Longtime News Anchor Announces Run for Senate
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
A longtime television news reporter and first-time political candidate has announced that she is entering the already chaotic race to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the Senate.
Christina Pascucci launched what Politico in an exclusive story published Oct. 18 called “a longshot campaign” for the seat.
Pascucci, who has spent years at Fox’s KTTV and the CW’s KTLA in Los Angeles joins Kari Lake as another former television news anchor seeking a position in the U.S. Senate in 2024.
Unlike Lake, however, Pascucci told Politico that her plan was to run as a “moderate consensus builder in a field of bomb-throwing partisans.”
She told Politico that she thought Feinstein and Sen. Mitt Romney were good examples of what a U.S. senator should be.
Pascucci posted a picture of herself with Feinstein to social media shortly after the senator passed.
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She also announced for the first time publicly that she was a little over four months pregnant with her first child.
“I’ve been covering the most pressing issues of California for the past 15 years and watching this race closely, as well as covering it and interviewing some of the candidates,” Pascucci told Politico in the interview. “And the more I watched it, the more closely I studied it, I honestly felt dismayed by how it was shaping up. I spoke to a lot of others who felt the same way. Like, this is our future — more of the same.”
“The only thing crazier than not jumping in this late would be not jumping in at all, because I have to fight for what I believe is possible for California and for this country,” she said.
Pascucci said she was aware that she had her work cut out for her if she hoped to come in at least second in California’s Super Tuesday jungle primary, and planned to do so in part by reaching out to Latino voters and “other voters who haven’t been swayed by a trio of far better-known Democrats in the race, Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee,” the outlet said.
She said she grew up with conservative Republican parents, teaching her how to get along with people even when their beliefs differ.
“I spent my life and my upbringing learning to speak the language of people who disagree with me,” she told Politico. “A lot of times people don’t even try and they just say, ‘They’re extreme.’ That is the worst thing you can do.
“That is the intent of disinformation: To polarize us,” she said, vowing to combat what she termed “disinformation warfare.” “The only way to combat that is by going in, sitting down and talking it out. And that’s what I’ve been trained to do as a journalist,” she added.
Pascucci also said that her exposure to political donors and Hollywood celebrities as a reporter gave her a base for fundraising.
“People will have plenty to say — especially people who are well-versed in politics — about what can or can’t be done,” she told Politico. “But my campaign is a campaign of possibility, of having people choose between how things have been done or what they can be. And I believe this message will resonate deeply.”
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