With over 650 people turning out, Mark DeSaulnier (*State Senator-Concord-Dem) set a new record for mass support at a Crab Fest in Contra Costa County. The list of attendees included the County's top political people including both Congressmen: Miller and Garamendi, Tom Torlakason (Assembly-Dem only 48 hours from a heart stint operation), 3 of the Board of Supervisors, The County Election Clerk, more than a dozen City Council folks from 5 different cities and county, district and state Democratic Party officials as well as union and business leaders throughout the area.
The crowd gave DeSaulnier a standing ovation when he declared that what happened in Massachusetts will not happen here and further that 'we will never, never, never give up on America.'
(There's an Act Blue page soliciting funds to take a poll on the Lakoff Initiative)
You may have seen me live-tweeting the events last night at SEIU Local 721 in LA, where Professor George Lakoff and the folks behind CA Majority Rule met with around 200 activists, union members, elected officials, legislative candidates, representatives from Speaker Bass' office, and more, to talk about the just-released proposed November 2010 initiative on majority rule. If you read through both the live tweets and Dante Atkins' notes on the meeting, I think you get a picture of a potential split inside the California Democratic Party, one that could have major implications for all elections next year.
It should be noted that CDP Vice-Chair Eric Bauman was there to offer support. He gave a typical stump speech and said very plainly that "the reason you're here tonight is the solution" to the problems that grip the state, problems he laid out very carefully and completely. He was honest in saying that any Democrat who opposes this kind of measure will be told that "vertebra are available for installation... I think the chiropractor's lobby can help us with that." He made clear that we don't have a spending problem, "we have a common sense problem," and he pushed everyone in the room to work toward a real solution.
But Professor Lakoff's speech seemed to capture the dynamic between the grassroots and the establishment much better. Lakoff opened by talking about the origins of the initiative that he filed yesterday:
I got into this last spring when Lonnie Hancock invited me to speak to a group of State Senators. And I said, what's the problem, you're the majority! And they said they don't have any power. And they explained the whole 2/3rds rule, and how the leadership has to work with them because we want to lose as little as possible.
And I asked, why aren't you in every assembly district explaining this problem? It's about schools, healthcare, everything, and there's no answer. I went back and said that there's something really wrong. Its name is democracy [...] Which is more Democratic? Majority rule, or minority rule? You knew the answer from the 3rd grade on. Even Republicans know the answer but they don't like to. We know there will be a blowback if we try to change things, but the hardest blowback is coming from our side. The reason that Loni Hancock invited me was that there was a poll done by a progressive organization, and it asked the wrong question.
This is my business. Studying language and the framing behind language. If someone presented you with the poll question: would you rather have more taxes and higher services, or fewer taxes and less services. Obviously, it went with the latter. And the legislature concluded that they shouldn't put anything about taxes on the 2010 ballot. Why do they think that? Because they think that polls are objective, and that language just floats out there. They're wrong. Language is not neutral. There's a truth here that that language hides. It's the truth that we don't have Democracy in this state. We have minority rule.
In response, because nobody else would do so, Lakoff's initiative reads: "All Legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by majority vote." It's tweetable and it's fairly simple to understand. It's framed as a democratic action to return the state to democratic rule. And it appeals very much to those interested in preserving democracy.
Which is the consensus opinion inside the Democratic Party. We know this because, back in July, the state party passed a resolution calling for majority rule for budget and revenue. And it didn't pass with contentious debate - it passed unanimously. One of the very few people to speak out against it was the Party Chair, John Burton. But the rank and file supported it utterly.
It was something of a reversal for Burton, who when he was trying to get the votes of those rank and file supported a majority vote position. Now he's seen some polls and decided to take half a bite out of the apple. Lakoff described his exceedingly short meeting with Burton last night.
Burton wouldn't talk to me for more than a minute. He just said that he saw the polls, and it said 55% on budget and nothing on taxes. How many of you were at the state convention? You voted on a resolution about this. How did that resolution come before you? The resolutions committee. And that was the point. We got the resolutions committee to do it and got a standing ovation. The rank and file Democrats know it's the right thing to do and they have to tell their leaders. So how do you change this? You have to have a poll, but you have to have pressure. The major donors have to call Burton and say, if you want any money from me, you get behind this. And he has to hear that from donor after donor and organization after organization. We have to win in our own party first. I think John Burton is a good person, same with Bass and Steinberg. It's the good people that we have to win over first.
Later, a woman from AFSCME asserted that Willie Pelote was willing to give $1 million dollars to a majority vote campaign until Burton called him and told him to forget it.
You can argue about what the most effective approach is to deal with California's budget dysfunction. We've been doing that all week. You could say that leaders must prepare the ground by tying things Californians want to revenue, and tell the story of Republicans thwarting the popular will. You can say that we need to throw out the Constitution and move straight to a convention. But what becomes incredibly clear is that there is a groundswell of support inside the party for a simple move to restore democracy to the state, and if the establishment in Sacramento rejects that, in particular John Burton, the subsequent outrage will have a major impact on grassroots support for all Democratic candidates next year. There's just no question about this. The grassroots already feels disrespected and abused by the leadership. They got Hillary Crosby into a statewide officer position based on just this kind of frustration. They feel that one of the richest economies in the world is run like a third-world country, and they know that they will never change that when procedural rules force Democrats into a defensive crouch, where they see their role as losing as little as possible. This split will grow and branch out into statewide officer races, legislative races, etc. The grassroots workhorses won't be very inclined to work so hard for a Party that disrespects them and fails to act in their stated interests. Not to mention the fact that everyone knows that, while we wait another Friedman Unit until the electorate figures out the problem on their own, people will suffer from budget cuts, people will go bankrupt, and people will die.
The CA Majority Rule team has a multi-pronged strategy. One, they are raising money for this poll, to try and prove that a properly framed set of questions will elicit the desired results. Two, they will put Speaker's Bureaus together in every district in California with people who can talk about majority rule and restoring democracy, complete with real-world examples of the fruit of the state's dysfunction. Three, they will seek to pass endorsements of the one-line majority rule initiative in every Democratic club and county committee in California. There's an executive board meeting coming up in November where this will probably come to a crescendo, too.
The real story of the Lakoff initiative is a story about rank and file Democrats wanting their leaders to follow their will. You can argue about tactics or strategy or approach, but that's what it boils down to. And the party leadership had better take heed.
The deadline for filing an initiative that would make the November 2010 ballot is Friday (Just a quick update to that: Friday is a suggested deadline to maximize time for signature gathering) . The initial measures to repeal the 2/3 ballot initiatives filed by Maurice Read failed at the end of July. There is currently an initiative to lower the threshold from 2/3 to 3/5 in circulation, but it does not have any backing.
And that's it. There is no pending initiative regarding any two-thirds rule, with the institutional support needed to get on the ballot, and the deadline is Friday.
A split between Democratic activists and the political pros who run the party may be growing over how to approach the issue that has bedeviled the party for years: the two-thirds vote required to pass taxes and budgets in the Legislature.
Most Democrats in the upper echelons of the party apparatus are convinced it's a fool's errand to try to persuade voters to hand the majority party unchecked power to raise taxes. Instead, they're gearing up for a campaign next year to lower the threshold - from two-thirds of both legislative bodies to a simple majority - on budget votes only, a path they believe voters can embrace.
But some grass roots liberals say they're frustrated with the caution of party leaders and believe, if sold right, voters would hand over both taxing and budgeting powers to the majority party.
"This is a doable thing, but it requires getting Democrats together and deciding to really do it," said George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley linguistics professor who has become a de facto leader of the cause and is preparing to submit by next week a ballot measure for the November 2010 election that would drop the two-thirds requirement on both taxes and budgets. "Either they want to give the state a future or they can let Republicans continue pushing it into disaster." [...]
But party leaders see him as quixotic, and dismiss his position as misplaced and uninformed.
"People are not ready to pass it," said John Burton, the Democratic party chairman and a former Senate leader. "He's got a theory. Good luck to him."
Mind you, that another guy had a theory before he entered the CDP Chairmanship: John Burton. At the time he committed himself to repealing the 2/3 majority for the budget and taxes, and listed it as a top priority. But I don't even know that the Burton fallback position is being considered; as of now, they have a little over 48 hours to file a 2/3 repeal on the budget. And of course, this would immediately put half of what a budget is - revenues - off-limits, while taking responsibility for bad budgets that cannot be fixed.
What I have heard now is that, with statewide offices being decided in 2010, party leaders don't want to put revenue on the ballot and increase GOP turnout against it, threatening their statewide officer candidates.
This is nothing more than a Friedman Unit strategy. We cannot put such a proposal on the ballot in 2010 because it might hurt candidates, so we move it to the next election. Which has candidates in it as well, so we have to just hold off past 2012. But our Governor's up for re-election/trying to defeat the Republican in 2014, so we have to hold off then, too. As a result, nothing proceeds.
And it's worse than that. We hear constantly that the public is not ready for a conversation about changing the rule, but in the meantime nothing is being done to prepare the ground for that shift in public opinion. It's not that we have to give the war a few more months to succeed, as in the Friedman Unit; it's that we have to give NOTHING more time for voters to, I guess, come up with their own ideas about state government.
The inescapable conclusion you must come to is that everyone in the system actually likes the system as it is. For Democrats, they personally prosper by getting elected and re-elected, and they can always blame the 2/3 rule for whatever failures occur. It's accountability-free government complete with a scapegoat, and it rocks their world.
We can talk about how Democratic leaders tend to view the electorate as static and unchangeable, rather than the starting point from where opinion can be shaped. We can talk about how small-bore goals or a major crisis can provide the spark for the change the state so desperately needs. But this isn't a failure of imagination. It's a general contentment with the status quo.
Which is why change will have to be imposed upon the system from the outside. The most intriguing initiatives to date are the one pushed by Lenny Goldberg to repeal the $2 billion dollar a year corporate tax breaks, and the proposal for a Constitutional convention (though that has also not gone into circulation by the Bay Area Council, but only through an independent effort from Paul Currier). This obviously cannot be left to anyone in Sacramento - they will always find a convenient excuse for delay.
When I was at the aforementioned CDP training in Ventura over the weekend, the attendees were asked by a show of hands how they found out about the training: friends, emails, their local club, County Committees, etc. Lastly was...the CDP website. And the only hand that went up was mine. Instant political geek cred right there.
So when I checked the CDP website recently again and saw this item, it made me a little curious. It's innocuous enough: establishing a set of guidelines on the part of the Rules Committee for the Legislative Action and Equal Opportunity committee (henceforth (LAEO).
I asked sources (an honest blogger doesn't reveal sources, so don't ask) what this may be about, since it isn't something that happens all that often regarding these committees--and I got more than I bargained for.
The average reader on this site would know that many of our editors haven't exactly seen eye-to-eye with CDP leadership in recent years on...well...just about anything. Political strategy, resource allocation, technology, volunteer mobilization--you name it, we've complained about it.
But it seems like things are changing, and nobody could be happier than I.
I happened to be at the CDP Learn to Win training this past Sunday in Ventura (another new program I'm happy the CDP is doing--more on this in a future post) when I received an email from one of my favorite bloggers who influences a lot of my thinking on political issues and strategy--Mark Kleiman at Same Facts. The email detailed the occurrence that I detailed Sunday evening, where Rep. Walley Herger in CD-2 praised as a "great American" a nutcase who described himself as a proud right-wing terrorist.
I showed the email and the details to Shawnda at the CDP, who was in attendance at the training (hooray for Blackberry). For the record, it's really too bad that there's no good video of this incident. This is why it's imperative that no matter what district you're in, it's always good to have a video camera trained on your local Republican--you never know when you're going to catch your own Macaca moment.
And no more than a couple of days later, the CDP has an action plan ready to go soliciting small-dollar contributions to fund an advertisement:
Members of Congress around the country have been holding town hall events in their districts this August, and some of them have gotten pretty heated. But nothing like this.
The Mt. Shasta News reports that at a recent town hall in Redding, Republican Rep. Wally Herger went out of his way to praise a man who stood up and identified himself as "a proud right-wing terrorist," calling him "a great American."
Yes, you heard me right: Rep. Herger, a Republican Congressman from California, publicly praised a self-described right-wing terrorist. That's outrageous.
The email gets better, because it lays it out on the line--directly listing all the incidents of right-wing terrorism that have occurred since Obama's election, associating Wally Herger with these incidents, and calling for him to issue a public apology.
Me? I'm all about keeping this incident in the news. And I'm glad the CDP is asking for citizen action about this outrage, along with the small-dollar contributions.
The special election to replace Ellen Tauscher in CA-10 is taking an ugly turn. The CDP has announced that its endorsement caucus will take place on August 1, and I'm already having flashbacks to Migden-Leno and the 2008 CDP convention.
You see, even though major flaws in the endorsement process were exposed over a year ago, nothing has changed; nor is there, at least to date, any apparent desire on the part of the CDP to address a situation where powerful outsiders are invited to skew the outcome of endorsements in local races.
As the Governor has tried to hijack the budget crisis to serve his own ends of punishing union workers and shredding the social services net, over the last couple days we've seen Democrats fighting back. For example, Dean Florez surgically took apart the Governor's idiotic smear attempt on legislators for doing their job of legislation. Considering that the Governor has never invited all 120 lawmakers into his smoking tent for a pow-wow, I think there's room for multitasking here. But understanding that would involve basic knowledge about how government works, as Florez said:
Assembly bill 606 creates a commission to serve the marketing interests of the blueberry industry. Another bill defines "honey" to mean the natural food product resulting from the harvest of nectar by honey bees, and a third bill adopts regulations establishing definitions and standards for 100-percent pomegranate juice.
"Look, we're pro-condiment, we're pro-fruit, but the focus needs to be on the budget crisis," McLear said.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Fresno) called Governor Schwarzenegger's criticism "childish" and said he is fed up.
"The governor's turned from an action hero into just another politician," Senator Florez said. "He should really, really take a course on fundamental government on how the legislature works."
"The fact that he doesn't understand these things worries me," he added.
Asm. Nancy Skinner held a press event with small business owners, again using the imagery of Arnold Antionette smoking a stogie in his Jacuzzi to contrast with the state's struggles:
Skinner called a news conference at the corner of Solano Avenue and The Alameda in Berkeley, outside the vacant storefront formerly occupied by A Child's Place. Near her podium was a poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger with a cigar in his mouth, with the headline "While the state drowns in IOUs ARNOLD DOESN'T CARE" and featuring a quotation from this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine article on the governor's method of coping with the stress of the budget crisis: "I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight. I'm going to lay back with a stogie."
Skinner said that's pretty cheeky talk for a governor who nixed bills that would've helped solve the state's cash crisis, avoided the need for the IOUs now going out and kept the deficit from growing by another several billion dollars. And it's particularly distasteful, she said, to small businesses that are struggling through this recession even as Schwarzenegger proudly talks about vetoing a plan to collect sales tax from large online retailers doing business through California-based affiliates.
You can debate AB 178, the plan to collect sales tax on affiliate sales (I don't sell enough in affiliate sales to have much skin in the game, but there are decent arguments on both sides), but aligning with small business to attack a supposedly business-friendly Governor has good optics.
For the wonks, the Assembly produced an analysis of the Governor's so-called "reform" agenda, showing that most of it would be completely irrelevant to the current budget year, and all of it uses math that magically eliminates implementation costs but assumes outrageously oversized savings years down the road. These are cuts to social services pretending to be reform. I guess it's a step up from completely eliminating programs like CalWorks, but it's fundamentally dishonest.
"I've never liked when people pick on the poor because they haven't got the ability to fight back," said John Burton, the state Democratic Party chairman and former Senate leader known as a fierce advocate for the poor. "It's a Republican syndrome. It isn't tough for Republicans to beat up on poor people. When finances are terrible, they go after the poor and blame the poor. Republicans constantly use that and don't worry about all the benefits government gives to businesses." [...]
Welfare advocates countered that nearly two-thirds of recipients are working or participating in training, and that half are making some kind of income. They also said that the governor's own May revised budget proposal estimated an annual savings of $100 million with that reform.
"He's reinforcing negative stereotypes and scapegoating people for the failure of his own administration," said Frank Mecca, executive director of the County Welfare Directors Association of California. "It's a reflection of a bully mentality, to go after the problems of struggling families when he doesn't get his way. The last thing those families need is to have a powerful figure accuse them of fraud, of not trying."
Furthermore, the CA Democratic Party has collected budget horror stories to highlight the human cost of the crisis. Here's one picked at random:
I am on Social Security Disability and with the amounts allowed to get SSI having been cut, it has also cut my income. Also, my medical coverage is being hit as well as so many of the social programs all of us depend on. Fortunately, I am not homeless yet, but it is a good possibility. I just do not understand how you could make all Californians suffer, especially those of us who are very low income, in favor of giving a huge tax break to oil and tobacco. This is not just or right and I believe that the solution is to sign the compromise bill, and tax the big corporations that are not now paying their fair share! - Christine, Victorville
The structural barriers in the state are so high that I'm not sure any of this can work. One thing is certain, however - this aggressive strategy creates energy in the grassroots, inspires changes to the system and can leverage public opinion far better than desperately seeking some compromise behind closed doors.
Dan Walters is touting a UC Riverside poll on budget issues that interviewed 276 respondents, 63% male, with a 42-38-11 split among Democrats, Republicans and independents. He does this with a straight face.
It barely matters what such a flawed poll shows, but I'll mention it anyway. According to 276 people, 57% support the 2/3 requirement for passing a budget, 24% preferred a simple majority, 6% in between, 4% other (?), and 6% don't know. Given the bad methodology, these numbers mean nothing.
But I'll tell you who has historically taken numbers like these as the gospel's truth and used them to mute themselves about any reform efforts for thirty years. That would be the leaders of the California Democratic Party. And they latch on to any poll numbers showing a view like this as a blunt instrument to kick hippies, not a starting point for the political advocacy and opinion leadership that can and should be done to change perspectives.
Here's the problem, in a nutshell. In 1978 California passed Prop. 13, and Democrats have run for cover ever since. They should have put up a fight immediately. But instead, Democrats cowered in fear of losing power, despite the demographic shifts in the state since the mid-1990s, so they lay low and never advocate for the necessary reforms, and buy completely into the myth that the 70's-era tax revolt remains alive and well, and they take public opinion polls like this as static and unchangeable through anything resembling leadership. Obviously Republicans are insane in this state, but they can barely manage 1/3 of the legislature (and if we had a half-decent campaign apparatus among California Democrats they'd lose that too) and shouldn't be feared in any respect. Yet our Democratic leadership exists in a post-1978 fog, a kind of "Sacramento Syndrome," where they've come to love their captors on the right, and have bought into their claims.
Meanwhile, the David Binder memo, with ten times the poll respondents and a clear majority favoring a broad swath of tax increases over spending cuts to deal with the deficit, goes unmentioned by virtually everyone in this state. And in that desert, voters go vainly on a futile search for leadership. They find nothing but shell-shocked politicians.
...As if on cue, view for yourself the craptastic "Post-Budget Reform Push" press release Assembly Speaker Bass just dropped. You'll be thrilled to know that your state government will be more "user-friendly" when leaving AIDS patients and the poor to die on the streets. You can almost smell the fear coming off this press release (on the flip):
Last week, John Burton (the new Chair of the California Democratic Party) sent an update to members of the CDP's Executive Board about what the organization has been doing since he took the helm in late April.
Please see the message below in its entirety (edited slightly to make it easier to read).
Congratulations on your election to the California Democratic Party Executive Board! Our first meeting will take place in Burlingame on the weekend of July 17th through the 19th. I am looking forward to seeing you there.
And I also wanted to thank you for making the April 09 CDP Convention such a positive and high-energy event. Our team has hit the ground running. (See the update below)
During this transition time, we are looking for the best ways to address the needs activists expressed to us during the campaign, and putting the programs in place to answer the call.
During my campaign, I promised I would focus on the basics: getting Democrats elected - from local races all the way up the ticket: Push to move red areas to blue, in all 58 counties; Increase Democratic voter registration; give activists the tools and assistance they need to be successful; support our young Democrats; and re-energize the state party.
I wanted to share a couple of thoughts with Calitics readers about my experience running for chair of the California Democratic Party.
First, I really did mean it in my speech on Saturday when I said most of the good ideas were on the floor of the convention. Of the 12 points I presented in that speech, a couple were mine. A few came from things I heard at central committee meetings or regional events I attended across the state during the campaign. In some cases, they were things political friends of mine suggested, or even stuff I read on blogs and listservs. One friend of mine at the convention called it crowdsourscing, another fellow said it was the essence of democracy, and a third observed that that's what representatives are supposed to do--listen to their constituents. Of course they're all right. But the point is, all you have to do is show up and listen. We have a lot of bright, experienced people in the Democratic Party in California. They have a lot to teach us.
The other thing people kept telling me is that I was so brave to do this. Anybody who knows me can tell you I'm not an inherently brave person. Foolhardy on occasion perhaps. But I was so nervous on Saturday that my son had to type the changes to my speech because my hands were shaking. What motivated me was the belief that what I was doing was important, and that's not much different than most of the people who do extraordinary things in our party every day.
The California Democratic Party "split the baby" on the six propositions for the May 19th ballot - endorsing Propositions 1B, 1C and 1F, while not supporting Props 1A, 1D and 1E. This shifts the dynamic for the last three weeks. No longer can Prop 1A's defeat be a mandate against tax increases - because the measure's "spending cap" is why progressives oppose it. Likewise, "no" on Props 1D and 1E is now a vote for the state to fund children's health programs and mental health services. And while many liberals fear the short-term "budget gap" if the measures all go down, the Party endorsed a "yes" vote on Prop 1C - which would have the most immediate impact. The Party's support for Prop 1B is a mandate for public schools - and while Prop 1A's defeat would prevent 1B from going into effect, a "yes" vote could pressure Governor Schwarzenegger to stop gutting education money. Democrats in the legislature promoted all six measures as a "budget package" to avert fiscal disaster. But it was a rotten deal, and the strategy would leave us no better off on May 20th towards a long-term solution. With this new dynamic, we can build momentum for scrapping the "two-thirds rule" in the state budget.
Thanks again to all of you who signed petitions and made phone calls and helped push the resolution to open a Congressional inquiry into Torture Judge Jay Bybee, which the California Democratic Party adopted at its convention yesterday. I have been told by the authors of the resolution that the pressure from the outside really aided their efforts.
The passage of the resolution was a beginning, not an ending. On the flip, come and join us in the next step.
UPDATE: Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post has the full story of the passage of the resolution at the convention.
This weekend was my second California Democratic Party convention and my first as an elected delegate. It was an enjoyable weekend, catching up with old friends and making new ones. I also had the opportunity to spend some time with some of our elected leaders, such as Barbara Boxer, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, and John Garamendi.
As I look back on the weekend, I am reminded of what I wrote after last year's convention, including some themes that were clearly in evidence this weekend. From last year:
The Leno-Migden fight certainly reached a dramatic climax today, and the result was stunning. After the vote was finalized Eden James argued that it was a representation of the power of the grassroots within the party, and I think that analysis is absolutely right....Migden's failed endorsement is also further evidence, along with the rescinded AD-40 endorsement and the split over Prop 93 earlier in the year, to a huge divide between the party grassroots and the Sacramento leadership in particular. Senate Democrats and their staffers had worked hard over the weekend to get a Migden endorsement and the delegates would not go along with it.
Switch out "Leno-Migden" and "Prop 93" for "Proposition 1A" and you'd have essentially the same story from this weekend in Sacramento. Progressives flexed their muscle yet again at this convention, showing that they are the force to be reckoned with in the party - even if progressives did not always speak with a single voice. The refusal to endorse Propositions 1A, 1D and 1E was a sign that progressive delegates are not going to be dictated to by Democratic leaders, and that they feel empowered to say "No" when it is warranted. That's a sign of a healthy and mature progressive movement. People power is here in the California Democratic Party - and although it has yet to find sustained expression, it's only a matter of time before that power revitalizes the party.
There's a lot else to write about, but for now I'm just going to offer some impressions, written down on the train back from Sacramento (and a note to all Democrats running for a statewide office in 2010: the first one of you to come up with a credible plan to connect Monterey to San Jose via frequent passenger rail service and will swear on the ghost of the Del Monte Express to implement it will get my endorsement).
Progressive candidates did very well in the race for CDP officer positions, in particular Hillary Crosby, who will hopefully and finally bring some financial accountability to this party. John Burton is himself a staunch progressive, as his victory speech made clear (he denounced the war in Afghanistan, for example). He will be a powerful voice for social democratic politics as party chair, and it's about time we had one.
Chris Finnie in particular deserves a shout-out. Even though many progressives, myself included, voted for John Burton, Finnie impressed a lot of delegates with her campaign and her speech. She showed she was running not for her own self-interests, but as the standard bearer for those who wanted true and long-overdue reform of the party. John Burton in turn showed he too saw the need for change by promising to adopt the 12 recommendations for reform that Chris advocated in her campaign. Her efforts showed the value of a contested race for chair, and by sticking with her campaign she showed more guts and probably will have had more of a lasting effect on the party than the other chair candidates who quit earlier on.
If the governor's race settles into a two-person contest between Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown, Brown's going to have to do more than wax nostalgic for the old days. His "recession reception" struck the wrong tone, as he became a kind of museum piece - the blue Plymouth in the drive (Update: According to Calbuzz Brown didn't know that the Plymouth would be there), the old mansion, old songs. I don't know if that's what he was going for, but that's how it came across. Even if Newsom's "stroll down memory lane" line is unfair to what Brown has accomplished in the recent past and his capacity to provide some direction forward, Brown has got to start asserting some truly new ideas and a new vision for the next 30 years. We'll have more on our sitdown with Newsom soon - lots to chew over there.
There was some early jockeying for position ahead of the 2010 primary, although hardly anyone was paying attention to the downticket races. There are no clear frontrunners or progressive champions in the Insurance Commissioner, Attorney General, or Lieutenant Governor races. But one thing is clear - Debra Bowen is beloved by this party and its base in particular. She's been an excellent secretary of state, and she'll have a wide and deep base of support should she decide to run for US Senate in 2012.
It may just have been me, but it seemed that there really was a new kind of energy among party delegates - a determination to build a party that's able to produce progressive change. I don't know how many of the delegates were new, products of the Obama movement, but where I sat (Region 9) a large number of the delegates were folks new to the convention who had been mobilized by the Obama campaign. They aren't the kind of people to tolerate the usual insider games, and they are motivated by a sense that change isn't just necessary, but possible. It's very inspiring.
I feel I reached the limits of what Twitter can accomplish for political conversation this weekend. During Barbara Boxer's press event I made some occasional tweets of her comments, but it just disappears into the ether, buried in folks' feeds among links to some swine flu article or Susan Boyle's latest hairstyle. Below you can see David Dayen's excellent liveblog of the debate over the proposition endorsements, which would simply have been impossible given Twitter's 140 character limit. And there is a robust conversation going on in the comments, much easier to follow and participate in than on Twitter. That's not to say that Twitter doesn't have its uses, but it would be a mistake to try and use it to do what we've done well at places like Calitics.
Add your thoughts in the comments. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Now, time to catch up on sleep...
UPDATE by Brian: Just wanted to remind everybody about two useful mobile tools for following our coverage of the CDP Convention. First there is the Calitics mobile site at http://wap.calitics.com. That allows you to read all front-paged diaries and comment in a mobile phone friendly website.
Headed out the door for a nice, leisurely six-hour drive through the Central Valley to Sacramento for another California Democratic Party Convention. Calitics will have full coverage, of course - many of our writers will be on hand, both as delegates and as plain old media. There's a lot to cover, from party elections to endorsements on the May 19 election to the resolution to impeach Jay Bybee from the 9th Circuit to the unofficial opening of the 2010 election.
The early pre-convention news is that Antonio Villaraigosa won't be making the trip with me (although there's still room in the car, so you never know). It's a confusing development, considering all the high-profile events other gubernatorial hopefuls Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown are holding (Jerry's got a kegger at the old Governor's Mansion, while Gavin is part of an outdoor block party featuring Wyclef Jean). But that may be the reason, as Villaraigosa wasn't able to compete.
Villaraigosa's press office sent out a release announcing: "Mayor Villaraigosa today announced that he will convene emergency weekend meetings with union leaders to tackle the city's budget crisis.
"Talks will focus on ways to close a $530 million budget deficit through shared sacrifice and shared responsibility. The Mayor will begin meetings in City Hall with labor leaders on Friday evening and will continue through the weekend." [...]
Calbuzz asked Tony V spokesman Sean Clegg if the emergency budget session was "just a lame, bullshit excuse" to skip the convention. "It's exactly the opposite of that," Clegg said. "The city of Los Angeles and most cities across California are facing an unprecedented economic crisis and jobs come first."
Clegg said Villaraigosa is putting the needs of his city before his personal political fortunes by trying to pull together an agreement that would require labor unions to give back some hard-earned gains in order to save jobs and services in Los Angeles.
"This is a leadership moment. Antonio Villaraigosa is not going to Twitter while Rome burns," Clegg said -- a clear shot at the other mayor who would be governor: San Francisco's Gavin Newsom.
At the same time, a Tulchin Research/Acosta|Salazar pre-convention poll (which is three weeks out, but released on convention eve) shows Villaraigosa slipping. The poll had Garamendi in the race at the time.
Obviously, that top-line support is soft, with 1 in 5 undecided. But I'm frankly surprised how quickly this is turning into a two-horse race, which could actually open the door for a progressive movement candidate, if one existed. But alas...
Anyway, those are just a couple of the issues we'll see unfold. Stay with us throughout the weekend.
(I've teed up a few posts while I'm on the ride, but it'll be a light post day until late afternoon)
Arnold Schwarzenegger's Budget Reform Now group released their first TV ad yesterday, full of buzzwords and bullet points ("Hold the politicians accountable!") and admitting that the package includes a "spending limit," which is certainly further than the Democratic legislative leadership has been willing to go. But as one-line summations of the election goes, you can't get much better than future chair of the CDP John Burton, who took a pass on giving his specific voting choices for May 19, but who uttered this classic quip:
In any case, pressed on the question of whether his lifelong bleeding heart liberalism would allow him to back some of the permanent budget cuts that would result if Prop. 1A is passed, Mr. Almost Chairman responded with a classic Burtonism:
"I think when it's all over, the ones getting fucked will be the poor people."
Now, I could give you the charts showing how spending will be forced down and payments to the reserve fund mandated even in bad budget years, or offer the example of TABOR's spending cap in Colorado, which was disastrous. And I could follow you through the contours of this bad public policy and how it does nothing to relieve the structural problems that can get California out of the ditch. But I cannot improve upon that line. I've been critical of Burton in the past, based on the need for forward-thinking strategies at the CDP, but I've never questioned his liberalism. And you have to give him the credit for this, er, bon mot.
Since it referenced me, let me start by shouting out to fellow Calitician Lucas O'Connor, writing on the front page of MyDD:
Since approximately the morning after election day in November, Dave Dayen has been writing over at Calitics about the dramatic Congressional pick-up opportunities in California that were missed in the Obama wave. Specifically, Obama carried 42 of California's 53 districts (I won't even begin right now to get into the state leg breakdown which is also a debacle), including eight districts held by Republicans in Congress. Well all of a sudden this week, the whole world is waking up to the Dayen gospel.
Not only is the current statewide Republican registration of 31% a historic low, but for the first time there is not a single congressional, state senate or assembly district that has a majority Republican registration.
Apparently Bob Mulholland sent out a press release waking up to these facts last week. Now, I'm not going to hate on Mulholland for finally getting with the program. But let's make ourselves clear - this was true in 2006 and 2008 as well, and yet the state party failed to capitalize, by their own admission. So it's going to take more than one press release to show a commitment. Republicans have obviously become repellent to the broad majority of Californians, and they're too busy trying to recall each other to notice. It's upsetting that we haven't used this unpopularity in the past two election cycles, and I hope that the CDP can catch up with the curve.
They can start with effective recruitment. John Garamendi, who spoke to Greg Lucas as if he's still a gubernatorial candidate but who by all accounts will be running for Congress, ought to be pushed to run in the 3rd District, where he is the largest landowner and where there is currently no viable candidate to beat Dan Lungren in a district that is trending Democratic, instead of the 10th, where there are multiple viable candidates. Recruitment is an often-unremarked-upon but crucial element to winning elections.
Speaking of which...
• CA-04: This CapAlert piece certainly makes it sound like Charlie Brown might challenge Tom McClintock once again.
At the Jefferson-Jackson dinner at the Blue Goose Fruit Shed in Loomis, Brown and his wife, Jan, were honored as photographs flashed of Brown and supporters during four years of campaigning. The production was accompanied by songs from Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender" to Neil Young's "Long May You Run."
And then Brown stirred huge cheers when he hinted he might have the stamina for one more try for Congress in 2010.
"We'll see what happens over the next few months - and whether you'll have the opportunity to get into any pictures again," Brown said.
In an interview, Brown said he is still mulling his prospects. He said he expects to decide by this fall.
We're big fans of Charlie here at Calitics, and should he run again we'll stand with him. McClintock would have the power of incumbency and a red-leaning district but the rumblings I'm hearing out of there signal that residents and local pols aren't all that enthused by the new Congressman's performance.
• CA-32: The LA Times weighs in with an overview of the 32nd race to replace Labor Secretary Hilda Solis set for May 19. They list Judy Chu and Gil Cedillo as the front-runners (though Emanuel Pleitez is profiled) and suggest that the race is a harbinger of the changing, minority-majority face of Southern California politics. They also mention the Betty Tom Chu controversy, as well as some allegations on the Cedillo side.
Judy Chu supporters suspect that Republican Betty Tom Chu, a Monterey Park councilwoman and a political opponent of Judy Chu, entered the race to confuse voters and harm the chances of her distant relative by marriage. Tom Chu said last week she did not have time to discuss her candidacy, but earlier told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that she is running because she could not support any of the other candidates and wanted to offer voters an alternative.
Apparently motivated by concerns that the large number of Latino candidates in the race would split the vote in that group and give Judy Chu the edge, there also were signs of jockeying.
Democratic candidate Francisco Alonso, a former mayor of Monterey Park, and a campaign official for Democratic actor/filmmaker Stefan "Contreras" Lysenko each said Cedillo called them shortly before filing closed and urged them to drop out. A Cedillo spokesman said the state senator was merely inviting the others to "work together" with him and did not intend to discourage them from running.
Over the weekend, Cedillo won the endorsement of the LA County Young Democrats, while Chu garnered the endorsement of the state Democratic Party.
My Internet connection at the Bay Area New Media Conference is agonizingly slow, but I just wanted to call your attention to Joe Eskenazi's report on the riveting Regional Director race between Chris Daly and August Longo.
Intriguing Matchup for Next Democratic Regional Director: Chris Daly (Hothead) vs. August Longo (Convicted Felon) By Joe Eskenazi
When Supervisor Chris Daly tossed his hat into the ring for the low-profile position of Democratic Party Regional Director earlier this week, much of the ensuing media coverage focused on Daly's history of polarizing and combative behavior. In short, was this man constitutionally capable of handling a job that, essentially, calls for him to bring together various segments of the party and impartially organize meetings in which party endorsements are decided? Can Chris Daly be anyone's "liaison"?
Little was mentioned of Daly's six-year incumbent opponent, August Longo. Yet Longo's background is arguably more disturbing than Daly's past experiences walking out of meetings or engaging in shouting matches with members of the public. Longo, also a member of San Francisco's Human Rights Commission, was in 1981 indicted in New York of impersonating three different doctors, filling out false credit-card and loan applications, and passing more than 40 bad checks -- to the tune of $467,000. He pleaded guilty to nine charges involving around $125,000.
This post was written by Asm. Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) and is being promoted pursuant to our policy to bump post from candidates and electeds.
Democratic Party activists have complained to me for years about the Party's finances. Alex Rooker and Eric Bradley have also been concerned, and shared their frustration with me.
If we agree there is a problem, then we need a solution. That is why I decided to introduce a Resolution at the upcoming Democratic Party Convention and asked Alex and Eric to join as co-sponsors: to fix our Party so we can get more Democrats elected!
But we can't do it alone. This common sense CDP finance reform resolution is the beginning of coming together for reform. I strongly believe that when delegates come together in support of this resolution, it will send a loud message for positive change throughout the Party.
The companion measure to our resolution is a bylaw amendment that will block cash payments to politicians' campaign accounts (especially those that are termed-out). I am confident that broad delegate support will build momentum to make this long-overdue change happen--to stop spending that does not meet our main goal of electing more Democrats at the federal, state, and local level and supporting worthy ballot measures.
I encourage every delegate, and every Democrat, to visit our website: www.LetsFixCDP.com and sign up for our reform effort. As we saw in November, we can accomplish amazing things when we unite for change as Democrats.
San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly has filed to run for Regional Director of the California Democratic Party - challenging long-time incumbent August Longo. In an e-mail sent to State Party delegates (who will pick the Regional Director on April 25th at the annual Convention in Sacramento), Daly stressed his credentials as a "community organizer," and the need to build on the grass-roots success of Barack Obama. But Daly's decision to run also comes after Longo cast the lone dissenting vote (albeit through a proxy) at a S.F. Democratic Central Committee meeting against an immigrant rights resolution. Following that vote at the DCCC meeting, Daly objected to a motion endorsing Longo for re-election - but at the time, his colleagues overruled him 15-4. Longo now claims he would have voted differently on the resolution if present, but Daly says he's not running against Longo's record. The job of Regional Director, said Daly, can be transformed to engage the grassroots and push for progressive change within the Party. Delegates from San Francisco and San Mateo Counties will get to vote at the Convention, and the outcome is very much in doubt.
Now Democratic State Party Controller Eric Bradley, who is running for re-election, Assemblyman Hector De La Torre and CDP vice-chair Alex Rooker have taken a stand, and want to prevent questionable expenditures from the CDP. They are sponsoring a resolution that says, in part:
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party supports common sense reforms that will bring greater trust and confidence in its ability to raise funds for campaign activities; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party should approve reforms that prevent money transfers to termed-out officeholders or their affiliated political committees, and that Party monies and resources should be used only on party building activities and direct campaign support for candidates or ballot measures in each campaign cycle.
Eric Bradley was also endorsed by State Controller John Chiang, in a letter I received in the mail today. Here's what he says about Eric:
"I know better than anyone how difficult the job of Controller can be. That's why I respect the job Eric is doing and endorse him for re-election. The job of Controller isn't just about counting money. It is about coordinating the the fundraising and financial efforts of our party, and marshalling them to elect Democrats."
And now, here's what I have to say about Eric Bradley. Eric has extensive fundraising experience throughout the state, in the big counties where it counts. He is a progressive and he has come out firmly for reform within the party.
More than that, Eric was with us here in Orange County, when Debbie Cook ran for Congress. Much of her territory was in Long Beach, in Los Angeles County. Eric's Long Beach roots and connections helped her campaign tremendously there and were a factor in a Democrat winning the Long Beach portion of the 46th District for the first time. Eric was there offering support every step of the way. He's a true grassroots leader.
I'm supporting Eric Bradley for re-election as Democratic Party Controller.
