On Tuesday night we were all (including me) counting Jim Costa amongst the casualties of the 2010 GOP wave. After all he was trailing Republican challenger Andy Vidak by 1823 votes with 100% of precincts reporting.
Fortunately that judgement seems to have been premature. :)
I have often noted that the progressive movement in CA is a coastal phenomenon while the real battle for the future of this state is being fought in the Central Valley. This is true for the Green Party, of which I am a member and it appears to be true for Calitics as the nexus of California's progressive netroots.
Let me call attention to the 20th Congressional District, where Jim Costa campaigns like a Democrat, but too often votes like a Republican, especially when the issues are ecological: water, fresh air, extractive industries, etc.
Last night, I was reading the most recent issue of High Country News. One article was about the proposal to re-establish Tulare Lake as a cost effective alternative to building some of the dams called for in the Schwarzenegger Water Project passed by the legislature in the recent special session. Surprisingly, this story, from a Colorado based publication, mentioned that Steve Haze was going to enter the primary against Costa, and never a peep out of Calitics before this.
After reading the story, it seems to me that Haze has it right.
"We've lost more jobs in construction than we have in farming this year," he says, piloting his granite blue Chevy pickup through clouds of fluffy bolls. "The real question is: How do we manage the water we have for farms, fish and people?"
That is a far cry from Costa's message of fry the delta smelt. In fact, Haze is doing a lot more.
But it's the feasibility study Haze completed last year that both the California Democratic Council and the California State Grange, a 137-year-old farmers' advocacy group, quoted when they endorsed the plan. In that study, Haze's team of engineers, hydrologists and economists argue that returning water to Tulare Lake would cost $1.3 billion -- a fifth as much as a proposed dam that would capture flows from the Upper San Joaquin River at Temperance Flat. It would also store twice as much water.
For the life of me, I don't see why Calitics is not paying attention to this race. Finally, there is a chance to break the hold that regressive agribusiness puppets have had on the Central Valley and to let new ideas grow like the tules that once covered the landscape.
Taking into account some suggestions and comments, I made some changes to my previous attempt at redistricting California. I conceded an additional 2 seats to the GOP, which concomitantly makes a number of other seats more strongly Democratic. The additional 2 safe GOP seats are CA-4 and CA-48. Here's what version 2 looks like, overall:
I decided to try my hand at redistricting California's Congressional districts for 2010-2012, using Dave's Redistricting App. After playing around with it a bit, here's what the map I came up with looks like overall:
Here's the 2008 Obama/McCain vote in California, on the precinct level:
For all that talk of progressive politics, I frequently wonder why no true progressive challenges Cardoza (CA-18) or Costa (CA-20). While this sits in the back of my brain, I was spurred to writing something when I clicked channel down rather than channel up on the remote this AM and landed on CSPAN where Costa was holding forth on the need to set aside the Endangered Species Act to protect the farmers in his district.
Costa predictably follows the line of the Westlands Water District. This one says that the problems of not having enough water are all the fault of putting the needs of a little minnow called the Delta Smelt ahead of the needs of people. The only problem with this is that it is a lie.
It's really beyond the point of tolerance for Bush Dog Jim Costa, who represents the district with the worst well-being in America for its residents. As Republicans dishonestly try to bully Democrats with their meaningless "Drill Now" chant, despite the fact that offshore drilling wouldn't lower gas prices and would do nothing to secure the energy future of the nation, Costa has joined up with a bipartisan group seeking a "compromise" (read: giving in to Republican fantasies) on energy.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking to craft a compromise on energy legislation includes politically vulnerable members, according to a partial list of members obtained by The Hill.
Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Peterson (R-Pa.), who organized the group, have kept the list of participants under wraps since the recent announcement of its formal launch.
Abercrombie and Peterson previously indicated the complete list of members would be released last week but later reconsidered, saying certain members could be face political problems if their names were released.
Reps. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), Gene Green (D-Texas), Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.), Nick Lampson (D-Texas), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) are part of the group, according to the list.
The group met on Wednesday [...]
The bill that is being crafted breaks significantly from Democratic leadership on the topic of offshore drilling.
Boren, Costa, Green, Lampson and Nunes twice voted no on the Democratic leadership's "use it or lose it" energy drilling bill.
It'd be one thing if Costa were actually a "vulnerable member," but his "opponent" this year, Jim Lopez, has no records with the FEC, hasn't updated his campaign website in a month and a half and hasn't had an event in the district since March. Costa is about as vulnerable as Iron Man. So one must conclude that he plans to sell out the Democratic Party on energy as a matter of principle.
It is completely absurd to open up the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling when there are over 60 million acres of leased public land lying fallow. The last people with any interest in lowering gas prices are oil execs; they want offshore leases so they can keep them in reserve and tell their stockholders how much cash they're sitting on. So Costa simply wants to enrich oil company bigwigs at the expense of the middle class, and ignore the serious risk to the planet in stalling on departing from the failed energy policy of the past. This man shouldn't dare even call himself a Democrat after the work he's done in the 110th Congress.
Considering all of the rural areas and dirt-poor urban centers in the country, you have to be a little surprised that Jim Costa's Central Valley district is the worst in the country for quality of life.
Poverty, poor health and low graduation rates have put the San Joaquin Valley's 20th Congressional District dead last in a new national scorecard that ranks the well-being of residents.
Even notoriously grim Appalachia fares better than the congressional district that sweeps in Fresno, Kings and Kern counties, the study made public Wednesday shows. The assessment of health, education and income ranks the district 436th out of 436 districts nationwide.
CA-20 has the lowest rate of college graduates in the country, just 6.5%. The median annual salary is just $16,767, and life expectancy is 4.5 years lower than in rich, high well-being areas like the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It's an appalling set of numbers.
We know the challenges in this district. Factory-style farming has lowered the air quality and increased the public health risks. As income inequality stratifies, places like the Central Valley get left behind, even more so in a California with a 6.9% unemployment rate. A lack of development into 21st-century jobs causes a brain drain, and higher energy prices cripple rural America.
And there's a residual benefit. A dirt-poor district is a district that doesn't vote heavily or pay much attention to politics, paradoxically so since they need to the most. And so we get Representatives like Jim Costa, whose district has the lowest participation rates in the entire state. Which means he can vote the wrong way on issues like FISA or war funding and not get much feedback about it from a constituency that's struggling to survive. In this context, his desire to return federal funds to the district or improve quality of life would seem to be low, at best. It's a vicious circle: poverty breeds inattention, inattention breeds bad lawmakers, bad lawmakers have trouble improving poverty.
We need less legislators like Jim Costa who seem more interested in pleasing their corporate contributors than the suffering citizens in their own districts. The problem is how to reach a low-information constituency, and how to make that connection, that sustained political power and engagement is vital if we want to end poverty and build the post-carbon, post-agrarian economy that would lift up whole regions like the Central Valley.
Kos has an important post on 2010 marking a pivot for the grassroots and netroots from trying to take back the federal government from Republicans to reforming our Party and holding Democrats accountable.
If your local congresscritter is one of the bad apples, start organizing locally. Plug into existing networks or start your own. Begin looking for primary challengers. Do the groundwork. Don't expect help from the local party establishment, they'll close ranks. So tap into alternate infrastructures. Find allies in the progressive movement. If your local shitty Democrat is anti-union, approach the unions. They'd love to send this kind of message. If the Democrat is anti-choice, work with the women's groups. If the Democrat is anti-environment ... you get the idea. If you have access to professional networks and money, start organizing those.
Of course, this takes more than just bitching about your frustrations on a blog, damning a whole party for the actions of a minority more scared of Mr. 28% than of protecting the Constitution they swore to protect. This takes hard work. But now is the time to start.
Indeed. The activists that meet campaigning this fall will form the core of next cycle's primary efforts. Kos suggests looking at The Capitulation Caucus with emphasis on those who are also Blue Dogs. In California, that means:
Joe Baca, Dennis Cardoza, Jim Costa, Jane Harman, and Adam Schiff
Kos also praises Loretta Sanchez as one of only four Blue Dogs who didn't cave on defending the Constitution from retroactive immunity. And remember, Ellen Tauscher was a member of the Blue Dogs until she saw the successful primarying of Joe Lieberman and occupies a district designed for a challenge from the left (and west).
Woohoo! Jerry did it! Jerry McNerney has managed to become the most un-progressive Democrat of the entire California congressional delegation. For those keeping score at home, Jerry's 82.45 was about a half point lower than the next CA Dem, Jim Costa, that progressive stalwart, at 82.97. And for all the talk of Harman changing her ways, she's still worse than even Joe Baca, almost 7 points worse from a very safe Dem seat.
For all of you CA-45 fans, "moderate" Mary Bono came in with a stellar 4.42 Chips are Down score. So, for all the bluster of the SCHIP vote, she's still dancing the same jig as the rest of her party.
On thing must be said, the Speaker has done an excellent job at preserving unity amongst the caucus. Whether that means she's being too incremental and/or ineffective, or just laying down the law is the big question. The reason her approval rating, and the Congress in general, is down has a whole lot to do with the fact that little has changed on the Iraq front. So, would it be better to have a speaker who is more willing to take risks? Perhaps, but the impediment of the president always lingers over her head, veto pen in hand. So, whether the unity is really there, is an open question. Full data over the flip.
(I was working on a similar post, but I'll still post my own, with all CA data and some other miscellany. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
The problem with most scorecards is that they are written by lobbyists concerned with always getting the votes of potential supporters. Thus, there is an equal weighting while in the real world not all votes are equal. In fact, regardless of everything else, some votes are dealbreakers and when they show up on scorecards as one of 12 votes or something, it looks silly. However, Progressive Punch has a new "when the chips are down" scorecard. After the flip is the ratings of CA's congressional delegation, in descending order.
I'm guessing that at tonight's Calitics' Actblue Celebrations there will be a lot of discussion about the votes to condemn MoveOn. The CA delegation split 50-50 in the senate and 16 yea and 17 nay in the house -- wedged successfully by the GOP in half. After the flip is the scorecard.
Fresno peace activists are taking it to Jim Costa. A coordinated effort from throughout the region is coming together
to "pressure Democratic Representative Jim Costa to vote NO on the September bill to continue funding the occupation of Iraq." [Peace Fresno president Bill] Simon wrote that "each group will take one day a week to picket in front of Costa's office and perhaps to go into the office to say 'No more funding'. We will also encourage passers by to call their Congressman and Senators."
Rep. Lynn Woolsey recently said that moderate Democrats need to hear the message that people in their district care. In Fresno, the message is getting through to local activists. Jean Hays, President of WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) explains the strategy: "Some say Congress is not listening to us; we say maybe WE ARE NOT TALKING LOUD ENOUGH!!"
This is how we apply pressure and bring about change.
Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller have started the Bush Dog Project to identify those Democrats who have voted with the President on the major issues that have the rank and file screaming betrayal; specifically, the Capitulation Bill giving Bush billions more for Iraq, and the FISA bill allowing Alberto Gonzales to wiretap American citizens without a warrant. These are overwhelmingly unpopular positions at odds with most of the American people, to say nothing of Democrats. Yet 38 "Bush Dog" Democrats voted for both of these bills, including one member of Congress from California: Jim Costa.
Costa is a member of the Blue Dogs but not the New Democrat Coalition. He's in one of the most Democratic seats out of the 38, with a Cook PVI of +4.6, so he's wildly out of step with his constituency. CA-20, Costa's district, runs along I-5 through Fresno, Kings and Kern Counties in the Central Valley. It includes the city of Fresno. Democrats have held this seat for a while, but Costa was only elected in 2004, replacing Cal Dooley (who was also something of a Bush Dog, having voted to authorize the war in Iraq, a vote he now regrets). While Costa had a mildly difficult battle winning the open seat against Roy Ashburn in 2004 (he won 54-46%), he faced no Republican opposition in 2006.
So we have a somewhat new legislator in a traditionally New Democrat seat, but it's in a district that gave Al Gore his largest margin of victory outside of the urban metropolises. And it's 63% Latino. So there's no excuse for Costa to be so in line with President Bush on the major issues, and certainly no excuse for him voting to throw the Fourth Amendment overboard and drown it (Incidentally, AT&T has given him a lot of money over the years. Do with that information what you will.). This is also important because the Central Valley needs to return to being a more prominently Democratic area, and Jim Costa needs to be the standard bearer for that because this is the most Democratic district in the region. So he must hear from his constituents about their displeasure with his being a rubber stamp for failed Bush Administration initiatives and the taking away of our civil liberties. This will ultimately make us a stronger party.
Leading up to the election last November, Chris Bowers initiated the Use It or Lose It project, urging unopposed members of Congress to contribute their money to the DCCC in support of other competitive races. In addition, I found 64 more districts with token opposition (Republican had raised less than $10,000 total). California's districts, safely drawn as many of them are, were well represented on these two lists, and while many of California's Democrats were very supportive, not all of them were. Our representatives have a responsibility to support the party as a whole whenever possible, and sitting on piles of cash is both a waste and a betrayal of good faith. Here's a look at how the delegation performed so that we can start applying pressure where necessary.
