Will Adam Schiff’s two homes be a factor in California’s 2024 Senate race?
California U.S. Senate candidate Adam Schiff, a Los Angeles area congressman for the past 23 years, maintains a home in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. as well as a residence in Burbank.
The dual properties were first reported by CNN. It said that in the first dozen years Schiff served in the House, he routinely designated the Maryland home as a primary residence, though Schiff has long maintained it is not.
Marisol Samayoa, Schiff’s campaign spokeswoman, said the congressman’s primary residence is in Burbank, part of the district he represents.
She said Schiff has often discussed how he and his wife “made the difficult decision to move their family to the D.C. area to spend more time with his children while doing his job — voting and representing the people of California’s 30th Congressional District.”
When he and his wife refinanced in 2020, the house in Potomac, a posh Washington suburb, was designated in a legal document as a second home.
Schiff pays California state income tax, is a registered voter in the state and has a state driver’s license.
A political problem?
The notion that he lives in both places adds new fuel to an already closely-contested race between Schiff, Reps. Katie Porter, D-Irvine and Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, entrepreneur Lexi Reese, veteran television reporter Christina Pascucci, former baseball star Steve Garvey and others for the Senate seat held for 31 years by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Feinstein died Sept. 29. Sen. Laphonza Butler, a Democrat, was appointed to the seat last month by Gov. Gavin Newsom and said she will not seek a full term next year.. Butler was living in Maryland at the time of her appointment but has worked extensively in California and re-registered in the state as a voter after being named to the Senate.
Just how much the residency issue will impact the campaign is unclear. How representatives legislate is more important than their zip code to voters, according to experts who spoke to The Bee.
That can change, depending on if that zip code is next door or 3,000 miles away. And campaign opponents certainly seize on residency, claiming that a candidate is not truly in touch with voters when they don’t even live with them.
“I do think it’s more important that you’re voting the way people want, that you’re representing their interests,” said Christian Grose, academic director of the University of Southern California Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. “I don’t think it’s essential that you are from inside, but it could be a negative campaign issue for sure.”
Schiff’s campaign says he has not claimed his Maryland property as a principal residence on his Montgomery County property taxes since he bought it 20 years ago. It has been designated as a primary residence for loan purposes. That characterization distinguishes it from a vacation home.
The most recent filing with Montgomery County from 2020 shows his Maryland property is a “second home.”
He and his wife signed a “Second Home Rider” document with their most recent mortgage refinance three years ago, attesting that “Borrower will occupy and use the Property as Borrower’s second home...”
Schiff explained to the Daily News of Los Angeles in March 2022 why he brought his family to the Washington area.
“It really hit me on Halloween, when I wasn’t able to be with my wife and daughter, Alexa. She’s 3 years old and trick-or-treating is really a big deal for her. I hate to miss moments like that, you never get them back,” he said at the time.
Living in Washington
It’s not uncommon for members of Congress to live in the Washington, D.C. area — or for that matter parts of California that aren’t in their House districts.
Federal rules vaguely say lawmakers must “be an Inhabitant of that state,” per the Constitution. There are various ways to prove where someone lives.
A federal lawmaker with an apartment in California who pays rent or taxes and is registered to vote there can physically live in Washington, D.C.
Traveling back and forth from Washington, particularly for someone who is older or who has young children, can make a bicoastal job more difficult.
For example, a 2020 review of property records showed that Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., did not own a home in Missouri. Rather, he was registered to vote out of his sister’s home in Ozark. He owned a home in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. with his wife and three children.
A spokeswoman for Hawley said that the senator and his wife had sold their former Springfield, Missouri, home and were staying with family while they built a new one in Ozark.
At the time, a Democratic-aligned group alleged that Hawley’s decision to register at his sister’s home could be a potential violation of Missouri’s voter registration law, which requires voters to register at their residence.
