from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday,

March 7th. I'm sure you've had enough of political analysts analysis of the Super Tuesday,

Biden and Trump and Nikki Haley results, right?

And as important as those were, because it's the presidential race, there were some other

very interesting down-ballot races that have national implications as well, that haven't gotten

as much coverage.

One of them is that Congressman Adam Schiff came in first in the

primary for U.S. Senate in California. That's the race to succeed, the late Senator Dianne Feinstein.

But apparently Schiff helped his own cause by helping to raise money for the Republican.

He will now run against in November. What?

Christian Paz, senior politics reporter at Vox, wrote up some of the interesting non-presidential

Super Tuesday primaries, including the California one, and he joins us now. Hi, Kristen, thanks for

coming on. Welcome to WNYC. Thanks so much. It's great to be with you.

So the California Senate primary is different from many other primaries in that it's nonpartisan. Is that the

right term? Democrats, Republicans, anyone else run in one unified primary. Is that right?

They run in one unified primary. It's been called, similar to a jungle primary in other states, but the California, I'm a

California, we call it a top two system where it doesn't matter what party you're from.

If you come in the top two slots, you'll be, and don't win an outright majority, then you'll be

a shoe in for the general election show up.

Do you know why they do it that way?

What's supposed to be better for democracy by having a unified primary rather than each

party holding its own?

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