Barbara Lee’s PAC launches rescue mission

California Rep. Barbara Lee’s Super PAC is whirring to life — and its organizers are making an urgent plea to donors as polls show a close race between three leading Democrats for the U.S. Senate seat.

Lee’s outside group, She Speaks for Me, will report raising more than $1.5 million in the second quarter, according to a memo the committee is circulating to major donors. That’s more than the $1.4 million the Lee campaign has in the bank, but it’s still orders of magnitude less than her Democratic rivals, Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, who are running to succeed Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The Lee PAC’s organizers — consultants Nathan Barankin, Brian Brokaw and Dan Newman — suggest in the donor memo that they need to start introducing Lee to a broader statewide audience immediately. And they outline an ambitious goal for a TV budget.

“But in order to give Barbara a fair shot at making the top-2 next March, the next few months are critical, and we need to raise another $8.5 million to reach as many likely voters as we can,” the trio wrote in the memo obtained by POLITICO.

The big donors to Lee’s PAC have ties to the Oakland congressmember and are well known in California political circles for their roles in helping reshape the state’s criminal justice system. Quinn Delaney, who runs a foundation along with her husband Wayne Jordan, has given $1 million, organizers said. Much of the remainder — $500,000 — was contributed by Patty Quillin, a philanthropist and the wife of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. The group will report to the FEC by month’s end.

Lee PAC organizers are trying to pitch prospective donors by pointing to the glut of public and private surveys that still show a tight race between Porter, Schiff and Lee. A well-respected survey late last week found all of them in the low double-digits. Super PACs have so far not played a significant financial role in the Senate race, though groups backing Lee and Schiff are stocked with veteran California consultants. A prospective PAC for Porter has been calling around to possible advisers to fill out its staff ranks, three people familiar with the overtures told POLITICO.

On the campaign side, Schiff’s committee is sitting on nearly $30 million while Porter has just over $10 million. In the Lee PAC memo, the consultants contend that despite her overwhelming financial disadvantage, she doesn’t need to match her opponents dollar for dollar to make top-two in the March runoff and win in November—“but she cannot afford to be outgunned by a 12-to-1 margin.”

“It truly is doable if she’s not swamped in the money race like she is today,” Newman said in an interview.

As for their reasons for hope, they point to their internal polling of each candidate’s launch video that found Lee’s share of support growing the most. They also highlight her lead among voters under 50 and the fact she’s from the Bay Area in Northern California, which historically votes at higher rates than do people in Southern California. Schiff and Porter are from Los Angeles and Orange County, respectively.