Brown’s signature makes California Dream Act a reality

by Brian Leubitz

The California Dream Act is not quite the major reform that the Dream Act represents at the federal level, but it is a nice place to start.  There was some doubt as to whether Gov. Brown would sign the second piece of legislation, as there was a $14.5 million redirection of funds involved.  However, ultimately the Governor came to the right decision:

“Going to college is a dream that promises intellectual excitement and creative thinking,” Brown said in a statement. “The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us.”

Under AB 131, illegal immigrants who are accepted into state universities can receive, starting in 2013, Cal-Grant assistance, which last year provided grants averaging $4,500 apiece to more than 370,000 low-income students.

The measure also allows students who are not in the country legally to get institutional grants while attending the University of California and California State University systems, and to get fee waivers in the California community college system. (LA Times)

While Rick Perry attempts to walk back his statement on stopping undocumented immigrants from attending universities at in-state tuition was “heartless)”, it is good to see that in California we are going in the opposite direction.

Let’s face it, getting legislation passed benefiting the immigrant community is challenging.  And with our previous governor, it was all the more difficult.  But the times have changed at the Horseshoe, and Asm. Gil Cedillo isn’t giving up on his efforts.

Cedillo’s bills would apply to undocumented immigrants who have attended California high schools, adult schools or technical schools for three years or more, graduated or attained an equivalent degree from them, and filed an application to legalize their status.

The two bills, Assembly Bills 130 and 131, would benefit the “best and brightest” of undocumented immigrants, who came to the United States as children through no choice of their own and embraced the English language and culture — and performed well in state schools, Cedillo said.(SacBee)

Given the demographic shifts of California, we are going to need all the well-educated workers that we can get.  That is where our economy is moving, and we just can’t be turning away hard-working and successful young students because their parents did something wrong when they were children.

Certainly we can all agree that we need to work to improve the Latin American economy so that we can reduce the number of undocumented immigrants.  However, at the same time, we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  If we have educated workers here, now, let’s put them to work in growing our economy.

It appears that Gil Cedillo has decided to forgo his well thought out scheme to seek his final two years in the Assembly by challenging Speaker John Perez in AD-46, and will instead run for Kevin De Leon’s open seat in AD-45. I just got a notification 5 minutes ago on Facebook that the group “Gil Cedillo for Congress” has changed its name to “Gil Cedillo for State Assembly.”  From the group description:

“I am proud to announce my intent to run for the 45th California State Assembly District. As your representative I will work to create a competitive workforce, secure access to affordable health care, increase services to veterans and their families, and invest in public safety and transportation. Thank you for your support”

One would have to assume that Gil Cedillo would be a prohibitive favorite based on name recognition, if the 45th isn’t his home district. But we’ll have to see what other challengers emerge in this open seat.

Back when John Perez was just starting to take command of the Speaker race, Sen. Gil Cedillo was threatening to run in the primary against him.  He never really gave any clear reasons for doing so, just that he had another 2 years left in the Assembly under term limits. Oh, and he had a poll showing that he could win.  But, you know how polls go, when a sitting Assembly speaker is challenged, there might be some money flowing to the race.

So, conveniently enough for Cedillo, Asm. Kevin DeLeon has announced that he will be vacating his Assembly seat and running for Cedillo’s senate seat.

“It has been and continues to be an honor to serve the communities of our region as a member of the Assembly,” De León said, “Today, I am announcing my strong desire to continue that work by running for the California State Senate. Now more than ever we need legislators who are dedicated to protecting vital public services, education, and public safety. These are extraordinarily difficult times and I will work tirelessly for the constituents of the 22nd Senate District.” (Capitol Weekly)

This situation is probably the best for all concerned, except that DeLeon doesn’t get to become Speaker.  At any rate, DeLeon had only one Assembly term left, we get a four year Speaker, and avoid a nasty primary fight.

How convenient.

Because I believe that John Perez’ sexual orientation is playing a role in the ongoing fight over who becomes the next Speaker of the Assembly here in California between the aforementioned Perez and Kevin De Leon.  As I’m sure we’re all aware, the election of John Perez to the post would make him California’s first ever openly gay Speaker.  And based on the words coming out of Karen Bass’ mouth, it sounds like it should be a done deal, given the fact that the choice of the majority caucus is usually confirmed without issue and Perez supposedly is the choice of the Democratic majority:

Bass said she had not spoken to de León about her decision to endorse Pérez. She said she wanted to be “very respectful and give him some space.”

“At the end of the day, democracy prevails,” she said, contending that she was the 29th vote in favor of Pérez, which is more than the traditional 26 votes needed to push a nomination forward.

So, why is there still an issue?  Because Asm. Kevin De Leon is still fighting, despite a lackluster showing from the Latino Caucus of the Democratic majority, which endorsed him in underwhelming fashion:

On Wednesday morning, de León met with a group of supporters within the Assembly’s 17-member Latino caucus at the Sheraton Hotel.

Ten members of the caucus attended the meeting, with seven present pledging their support for de León as speaker. Pérez is also a member of the Latino caucus, but he was not present.

Color me unimpressed, of course, when you claim an endorsement with less than 44% of the vote among voters who aren’t your opponent.  So all in all, it would seem that De Leon’s position isn’t all that strong.  But now I’d like you to consider the words of another De Leon supporter: Assemblymember and current candidate for Attorney General Pedro Nava:

“I do think that’s what really matters and what people should focus on was the number of votes for speaker is not 27 or 29, it’s 41,” said de León supporter Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara.

“I think that we have a large number of very independent-thinking people who are not going to be stampeded into making a decision,” Nava said.

Remember what I said about the choice of the majority party usually getting confirmed as Speaker without much hassle.  Well, 41 is, of course, the number of votes required to win confirmation as Speaker by full vote of the Assembly.  What Asm. Nava’s words quite clearly suggest is that De Leon’s supporters are contemplating going outside the Democratic Caucus to secure some Republican votes in order to defeat Perez, who would be the choice of the majority of Democrats.  If that’s not what Asm. Nava meant, I highly encourage him to clarify, because that’s the only logical interpretation of his statement.

And if that is the case, why would the Republicans agree to support De Leon against Perez?  They’re both Latino labor leaders from the Los Angeles area–except one of them is gay, and one of them isn’t.  And given the fact that many Republicans still see being gay as some sort of terminal character flaw that leaves one unfit for any public or private responsibility, it would be no surprise if that were reason enough for at least some Republicans to join the De Leon faction to support him against the wishes of the Democratic majority.

And then, of course, we return to the plight of Senator Gil Cedillo, who obviously has reasons to support De Leon over Perez because, as I’ve written earlier, the good Senator so desperately needs to serve in the Assembly for his last two remaining years of eligibility that he is willing to challenge Asm. Perez in the Democratic Primary, even if Perez is elected as Speaker.  Obviously, Cedillo has every incentive to promote De Leon’s bid, because trying to unseat a sitting Speaker in your own Party’s primary undoubtedly won’t win you a lot of friends.  Of course, there is no word on what Senator Cedillo will do if he either a) loses to Perez, or b) wins and serves his two years.  Given his unbridled desire to hold another political office and his lack of ability to do so in either circumstance, I hope he will determine that his life still has value.

But humor aside.  How likely is it that Cedillo will able to win a traditional campaign against Perez, regardless of whether the latter is the Speaker?  Cedillo won’t get the endorsement of the Democratic Party because Perez is the incumbent and he only needs 50% of the delegates.  And I really doubt anyone will give a boatload of money to someone who can only serve in the Assembly for one term and then has to leave town with little hope of promotion to a higher office.

And given the fact that they’re both strong leaders in the Latino community, the only way I see Cedillo being able to have any chance whatsoever is to make Perez’ sexual orientation an issue, most likely in a fashion that is slightly less than above board.  And given the fact that Cedillo’s previous campaign was more than up to the task of using character assassination in his failed run for Congress, I have no doubt that his next team would be willing to use the same sort of scorched earth approach.

So what’s the bottom line?  I call on Asm. De Leon and Senator Cedillo not to make this an issue, either in the campaign for Assembly Speaker or in Cedillo’s quixotic primary challenge.  California Democrats support full and total equality and acceptance of the LGBT community, and it would be a shame if one of our own used the issue for personal gain among a far less tolerant group of people–such as, for instance, the California Republican Party.

This will be brief.  It is with amusement that I read from Capitol Weekly’s Twitter feed that Senator Gil Cedillo is intent on challenging John Perez for his Assembly seat now that he is termed out of the State Senate–even if Perez is elected as speaker, which is an outcome that is looking increasingly likely.

Keep in mind that last time we saw Gil Cedillo, he was engaged in a mean-spirited, borderline racist, and completely mendacious campaign for the 32nd Congressional District against newcomer Emanuel Pleitez and current Congresswoman and former Board of Equalization Chair Judy Chu.

There are a couple of things that really stand out to me about this.  First, I was under the impression that Senator Cedillo had already served his terms in the Assembly from 1997 until 2002.  If he’s contemplating running, he obviously has some eligibility left, but how could it extend beyond one term?  I would appreciate enlightenment on this issue. (UPDATE by Robert: According to Capitol Weekly, Cedillo has 1 term left – he replaced Louis Caldera in 1997 when Caldera became Army Secretary under Clinton.)

Second–challenging a sitting Speaker of the Assembly who is also a Latino with roots in the labor movement to move to the lower house?  Whose support, endorsements or fundraising does he really think he’s going to get if he pulls a move like that?  He certainly won’t get the support of the CDP, or the prominent members of the local party.

And lastly, after the hit that the Senator’s reputation took in light of his disastrous campaign for Congress, why would he want to follow that up by challenging a sitting Speaker when we have an opportunity to have several uninterrupted years of continuous leadership in that position due to the fact that we’ll apparently have a Speaker who isn’t in his last term?

Sometimes, I guess, the thirst for an office convinces people to do things they probably shouldn’t.  This is one of those cases.

The ballots have been cast and officially counted in CA-32.  The final numbers by percentage:

Judy Chu 32.64%

Gil Cedillo 23.23%

Emanuel Pleitez 13.4%

Betty Chu 10.44%

So…what’s the aftermath and what can we learn–besides, of course, that Judy Chu will defeat her distant cousin easily on July 14?  Postmortem below the flip.

The first thing to note is that this campaign was over before election day because, as previously reported, the Judy Chu campaign did an excellent job in collecting absentee votes.

Over one-quarter of the ballots cast in this special election were cast by mail early enough to be counted in the initial tally at the beginning of election night before the poll results started coming in–28.12% of the vote, to be specific–and Judy Chu won a hair short of 42% of those absentee ballots.  The Cedillo campaign was counting on high election-day turnout among less experienced voters to make up the difference, but there just wasn’t enough.

Most notable, however, is that if the election had been decided strictly on the poll vote, Judy Chu would have won anyway.  Crunching the numbers based on the absentee results and full results mention earlier, Judy Chu won a plurality of votes cast on election day: 11,273 out of 38,900, or just shy of 29%.  Cedillo got 25.56%, while Pleitez got 15.47%.

So, the big question, given those numbers, is: did the Pleitez candidacy ruin the chances of the “preferred” Latino candidate, Gil Cedillo, to retain what Congressman Joe Baca famously referred to as a “Hispanic seat”?  This narrative of Pleitez’ ethnic disloyalty is, apparently, running some nerves raw in the Cedillo camp, according to the postmortem of the race in yesterday’s L.A. Times:

Within the Cedillo campaign, there was a strong belief that Pleitez “has cost us a Latino congressional seat and that has stirred up a lot of feelings,” said a campaign staffer who requested anonymity because no one was authorized to speak publicly about the loss.

I am going to ignore here the idea–distasteful to some, I am sure–that Congressional Districts, including minority-majority districts, ought to be represented by a person of the majority ethnicity in the district.  The thing I’d like to focus on is that the aforementioned belief about Pleitez being a spoiler is almost certainly not true.

We’re just a few days removed from the election–and owing to that, there is much exact data about vote breakdowns by region, new voter registration, etc. that we just don’t have to be able to draw a conclusion one way or the other.  But we’re going to focus on what we do know.

If one ignores the potential spoiler role played by Betty Chu–who probably got a lot more votes than she deserved owing to confusion among the voters–it is definitely true that if Pleitez’ vote and Cedillo’s vote are added, it exceeds the vote for Judy Chu.  So, yes, the two Latino candidates combined got more votes than the Asian candidate.  The problem is that calculating things this way naively and automatically assumes that everyone who voted for Pleitez would have voted for his fellow Latino Cedillo if Pleitez had not been on the ballot.  We can dispel that assumption for a few reasons.

First, as the aforementioned article mentions, Pleitez ran very strong in his home neighborhoods of East Los Angeles and El Sereno.  These neighborhoods were Pleitez’ core base, which is why Cedillo sent his first outrageous mailer against Pleitez to Latinos in that area.  The interesting question is, what would those voters have done if Pleitez had  not been on the ballot?

Interestingly, another L.A. Times editorial about the race–this one ironically written by the mother of one of the young African American women featured on the infamous mailer, and worth a full read–adds to the clues of the mindset of these voters.  It’s obvious that the Cedillo campaign’s mentality in going against Pleitez in these areas was that these voters were going to vote for a Latino candidate, so it was worthwhile to make sure that Cedillo portrayed himself as the only Latino candidate worth voting for.  And in fact, Pleitez makes official what respected Calitics commenter Seneca Doane first noticed in the story I wrote here about the initial mailer.  Again, from the most recently mentioned L.A. Times, editorial:

“We’re throwing up the peace sign,” Pleitez said Thursday of their hand signals, frustration evident in a voice still soaked in disappointment from his third-place finish.

“To try to say that I’m romanticizing gangs, to try to make college students look like thugs. . . . They tried to find pictures with white and African American women, and only mailed them to Latino households.”

But regardless of the Cedillo campaign’s efforts to portray their candidate as the only respectable Latino in the race, it’s a sure bet that many of the voters in these communities were voting only because Pleitez was on the ballot–after all, he was the local kid who made good–like the article said, what just about every parent in East L.A. wishes their son would achieve (which is why going negative in the fashion that Cedillo did was, simply put, not only offensive, but stupid).

It is true that otherwise, Cedillo ran strong in the Latino communities of unincorporated East Los Angeles and the small cut of Los Angeles proper that lies within the district.  But it also seems true that many of the voters that the Pleitez campaign engaged would not have voted at all had it not been for Pleitez getting them to vote.

But even more damning for this line of evidence is the simple math.  Let’s assume the untrue, for the sake of argument–that every single supporter of Pleitez would have cast a ballot for either Judy Chu or Gil Cedillo had Pleitez not appeared on the ballot.  Even if 85% of Pleitez’ supporters had chosen Cedillo instead  while only 15% chose Chu, Cedillo still would have lost by 15 votes.

And how likely is that scenario?  Well, the evidence provided by the L.A. Times, as well as the anecdotal evidence provided by the Cedillo campaign, seems to speak to this question.

Latinos make up nearly half of the district’s registered voters, while Asians — Judy Chu is Chinese American — account for an estimated 10% to 13%. Chu appears to have won about one-third of the Latino vote, preliminary analyses indicate, plus virtually all the Asian vote and most of the white vote…

Pleitez appears to have done well among younger voters and English-speaking Latinos, including many who probably would not have voted for Cedillo even if the younger man not been in the race, several political analysts said.

Bottom line: Chu won a third of Latino voters regardless, and Pleitez won a chunk of the white vote, as well as a portion of the English-speaking Hispanic vote–which is why the Cedillo campaign sent a second mailer in English only to Latinos in the San Gabriel Valley.  Both of these demographics were groups that were less likely to support Cedillo, making it highly, highly unlikely that Pleitez played spoiler by taking 90% of his votes away from Gil Cedillo.

But just as important is the question of what the Latino political elite is going to do with Emanuel Pleitez.  The truth is that Pleitez had the most head-turning third-place finish in recent memory: he, as a 26-year-old, built a campaign essentially entirely off volunteer assistance from dedicated youth activists, raised an exceptional chunk of change using new media tools despite having no endorsements or institutional support, and caused one of the most prominent members of the Latino political elite to go into the gutter to try to counteract his momentum.

As the editorial about the mailer so aptly points out, the upcoming political generation–of which I am a part–is not inclined to wait its turn for someone to tell us we’re ready, given the tools, networks and experience we now have at our disposal.  And given that reality, the Latino political elite in Southern California–and any other political elite group faced with this same dynamic–is going to be forced to make a choice.  They can either seek to punish Pleitez and turn him into an outcast for not following the preordained orthodoxy, or they can take a look at what he was able to accomplish without them and say, “wow, we need more of that.”  For the sake of young voters and the Democratic bench, I sincerely hope they choose the latter.

I was invited yesterday by Emanuel Pleitez’ press secretary Emily Dulcan to come to the office to interview Emanuel Pleitez and some members of his team on the second day of GOTV weekend.  By chance, campaign consultant Eric Hacopian, who has been the center of a manufactured controversy recently, happened to be in the office, so I got a chance to interview him as well.

The office was lively, with about two dozen phone bankers of all ethnicities and ages working the phones from the campaign office.  According to the field directors, they currently had 55-60 volunteers canvassing neighborhoods from that office at the time.  For space, the recap of the interviews is below the flip.

When I talked with Hacopian, the subject I was most interested in was his take on Cedillo’s strategy–and Hacopian struck an affable but mildly derisive tone.  But in the end, it came down to the idea that Cedillo’s mail team was completely incompetent:

They’ve raised close to a million.  We’ve raised nearly $300,000.  And we’ve either outmailed them or it’s even.  If we had their money, we would have sent out 25 mail pieces, instead of the 15 that we have.

Eric told me that the main objective of mail is to develop a narrative about the campaign–that mail pieces aren’t just extemporaneous, but that they’re carefully designed to build in the minds of the voters a story about who the candidate is and why he or she is better than the opposing candidate.  Eric told me that one of the Cedillo team’s main problems is that their mailers hadn’t done that:

…but Gil hasn’t done that.  It’s all, endorsement, endorsement, endorsement, and, oh, the other two candidates are evil.

But what Eric really pointed out was that Cedillo’s latest mailings that we have been covering have not been centered around advancing the narrative of the campaign at all, but rather toward what appeared to be staunching the bleeding:

So, the first mailer [that Cedillo sent against Pleitez] went out to Latinos in [East L.A.].  But the second one–they took out the Rosario Dawson picture and then sent it to the whole San Gabriel Valley.  Now that should tell you something.

It should tell you what I wrote a few days ago:

There are two ways to look at this: one is that Cedillo’s campaign is bleeding educated Latino voters in the SGV.  The other is that the Cedillo campaign has so much money left to spend in the days before election day that they figure they may as well.

And, for good measure, I asked him about the conspiracy theory that Pleitez only got in the race as a pawn of Mayor Villaraigosa to take votes away from Gil Cedillo:

Emanuel announced before Gil did, so it’s pretty difficult to be a stalking horse for someone who’s not even in the race yet.  Of course I know Parke [Skelton, consultant for Judy Chu].  There are only 7 or 8 guys who do what we do in L.A.  But you ever notice how all these conspiracy theories involve meeting in public places?  The last one I heard was about how we all had a meeting at a CPK.  If we were going to plot a conspiracy, you think we’d do it at a CPK?  It’s all ridiculous.

And last point from my conversation with Eric–I asked him about the description of Pleitez in a few publications as a “web candidate.”

There is no such thing.  The internet has never won an election.  It has helped.  It can give you an additional edge, which is what we’re seeing, but that’s it.  This doesn’t happen without the people running the field and running the mail.  The web has been great for raising money–about 80-90% of contributions are online–and those people may have written checks, but the web just makes it that much easier.

I also talked for a few minutes with Emanuel himself.  There has been so much coverage of the campaign already that I decided to focus on what happens after tomorrow.  First, I asked him what he intended to do next if he didn’t advance to the July 14 runoff.

I’m not worried about that…I’ll be fine.  The people I’m worried about are the 60 full-time volunteers, some of whom have refused paying jobs to be able to work on this campaign.

I also asked him if, given recent events, he would have a hard time endorsing the Democratic nominee if he doesn’t succeed, depending on how the vote tomorrow goes.

It’s customary for that to happen, and I am a Democrat and I would support the one Democrat against the one Republican, for sure.  It would matter more if it were a 50-50 district instead of a really Democratic one, because the Democrat is going to win.  Now, how much of my time and resources I would commit to helping would be something I would need to figure out.

I certainly wasn’t trying to ask “gotcha” questions, but I also asked Emanuel agreed with the recent characterization of Congressman Baca that the CA-32 was a Hispanic seat.

Well, the district was originally carved in the 1980s to be a seat with a a large Hispanic population, and the district is 60% Latino.  And I knew that when I got into the race a lot of people would accuse me of [splitting the Latino vote].  A few elected officials told me that I would stay out of the race if I wanted to continue a career.  But I ran anyway because I wanted to offer the voters of the district a different choice.

Emanuel was heavily focused on the idea that his campaign could set a model for how insurgent or nontraditional campaigns could be run in the future.  He repeatedly stressed the idea that he did not have the most money and did not have any prominent endorsements, which required him to run an outside-the-box campaign using dedicated and passionate volunteers doing outreach to their friends and family, both online and offline.

My thoughts?  Emanuel’s success–or failure–will provide an example for whether the type of campaign that he is running will become a model for the future.  If Emanuel finishes anywhere besides third–or even if he has a strong showing in third place behind the two heavyweights he’s opposing–he will send a message to other young insurgent candidates that there is a new model of campaigning out there that could spur them to electoral success.

You would think you would want the endorsements before GOTV weekend, but the Judy Chu campaign rolled out a series of endorsements in the past 48 hours.  Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) endorsed Dr. Chu yesterday and appeared with her at a GOTV rally.  And today, Chu announced endorsements from Congresswoman Diane Watson (CA-33) and the United Farm Workers.  Previously UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta had endorsed Chu, but prior to today, the UFW had endorsed Gil Cedillo, so this is a very surprising reversal.

“Judy Chu has always been a champion and friend to farm workers and working class families everywhere. When farm worker Asuncion Valdivia died after toiling in the extreme heat of the Central Valley for hours on end and was denied adequate medical care by his employers, Judy proposed legislation that would ensure such a tragedy would never happen again,” said Arturo Rodriguez, UFW President. “Today, California’s workers are entitled to mandatory shade, rest, and water breaks thanks to the law Judy helped pass. It is because of her dedication to the health and well-being of our members that the United Farm Workers of America proudly endorse Judy Chu for Congress!”

Considering how late in the game it is, something has to be getting these endorsers off the fence and into Chu’s column, especially with respect to the Farm Workers, who appear to have reversed their endorsement.  Maybe it’s Gil Cedillo’s vindictive, ugly campaign.

I don’t think it will matter to GOTV efforts, but it’s a telling sign when the players start lining up at the very end of the game.

…Sen. Cedillo still has the UFW endorsement on his website.

UPDATE by Dante: The endorsement by UFW is, according to Judy Chu Press Secretary Fred Ortega, a dual endorsement.  The UFW endorsement of Gil Cedillo was not withdrawn.  Said Fred Ortega: “The endorsement is yet another sign of Judy Chu’s crossover appeal, and she is very proud to have the endorsement of the organization founded by Cesar Chavez to protect the rights of predominantly Latino workers.”