Monte Vista Alum Adam Schiff Running For California Senate

DANVILLE, CA — Monte Vista High School graduate Rep. Adam Schiff announced Thursday that he intends to run for the U.S. Senate seat that has been occupied by Dianne Feinstein since 1992. Feinstein, 89, has not announced whether she is running or not in 2024, but she is not expected to run again after ceding top posts and declining to serve as president pro tem of the senate.

Schiff, 62, has served in the House of Representatives since January 2001, and represented shifting districts in the Los Angeles area. Since January 2023, he has been the representative for California’s 30th district, which includes Hollywood, West Hollywood, Pasadena and Burbank. He served as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from 2019 to 2023, where he led two impeachment investigations against former President Trump.

Schiff was born in Massachusetts, but moved to Alamo in 1972. He graduated from Monte Vista High School in 1978, where he was both class valedictorian and voted “most likely to succeed.”

“Growing up in the Bay Area, my parents taught me that public service was a noble calling,” Schiff said in his announcement video.

He graduated from Stanford University, and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District from 1987 to 1993, and in 1996 was elected to represent California’s 21st District in northern LA County in the California State Senate. In 2000, he was elected as the representative of California’s 27th congressional district.

Schiff gained widespread attention in recent years as an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and one of the Democratic Party’s most successful fundraisers. As head of the House Intelligence Committee, he led two impeachment investigations, and led the fourth day of the Jan. 6 Committee Hearings. Last Tuesday, current Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy exiled Reps. Schiff and Eric Swalwell - another Tri-Valley native - from the House Intelligence Committee.

“I wish I could say the era of MAGA extremists is over,” Schiff said in his video. “It is not. Today’s Republican party is gutting the middle class. Threatening our democracy. They are not going to stop. We have to stop them.”

If Feinstein declines to run again, it is unlikely that a Republican candidate will win her seat. The Democratic field is wide open. Katie Porter, the first Democrat to be elected in her Orange County district, has also announced her candidacy. Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, and Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee, have also said they intend to run for the November 2024 race.

Schiff is far from the only famous Danviller. Playwright Eugene O’Neill lived there from 1937 to 1944; supermodel Christy Turlington graduated Monte Vista in 1987; pilot Sully Sullenberger grew up in Danville and was awarded the “Key to the Town” and became an honorary Danville police officer. At the other end of the spectrum, Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, was married to a doctor and living in the Blackhawk Country Club just before she joined the radical group Tribal Thumb.