It took about four weeks for the San Diego County Registrar of Voters to finish counting every single vote of the 2008 General Election and then upload the vote database to their web site. After anxiously waiting for a few weeks, I took the database and converted it into a usable format and started producing some reports that allowed me to drill down and see exactly how each community and city voted.
I'ved used the term "community" to describe a place within the City of San Diego boundary, such as Mira Mesa and La Jolla and the term "unincorporated" means that the place is not a city, such as Julian and Alpine.
The data is first grouped into 18 cities and unincorporated area (19 total groups). The City of San Diego and unincorporated area are then broken down by community. After scanning each of the totals, it makes it very easy to compare the different political viewpoints of each of the communities. For example, Proposition 8 received an unsurprising 83% opposition in Hillcrest, while the Campo area voted 77% in favor of the proposition.
I was only able to attend the Saturday session of this weekend's e-board meeting, under the strange and foreboding Anaheim skies - the fire in Chino Hills nearby blotted out the sun during the midday, you could actually stare right into it - but there were some interesting happenings:
• The Progressive Caucus meeting featured a debate between two candidates for party controller, Eric Bradley (the incumbent) and progressive challenger Hillary Crosby. It was good of both of them to come to the caucus and express their views, but Bradley's contentions (some would call them alibis) for why the party didn't do quite as well in downballot races this year were kind of preposterous. First, he claimed that money moved into some races late because nobody knew Barack Obama would do as well as he did. This is insulting on a variety of levels. First of all, Obama was leading by as much as 28 points in some polls as far back as June, and was never seriously threatened in any polling. Second of all, I don't see how it matters, in terms of who you spend money on, how a race that is out of your control is faring. The next thing that Bradley said, echoing something I hear a lot at these CDP meetings, is that we cannot disclose information to the membership of the party on financing because "we cannot let the Republicans know what we're doing." We might as well let them know, considering that hiding the information hasn't brought us much good. Also, the entirety of the information that Crosby and progressives like her are seeking is a) already readily available in FPPC and FEC reports and b) sought AFTER THE FACT so we can make intelligent decisions about what worked and what didn't. There is a bias toward secrecy there that is quite disconcerting.
• In the general session, there was a continued set of numbers given to prove that the CDP did everything it could to win downballot races. Art Torres mentioned 1 million live GOTV calls and $12.5 million spent. These are all nice numbers (although Obama's California campaign made 1 million calls a day in the week leading up to the election), but if the results are essentially nothing, recapturing seats that were gerrymandered to benefit Democrats to begin with, then the question of effectiveness must be asked. We had a very good session about that with a group of committed activists who ran phonebank operations and local headquarters and state campaigns, and the information was very illuminating. First of all, we have got to end the practice of being one of the only two states in the country not using the DNC Voter File and VAN software. The data is supposedly better in the current set we use, but that can be bought out and integrated into the VAN. I heard about numerous problems with the statewide Neighbor-to-Neighbor tool that made it essentially useless.
Second, there needs to be more empowerment at the local level. The stories I heard from the organizers at DP-SFV (the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley) on how they funded their headquarters and made the best use of volunteer time, for example, was great. In the last week, however, the folks running the campaigns from Sacramento got very top-down in their approach and made all kinds of mistakes that the locals had to fix. It discouraged volunteers and organizers at the local level.
Finally, there has to be off-cycle organizing so that prospective volunteers are brought up with a culture of impacting their own communities instead of driving off to Nevada every four years. This includes finding and capturing the local groups who worked so tirelessly for Obama this year. They need to have it explained and drilled into them why staying local and effecting change inside California is so important. And organizers need to be paid year-round to help bring that about. Finally, they need to be in EVERY county, not just the populous ones or the most contested ones, to impact those statewide races for 2010. For his part, Chairman Torres said he is committed to finding organizers and capitalizing on all the energy we see now, and I think we need to hold him to that.
• The above steps make a good criteria for the next party chair, and that race was the buzz of the session. Right now we have three candidates: Eric Bauman, chair of the LA County Democratic Party; Alex Rooker, current first Vice-Chair; and the legendary John Burton, former State Senate leader and Congressman. At first I figured that Burton would have locked up so many endorsements from legislators who he's known forever that this might not be much of a race; however, Rooker won the endorsement of the CDP Labor Caucus, which is very significant (if not totally surprising, as Rooker has longstanding ties to labor). I don't know if you're aware of who pays for campaigns in California, but the labor community could have a lot to say about who's the next state party chair. In addition, a tough three-way fight with two candidates from the North and one from the South could give the Southern California candidate an advantage. (CORRECTION: Rooker is from LA County, which would give the advantage to the northern candidate)
I'm inviting all of the candidates to visit us at Calitics and offer their vision of where they want to take the party.
So we haven't had a great deal of time to throw this together, and we aren't entirely sure of who would be willing to participate. So here's what we're going to do: anyone who would like to discuss what went well and what went not-so-well in the 2008 election cycle, and what could be improved for the future, at this weekend's CDP executive board meeting, should meet after the general session outside the hall at 12:00. At that point, we'll have a better understanding of how many people we will having participating, and we'll find a place to congregate.
Feel free to email me about this: david-dot-dayen-at-gmail-dot-com. Hope to see some of you tomorrow in Anaheim.
In addition, I wanted to again highlight Join The Impact, a series of marches and protests against Prop. 8 tomorrow, throughout the country. You can find your protest location here. Unfortunately, lots of us at Calitics, including Robert, Brian, Dante and myself, will be at the e-board meeting tomorrow. However, through the wonders of Soapblox, we can front-page your stories from events all over the state and the nation. So please, if you're attending any of the marches, please post a diary and tell us about it. We should have coverage from at least Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego and Albuquerque, NM, already, but it would be great to have a panoply of voices.
This is something I'm just whipping together on my own. But based on the feedback on what I've been writing about the California Election Day campaign and some additional offline requests, there seems to be a desire to get together at this weekend's CDP executive board meeting in Anaheim and go over what went right and what went wrong. So, I'm taking ownership of this.
We can do it on Saturday, though I have no idea when or where. The meeting is located at:
Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort
1855 S. Harbor Blvd.
Anaheim, CA 92802
I'm looking over the agenda, and the best time would probably be during the social from 5:30-8pm, but I wouldn't be able to personally attend. Otherwise, we'd have to do it during committee meetings, caucuses, or lunch. Lunch might work best, actually, between 12:00-1:30.
I'm making this open-source, so I'll cede to everyone's best judgment. Comment here on when you'd like to do this and if you can attend. Also what you would like to see covered. And of course, we're going to have to find a place for this as well. There is a coffee shop inside the Sheraton called Cappuccino Cafasia that might work, as well as Molly's Kitchen, also at the Sheraton. And there's an IHOP across the street!
Please get this out to your lists so I can get some feedback. Thanks.
• The CDP has a version of Neighbor-to-Neighbor called Neighborhood Leader. The program asks for a commitment from the activist to talk with 25 friends on multiple occasions throughout the year. I don't have metrics on it, which would be nice to know, but my suspicion is it needs to be expanded.
• There is a lot of back and forth about the extent of the ground game here in California. Many have written in to talk about the field operation in key districts and field offices throughout the state. Some have said that I overlooked this element, including all the doorhangers and phone calls made inside the state. Others have told me that the calls tried to shoehorn too many messages into one (I did have experiences calling for multiple propositions and a candidate at the same time, which ends up shortchanging all of them) and that the results on the ground in general were unfocused. And the insistence from some to talk about field elides the point. Even if I grant that every targeted legislative campaign had the most aggressive and far-reaching field program in American history, the facts are that most of these campaigns lost, and so it's time to come to terms with the fact that the type of organizing done in the state isn't working.
• Some have suggested that Democrats, in fact, did not underperform the Presidential ticket in House races, but I think a lot of this is fun with statistics. Yes, House Democrats in California may have done better than Barack Obama, but that would be because a substantial number of them had token or no competition. Like 30 out of 53. While on the chart at the link, it appears that California exceeded the Presidential numbers, the proof is in the lack of pickups despite a 24-point blowout at the top of the ticket.
• Other local organizers have the right idea. I'm going to reprint this comment in full:
We ran a very intensive and very grassroots effort in Monterey County with more than 1000 volunteers (5 fold increase over 2004) that was by and large successful, got some newcomers into office and saved some progressive incumbents from conservative challengers.
We did all of this without CDP help.
We were offered use of the CDP voter database which in many ways was quite inadequate when it came to mapping and would have costed us money. We were also offered 1000 doorhangers on Thursday before the election (we have 80,000 Democrats in Monterey County).
Instead we commissioned our own slate mailers and door hangers and mailed and hung 80,0000 and 30,000 respectively in conjunction with the local unions. We used the VAN through CAVoterConnect for free with great results for us. We were able to manage our volunteers with it and we used it for all of our phone banking and Neighbor-to-Neighbor activities.
Here is what the CDP could have done - and can still do for future campaigns:
Support the VAN and help all local parties get access. Help integrate State VAN with Obama VAN.
Conduct more capacity building, especially in how to run county-based campaigns, along the lines of Camp Obama but applied to state and local races.
Provide a template for door hangers that local parties can buy into instead of having to go out and design their own.
Work toward a more modular - bottom-up campaign.
Vinz Koller/ Chair/ Monterey County Democratic Party
I particularly want to emphasize the VAN, the California VAN is for some reason not integrated with the DNC's Votebuilder program, which doesn't make much sense to me. There ought to be an effort to clean up all that idea in the off-year to get it ready for 2010. Votebuilder is simply easier to work with and can be managed by volunteers. And since there will be off-year elections this year, it can be test run.
• I don't think I ever blamed the Obama campaign for draining the state of resources, but let me say again that I don't. In addition to many of the best volunteers leaving the state, many of the top organizers, including most of labor, left as well. And Obama's election was crucially important for a variety of reasons so you can't blame them.
• Therefore, the biggest thing California Democrats can do to reverse this disturbing trend of the "political trade deficit," sending money and organization elsewhere and never importing anything, is to argue for and pass the National Popular Vote plan, which would force locals to organize their own communities in a Presidential election. If the Electoral College were offered as a system today, it would be found to be an unconstitutional violation of the principle of "one person, one vote" as determined by the 14th Amendment. It shrinks the pool of competitive states down to a geographically significant battleground, and has made California irrelevant - again - as it has been for Presidential races for a generation. A disruptive change like the National Popular Vote would go a long way to changing how campaigns are conducted in Presidential years in California.
Back in 2006, I and a lot of other grassroots progressives were angered that California showed little to no movement in its Congressional and legislative seats despite a wave election. You can see some articles about that here and here, when I explained why I was running as a delegate to the state Party. And frankly, I could rerun the entire article today, but instead I'll excerpt.
I've lived in California for the last eight years. I'm a fairly active and engaged citizen, one who has attended plenty of Democratic Club meetings, who has lived in the most heavily Democratic areas of the state in both the North and South, who has volunteered and aided the CDP and Democratic candidates from California during election time, who (you would think) would be the most likely candidate for outreach from that party to help them in their efforts to build a lasting majority. But in actuality, the California Democratic Party means absolutely nothing to me. Neither do its endorsements. The amount of people who aren't online and aren't in grassroots meetings everyday who share this feeling, I'd peg at about 95% of the electorate.
I mean, I'm a part of both those worlds, and I have no connection to the state party. I should be someone that the CDP is reaching out to get involved. They don't. The only time I ever know that the CDP exists is three weeks before the election when they pay for a bunch of ads. The other 23 months of the year they are a nonentity to the vast majority of the populace [...]
Only two Democrats in the entire state of California were able to defeat incumbents last November: Debra Bowen and Jerry McNerney. Both of them harnessed the power of the grassroots and used it to carry them to victory. They also stuck to their principles and created a real contrast with their opponents on core issues. The only way that the California Democratic Party can retain some relevance in the state, and not remain a secretive, cloistered money factory that enriches its elected officials with lobbyist money and does nothing to build the Democratic brand, is by building from the bottom up and not the top down. By becoming more responsive to the grassroots and more effective in its strategy, we can ensure that California stays blue, which is not a given. This is a long-term process that is in its third year, and will not happen overnight. But it's crucial that we continue and keep the pressure on.
In 2008, we experienced that most anomalous of events, a SECOND wave election in a row. Barack Obama won the biggest victory at the top of the ticket in California since WWII. And yet, the efforts of downticket Democrats yielded only minimal success. This is despite a decided improvement in the party in terms of online outreach and voter registration. So something is deeply, deeply wrong with how they're conducting campaigns.
I'm going to lay out the good, the bad and the ugly on the flip and make some suggestions as to what we must do to improve this for the future.
In the last two weeks voter registration and early voting has shown that voters are geared up and ready to take part in what has been called a "historical event" on November 4.
The quality of education at the University of California (where I have been a graduate student since 2003) is plummeting. I hear from my friends at the California State Universities that things are looking equally bad there, too. Why are these proud institutions rapidly losing their reputation as world-class centers of learning?
Budget cuts. Every year since 2003, the budget for the UC and the CSU have been slashed. This year, it's worse than ever.
While the university administration and Republicans in Sacramento can blame the financial crisis for the free-falling budget, make no mistake.
The budget for California education has not been slashed because of the 2008 bank mess. The budget for education has been slashed because of the failed Republican ideology which says that all public money is "socialism."
Well, like you, I really like my "socialist" libraries, highways, fire departments, and universities. The anti-public Republican philosophy is bankrupt, and the damage from that philosophy is continuing to spread. Over the past five years, I've watched as the GOP has gutted the University of California.
I was wondering if everyone was aware of California's Prop 10 - a deceptively named initiative on the November ballot that seeks to authorize "$5 billion in bonds ($9.8 billion with interest), much of which would provide rebates to buyers of natural gas run vehicles. First off, environmental groups including the California League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club oppose Prop 10.
And for the purposes of full disclosure, I work for a non-profit consumer rights organization called the Consumer Federation of California. We started doing some research on Prop 10 and couldn't believe what we found.
Most know about Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens through his "Pickens Plan" ads. Many
don't know that he was a primary funder of the false and slanderous attack ads against John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans of Truth in 2004, has an egregious legacy on the
environment, and a long track record of conning communities and local governments into deals that benefit Pickens at the expense of the public. Well, he's set his sights on the natural gas market...and he's using Prop 10 - a $10 billion Texas Boondoggle - to do it.
In fact, its T. Boone Pickens natural gas corporation that spent millions to get Prop 10 on the ballot and now is spending millions more to make sure it wins in November.
What's amazing about this Proposition however, is how obvious an attempt it is to greenwash Californians in order to enrich the natural gas industry (and therefore Pickens). Prop 10 doesn't require any clean air improvement, yet asks taxpayers to shell out $2.5 billion in subsidies to trucking companies to purchase so-called "clean" vehicles that can pollute every bit as much as diesel and gasoline powered trucks. Hybrids are not even considered "clean" under Prop 10.
The tax giveaways favor vehicles that fill up at his corporation's fossil fuel stations and shortchange other cleaner technologies. Meanwhile, interstate trucking companies can collect California handouts of $50,000 per "clean" truck, and re-locate the trucks out of state. Prop 10's California price tag: $10 billion.
The Bad News:
The non-profit coalition that opposes Prop 10 has almost no real campaign money, so we're being outspent millions to one. T. Boone Pickens has received a free ride from the corporate media, and many voters believe it is "green" because of the slick ads promoting it..
So we're asking that everyone check out our No on 10 website www.noonproposition10.org and share it with as many people as you can and hyperlink it to your blogs or websites if possible.
The Good News:
On top of the opposition from leading environmental organizations, all four of the state's four major consumer right groups - TURN, UCAN, CFC, and Consumer Watchdog - are also opposed.
EVERY NEWSPAPER editorial board to date has blasted Prop 10 out of the water...with the Los Angeles Times calling it a "reprehensible scam". Even the three major taxpayer rights groups - California Taxpayers Association, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and the California Tax Reform Association - are opposed to Prop 10.
Hell, groups as diverse as the California Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters, the California Federation of Teachers and the California Nurses Association even agree this is a sham.
The fact of the matter is Prop 10 is a corporate greenwash of the highest order...the question is will the truth beat out all their fossil fuel money?
I know that California doesn't have a U.S. Senate race in 2008. But 33 other states do. And anyone following the news over the last year-and-a-half has read about Senate Republicans filibustering anything and everything that moves, breaking the record for filibusters in a two-year Congressional session in less than one year!
It is critical that we expand our majority in the U.S. Senate to reduce this historic rate of Republican obstructionism, so that an Obama administration can proceed with an agenda that helps rather than hinders American progress. I have been following this on my blog, Senate Guru, very closely and have been pushing for us to expand the map of competitive Senate races.
To that end, I have established the Expand the Map! ActBlue page, raising much needed funds for Democratic Senate candidates in uphill but competitive (or very-close-to-competitive) Senate races. Every one of these Democratic Senate candidates who wins her or his race means one less Republican filibustering progressive legislation. And every one of these Democratic Senate candidates has a message that will resonate with voters - all they need are the resources to get their messages out to the electorate and prevent the Republican incumbents from muddying their records.
With Monday night being the deadline for the second fundraising quarter of 2008, it is critical that we get funds in to help these Democratic candidates show strength. So, please, please, please contribute if you can to any of the terrific candidates for Senate on the Expand the Map! ActBlue page. Even though these candidates don't represent your state, if elected, they will defeat the Republican obstructionism that very much impacts you and your state.
Here is my updated legislature outlook, with the updated registration numbers of the districts where the current incumbents are term-limited. I am using a "Partisan Factor" (PF), which is the average of the margins in registration, Davis-Simon (02G), Kerry-Bush (04P), Boxer-Jones (04S), and Feinstein-Mountjoy (06S). My previous diary is here, the initial discussion we had on the legislature outlook is here, and the updated numbers are below the flip.
Before the flip, I have a few words to say.........
Get Out The Vote!!!
And a friendly reminder to voters out in SD-15: Please make sure to write in Dennis Morris!
Well, at least for another year. The Sac Bee reports that the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee, chaired by Yolo County's own Lois Wolk (D- Davis), just killed SB 27 until next year. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) would have established a committee to build a peripheral canal diverting water around the Sacramento Delta for export south, although it called it a "conveyance" in a modest feat of bureaucratic obscurantism.
Here is my updated legislature outlook, with the updated registration numbers of the districts where the current incumbents are term-limited. I am using a "Partisan Factor" (PF), which is the average of the margins in registration, Davis-Simon (02G), Kerry-Bush (04P), Boxer-Jones (04S), and Feinstein-Mountjoy (06S). My previous diary is here, the initial discussion we had on the legislature outlook is here, and the updated numbers are below the flip.
I am proud to announce that... (*drumroll*) ...we now have a Democratic registration advantage in the 15th and 26th Assembly districts!
(Another installment of great data. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Here is my updated legislature outlook, with the updated registration numbers of the districts where the current incumbents are term-limited. I am using a "Partisan Factor" (PF), which is the average of the margins in registration, Davis-Simon (02G), Kerry-Bush (04P), Boxer-Jones (04S), and Feinstein-Mountjoy (06S). My previous diary is here, the initial discussion we had on the legislature outlook is here, and the updated numbers are below the flip.
I am firmly committed to getting a 2/3 majority in both houses of the state Legislature by 2010. Fabian Nuñez believes that, in the Assembly, we can get halfway there by November.
Speaking at the Sacramento Press Club yesterday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez said Democrats should add three seats to their 48-32 majority in the California Assembly in November's elections.
Nunez made the prediction after new figures from the Secretary of State show a surge in Democratic registrations in all but two Assembly districts, including three held by incumbent Republicans who will be forced to leave office.
They include the desert/Riverside area seat held by Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, the San Diego seat of Assemblywoman Shirley Horton, and the Contra Costa/Sacramento Delta seat held by Assemblyman Guy Houston.
These are clearly the three seats to target. AD-80 (Garcia's seat) has some excellent candidates on the Democratic side, including Greg Pettis and the Hispanic Barack Obama, Manuel Perez. We have good candidates in AD-78 (Horton's old seat) and AD-15 (Houston's) as well - as those Caliticians in those districts can attest. Plus, we not only have registration advantages, but the advantage of a game-changing Democratic nominee at the top of the ticket (whether it's Obama or Clinton) that will bring new Democratic voters to the process. These three seats are prime opportunities, and there are other Assembly opportunities like Greg Aghazarian's seat (he's also termed out), and more in the Senate (Hannah Beth Jackson's bid in SD-19, the possible Jeff Denham recall, Abel Maldonado's SD-15).
However, I want to highlight this nugget about the way Assembly and Senate elections are managed in California.
If Democrats field strong candidates for these seats, we could be looking at a pickup of 2/3+ seats.
Each of the marquee races are expected to be $1 million+ contests. The new Assembly Speaker will be responsible for raising funds and overseeing the campaigns.
(because she really has been a strong defender of the voters here in California. - promoted by shayera)
In 2000 and in 2004, we saw what happened when election results are called into question. Citizens across the country reacted with outrage when they realized that their vote might not be counted. That's why, in 2006, California Democrats worked to elect Secretary of State Debra Bowen -- she promised to make sure that in our state, every vote would be protected.
Bowen has fulfilled that campaign promise. Last year she had experts at the University of California conduct a thorough analysis of California's electronic voting machines. When that review showed the machines could be hacked and results could be changed, Bowen promptly decertified the machines to maintain the integrity of California elections.
So how did Diebold and Sequoia respond to her actions? As you might expect, by putting their PR departments into overdrive. In the days and weeks leading up to today's election, they have waged a media campaign to blame Debra Bowen for election delays, cost overruns, and teen acne.
