Daily Archives: November 8, 2006

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“When you are in the Majority, you cut the Pie different”

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I posted this earlier at dkos, and then realized I should also post it here.  It isn’t much of a diary, but enjoy!
Audio of the first 30 minutes:

I just got back from a Democratic Victory Press Conference in Oakland, CA.  Those in attendance (no particular order):

Jerry McNerney
Debra Bowen
John Garamendi
Ron Dellums
Jerry Brown
John Chiang
Art Torres
Loads more on down the list.

“When you are in the Majority, you get to cut the pie a little different.”
-Ron Dellums

I don’t remember the exact quote, but you have the feel.  My impressions on the flip…

First of all…

I got to shake Jerry’s hand!  (McNerney, not Brown)  yay!  And I got to have a nice chat with Debra.  She is fabulous and a VERY real person.  We haven’t seen the last of her!

There was a lot of energy.  A press conference just concluded at the Oakland CDP headquarters.  Present were just about every Democratic Statewide and local candidate you could think of.  And all the California Democratic Party staff and volunteers.

Everyone was really excited about “keeping 7 of the 9 constitutional offices” of California within Democratic control. 

I was most impressed with the speach that Ron Dellums gave.  He has just been elected as Mayor of Oakland, but he was the Representative to Congress for the Berkeley/Oakland area for more than 25 years, elected in 1970 (I think) as a black anti-Vietnam War activist with a ‘fro.

Well, I have to say: he still has it (the fire and energy, not the big ‘fro).  He is a very powerful and inspirational speaker.

He and John Garamendi listed off the Senators and Congressmen that were going to be heading the various committees.  I didn’t have anything to take notes with.  But I am sure that there are some that are reading this that can list them out in the comments.

But it is an amazing thing to consider.  John Conyers on Judicial.  Barney Frank on Financial Services.  You get the idea…

But we have to also realize that this is just a new beginning.

John Garamendi talked about coming back to this country in the late 60s after RFK was shot.  How he came back to a different country than the one he knew.  That there was a lot of unrest in the streets and a lot of violence, but that now he sees us starting to achieve a dream that was just starting to be concieved at that time.

Debra Bowen talked (of course) about taking a look INSIDE those black boxes of Diebold.  Of making sure that the process is transparent.  These are my words, but voting should be something that we, the people, own collectively.  Just as the air we breathe.  We expect government to protect our air, and we should expect it to protect our votes as well.  It shouldn’t be turned over to for-profit companies with proprietary software.  I am sure she thinks about it in the same way.

So, those are the highlights.

Did I mention that I got to shake Jerry McNerney’s hand?  He was great, too.  He said is going to focus on renewable energy and aleviating our dependance of oil.  He knows he and Pelosi have a lot of work to do, and he is ready for it!

I should add that McNerney was definitlely the star of the show.  The media was tripping over itself to film his every move and word!

Arnold Schwarzenegger

My California post-mortem

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(The more the merrier. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Thought I’d sum up my thoughts on the state elections. Brian had a good take too, and many of his points fall in line with mine.

? In the Governor’s race, we simply couldn’t overcome the complete co-opting of the Democratic agenda from the Republican incumbent.  I read something where an incumbent governor hasn’t been denied a second term in California in something like 70 years, and watching this campaign I believe it.  California is almost uncampaignable, and it’s gotten worse.  You need millions of dollars and, apparently, an IMDb profile.  I still believe Phil Angelides would have been a great governor, but he was a middling candidate with a miserable campaign team.  My 1996 comparison still stands; faced with no real options, the CDP took the loyal guy to run a suicide mission.  Then they gave him little support as the state legislators pretty much undermined him throughout the year.  Nobody got out early enough to define Arnold Schwarzenegger; instead it was the other way around.

more on the flip…

? I’m extremely skeptical that Arnold Schwarzenegger will continue to run as a stealth Democrat throughout his next term.  The pressure will be off him, and he’s already shown his true colors with that “signing statement” changing the anti-global warming law.  He’s said that his Special Election of 2005 was full of “good ideas” and I expect him to try and strong-arm them through the legislature.  There are going to be battles in this state for the next four years.

? On the good side, the California Republican Party is dead.  Buried.  They won the governorship by 16 points and couldn’t get more than one candidate to ride his coattails.  And Steve Poizner made his own coattails with $15 million dollars and the fact that he ran against a party hack who thought it would be a good idea to run on a platform of “I lost weight.”  There is no Republican in this state that can win a statewide race against anything more than a marginally competent Democrat.  Schwarzenegger completely sold out Republican ideals in order to get re-elected, and in so doing destroyed his party for at least a decade.  My post, on the end of the CRP, still stands.

? Debra Bowen, Secretary of State of California.  ‘Nuff said.  I’m so proud of her.  That was yet another netroots victory.  She was underfunded and under-publicized and still beat an incumbent.

? The only other incumbent to lose in the whole state: Dick Pombo.  Jerry McNerney was a brilliant candidate, who earned this victory one voter at a time.  McNerney had to fight off a DLC and DCCC-backed candidate in the primary, then withstand a barrage of negative attacks (millions of dollars in NRCC money) to win.  This is a tremendous victory, and great news for the country.  We have an ALTERNATIVE ENERGY EXPERT in Capitol Hill! 

Great props to Say No To Pombo, a local blog who was all over this race from day one.  And it’s important to note that both Dem candidates able to flip seats in California were grassroots/netroots candidates.

? My bold prediction: at some point in 2007, Charlie Brown will represent the 4th District of California.
There’s no doubt that John Doolittle is going down, down, down in the Abramoff scandal.  He’ll be the next guy forced to resign.  And Brown has built up great name ID and excitement in the district.

? As for the propositions, people decided that they would rather borrow than tax, even if it’s not them being taxed.  Shortsighted.  Prop. 84 passed because people probably thought it was part of the infrastructure bond issues, even though it wasn’t.  Anything involving a tax went down; the Howard Jarvis memory lives on!  I’m upset that Prop. 89 didn’t do better, but it was so crowded out by the other issues.

? Props. 85 and 90 went down, which is fantastic.  Can we put this parental notification initiative to bed already?  It did worse this time than it did last year!  And the stealth-developer law got nipped at the wire as well.  Among non-infrastructure propositions, only the feel-good, bad-policy sex offender law (Prop. 83) passed.

? The incumbents held in Santa Monica.  Machine politics continues.

? Overall, I think the Republicans are dead in the water in California, but the Democrats aren’t in such better shape.  I think the CDP needs MAJOR structural reforms.  The worst of middle-of-the-road, milquetoast Democrats are on display there.  The progressive movement needs to make inroads in Sacramento and try to take the Party back.

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Doolittle wants to be in the Minority Leadership

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No, seriously.  [Jon Fleischman is reporting ] that John “15%” Doolittle is running for House Republican Conference Secretary.  Here’s the full press release from FR (PDF).  Doolittle says that he’s a grrrrrreat Congressman in the release:

“Since coming to Congress, I have sought to provide unyielding support for the Republican cause and for those striving to join our crusade for smaller government, lower taxes, and fiscal restraint,” Doolittle said.

No mention of all the investigations into the question of foreign governments paying for his vacations.  No mention of any losses in Congress yesterday.  The man’s in denail  Oh, and look he even has a sweet campaign website for the other dirty congressman to learn how to rake in the lobbyist cash.

Sweet, pick him…he’s a shining paragon of GOP virtues.

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My thoughts

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So, I have a few thoughts I’d like to share, state and national.  Agree, disagree, whatever.

  • Rahm Emmanuel might get a lot of credit, but take a closer look.  He spent $3million on Tammy Duckworth when we already had a strong candidate there…and lost.  Similarly, he gave up on CA-11 after his (and Ellen Tauscher’s) hand-picked Republican Democratic nominee Steve Filson lost.  After getting polling data that was very positive for Jerry McNerney, he finally got back into the race. 

    In my book, the DCCC was a non-factor in CA-11. They refused to listen to people who lived in the district, who supported Jerry, and brought in their own man. Credit should go to the Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and the Human Soceity who worked tirelessly in their IEs.  The DCCC…nothing. This was a win for the grassroots, the netroots, and for the people of CA-11.

  • The Blue-Dog Democrat myth. Again, this is just BS.  Dems in Dem-heavy districts did well.  A couple of races are still too close to call, but take for example, I dunno, CA-11. Jerry? No Blue-dog there.  We do not need to become Republican lite to win.  We needn’t suck at the corporate sow.  We need to complete the 6 in ’06 strategy.  First thing: Raise the minimum wage.  Now.
  • California is still blue.  Wanna know how I know that? John Chiang is how I know that.  I bet if you asked most Californians, including  most Californians that voted for him, who John Chiang is, they’d say they have no clue.  Yet he won, easily, despite a couple of massive IEs from Intuit, because they don’t want taxes to be easy for Californians, and by the Indian gaming interests, because…um, Tony Strickland sold out to them, and they were mad at labor. The special interests hit Chiang as hard as they could, yet he still defeated Strickland by 10 percent.

    Nope, John Chiang won in California because he had a D next to his name. I know there are other factors (ie identity politics and endorsements from newspapers), but the real reason is that D.  And that’s because we still have a good brand here.  Let’s keep that brand strong for ’08!

  • UPDATE: I forgot to mention the Arizona initiative to ban gay marriage.  It lost.  A similar initiative will lose if it comes up in Massachusetts.  People have seen that the sky has not come tumbling down. Polls in California show an initiative would be really close here.  Don’t expect to see one soon, because they don’t want to lose another.  Despite several losses, the tide has begun to turn on marriage equality.
    • Jerry Brown

    Results!

    9 Comments

    I told you I’d be back bright and early! Well, all in all, a pretty good night.  So, let’s get to some results:

  • Yes, Arnold won.  But the only thing he proved is that the Democratic vision for this state is alive and well.  By co-opting our platform, Arnold showed that the Republican vision for this state is just not one that we are prepared to deal with.

  • CA-11: Jerry won!  Ding-dong the environmental witch is dead. Congratulations, this was really a victory for the netroots, a victory for ethics, and a victory for the environment.

  • Arnold’s coattails were non-existent, well, unless you can add Poizner’s $15million of his own money to those tails. The GOP took only the two statewide races, Gov and InsComm, and they were resoundigly defeated elsewhere.

    • CA-LtG: McClintock’s name ID wasn’t sufficient to propel him over the top and John Garamendi will be our next lite gov.  I know this position is essentially powerless, but would you really want McClintock to have gubenatorial powers when Arnold leaves the state?  Or to give him any further platform? Me neither.

    • CA-SoS: Woohoo! Debra Bowen won!!! Finally, somebody will address the issues of electoral integrity from the SoS office. Bowen will be a phenomenal SoS.  You’ve done a good job, California.

    • CA-Controller: All that money that Intuit and the Indian gaming interests dumped into IEs for Strickland were completely unsuccessful.  Chiang won this one going away.  Again, he’ll do a great job.

    • The less competitive races: As expected Jerry Brown defeated Pooch and Lockyer defeated the repo’d man. Both were far better than their scary competition.

    • CA-InsComm: Well, Poizner was right, we cruzed, we losed.  Next time, we’ll get some better candidates.  However, in the interim, Poizner is now primed to run for governor, the position he wanted anyway.  It’s time to start branding him the way we want.

  • DiFi won.  Oh look, we have our “independent” senator back. We missed our shot to push her back to the left by running a primary challenger, but I think we learned a lesson from CA-36, where Marcy Winograd forced Jane Harman to pay attention to her consitituents. Perhaps that’s a lesson that some other Congress people should pay attention to

  • Right now it looks like Lynn Daucher(R) won by 13 votes in SD-34.  Yes, thirteen. Currently the tally stands at 38,666 for Correa and 38,679 for Daucher.  There will be a recount for sure and a thorough counting of all ballots and a check for provisionals.  There was a lot of dirtiness in the OC’s elections, so this one is far from over.

  • Props: Well paint me stupid.  I thought that some of the bonds would go down, but it looks like they all came through easily.  Hmm, well, I was wrong. It happens sometimes when you go out on a limb, but Arnold and the DemGang went all out in the last two weeks and that seems to have worked.  However, Props 85 and 90 were both defeated.  Yay! Maybe they will stop trying to put that stupid parental notification on the ballot again and again.  But I doubt it. This time it was beaten more soundly receiving only 45.9%,as compared to 47.2 last year. 

    We barely squeaked by on Prop 90.  Whew!! That was way too close for comfort at 47.4% Yes. We’ll need to address paid signature gathering soon.  I’m really sick of the Howie Rich’s of the world coming here and trying to mess with our system.

    Props 86-89 all failed.  The forces against them, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, the monied special interests and well I don’t know about 88, but they just got wiped out by the TV ads.  They obfusicate the issue and hope people will just vote no.  It worked this time.  Next time we’re going to work just as hard.  Particularly, Clean Money and the Alternative Energy/Oil Tax were good ideas. You haven’t heard the last of them.

    • Ok, I’ll be back soon; I need to take a nap.

    Orange County

    SD 34: Still Too Close to Call

    1 Comment

    With all regular ballots counted, the closest race in Orange County is as close to a statistical tie as humanly possible…
    Republican Lynn Daucher leads by ONLY 13 VOTES…

    I’m not kidding! Here’s the last update from the Registrar of Voters:

    STATE SENATOR, 34th District 
    Completed Precincts: 377 of 377 
      Vote Count  Percentage 
    LYNN DAUCHER (REP)  38679  50.0% 
    LOU CORREA (DEM)  38666  50.0%

    Oh, and we still have to wait for ALL the provisional ballots to be counted, as well as ALL the absentee ballots that were handed in yesterday… Oh, and I hadn’t even figured into account the lawsuits yet! We were warned that this race would be close, and now the real fight to the bitter end begins.

    (Also cross-posted at http://atdnext.blogs… )

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    California Returns

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    (Ok, that’s it for now folks. I’ll be back early in the morn. Garamendi and Bowen are coming on strong. 90 is fading. Yay! – promoted by SFBrianCL)

    Things look pretty good in the rest of the country, and it’s time to start checking the West Coast returns.

    The official Secretary of State elections results are here:  http://vote.ss.ca.gov/

    8:18 pm : The polls just closed, and it looks like some early voting is in.

    Everything else is and will be on the flip:

    Statewide
    Offices as of 11:27

    Governor-Called for Arnold
    Angelides  (D) 36.7%
    Schwarzenegger (R) 58.5%
    Lt.
    Governor
    Garamendi (D) 47.6%
    McClintock (R) 47.0%
    Atty
    General
    Brown (D) 54.6%
    Poochigian (R) 40.1%
    Sec.
    of State
    Bowen (D) 46.4%
    McPherson (R) 47.1%
    Controller
    Chiang (D) 49.1%
    Strickland (R) 42.1%
    Treasurer
    Lockyer (D) 53.1%
    Parrish (R) 38.9%
    Ins.
    Commissioner
    Bustamante (D) 37.3%
    Poizner (R) 52.1%

    Selected
    Propositions as of 11:27

    Proposition Yes No
    85: Parental Notification 46.9% 53.1%
    87: Energy/Oil Tax 43.6% 56.4%
    89: Campaign Public Fund 24.7% 75.3%
    90: Regulatory Takings 48.4% 51.6%

    SelectedHouse
    Races as of 11:32

    CA-04
    Charlie Brown (D) 44.8%
    John 15% Doolittle (R) 50.2%
    CA-11
    Jerry McNerney (D) 51.6%
    Richard Paid-For Pombo (R) 48.4%

    Uncategorized

    Almost there!

    I’ll be at Debra Bowen’s event in San Francisco tonight. It’s at Delancey street at 8pm (Town Hall Room).  I believe Bill Lockyer, Jerry Brown and DiFi will all be there.  I’m also going to try to stop at Alix Rosenthal’s party at the 500 Club in the Mission.  I’ll try to do some periodic mobile blogging.

    Other Events here.

    Uncategorized

    Disruptions around CA

    A few reports from around the blogosphere.  Strangely, most of them seem to be coming from the OC? Hmmm. BradBlog has the best coverage for voting issues around the country.

  • The Liberal OC’s Mike reports on his voting experience in Garden Grove.  Apparently, paper ballots were in short supply or well, no supply.

  • Also from the OC, Steve Young (CA-48) is reporting that heavily Dem precincts didn’t have enough English ballots and that some voters gave up or voted on Chinese/Spanish/Vietnamese ballots. (BradBlog)