Rep. Adam B. Schiff is a darling of the Democrats, a fighter and political veteran accustomed to the limelight on Sunday talk shows and on the House floor.
In the Senate, the Burbank Democrat will carry a new title: freshman.
Schiff easily won California’s U.S. Senate race on Nov. 5, and will be sworn in next month to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term. He will start a six-year Senate term in January, the same month that his most powerful antagonist, President-elect Donald Trump, will move back into the White House.
Trump’s election puts Schiff in a unique position for a freshman senator. Trump has vowed to spend his second term pursuing his political enemies, including Schiff, whom he has variously described as a “liar,” “traitor,” “shifty,” “evil,” “pencil neck” and one of the country’s “enemies from within.”
Schiff will be navigating a new workplace for the first time since 2001, contending with nuts-and-bolts issues like committee assignments and office space, and trying to build relationships to pass laws that benefit California. He will have to do so while contending with the expectations that come with his national profile as a vociferous Trump critic.
“When he walks onto the Senate floor for the first time, Republican senators are going to look around and say, ‘So there he is,’ ” said Jim Manley, a former senior advisor to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “They’re going to try to size him up, because all they’ve read, all they’ve heard for the last few years, is the soon-to-be president demonizing the guy.”
Schiff declined to be interviewed for this story, but recently told Times columnist Mark Z. Barabak that he plans to focus on bringing down the cost of living for working- and middle-class families. He wants to rein in the rising costs of food, housing and child care and build more housing to address the state’s twin crises of high housing costs and homelessness.
“They’re the same issues, in part, that Republicans campaigned on and Trump campaigned on,” Schiff said. “Where they’re serious … they’ll find a willing ally.”
Despite that conciliatory tone, Schiff also has promised to stand firm against the incoming president if he threatens Californians. In a victory speech on election night, the senator-elect said that he was “committed to taking on the big fights to protect our freedoms and to protect our democracy.”
With Schiff’s election, California will have two male senators for the first time since the early 1990s, neither with much seniority. He’ll be the junior senator to Alex Padilla, who was appointed to the Senate in 2021 and elected to a full term in 2022.
Republicans will have a majority in the Senate next year, but Schiff will still wield a significant amount of power, said former California Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Republicans controlled the Senate for most of Boxer’s 24 years in the chamber, including several terms when they held 55 of 100 seats. Speaking from experience, she said, Democrats shouldn’t expect to control the discussion around bills, but there are other ways to make their points, including “taking to the floor, all night, overnight,” holding news conferences, and inviting expert speakers to their caucus meetings.
She said personal relationships and bipartisanship matter more in the Senate than in the House. She cited an old adage: The House of Representatives is the hot tea, and the Senate is the saucer where things cool down.
“I’m sure there are die-hard MAGA senators who aren’t going to be happy that Adam Schiff is showing up, but he’s a smart, thoughtful and reasonable person,” Boxer said. “The Senate is such a personal body. There’s more working across the aisle than it appears. That’s all built on relationships and trust and credibility.”
That atmosphere will help Schiff get beyond being pigeonholed as a Trump adversary, even if he continues to be on Trump’s list of enemies, said Democratic Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, who is retiring after 18 years in the Senate.
“The president-elect has a long list, and that list changes every day and it changes by the moment,” Cardin said. “It will not at all prevent senators from working with Adam Schiff.”
Schiff also worked to bolster his relationships with Senate Democrats before his election. He contributed $1 million from his campaign account to help Senate candidates across the country. He also campaigned alongside eight Democratic Senate candidates, including incumbent Sens. Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sens.-elect Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, all of whom won in close swing-state races.
How Schiff uses his voice will depend in part on his committee assignments. Freshmen senators typically get last pick, although Schiff could have a slight leg up considering his decades of experience, national stature and dedication to the party, and because serving out the last bit of Feinstein’s term gives him a sliver of seniority over his fellow freshmen, whose terms start in January.
Leaders from both major parties still have to negotiate how many senators from their caucuses will serve on each committee, and decide leadership roles for senior senators. Only then will open seats go to freshmen.
Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York declined to answer questions about what roles Schiff might play in the Senate, but said he will be a “great addition” to the caucus.
The Senate can confirm or block high-level appointments by the president with a simple majority vote, meaning Trump’s Cabinet picks could be appointed without any support from Democrats.
But Trump has already signaled that he will try to bypass the Senate. On Sunday, he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that the Senate’s next Republican majority leader “must agree” to empower him to make critical appointments unilaterally while the chamber is in recess. Without that power, Trump wrote, “we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.”
Schiff has challenged that idea — writing on X that Trump’s nominee for attorney general, MAGA devotee and former Rep. Matt Gaetz, “must be rejected” by the Senate.
Beyond committees, the minority party often looks to the court of public opinion to get its message out.
When Republicans held all three branches of government in the early 2000s, Boxer began holding weekly news conferences to talk about President George W. Bush’s actions that posed environmental risks, recalled Rose Kapolczynski, who ran all four of Boxer’s Senate campaigns.
Boxer’s staff began taping together the papers listing the administration’s problematic moves on the environment. By the end, Kapolczynski said, Boxer was unfurling a 32-foot scroll for the cameras, and Democrats were armed with a to-do list on environmental issues when they retook the Senate in 2008.
Boxer said that Schiff will learn that he still has significant power, even in the minority party.
A UC Berkeley poll co-sponsored by the L.A. Times in September indicated that if Trump were elected again, nearly 6 in 10 likely California voters would want Schiff to prioritize “protecting California’s interests and opposing federal legislation that would undercut existing state laws and policies.”
Half of likely California voters surveyed said Schiff should focus on passing bipartisan legislation. Just under half said he should prioritize “standing up to the president and challenging his executive orders.”
Schiff’s contentious relationship with Trump — and Trump’s disdain for him — stem directly from Schiff’s work in the House to hold the Republican accountable before and during his first term in office.
Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, helped lead the House investigation into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia in the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2016 election. During that time, top Trump campaign officials met with a Russian asset in Trump Tower, Trump’s campaign manager shared internal polling data with another Russian asset, and Trump himself called on Russia to hack Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton’s emails.
House Republicans ultimately censured Schiff for saying publicly that there was “significant” and “compelling” evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that Russia had intervened on the Trump campaign’s behalf, and that the campaign had welcomed the help, but did not recommend that the Justice Department charge any Americans. Schiff has maintained that there was evidence of collusion, even if it did not lead to criminal charges.
Schiff was the lead manager of the trial in which the House voted to impeach Trump for asking Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, his expected 2020 Democratic presidential rival, while withholding military aid to the country.
The Burbank Democrat also helped investigate Trump’s role in inciting the U.S. Capitol insurrection that tried to block Congress’ certification of Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to Trump’s second impeachment.
The Senate acquitted Trump after both House impeachments, but he hasn’t forgotten the investigations, calling them “witch hunts” and painting Schiff as an immoral Democratic operator who was obsessed with toppling him from the White House.
In September, when Schiff was still hoping Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidential election, he told The Times that Trump being returned to power would “elevate the personal risk” to himself.
He said Trump would be “more unshackled than ever, more threatening than ever, of his political enemies” since the recent Supreme Court ruling that sitting presidents have sweeping criminal immunity for actions taken in their official capacity.
“But I’m determined to do my job,” Schiff said.
Times staff writer Noah Bierman contributed to this report.