Dianne Feinstein successors line up to be the coolest nerds in the U.S. Senate | Opinion

Now that Sen. Dianne Feinstein has announced she won’t seek re-election, it’s become a battle of campaign merchandise between her eager and decidedly nerdy successors.

The apparent front-runner is Rep. Adam Schiff, who would have been president of the student council for life if he hadn’t gotten elected to the House of Representatives first.

On his campaign website, Schiff is selling retro swag that says he means business. One of the products is a T-shirt featuring a photo of Schiff — apparently as a high school senior — with ’70s graphics reminiscent of the Starsky and Hutch logo. (Google it, kids.)

As someone who is exactly Schiff’s age (born in 1960 — a child, really) I absolutely identified with the shirt. It shows Schiff’s playful side, which isn’t abundantly evident in his many somber appearances on MSNBC.

With more than a year to go before the 2024 elections, the smiling Schiff shirt is a better play for him now than the other dull and staid merchandise — 19 items in all — currently being sold on his campaign website.

Most unfortunate of all are the mugs, sweatshirts, T-shirts and ball caps emblazoned with the words: “Right. Truth. Decency.”

Sir? Respectfully? Lighten up.

Schiff does have name value, however. Law & Order aficionados from 30 years ago might recall the name “Adam Schiff” as the Manhattan DA on that show, and having some familiarity with the real Adam Schiff, I cannot rule out that this was a planned gambit.

After that Adam Schiff left the show, Fred Thompson, the actor and once a real U.S. Senator from Tennessee, joined Law & Order as the new Manhattan DA during his final months in the Senate in 2002.

Art imitating life? You be the judge. Or the DA.

But let us not forget Rep. Katie Porter’s senate campaign as well: Porter, announced her candidacy during the recent, catastrophic flooding and storms in California as her first political move. Oh, and she also has a website.

To her credit, Porter’s store is dramatically more interesting than Schiff’s. It also features 19 items. That may also be a planned gambit.

Sadly, there isn’t any swag related to meteorology. Prior to looking at her site, I was thinking, “She’d be smart to offer an Official Katie Porter Whiteboard.”

She does, in fact, offer an Official Katie Porter Whiteboard (with complimentary marker). And a Katie Porter Kitchen Kit, with a magnetic fridge clip, a towel, and — intriguingly — a sponge.

I would really like to see an Adam Schiff sponge.

Then there’s a Katie Porter-branded cosmetic bag, various shirts and hats that feature the far catchier slogan, “No BS.”

I mean, I like right, truth and decency as much as the next voter, but “No BS” screams “Enraged Millennial” and really cuts through the clutter.

I particularly like the “No BS” socks, but a more subtle dig at Schiff may be a pair of “OK, Boomer” socks. An umbrella would have been a nice touch, too.

Rep. Barbara Lee has also filed to run for the vacant Senate seat, but she seems to have as much money as I do have under my car seat. Lee doesn’t have a campaign website, or a campaign store — yet.

Moving on to Rep. Ro Khanna’s site, which is not a U.S. Senate campaign site — again, yet — there is no store, no swag, no mugs, no whiteboard, no kitchen kit and certainly no sponges.

Sen. Feinstein, obviously, has no website. If she did, it might have a Lindsey Graham huggable bear.

Here’s the thing: Schiff has just scratched the surface of where he needs to be in the campaign merch‘ battle. Maybe he can do a pencil, for “pencil neck” (Trump’s super clever description of him) pencil, or a: “My Gramma Watches MSNBC Obsessively And All I Got Was This Lousy But Terribly Earnest Adam Schiff Shirt.”

OK, Boomer? People our age look lousy in T-shirts. How about an untucked, really loose sweatshirt with stain-protection fibers?

Kids my kids’ age want to see you’re in on your own joke.