trump. He is also testing the muscle of the nation’s newly emboldened left.

“Time’s up!” de León’s supporters chanted as Feinstein left the convention stage. Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist and Democratic megadonor who once considered challenging Feinstein himself, described the contest on MSNBC as “incrementalism versus visionary thinking in the Democratic Party.”