The Daily Show takes on California's initiative system
by Brian Leubitz
I'm not going to surprise anybody on this blog when I say that the initiative process is well and truly screwed. It leaves us with the people voting on a minority's rights, voting for contradictory measures, and a wealth of confusion. But with the Daily Show taking aim at the mess that is now, unfortunately, Hiram Johnson's legacy, perhaps the word will get out a bit more broadly.
John Burton, who can make many a sailor blush, surprises even the Daily Show's John Oliver with both his language and his feeling about the initiative system. As Chairman Burton puts it: "It's It's F&$*$D." And a quick note to our esteemed leader, we're not boycotting Amazon anymore. In fact, you can buy one of the exciting Kindle Fire devices and I get a referral fee. Of course, if you'd prefer to shop at a store that hasn't tried to skirt sales taxes for several years, you can shop at Barnes and Noble and get one of their competing Nook tablets. Oooh, exciting, either way, you're helping out Calitics.
Back to the video, MinuteMan crazy dude (and Assemblyman) Tim Donnelly is also featured. But I'll just let you get to that on your own...
So-called "Top 2" primary makes intraparty general elections possible
by Brian Leubitz
The top-2 primary system yields some strange results. You could end up with two members of the same party. Or you could end up with a non-major party candidate in the top 2. Both of these situations lead to some uncomfortable questions for the party. Under the current rules, party entities are not allowed to endorse non-democrats. However, if there are no Democrats in the general election, what then? CDP Chair John Burton just released an email about his take on the "top 2" primary system and independents.
What are we to do if a "Decline-to-State" supports the issues we do and shares our values as Democrats? I personally know several people who became "Decline-to-State" in opposition to Iraq and Afghanistan, but favor environmental protection, gay rights, and other progressive issues. If local Democrats are presented with a dilemma of a progressive declined-to-state vs. a reactionary Republican in the run off election, I believe the local delegates should have the option of whether to endorse.
The July Executive Board meeting happening next weekend will deal with these issues. The changes proposed by the CDP Rules committee can be found here (PDF. In short, the rules changes allow a DTS voter to apply to get an endorsement where there are no Democrats on the ballot.
Take a look at the changes, there is a lot to think about. I'm pretty inclined to support this, but I'd like to hear others' thoughts. Full email over the flip.
John Burton isn't one to hold his tongue, and if you are on the CDP's email list, you'll know that by now. But that doesn't make today's email any less notable, if only for the tone and strength of its message.
What some might call it a "deal" or "compromise" I would call capitulation to the Republicans.
Just as we do not negotiate with international terrorists, we must stand up to the political terrorism of the Republicans in the United States Senate.
At some point, the American people have to know what kind of people these Republicans are. They may never find out if the Republicans can force their view point on the Administration, splitting the Democratic Party.
The Republicans rant against the deficit, but they give billions, approaching trillions, of tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
So, what have we got here? A message calling the Republicans terrorists and President Obama a modern day Neville Chamberlain. Of course, he is far from the only one. Democracy for America worked with Sen. Bernie Sanders to attack the plan as "reprehensible", and Sen. Sanders later put out a release attacking Republicans for failing to adopt an Amendment to provide additional breaks for those receiving Social Security.
You got all that? Millions to each of thousands of millionaires and billionaires? Yay! $250 to millions of social security recipients? Too expensive. It's amazing how that works, despite the fact that any economist will tell you that the way you get people working is to distribute money to the poorest end of the spectrum, and let the multiplier take its turn.
Look, the plan won't necessarily hurt the economy in the short term, but it is a huge missed opportunity to help provide additional funds into the economy. We're wasting it on people who don't need it (but desperately lobby for it) instead of providing for those who could use it to get from day to day. It is short sighted in the extreme, and it is good to see John Burton, and whomever else joins the chorus, in objecting in these terms.
In the month of June, with the Constitutional Deadline to pass a budget, the CDP did one move on the budget. And it was pathetic. There was no Theory of Change, no path for what they were doing to result in passing a budget quicker, or passing a more just budget. It was quite honestly one of the most pathetic online moves I have ever seen by a state party -- anywhere in the country.
And then they got defensive. They started censoring comments at Calitics, giving a '0' rating to disappear any criticism. They censored, again and again and again and again.
I'm trying to figure out how the California Democratic Party could have failed so completely, I think it might have gone something like this:
I spoke to a few friends at the California Democratic Party about their recent donation that we mentioned in the open thread yesterday. It was a pretty big deal:
Jerry Brown received $2.25 million in campaign cash from the state Democratic Party's central committee, his gubernatorial campaign reported this weekend.
The donation by far is the largest single contribution given to Brown, a Democrat and former chairman of the state party. Brown, the state attorney general and former governor, faces no serious opposition in the June 8 Democratic primary. (CapWkly)
In the past, the fund raising prowess of the CDP was shall we say, less than we would have hoped. But, things can change, and when they do, it can sneak up on you, even us here at Calitics. Where as the CDP used to be primarily a conduit, it now has its own financial muscle. This $2 million check comes from the fruits of the CDP's own labor.
So, whatever there is to be said about the governor's race and the CDP, there is now a different relationship between the party and the elected leaders. There CDP can now stand up on its own two legs, and that's a good thing for progressives, especially with the current structure of Democratic leadership.
What am I talking about? Well, let's start from the fact that John Myers is all over this California politics stuff. He went through the most recent finance filings and found that the CDP had received $10,000 from Anthem Blue Cross?
Really? John Burton, as chair of the CDP, thought it was cool to solicit and take money from Anthem Blue Cross? One of the groups he was railing against during the waning days of the health care fight?
I was sort of amazed by that and needed to get to the bottom of this. So, I called up the CDP and said "What you talking about CDP?"
Turns out, the check arrived, unsolicited, from Anthem Blue Cross late in the work day. The staff, being a bit hesitant about a $10K check from a big health insurer, set the check aside for Chairman Burton's approval. However, this being 24-hour reporting days, the staff, in constant reporting mode, wrote it up right away and filed it.
I've been told, and have no reason to doubt it, that the check was never cashed, and will not be cashed. It will be returned promptly.
But, this brings up a good question. Should the party return such unsolicited funds? Certainly, we should not be courting these companies, that much should be in no question at all. But, if they are dropping off checks, couldn't the party use that money against the insurer? Spend it sending mail into swing districts to support representatives that will support single payer health care?
Yeah, they wouldn't send any more checks, but so what? Anthem knew who they were sending the check to, John Burton, who wrote and got passed SB 2, one of the most progressive health care reform packages ever passed in America. Of course, ABC didn't like that, and spent heavily to repeal the measure. (Correction: Anthem Blue Cross didn't actually get involved in SB 2, but have been involved on the wrong side in pretty much every other health care fight in California)
What say you, Calitics folks? Would you have cashed that check?
At the (CYD Caucus) CDP poolside shindig last night, the big news was that I missed the tamales on the buffet. I was enraged! I was more enraged by the fact that Jerry Brown took the last one.
Ok, Ok, I kid. The real big news was the converstaion between Brown and CDP Chair John Burton. As Brown and Burton were engaged in small talk, Calitics reader lindasutton came up and brought up the question of single payer.
Brown responded by saying it was never going to happen. That it wasn't going to happen at the federal level, and that he wasn't sure about it at the state level. Burton then interjected saying that it would, and should, happen. After Brown hemmed and hawed for a while, saying that it wouldn't happen, Burton responded with this remark: "I thought you were supposed to reach beyond the stars."
I'm not quite sure what Brown's response was, as it was a bit mumbled. I think it was something to the effect of it's not going to happen. A remarkable evening, all in all.
UPDATE by Robert: I too was standing there, tamale-less, watching this fascinating exchange between two of the leading California politicians of the 1960s and 1970s. It was an interesting contrast in basic political approaches. Burton emphasizes progressive principles - his older brother Phil created the Medi-Cal program in the early 1960s and he believes that single-payer is the right solution to the health care crisis. Brown emphasizes a pragmatic approach, one that will never embrace a progressive solution on its merits unless it is already popular with voters.
Interestingly, Brown's statement on single-payer - "it'll never happen" - is the same position President Barack Obama has. The difference of course is that Obama was able to create a campaign based on a clear message of hope and change that was able to generate high levels of enthusiasm among progressives to help him win. Brown, on the other hand, hasn't yet offered any larger vision for progressives to embrace, so his dismissal of single-payer is going to be more of an obstacle.
Marcy Winograd, who is again challenging Jane Harman for the Democratic nomination in CA-36, suggested an interesting approach to this: progressives should tell Brown if/when he wins that "we celebrate your victory and look forward to you singing the single-payer bill."
(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.
This is a big deal. John Burton just sent out an action alert to CDP delegates and supporters urging them to vote AGAINST an element of the budget negotiated by the Democratic leadership. Specifically, he wants the offshore drilling at Tranquillon Ridge voted down.
As you may have heard, legislative leaders and the governor have reached a tentative budget deal that the Senate and Assembly could vote on as soon as tomorrow.
One part of the package is a Republican-written bill that would allow offshore drilling in state-controlled waters off California's coast for the first time since the devastating 1969 oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast. This proposal is an affront to all Californians and we must urge lawmakers to vote it down.
This sweetheart deal for one oil company was negotiated behind closed doors, without any legislative hearings to allow public comment.
It strips the State Lands Commission - which has approved or rejected oil leases for the past 150 years - of this power and gives it to a commission controlled by the governor's administration. This commission would have unlimited authority to rewrite the lease to benefit the oil company.
The offshore drilling plan does not solve either this year's budget problems or systemic problems. That's because its promises of future revenue are not actually written into law.
This Republican offshore drilling scheme endangers California's environment. It would further pad the pockets of oil executives. And it does virtually nothing to solve the state's current or future budget problems.
Ironically, the same Republican legislators who support this sweetheart deal are the ones who refused to vote for our Democratic leaders' proposal for an oil-severance tax like the one levied in every other oil-producing state.
Please call your local lawmaker and urge him or her to say NO to new offshore drilling. Say NO to jeopardizing our coastline for minimal budget help this year or in the future.
At the end of the email, Burton reminds readers that these kind of backroom deals are part of why "it's so important to have a majority-vote budget in California so Republicans cannot hijack the budget process to make bad policy changes that are extraneous to the state budget." A-men to that, but tell it to the Democratic leaders who helped negotiate this.
Karen Bass was asked today by reporters why the offshore drilling bill was included in the budget agreement, and she replied, "It comes down to $100 million dollars." Apparently you can put a price on despoiling the coastline and destroying the environment. Turns out it's 1/880th of total budgetary spending.
It's good to see the Chairman of the CDP picking up on a campaign by the Courage Campaign and amplifying it. The offshore drilling plan will be considered in a separate trailer bill. It can be defeated.
A few days ago, we mentioned Arnold's TV ad. It was rather sketchy, considering it drew a bizarre line in the sand. However, it turns out there is something else sketchy about the ad. Namely, that it violates regulations laid down by the Fair Political Practices Commission.
Specifically, the money for the ad came from Arnold's ballot measure account "Governor Schwarzenegger's Dream Team California" Under FPPC regulations (Title 2 of the California Code of Regs, Sec. 18521.5), such ballot measure committees must only spend money on ACTUAL ballot measures, whether to gather signatures or what not. But while that is a bit murky, the one thing that is clear is that spending has to be in the furtherance of a ballot measure.
If you recall, the ad said nothing whatsoever about any ballot measure. In fact, the only thing it does mention is the budget negotiation process. Thus, Arnold will have to find some other slush fund to run this ad. The CDP is asking for the FPPC to seek an injunction to block the airing of the ad or of its continued existence on a website paid for by the "Dream Team" Committee.
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.
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.
Before the California Democratic Convention ended yesterday, delegates bucked the Party leadership on the May 19th ballot measures - by securing a "no endorsement" on Propositions 1A, 1D and 1E. State legislators and Party operatives pushed "yes" on all six measures, but enough of the grassroots who stayed for the tail end of the session refused to go along. I've been attending these Conventions for 12 years, and it's clear now that activists and "reform" types run the Party - a stark contrast to how it once was. That's because Howard Dean and Barack Obama brought in a new wave of rank-and-file members, and now we see the impact. College students have replaced the "professional" types that once dominated the Young Democrats caucus. Reformer Hillary Crosby won the race for State Party Controller, and even John Burton's election as Party Chair is a good thing for the activist wing. Politicians must adapt to this change, and it's clear some of them - like John Garamendi - still don't get it. In the race for Governor, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was not well received at the Convention by delegates from his hometown - as he painted a rosy picture of how things are in the City. And while Chris Daly ran as a "reformer" in the race for Regional Director, other factors contributed his defeat.
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.
Recently, the first Vice Chair and Controller of the California Democratic Party joined a California Assemblymember to call for delegates to "help us rewrite the rules and make common-sense reforms...." They have proposed to change to one rule of the California Democratic Party.
I applaud their call for reforms. I support their call for rules changes to accomplish that reform. But, though the change they propose is an important one, it is hardly enough. Here are some other ideas that would actually bring the greater accountability these reformers call for:
In Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, Sr. Political Reporter Carla Marinucci writes about the race for chair of the California Democratic Party:
"Even as the Democratic Party rides an Obama-fueled wave of youth, enthusiasm and "change," the Democrats of California look to be bucking the trend: They're preparing to elect former state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, 77, the iconic, battle-scarred veteran of state politics, as their party leader.
It's a move not without controversy: The powerful former legislator, who first held the job of party chairman 36 years ago, is to his fans a colorful idol of progressive politics and to his critics the very symbol of old school, insider machine politics."
The article goes on to paint Senator Burton's election as nearly inevitable. But the comments are fascinating. In 6 pages of comments I read this morning, two supported Senator Burton. The rest were pretty consistent--the CDP needs to stop recycling retired politicians to lead the party. One poster wanted to know if this meant disco was coming back too. As hilarious as they were, they pointed to a pretty disturbing perception among California voters--that the CDP is resistant to, and even actively hostile to change.
In the January Assembly district caucuses to elect delegates to the California Democratic Party, many people reported that union members showed up to support delegates running on a slate for Senator John Burton for CDP chair. Many of these delegate candidates were also union members. I spoke to several of these union members running for delegate at my AD caucus. Both seemed like fine people. Clearly they were dedicated union members. Neither of them were Democratic activists. They had no links to or experience with the party. But, in my district, both are now delegates--or, officially, members of the state Democratic central committee.
I am a firm supporter of bringing new people into the party. But I find this development disturbing for several reasons.
(This is in response to an earlier diary. I edited the title (by adding "Regarding Harassment Charge") and cleaned up the names and moved them over the flip. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
We are offended by the content of a recent anonymous website posting. The complaint referenced underwent a thorough independent investigation, and it was found that there was no corroborating evidence to the claim of sexual harassment.
We, the undersigned, have worked for John Burton collectively for a period of 180 years. During that time we never witnessed, or heard of, any sexual harassment by John Burton against any employees or acquaintances, and we’re prepared to testify to that under oath. This includes staff members Michele Byrnes and Amy Lemley who worked for the Foundation at the time of the complaint.
John may have dropped an “F” Bomb here and there, but throughout our individual and collective careers, he has always shown us respect and gratitude.
Every female supporter of John’s, especially those who have had a long personal relationship with him, as well as women who worked and served with him in the State Senate and Assembly, would not add their names to his candidacy if they thought there was any truth to the allegation. And neither would we.
