Politico picks up the story of Tom McClintock's fundraising woes, and the fact that he was in the red as of October 1. I didn't know this:
But according to his campaign finance reports, he heads into the home stretch without much campaign cash left. McClintock spent more money than he raised, ending September with just $94,000 in his campaign account.
He is not currently airing airing any television ads, and hasn't been for the last two weeks.
If he's off the air right now, it's going to be next to impossible for him to get back on. The NRCC doesn't have a whole lot of money to play with, especially considering all the incumbents they have to defend. And the GOTV efforts, radio, phone calls, mailers, etc., cost plenty of money. If McClintock's living from hand to mouth right now, he's not going to get back on TV. And needless to say, Charlie Brown has plenty of money to blanket TV in the final two weeks. It's incredible.
And what's amazing is that this is how McClintock handled the primary as well. He overspent early and wound up running on fumes the last couple weeks. It wasn't a big deal against Doug Ose, but against a formidable opponent like Brown it'll matter. The supposed fiscal conservative can't even manage his own campaign stash.
With only two weeks until Election Day, it is more critical than ever to get out and help bring Charlie to victory. For months now, the Charlie Brown campaign for Congress has been burning up the phone lines and pounding the pavement to get our positive message of "patriotism before partisanship" out to the voters of the 4th Congressional District.
That's the bottom line. As the Sacramento Bee reports, Tom McClintock is Epic Fail:
Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican in a Democratic-dominated state Legislature, is the only state lawmaker to fail to shepherd a single piece of legislation into law in the last two years.
Not that he seems to mind.
In all of 2007, he passed not a single bill. And, according to the article, this year, he passed one, but it was vetoed by the VetoNator.
So...since Tom McClintock isn't exactly a legislator, what does he view his job as?
"I came to the conclusion a long time ago that minority legislators have a choice," said McClintock, who has served for 22 years in Sacramento. "One is to tinker at the margins and win very minor victories on unimportant matters and the other is to try to drive the public policy debate on major issues, sacrificing legislative victories for broader policy victories."
See, McClintock doesn't view himself as a legislator representing his constituents. He actually sees himself as a conservative ideologue using a position in elected office to push a broader ideological agenda. And it doesn't matter what the office is, or whom he would technically represent. What matters is that it's an office he thinks he can win--which is why he'll carpetbag hundreds of miles to a district he doesn't even know.
Attention Mr. McClintock: If you want to push a narrative, go work at the Heritage Foundation. Go push public opinion at Fox News. If you want to push the debate, there are plenty of places designed for just that where you can do that. But do us all a favor, Tom, and leave the legislating and representing of constituents to someone who...oh, I don't know...actually gives a shit about the job.
Voters in CA-04 have a choice. That choice is Charlie Brown.
Gentle Readers, volunteers, and fans of one of the most beautiful districts in the nation, CA- 04, this one's for you. You walked, you talked, you called, you organized, you typed, you wrote, you attended, you spoke, you applauded, you got up in the morning and you did it all again. And again.
You saw what was wrong, you wanted to make it right, and that meant you had to pick it up. You couldn't let the the Charlie Brown down. And that meant volunteering. It makes a difference. (more over the fold)
With less than 3 weeks in the election, the Charlie Brown for Congress campaign continues to dominate in voter contact in the 4th Congressional District. As dozens of dedicated canvassers, hundreds of volunteers, and the candidate himself hit the pavement to spread Charlie's positive message of patriotism before partisanship, its becoming increasingly clear who has the advantage in this race.
Just the other weekend, Charlie Brown participated in the 4th Brown BBQ Town Hall meeting, a great opportunity for voters and Charlie to connect and ask the questions that are at the top of their minds.
The countdown to Election Day moves forward, as does the Charlie Brown campaign. In an event-filled day that included an eggplant festival, two barbeques, a solar home tour and an Orange to Blue special DailyKos "Hell to Pay" fundraiser, Charlie was able to meet and talk directly with voters at Johnson-Springview Park in Rocklin, CA.
( Didn't really want to write this, but since the comment to the story about McClintock's KKK endorsement kept expanding, it gets its own diary. I noticed some skepticism towards this topic at dailykos, and since I had a lot of background material already available, it is relevant. )
This "endorsement" would explain why one of McClintock's supporters keeps on using
.....This.
This was in the local paper 9/21/08. It's from a McClintock supporter who posts blogs or comments on a daily basis. Most of his stuff I won't repeat because it's too inflammatory. I just try to tell people that these wedge issues are being used to do internet fundraising targeting senior citizens based on a fear of minorities, and that provoking these fears is wrong.
Perennial candidate Tom McClintock is a beloved figure on the far right. We just didn't know how far.
It turns out that in 2003, when McClintock was running for his eleventy-teenth political office in the California governor recall election, he was endorsed by none other than the KKK.
Dateline: September 27, 2003
Ku Klux Klan Announces support for Tom McClintock
The Imperial Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (IKA) have announced their full support for Tom
McClintock's bid for the governorship of California. Their support is announced in what they term "the
lesser of all evil candidates."
When interviewed, Mr. Chris Johnson (Grand Dragon or State Director of the IKA's California chapter) had this to say regarding the announcement, "While Mr. McClintock is not the perfect candidate for California Governor, we have more in common with his ideology than any of the other candidates. We are in congruence with his stand on illegal aliens infecting our land and his courage in standing up to the invasion." Mr. Johnson went on to say that, "Mr. McClintock echoes our anti-abortion stand, and our opposition to oppressive taxation."
I guess the McClintock campaign can spin this by saying that at least the KKK called him evil, even if he was the lesser of all the rest?
Here's the thing: organizations can choose to endorse anybody they want, and the candidates have no control over that. But McClintock never said a peep five years ago when he got this endorsement. And there's a Chris Johnson on McClintock's donor list from that 2003 gubernatorial race. Chris Johnson is obviously a common name, and the donation is $100, so take it with a grain of salt. But certainly, McClintock needs to answer the question of why he never rejected the endorsement and why they never sought out and returned money that would even have the appearance of coming from the Klan.
More to the point, McClintock is just the kind of guy to demonize an opponent's associations. In fact, when running for governor in 2003, McClintock compared then-Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante's association with the Hispanic student group MEChA to, you guessed it, the KKK.
State Sen. Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican rival, recently likened the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, also known as MEChA, to the Ku Klux Klan.
"It's like saying, 'Oh, I was a moderate member of the Klan,'" McClintock said last month on the San Diego radio station KOGO. "It's incumbent on Cruz Bustamante to clearly and completely renounce ...
The idea that the KKK finds ideological kinship with McClintock is pretty much a no-brainer. His demonization of illegal immigrants as the cause of so much of the nation's economic woes plays to the baser instincts of the racist right. He's running a campaign against Charlie Brown that has recently seized on Brown's appearance at an anti-war rally before the invasion of Iraq as somehow un-American. It's really not too much of a logical leap here.
• CA-04: The most important debate evah is tonight! No, not that Biden-Palin thing, it's Calitics Match candidate Charlie Brown and Tom McClintock in Oroville. Meanwhile, the air war has begun in earnest. Brown is up with a 60-second ad featuring a local family as a third-party endorser, explaining their struggles to stay ahead in this economy and how Brown is the right choice. I think it'll play well (Brown has an American Jobs Plan which includes investments in infrastructure and green jobs, which is key to the needed reindustrialization of society). On the other hand, Tom McClintock has decided to use Grandpa Fred.
"The financial crisis our nation faces is complicated, and I don't think anybody's got all the answers," Thompson, a well-known actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee, says in the commercial. "But I'll tell you one thing. I'll feel a lot more confident with Tom McClintock working on it, rather than some amateur."
Shorter Grandpa Fred: "All this book-learnin' and financializin' is hard to figger. Pick the guy who's never voted Yes on a budget in his entire career."
• CA-11: If you want to know why Dean Andal isn't getting any traction in his race against Rep. Jerry McNerney, this quote says it all:
Elected in 2006, McNerney is in a better position for reelection than many expected. But he sits in a district that gave President Bush 54 percent of the vote in 2004, a sure sign that the freshman Democrat ought to be looking over his shoulder.
His Republican opponent, former state Assemblyman Dean Andal, may not be in a position to capitalize, though. The Lodi News-Sentinel reported that an Andal spokesman took the curious position that "it would be inappropriate of Andal to comment on the bailout bill, because he is not in office."
Yes, it would be terrible to actually give your viewpoints on national issues during a political campaign.
• CA-46: You know that Calitics Match candidate Debbie Cook is gaining traction in her race against nutjob Dana Rohrabacher by this - Rohrabacher has gone negative. He's sent an attack mailer that takes a Cook comment about gas prices out of context and really goes to great lengths to greenwash himself. He mentions his sponsorship of a bill to completely eliminate environmental review for solar projects, which is irresponsible but which he is trying to cynically use as proof of his green energy bona fides. It also calls Cook an extremist liberal who opposes drilling.
What's hysterical is that Rohrabacher sent the mailer to everyone in the district but Democrats, meaning that Greens got it. And I'm told by the Cook campaign that they received numerous calls from Green Party members saying that they were voting for Debbie BECAUSE of the mailer!
According to a September 25, 2008, Pasadena Weekly article by Carl Kozlowski, Rohrabacher believes that the Los Angeles Police Department has for 40 years hidden the fact that Sirhan Sirhan, the lone man convicted of shooting Kennedy, worked as part of a "real conspiracy" of Arabs [...]
In early 2007--39 years after the killing and right around the time that he blamed global warming on dinosaur flatulence, Rohrabacher decided to solve his murder mystery for "the Kennedy family."
Anyone familiar with Rohrabacher knows this story is now headed for unadulterated, wacky bliss.
At some point, Sirhan sent Summer Reese, one of his lawyers, a letter telling her that "a Diana was coming to see him."
Reese told Kozlowski, "Sirhan didn't know it was the congressman because his visitor was presented as a woman."
Rohrabacher. Undercover. In drag. Using the name Diana?
Perhaps this sheds light on why ex-Congressman Bob Dornan (R-Garden Grove) liked to call Rohrabacher "a fruitcake."
I actually know Carl, maybe I'll track him down and interview him about this.
• AD-26: I've noticed a lot of Republicans afraid to debate this year. Here's another example.
Stretching from Turlock to Stocton, the 26th Assembly District is fairly even in voter registration and is a target on both party's lists. So why would one candidate take a pass on a critical opportunity to face his opponent and make his case to voters? That is the question being asked by Democratic candidate John Eisenhut who was at a League of Women Voters debate in Modesto Friday night. His Republican opponent, Bill Berryhill, had a "scheduling conflict."
In a conversation with Eisenhut the night after the debate he said that Berryhill didn't want to debate him. This in spite of Berryhill being quoted by the Modesto Bee saying,
"People deserve some dialogue and to know where we both stand."
• AD-30: Fran Florez runs against Sacramento in this solid new ad. Is she also running against her own son, State Sen. Dean Florez?
As the Charlie Brown for Congress campaign jumps into high-gear, the people of El Dorado County got an opportunity to hear from 4th Congressional District's very own Charlie Brown at our 3rd BBQ Town Hall at Bijou Park in South Lake Tahoe. Approximately 100 voters were on hand to enjoy the beautiful facilities, some free food, and the opportunity to ask Charlie Brown the questions on their minds.
Greetings, Fans of one of the most beautiful Congressional Districts in the country, still accursed by one of the most scandal- encrusted Congressman, who is trying to retire out before he gets indicted. Local Democratic candidate Charlie Brown is running for this seat against imported Southern Californian carpetbagger and Republican "I Con" (icon™, yes, that is what the Republicans call him) Tom McClintock.
This is just a quick reminder that we here in CA- 04 are having a debate tomorrow night Thursday, Oct 2 between Charlie Brown and Tom McClintock in Oroville. It's a candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Butte County. It is at the Southside Community Center at 2959 Lower Wyandotte Rd, Oroville, 95966, at 8 pm. IMPORTANT TIME EDIT UPDATE: This forum begins at 7pm. Come early. Local candidates speak first, then Brown and McClintock start at 8 pm. Questions are submitted beforehand, seating may be first come/first serve, REPEAT, FORUM BEGINS AT 7 PM
If you're local, you can alway Tivo the other event and come see real live democracy in action.
(You guys are awesome. Thanks so much for getting us to our goal. But there's still more work to be done before midnight; we need to get $500 raised for each candidate. Right now 4 of our 5 candidates need a little more. Visit our ActBlue page and donate!)
Calitics Match candidate Charlie Brown is facing California's Alan Keyes, perennial candidate Tom McClintock, in the most hotly contested Congressional race in the state. And I think the pressure is getting to McClintock.
He put together a website called "Vets for Tom" which has a page with a list of resources for veterans. There is substantial evidence that McClintock's team plagiarized the resource list from Charlie Brown's website.
Campaign manager Todd Stenhouse said that not only did a list of resources on the site exactly match what was on Brown's site, but one link that was broken on Brown's site had the same problem on McClintock's site.
When visitors clicked on the "AmVets" link on McClintock's site, Stenhouse said, the broken address took visitor to a site with an address from Charlie Brown's site, in what Stenhouse called "a smoking gun."
"Everything he's learned about veterans and the military, he's apparently learned from Charlie Brown," Stenhouse said, referring to Brown's criticism of McClintock, a state senator, for voting against legislation related to veterans. McClintock established the veterans' site late last week.
There's really not much more to say on that. Some people lead and others follow.
Meanwhile, Brown and McClintock are strating to meet in forums and debates. Last week Brown called into a Sacramento radio show where McClintock was appearing, and last night they discussed the financial industry bailout. As expected, McClintock favors the exact same failed solutions which brought us to this crisis in the first place, like suspending the capital gains tax. Brown's position is more nuanced, supporting enforceable standards on executive compensation and returning proceeds from selling assets to taxpayers, while concerned about the consequences of doing nothing (which is McClintock's specialty).
The larger point is that McClintock is an enthusiastic supporter of the failed policies of the past, while Brown would reliably represent the future and lead on key issues.
This last weekend, Charlie Brown held his 2nd neighborhood BBQ Town Hall in the city of Oroville. The crowd gathered in the Oroville Veterans Hall, a fitting place for a meeting that consisted largely of veterans and their families.
Last Saturday, I headed up to the Roseville/Rocklin area - Sacramento suburbs off Highway 80 on the way up to Tahoe – to volunteer for Charlie Brown’s campaign for U.S. Congress. I arrived on the heels of some fantastic news for the campaign, a poll commissioned by Daily Kos revealing a five point lead for Brown. It’s hard to understate the significance of this considering the extremely conservative nature of CA-04 (take, for example, 2004, when Bush buried Kerry by 24 points here). After a day of canvassing in the district and speaking with the people that live there, the reasons for Brown’s success so far make a lot of sense to me. The place seems full of disaffected Republicans and Independents open to Brown’s positions and not wild about his challenger, Tom McClintock. While the day wasn’t all wine and roses, I’m convinced that CA-04 represents an enormous chance for Democrats to pick up a seat in Congress, and that activists should continue to focus on this race to ensure Brown makes his way to victory.
Greetings from Oroville ! *
*
680_2 Charlie Brown , Mayor Jernigan, Mrs Jernigan
*
*
Saturday, September 20, 2008, at the Veterans Hall in Oroville, CA. Left to right, Mrs. Jernigan, Mayor Steve Jernigan of Oroville, Charlie Brown, candidate for Congress in CA's 4th district, and a volunteer for the Town Hall and BBQ event.
There's lots more pictures and news of upcoming Charlie Brown events, if you'll continue with me over the fold:
With a little less than 50 days until the November 4th Election, the stakes couldn't be higher in the race for California's 4th House of Representatives seat. We have an awesome opportunity to put a different kind of leader in Congress, one who is results-driven and ready to put patriotism before partisanship.
On Tues, Sept 16, the Tom McClintock (R) carpetbagging campaign for CA- 04 up here in Northern California, running against Democrat Charlie Brown, sank to a new depth akin to the stock market crash of 2008.
Sacramento News Channel 10, ( ABC ) ran a story about a swiftboat ad release by the McClintock campaign, and did not tell who the people were in the video nor who was involved in the making of it. (edit: added link http://www.news10.net/news/sto... ) They did not note that the "uniform" was just a jacket over a tee shirt and jeans. They edited video in such a way as to disguise an incident of potential assault by a McClintock campaign advisor. They did not say that the event was written up as a press conference by other sources, to imply open access, when the McClintock campaign decided to call security to prevent access by observers, and was not letting them see the event. I witnessed the event (or rather, the closed doors, mostly except when they opened ) from the hallway but was prevented from recording it and was threatened with removal from the building by someone who would not identify themselves or their job title.
Regarding the video on the News 10 site, now that I have seen it:
The dark haired man in the suit facing the camera is John Ruiz, a "campaign consultant" or "advisor" for the McClintock campaign, previously associated with John Doolittle and Richard Pombo, who also is financially involved with Southern California Casinos being financed by the Malik family of Detroit. http://www.theverifiabletruth.... This Malik family has given thousands of dollars to campaigns of Tom McClintock. He (Ruiz) had just previously committed what is known legally as "assault" upon another person in the photo, which has been edited out of the News 10 video, by grabbing the person's arm and threatening them under his breath. He then made another comment out loud trying to provoke a fight. Only the person's reaction, saying "do not touch me again," is shown in the video.
The person in the print shirt with his back to the camera is a real veteran and did not assault anybody. The person standing behind Ruiz is a real veteran and did not assault anybody.
I'm going to try and do these once a day. No promises!
• CA-04: In partial response to the kerfuffle from yesterday's deceitful attack ad, Charlie Brown released two radio spots and a TV ad today. His wife Jan Brown narrates the TV spot, which foregrounds Charlie and his son's military service. (Sorry, not embeddable)
The radio spots are both solid attacks on Venturian Candidate Tom McClintock. Two men, two paths contrasts Brown's service and leadership with McClintock's life in politics, and his record on veterans (including donating 5% of his campaign funds) with McClintock's (voting against veteran's funding). Vote is a humorous spot discussing how McClintock can't vote for himself because he won't move into the district. There's also a lot on McClintock's per diem expenses from the State Senate. "L.A. Tom" is the frame they're going with, and they ask, "if he won't vote for himself, why should we?"
• CA-11: State Senator Ellen Corbett and Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi sent a letter to women in Jerry McNerney's district urging them to reject right-wing extremist Dean Andal. His record on women's issues is really retrograde.
To the Women of Congressional District 11:
If you are anything like us, you want a representative in Washington that not only reflects your values, but who also respects you.
Dean Andal just doesn't qualify. In fact, Dean Andal's record on women's issues shows just how out of touch and extreme his views are.
In 1994, as a member of the State Assembly, Dean Andal opposed a common sense law that would have allowed women to wear pants in the workplace instead of being forced to wear skirts and dresses.
Andal also voted against requiring health insurance plans to cover cervical cancer screenings. He even voted against making sure that information about sexual harassment be included in mandatory workplace anti-discrimination posters.
Yet the most egregious affront to women he offered in his short term in the Assembly was his vote to restrict the definition of rape to exclude attacks where an incapacitated woman cannot resist.
And what's worse, Andal's was the only vote in the Assembly against expanding the definition. The only one.
Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, all women should be proud of the progress we have made. That's why it's so important that we don't send someone like Dean Andal to Congress. Someone with a record like Andal's can be counted on to turn back the clock on all we have achieved.
• LA Board of Supes: There's a runoff in this seat between Councilman Bernard Parks and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas. While Ridley-Thomas is a solid progressive who understands the fundamental dysfunction of state government and will fight for progressive values on the powerful Board of Supes, Bernard Parks has hired Republican fixer Steve Kinney to help him win the race. Parks, who has a business-friendly record on the City Council, is receiving help from BizFed, a PAC notorious for pushing the same agenda. The wingnuts at the Lincoln Club have reportedly offered him support as well. At least the choice is now clear to voters - one candidate on the side of the corporate vultures, the other on the side of the people.
• Misc. I should note that Chris Bowers' House race forecast is up, and among California races, he lists CA-04 as a tossup, CA-11 as Lean D, and CA-26 & CA-50 as Likely R. I think he's selling a couple races short, but that's a pretty good conservative estimate.
Things are happening very quickly in the most hotly contested campaigns in California. Here's an update:
• CA-04: Watching himself falling behind in the race to replace John Doolittle, perennial candidate Tom McClintock decided to borrow one of his predeccesor's smear campaigns and release an ad claiming that Charlie Brown dishonored servicemen by appearing at an anti-war rally.
The idea that wearing a camouflage jacket constitutes being "in uniform" is ridiculous, and so is the idea that a retired military officer has no free speech rights. But the idea is to smear Charlie as some kind of radical leftist and anti-military, despite Brown's long record of supporting veterans and McClintock's longer record voting against them.
The ensuing press conference put on by the McClintock campaign was a wild affair.
SACRAMENTO - A press conference on congressional candidate Charlie Brown's actions in 2005 at the home of an anti-war display nearly descended into conflict itself, with disruptions before, during and after the event and a near-appearance by police officers [...]
But before the event even began, a handful of Brown supporters - accompanied by Brown's campaign manager, Todd Stenhouse - were asked to leave so that they wouldn't cause a disruption.
One man loudly protested that as a military veteran and the father of an active-duty U.S. soldier, he felt he could stay. "This is not Russia," he said.
McClintock campaign consultant John Feliz and Stenhouse eventually got the man to agree to leave, but not before security at the Hyatt hotel where the press conference took place made calls to Sacramento police to remove the man [...]
But a third man who was with the veterans pointed out that Brown was within his First Amendment right to do so, prompting Feliz to ask him to leave as well, while also saying Brown should re-enlist and face a court martial for his actions.
The man, who gave his name as Bret Sherlock, said afterward that he attended because he was tired of non-veterans like McClintock smearing veterans like Brown.
"Did he do anything illegal?" Sherlock said of Brown, adding that if anyone should be able to protest the war, it should be Brown, as both a veteran and a father of a soldier who has served four tours of duty in Iraq.
McClintock campaign spokesman Bill George said the video came from a "concerned citizen." Neither McClintock nor Brown appeared at the press conference.
After the press conference concluded, Stenhouse tried to give McClintock's campaign a pledge to join a Brown program that donates 5 percent of Brown's campaign contributions to nonprofit community groups that work with charities.
Feliz angrily took it and threw it down without looking at it.
They don't want to talk about issues. So McClintock tries to smear a decorated veteran to win an election. Typical.
