Democrats

WASHINGTON — President Trump will road-test his claims that he’s tackling Americans’ affordability woes at a Tuesday rally in Mount Pocono, Penn., — shifting an argument made in Oval Office appearances and social media posts to a campaign-style event.

The trip comes as polling consistently shows that public trust in Trump’s economic leadership has faltered. Following dismal results for Republicans in last month’s off-cycle elections, the White House has sought to convince voters that the economy will emerge stronger next year and that any anxieties over inflation have nothing to do with Trump.

The president has consistently blamed his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for inflation even as his own aggressive implementation of policies has pushed up prices that had been settling down after spiking in 2022 to a four-decade high. Inflation began to accelerate after Trump announced his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. Companies warned that the import taxes could be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices and reduced hiring, yet Trump continues to insist that inflation has faded.

“We’re bringing prices way down,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. “You can call it ‘affordability’ or anything you want — but the Democrats caused the affordability problem, and we’re the ones that are fixing it.”

The president’s reception in the county hosting his Tuesday rally could give a signal of just how much voters trust his claims. Monroe County flipped to Trump in the 2024 election after having backed Biden in 2020, helping the Republican to win the swing state of Pennsylvania and return to the White House after a four-year hiatus.

As home to the Pocono Mountains, the county has largely relied on tourism for skiing, hiking, hunting and other activities as a source of jobs. Its proximity to New York City — under two hours by car — has also attracted people seeking more affordable housing.

It’s also an area that could help decide control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

Trump is holding his rally in a congressional district held by freshman Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, who is a top target of Democrats and won his 2024 race by about 1.5 percentage points, among the nation’s closest. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, a Democrat, is running for the nomination to challenge him.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is running digital ads during Trump’s visit on the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader website that criticize Bresnahan for his stock trading while in Congress and suggest that Trump has not as promised addressed double-dealing in Washington.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said on the online conservative talk show “The Mom View” that Trump would be on the “campaign trail” next year to engage supporters who otherwise might sit out a congressional race.

Wiles, who helped manage Trump’s 2024 campaign, said most administrations try to localize midterm elections and keep the president out of the race, but she intends to do the opposite of that.

“We’re actually going to turn that on its head,” Wiles said, “and put him on the ballot because so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters.”

Wiles added, “So I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again.”

The challenge for Trump is how to address the concerns of voters about the economy while simultaneously claiming that the economy is enjoying an historic boom.

Asked on a Politico podcast about how he’d rate the economy, Trump leaned into the grade inflation by answering “A-plus,” only to then amend his answer to “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”

Trump has said he’s giving consumers relief by relaxing fuel efficiency standards for autos and signing agreements to reduce list prices on prescription drugs.

Trump has also advocated for cuts to the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate — which influences the supply of money in the U.S. economy. He argues that would reduce the cost of mortgages and auto loans, although critics warn that cuts of the scale sought by Trump could instead worsen inflation.

The U.S. economy has shown signs of resilience with the stock market up this year and overall growth looking solid for the third quarter. But many Americans see the prices of housing, groceries, education, electricity and other basic needs as swallowing up their incomes, a dynamic that the Trump administration has said it expects to fade next year with more investments in artificial intelligence and manufacturing.

Since the elections in November when Democrats won key races with a focus on kitchen table issues, Trump has often dismissed the concerns about prices as a “hoax” and a “con job” to suggest that he bears no responsibility for inflation, even though he campaigned on his ability to quickly bring down prices. Just 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, according to a November survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Boak and Levy write for the Associated Press. Levy reported from Harrisburg, Penn.

Former Rep. Colin Allred is ending his U.S. Senate campaign in Texas and instead will attempt a House comeback bid, potentially paving the way for Rep. Jasmine Crockett to enter the race for Democrats’ nomination in a state that is critical for the party’s long-shot hopes to reclaim a Senate majority in next year’s midterm elections.

Crockett, a high-profile House member who has sparred with President Trump, is expected to announce her decision on Monday, the final day of qualifying in Texas. Democrats expect she will enter the race for the seat now held by Republican Sen. John Cornyn. Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats to wrest control from Republicans next November, and Texas, which Republicans have dominated for decades, is part of their ideal path.

Allred said in a statement Monday that he wanted to avoid “a bruising Senate primary and runoff” that could threaten Democrats’ chances in November. He said he would instead run for the House in a newly drawn district in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which he previously represented in Congress before he won the Democrats’ Senate nomination in 2024 and lost the general election to Sen. Ted Cruz.

The former congressman did not name Crockett or state Rep. James Talarico, who has launched his Senate bid already, in his explanation. But Allred’s decision aligns with Crockett’s expected entry into the race. Her campaign has scheduled a “special announcement” in Dallas at 4:30 p.m. CST.

Republicans also expect a hotly contested primary among the incumbent Cornyn, state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

Allred says he wants to avoid a divisive Democratic primary

An internal party battle, Allred said, “would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers.”

Kamau Marshall, a Democratic consultant who has worked for Allred before and worked other campaigns in Texas, said Allred made the right call. But he said Talarico and Crockett both face distinct challenges and added that Democrats have work to do across the nation’s second-most populous state.

He said Crockett is a “solid national figure” who has a large social media following and is a frequent presence on cable news. That could be an advantage with Democratic primary voters, Marshall said, but not necessarily afterward.

“It’s going to be a sprint from now until the primary, but in Texas you have to think about the voter base overall in November, too,” Marshall said. “Who can do the work on the ground? After the primary, who can win in the general? … It’s about building complicated coalitions in a big state.”

Talarico, meanwhile, must raise money and build name recognition to make the leap from the Texas House of Representatives to a strong statewide candidate, Marshall said.

A winning Democratic candidate in Texas, Marshall said, would have to energize Black voters, mainly in metro Houston and Dallas, win the kind of diverse suburbs and exurbs like those Allred once represented in Congress, and get enough rural votes, especially among Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley.

Texas Democrats have big gaps to make up

The closest Democrats have come recently to a top-of-the-ticket victory in Texas elections was Beto O’Rourke’s challenge of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. O’Rourke campaigned in all 254 counties — a notable feat for Texas Democrats — and got 48.3% of the vote. But that was still a statewide deficit of 215,000 votes. Just four years later, O’Rourke was the gubernatorial nominee and lost to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott by more than 880,000 votes, a gap of nearly 11 percentage points. In 2024, Allred lost the Senate general election by nearly 960,000 votes or 8.5 points.

Allred’s new House district is part of the new congressional map that Texas’ GOP-run Legislature approved earlier this year as part of Trump’s push to redraw House boundaries to Republicans’ advantage. It includes some areas that Allred represented in Congress from 2019-25. Most of the district is currently being represented by Rep. Marc Veasey, but he has planned to run in a new, neighboring district.

A former professional football player and civil rights attorney, Allred was among Democrats’ star recruits for the 2018 midterms, when the party gained a net of 40 House seats, including multiple suburban and exurban districts in Texas, to win a House majority that redefined Trump’s first presidency.

Besides avoiding a free-for-all Senate primary, Marshall said Allred is helping Democrats’ cause by becoming a candidate for another office, and he said that’s a key for the party to have any shot at flipping the state.

“The infrastructure isn’t terrible but it clearly needs improvement,” he said. “Having strong, competitive candidates for every office is part of building that energy and operation. Texas needs strong candidates in House races, for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general — every office — so that voters are hearing from Democrats everywhere.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Anti-incumbent fever. The Year of the Woman. Coattails and skirt-tails. Yes, the pundits are in a lather with prognostications of a blitzkrieg this year against the powers-that-be in American politics. But will this sortie swoop down on Orange County’s long-entrenched state Legislators?

Don’t count on it, say the region’s Republican hierarchy. They insist the hefty contingent of GOP incumbents in Orange County is just too powerful. Even some leaders of the second-fiddle Democrats, who hold only one state elected office in Orange County, say privately that they don’t expect to make much headway against the GOP.

But such behind-the-scenes sentiments haven’t stopped most Democratic challengers–as well as Libertarians and other third-party candidates–from mounting spirited grass-roots campaigns and espousing the optimistic view that in this wacky political season, anything could happen.

These Democrats suggest they could benefit by hitching a ride on the coattails or skirt hems of their party’s candidates at the top of the ticket. Some of the challengers also predict the Democrat’s surge in voter registration, which saw the party begin to close the GOP’s huge lead, may signal the beginnings of change in the political climate of Orange County.

The Democrats also predict that the electorate’s grumpy feelings about the Legislature–fueled by the nationally embarrassing budget stalemate over the summer–will spark an anti-incumbent wildfire that could hurt GOP candidates in Orange County.

“I think this is the year,” enthused Jim Toledano, an Irvine attorney running against longtime Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) in the 70th District, where Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1. “I get a feeling voters will be picking and choosing this year. And an awful lot of them will be going anti-incumbent.”

Republican officials just aren’t buying it. They admit that anti-incumbency could shave a few points off the usual electoral landslides their candidates enjoy, but say the GOP isn’t taking any chances. The Republicans, after all, still enjoy a hefty edge in fund raising and party registration in nearly all the districts.

“We don’t see any upsets, but this is not a good year to be resting on your laurels,” said Greg Haskin, Orange County’s Republican executive director. “Most of our Republican incumbents are taking it very seriously and working hard to get reelected.”

A look at Orange County’s races for the Assembly:

67th Assembly District

Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) had to engage in a tumultuous primary campaign to defeat colleagues Tom Mays (R-Huntington Beach) and Nolan Frizzelle (R-Fountain Valley) after redistricting put all three in this coastal Orange County district anchored by Huntington Beach.

Although the five-term assemblywoman heads toward election day with a 51.5% to 35.4% registration advantage for the GOP, Democrat challenger Ken LeBlanc is bullish on his chances.

“I’m doing everything I can to position myself for lightning to strike,” LeBlanc said. He is tapping into the 700 volunteers working out of the Democratic Party’s west Orange County office. LeBlanc also notes that much of the newly reapportioned district is new to Allen. In the meantime, LeBlanc has tried to characterize himself as a maverick, “not your usual liberal Democrat.”

LeBlanc also makes a fuss over money funneled to Allen during the primary by education and labor groups that have traditionally supported Democrats. It has prompted an unusual charge: LeBlanc, the Democrat, has tried to tie Allen to powerful Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

“Doris made a deal with Willie obviously,” LeBlanc contends. “If Doris wants to sell herself to the highest bidder, she can do that.”

Allen bristles at such accusations, saying Brown had nothing to do with the contributions, which she contends were sparked by her support of education.

“There was never a deal with Willie, never a discussion,” she said. “In fact, Willie was mad that they were putting money into a Republican district.” Allen also said LeBlanc “hurts himself worse than he helps himself” by making such charges.

She hopes to return to Sacramento and work on finding “a balance between the economy and environment.” Her big effort in recent years has been to outlaw the use of gill nets by commercial fishermen.

Libertarian Brian Schar, an aerospace engineer, says meaningful budget reform needs to start with public schools and supports the proposed voucher system allowing parents to more easily send their children to private schools. Like other Libertarians, he wants to cut taxes and regulations to help improve the state’s business climate.

68th Assembly District

Curt Pringle, Orange County’s former assemblyman, is back.

After one term in the Legislature, Pringle was defeated by Democrat Tom Umberg in an unruly 1990 race. Reapportionment shifted Pringle into a new district, and here he is again in the 68th.

His Democratic opponent, Linda Kay Rigney, is running a campaign long on hustle and short on cash. Nonetheless, Rigney sees signs of hope. The central county district–anchored by Garden Grove, Westminster and Anaheim–isn’t nearly as lopsided as some (it’s 46.2% Republican and 42.2% Democratic). With no other candidate in the race, Rigney hopes the 11% who aren’t followers of the major parties will vote for her.

Moreover, she thinks the area’s residents, irked by the lingering recession, will be ready to revolt against the GOP hierarchy. She also expects to gain votes in this political “Year of the Woman” and perhaps even ride the hems of Feinstein and Boxer.

A longtime Democratic activist and school instructional aide, Rigney hopes to take “drastic measures” to spur the economy by streamlining the regulatory process and reforming workers compensation.

Pringle, 33, has mostly focused on his desire to work at reducing the size of government. Like other Republicans, he wants to roll back regulations to “bring the economy out of the doldrums.”

He also wants to overhaul the worker’s compensation system to outlaw stress disability claims and make cuts “in every area of the budget.” Noting that many politicians “shy away” from talking about cuts in education, Pringle stressed that the problem isn’t a lack of money but a bloated education bureaucracy.

69th Assembly District

With a Democrat majority, this district is an anomaly in the GOP bastion of Orange County. Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) enjoys a 54% to 36% registration edge over the Republicans.

But local Republicans would like nothing better than to unseat Umberg, and they feel they’ve got just the candidate to do it–Jo Ellen Allen, a conservative former associate professor of political science and champion of “traditional family values.”

Both sides are armed for war. Allen has raised about $200,000 so far, while Umberg has amassed $300,000. There’s even been a few early skirmishes.

Allen has made a point to regularly blast Umberg for his vote in 1990 to retain Willie Brown as speaker of the Assembly, a post the San Francisco Democrat has held for a dozen years to the ever-increasing irritation of frustrated Republican politicos.

Umberg’s campaign, meanwhile, has been quietly making a fuss over Allen’s role for the past decade as president of the California chapter of Eagle Forum, a conservative group headed by Phyllis Schlafly, the right-wing national celebrity most prominent for her stand against the proposed equal rights amendment and other feminist causes.

David Keller, the Libertarian candidate, wants to privatize the public school system and many other government services. He also would work to abolish the South Coast Air Quality Management District as well as agencies such as the Iceberg Lettuce Commission and the state Arts Council. Keller favors a flat-rate personal income tax for the state and wants to reduce sales taxes. He also wants to legalize drugs, saying that “the drug war is diverting police and court resources from real crime, serious crime.”

70th Assembly District

Like other Republican incumbents, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson enjoys a decided registration advantage (56.1% GOP to 29.7% Democratic), but challenger Jim Toledano remains confident.

Toledano and his volunteers have been walking precincts for more than two months. He has also raised more than $50,000 and figures he will capture GOP voters who supported Costa Mesa Mayor Mary Hornbuckle, who gave Ferguson a rough fight in the Republican primary.

He contends the state has “systematically shortchanged education,” turning a “first-rate education system into one that hasn’t done the job.” Business, in turn, has suffered because of a dearth of well-educated workers, he said.

The Democrat is also talking tough.

“Gil Ferguson has an extreme right-wing ideological agenda that he pushes at every opportunity,” Toledano said. “He is focused on winning ideological points on the right and not in dealing with problems.”

Ferguson scoffs at Toledano’s critique. Although the challenger insists he would vote to oust Democrat Willie Brown as speaker of the Assembly, Ferguson isn’t buying it.

“He’s a typical Democrat opponent,” Ferguson said. “They distort your record and say bad things about you. But they never tell the constituents that they’re going to go up to Sacramento and join Willie Brown.”

Ferguson said he’s happy to run on his record, noting that he worked to get an independent Caltrans district office in Orange County and served on a blue-ribbon task force that successfully pushed a highway funding measure that fueled the current freeway building binge.

Libertarian Scott Bieser, meanwhile, is running as a protest candidate to give voters who are “fed up with Republicans and Democrats” another choice. He wants to cut government by about 80%, comparing politicians’ thirst for tax dollars to “a person addicted to a drug.”

71st Assembly District

Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Santa Ana) has a bigger registration advantage than any Republican in the state (58% to 29.2% for the Democrats). But he’s not taking chances in this unpredictable political year.

Conroy is running on his record–he managed to get 24 bills signed into law since he won a special election for the seat last year. They’ve included a domestic violence bill, a law making it a crime to deface veterans’ memorials and legislation repealing the tax on white canes for the blind.

His Democratic opponent, Bea Foster, hopes to parlay her many years of activism in community politics into votes. She helped push through Orange County’s TINCUP campaign finance reform measure, was active in the unsuccessful effort to incorporate north Tustin and helped block plans for extension of the Garden Grove Freeway into the Tustin hills.

Foster wants to see the state’s health care system improved and boost funding for education, saying “one of our gold mines is going down the drain.” She also wants to push for retraining of aerospace workers and others out of jobs because of the economy.

72nd Assembly District

Like many other heavily Republican districts, this race could turn into a coronation for powerful Assemblyman Ross Johnson. The former Assembly minority party leader enjoys a 55.6% to 37.7% registration advantage over the Democrats in his district. Moreover, Democratic challenger Paul Garza Jr. is running a low-key campaign.

Johnson hopes to fundamentally restructure state government, cutting regulations and spending fewer tax dollars. He wants to rework the welfare system, shifting the emphasis to helping people become “fully functioning, productive members of society.”

Garza, a public affairs consultant and former Orange County Democratic Party executive director, supports abortion rights, wants to see the state’s health care system revamped to improve care for all and wants the welfare system reformed to provide education and vocational skills.

Libertarian Geoffrey Braun favors school vouchers, wants the state’s workers’ compensation system revamped and backs campaign finance reform, saying that big political contributions are undermining the ability of government to truly serve the people.

73rd Assembly District

Up until a few weeks ago, this race appeared headed toward a historic intraparty showdown. But then Republican nominee Bill Morrow and the opponent he defeated in the primary, Laguna Niguel Councilwoman Patricia C. Bates, made up and held a peace powwow with GOP officials.

Democrat Lee Walker isn’t holding back the punches, calling Morrow an “ultra-conservative, right-wing Christian” who is “out of the mainstream of Republicanism.”

Walker, a college professor who has modeled himself as the “education candidate,” also has blasted Morrow for raising more than $275,000 in contributions, much of the money from powerful Sacramento politicians and political action committees. “I could call him Mr. Pac-Man because he’s got so many PACs giving him money,” Walker said.

Morrow counters that “people who contribute to my campaign do so because they know I stand for certain principles that are consistent with their own beliefs” and stressed that he has received many small-dollar contributions from the general public.

Five months after joining the U.S. Senate, Adam Schiff delivered a floor speech on what he called “the top 10 deals for Donald Trump and the worst deals for the American people.”

Schiff spoke of Trump and his family getting rich off cryptocurrency and cutting new development deals across the Middle East, and of the president accepting a free jet from the Qatari government. Meanwhile, he said, average Americans were losing their healthcare, getting priced out of the housing market and having to “choose between rent or groceries.”

“Trump gets rich. You get screwed,” the Democrat said.

The speech was classic Schiff — an attempt by the former prosecutor to wrangle a complex set of graft allegations against Trump and his orbit into a single, cohesive corruption case against the president, all while serving up his own party’s preferred messaging on rising costs and the lack of affordability.

It was also a prime example of the tack Schiff has taken since being sworn in one year ago to finish the final term of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a titan of California politics who held the seat for more than 30 years before dying in office in 2023.

Schiff — now serving his own six-year term — has remained the unblinking antagonist to Trump that many Californians elected him to be after watching him dog the president from the U.S. House during Trump’s first term in the White House. He’s also continued to serve as one of the Democratic Party’s most talented if slightly cerebral messengers, hammering Trump over his alleged abuses of power and the lagging economy, which has become one of the president’s biggest liabilities.

Schiff has done so while also defending himself against Trump’s accusations that he committed mortgage fraud on years-old loan documents; responding to the devastating wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles region in January; visiting 25 of California’s 58 counties to meet more of his nearly 40 million constituents; grilling Trump appointees as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and struggling to pass legislation as a minority member of a profoundly dysfunctional Congress that recently allowed for the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.

It’s been an unusual and busy freshman year, attracting sharp criticism from the White House but high praise from his allies.

“Pencil Neck Shifty Schiff clearly suffers from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that clouds his every thought,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “It’s too bad for Californians that Pencil Neck is more focused on his hatred of the President than he is on the issues that matter to them.”

“He’s been great for California,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee who endorsed Schiff’s opponent, former Rep. Katie Porter, in the Senate primary. “He’s not afraid of taking on Trump, he’s not afraid of doing tough oversight, he’s not afraid of asking questions, and it’s clear that Donald Trump is scared of Adam Schiff.”

“While he may be a freshman in the Senate,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), “he’s certainly no rookie.”

Attempts to legislate

Before he became known nationally for helping to lead Trump’s first-term impeachments and investigate the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters, Schiff was known as a serious legislator. Since joining the Senate, he has tried to reclaim that reputation.

He has introduced bills to strengthen homes against wildfires and other natural disasters, give tax relief to Los Angeles fire victims, strengthen California’s fire-crippled insurance market, study AI’s impact on the American workforce, reinstate a national assault weapons ban and expand federal tax credits for affordable housing.

He has also introduced bills to end Trump’s tariffs, rein in the powers of the executive branch, halt the president and other elected officials from getting rich off cryptocurrencies, and end the White House-directed bombing campaign on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.

None of that legislation has passed.

Schiff said he’s aware that putting his name on legislation might diminish its chances of gaining support, and at times he has intentionally taken a back seat on bills he’s worked on — he wouldn’t say which — to give them a better shot of advancing. But he said he also believes Democrats need to “point out what they’re for” to voters more often, and is proud to have put his name on bills that are important to him and he believes will bring down costs for Californians.

As an example, he said his recent Housing BOOM (Building Occupancy Opportunity for Millions) Act is about building “millions of new homes across America, like we did after World War II, that are affordable for working families,” and is worth pushing even if Republicans resist it.

“As we saw with the healthcare debate, when Republicans aren’t acting to bring costs down, when they’re doing things that make costs go up instead, we can force them to respond by putting forward our own proposals to move the country forward,” he said. “If Republicans continue to be tone deaf to the needs of the American people, with President Trump calling the affordability issue a hoax, then they’re gonna get the same kind of shellacking that they did in the election last month.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), a staunch ally, called Schiff a “legislative genius” who is “giving people hope” with his bills, which could pass if Democrats win back the House next year.

“He has a vision for our country. He has knowledge of issues par excellence from all of the years that he’s served. He’s a strategic thinker,” she said. “I wouldn’t question how he decides to take up a bill just because what’s-his-name’s in the White House.”

Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant, said Schiff’s prominent position on Trump’s enemies list of course hurts his chances of passing legislation, but the hyper-partisan nature of Congress means his chances weren’t great to begin with.

Meanwhile, being seen as working for solutions clearly serves him and his party well, Madrid said, adding, “He’s probably accomplishing more socially than he ever could legislatively.”

Criticism and praise

For months, Trump and his administration have been accusing several prominent Democrats of mortgage-related crimes. Trump has accused Schiff of mortgage fraud for claiming primary residency in both California and Maryland, which Schiff denies.

So far, nothing has come of it. Schiff said that he has not been interviewed by federal prosecutors, who are reportedly skeptical of the case, and that he doesn’t know anything about it other than that it is “a broad effort to silence and intimidate the president’s critics.”

Schiff’s supporters and other political observers in the state either ignored the issue when asked about Schiff’s first year, were dismissive of it or said they saw it as a potential asset for the senator.

“Adam Schiff is a person of great integrity, and people know that,” Pelosi said.

“Probably one of the best things that could happen to Schiff is if Trump actually goaded the [Justice Department] to charge him for mortgage fraud, and then for the case to be thrown out in court,” said Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist — noting that is what happened with a similar case brought against New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James.

“He’s really benefited from having Trump put a target on his back,” South said. “In California, that’s not a death knell, that’s a life force.”

Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), who chairs the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, which Schiff sits on, said California represents a big part of the nation’s agriculture industry and having Schiff on the committee “is a good thing not just for California, but for our overall efforts to support farmers and producers nationwide.”

“I have known Sen. Schiff since we served in the House together, and we are both committed to advocating farmers’ and rural America’s needs in a bipartisan way,” Boozman said. “We look forward to more opportunities to advance these goals together.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has “a cordial, professional relationship” with Schiff, a spokesperson said.

Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, declined to comment. Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, the leading Republican in the race for governor, did not respond to a request for comment.

Looking ahead

What comes next for Schiff will depend in part on whether Democrats win back a majority in Congress. But people on both sides of the political aisle said they expect big things from him regardless.

Garcia said Schiff will be “at the center of holding the Trump administration accountable” no matter what happens. “Obviously, in the majority, we’re going to have the ability to subpoena, and to hold hearings, and to hold the administration accountable in a way that we don’t have now, but even in the minority, I think you see Adam’s strong voice pretty constant.”

Kevin Spillane, a veteran GOP strategist, said he doesn’t make much of Schiff’s economic messaging because voters in California know that Democrats have caused the state’s affordability crisis by raising taxes and imposing endless regulations.

But Schiff is already “the second-most important Democrat in California” after Newsom, he said, and his hammering on affordability could propel him even further if voters start to see him as working toward solutions.

Rob Stutzman, another Republican consultant, said he can see Schiff in coming years “ascend to the Feinstein role” of “the caretaker of California in the U.S. Congress” — someone with “the ability to broker deals” on hugely important issues such as water and infrastructure. But to do so, Stutzman said, Schiff “needs to extract himself from the political meme of being a Trump antagonist.”

Schiff said he knew heading to the Senate as Trump returned to the White House that he would be dividing his time “between delivering for California and fighting the worst of the Trump policies.” But his efforts to fix the economy and his efforts to resist Trump are not at odds, he said, but deeply intertwined.

“When people feel like the quality of life their parents had was better, and the future for their kids looks like it’s even more in doubt, all too many are ready to entertain any demagogue who comes along promising they alone can fix it. They start to question whether democracy really works,” he said. “So I don’t think we’re going to put our democracy on a solid footing until we have our economy on a solid footing.”

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos in Washington contributed to this report.