Barbara Lee Is a Progressive Hero. Why Is She Trailing in the Polls in California?

“The perspective, the lens, the representation, the experience of a Black woman from California is badly needed.”

That’s what Representative Barbara Lee — a California Democrat vying for the Senate seat held for three decades by Dianne Feinstein — told a television reporter last month about why people should vote for her in the race.

On Sunday, before a rally that evening outside a production studio in Los Angeles owned by the former N.B.A. all-star Baron Davis, I asked Lee what she meant by that, since Black people are only about 7 percent of the population of the state.

She replied in a way that was both shrewd and true to her career in politics: “I’ve taken everything I know about what it means to be Black in America or brown in America or low-income in America or a woman in America and tried to turn it into policies.”

On paper, Lee strikes me as the perfect candidate. She has a decades-long record of standing up for progressive policies, she is a woman of color at a time when women of color are central to the success of the Democratic Party and she is a capable politician who has never lost an election.

But polls show her in fourth place going into Tuesday’s primary. Under California’s open primary rules, the top two finishers will advance to the general election, regardless of party.