They are getting closer to having enough money to pay for all of the signature gatherers.  The $600k they announced earlier would not get it done.  They have raised a total of $1.2 million.  They will need at least $2 million to pay for the signatures to be collected.  Politico is the only one with the story thus far, so regretfully I link:

Backers of a California ballot initiative that would drastically increase Republican chances of retaining the White House in 2008 have raised $1.2 million, including $316,000 in eight days this month – and supporters say they’re on pace to qualify for the vote in June.

The group, California Counts – Make Your Vote Count!, reported Tuesday it had raked in $855,000, mostly from a handful of huge contributions, according to a filing with the California Secretary of State’s office.

That doesn’t include $350,000 in contributions which are either below the reporting threshold of $5,000 or which arrived in the past week, campaign manager Dave Gilliard said.

Contributions above $5k have to be reported to the Secretary of State’s office within 10 days.

They are expected to turn in the signatures by the 29th.  Then the SoS will do a random test of the signatures to estimate how many are valid.  If they pass that test then it goes to the ballot.  If it fails, then they will do a manual count.

(from my DailyKos diary this morning–it’s important for me to try to bring CA issues to the national spotlight.)

And by that, I refer to the California Democratic Party.

As you may know by now, the resolution authored by progressive activists to censure Senator Dianne Feinstein was not heard by the CDP Resolutions Committee.  If you read my previous diary on the subject, you’ll realize just how contentious this issue was, and that the end result was exactly as expected.

There will be a lot of complaints about the result, and understandably so.  Nevertheless, an official censure is a huge step, and the end result is no surprise, given the momentous nature of the struggle in question.

But I’d like to share another story with you that might even better exemplify just how much change and reform we still need in the California Democratic Party, as well as give you some insight into how the party machinery works.

It all starts with a news item you may or may not be familiar with: the Speaker of the California State Assembly, Democrat Fabian Nunez, came under fire last month for reports of using campaign funds to pay for lavish expenses at luxurious destinations in Europe and California:

The spending, listed in mandatory filings with the state, includes $47,412 on United, Lufthansa and Air France airlines this year; $8,745 at the exclusive Hotel Arts in Barcelona, Spain; $5,149 for a “meeting” at Cave L’Avant Garde, a wine seller in the Bordeaux region of France; a total of $2,562 for two “office expenses” at Vuitton, two years apart; and $1,795 for a “meeting” at Le Grand Colbert, a venerable Parisian restaurant.

You know, the type of thing that it’s really, really hard to justify using a campaign account, even if you’re Steve Maviglio from Speaker Nunez’ office (whose previous foibles I have mentioned before).

I, and many other activists, were disturbed at these reports–though admittedly, even more disturbed by Speaker Nunez’ claims to be “middle-class”:

There’s not too big a difference,” he said, “between how I live and how most middle-class people live.”

Because I can tell you, I’m racking up those $10,000 hotel bills at luxury resorts in Europe all the time!  It’s just part of the middle-class lifestyle.

Regardless, I decided submit a resolution concerning transparency for travel expenses to the Resolutions Committee for consideration at the Executive Board meeting in Anaheim this weekend.  Now, originally, I wrote my resolution specifically calling for Speaker Nunez to fully account for the legislative or fact-finding purpose behind his travel expenses.  I was assured, however, that such a targeted resolution would have no chance of passing the Resolutions Committee, so I rewrote it to be more general, especially since there have been many, many Republicans who have been guilty of the same type of thing on perhaps a much worse scale in recent years (paging Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, anyone?), and resolutions are supposed to be statements of “philosophical intent” regardless.  So here’s the text of my resolution:

RESOLUTION CALLING FOR GREATER TRANSPARENCY FOR CAMPAIGN-RELATED TRAVEL EXPENSES

WHEREAS, in recent years, officeholders of both major political parties at both the federal and state levels have been accused of using campaign-paid travel expenses to enrich their personal lifestyles;

And WHEREAS, travel expenses to more exclusive locales paid for by lobbyists or other special interests create the appearance of and possibility for conflicts of interest in the legislative process, especially for officeholders with higher stature in legislative bodies;

And WHEREAS, California law requires that travel expenses for members of the State legislature have a legislative purpose;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party, in the interests of accountability, transparency and good governance, calls upon all federal and state legislators to fully disclose the legislative or fact-finding purpose behind all travel and accommodations expenses paid with campaign funds;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Party encourages all federal and state legislators to use campaign funds to pay only for travel and accommodations expenses regarding a transparent, easily understandable legislative or fact-finding purpose, and supports investigations into use of campaign funds that do not meet this criterion.

Now, to my mind, that’s just about as harmless as you can get for a resolution on this issue.  It’s bipartisan, mentions no names, and calls for the easily shared values of transparency, accountability, and good governance.

Apparently, however, the values of transparency, accountability and good governance aren’t shared by certain members of the Resolutions Committee.  Either that, or this resolution was still so dicey for the people at the highest echelons that they couldn’t even take this amount of heat.

Now, I originally got a call on Saturday from my friend Brian Leubitz, founded Calitics and who sits on the Resolutions Committee, that they wanted to insert language into the resolution concerning accountability for the fact that some of Schwarzenegger’s travel expenses were picked up by a nonprofit group.  I told Brian to assure the rest of the Resolutions Committee that I had no objection to inserting “accountability for Arnold” language into the resolution if the main thrust of my language remained unchanged.  But then later that afternoon, this was the text I got back from the Committee:

Whereas, in recent years candidates at the federal and state levels
have been accused of not fully disclosing how they raise and spend
funds and of misusing campaign funds; and

Whereas, in recent years some officeholders have paid for expenses
through the use of non-profit organizations, eliminating virtually all
disclosure of which individuals and interest groups are actually
paying for the expenses of the officeholders; and

Whereas, California and federal finance rules require that expenses
paid with campaign funds have a campaign, governmental, or political
purpose;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party, in the
interests of accountability, transparency, and good governance,
supports modifications in state and federal law that would require
non-profit organizations who pay for officeholder expenses to fully
disclose the sources and amount of funds the organization has obtained
and the purpose behind all activity paid for by the organizations in a
manner similar to that required for campaign committees; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party supports
state and federal legislative and regulatory changes to facilitate and
require that candidates and officeholders fully disclose in a
transparent manner the campaign, governmental or political purpose
behind all activity.

Notice a problem here?  Well, I certainly do: All references to travel expenses were excised from the resolution.  I called Brian to tell him that the Resolutions Committee had voided the entire point of my resolution and that I wanted to see the phrase “travel expenses” actually appear in my resolution about travel expenses.

But alas, it was not to be.  The Resolutions Committee took their new anti-Arnold resolution and moved it to the consent calendar.  Now, I wasn’t at the general session of the meeting on Sunday because of work obligations, but I could have still called one of the e-board members I know to have them pull it from the consent calendar for the purposes of amending it according to my specifications, but I decided not to bother, especially since everyone was so preoccupied with Feinstein and the amendments would have likely failed on a floor vote regardless.

The only thing it proves, though, is that when all is said and done, it’s the elected officials that control what the party does, rather than the party trying to keep the elected officials in line with party values.

And this doesn’t just manifest itself in a reticence to acquiesce to large-scale significant actions like censuring Dianne Feinstein.  The craven desire to kowtow to elected officials and not dare to acknowledge their wrongdoing is so pervasive that a resolution whose language focused primarily on a Republican can’t even be passed if it dares to mention an issue on which a prominent Democratic elected official has been lacking.

And that, my friends, is a sad situation that calls for action and reform.  Am I antagonized? Certainly.  But am I forlorn?  Not at all.  (Do I sound like Donald Rumsfeld when I ask rhetorical questions and provide the answers? Yes.  Is it fun? absolutely.)

You see, the worst possible thing we would do is give up and operate on the assumption that the system is impermeable–because it isn’t, and we’ve already made significant strides in California.  But there’s more work to be done.

And let me ask you something: do you know how your state party would act in a similar situation?  If you don’t, why not find out?

And most of all–keep fighting for good governance that’s accountable to the people.

I have a bunch of things that might have been more appropriate for Quick Hits, but rather than flooding the Quick Hits Section, I’ll do it here. So, here we go:

(From the diaries–hekebolos. This is the original letter from Michael Jay, co-author of the censure resolution, to CDP Chairman Art Torres. This was the letter Bob Mulholland was responding to. – promoted by Dante Atkins (hekebolos))

Here’s the letter that led Bob Mulholland to write me, regarding Feinstein’s censure:

An open letter to Chairman Art Torres, Regarding Party consultant Bob Mulholland’s published insults

Dear Chairman Torres,

I am writing out of deep concern over public comments made by a consultant to the California Democratic Party.

You are likely aware that I co-authored and submitted the resolution to censure Senator Dianne Feinstein. Just after the close of this weekend’s Executive Board General Assembly, I was made aware of an article regarding this resolution, which appeared in the November 16 issue of the newspaper The Guardian. It contained the following reference to Bob Mulholland, identifying him as “a campaign adviser to California Democrats.”:

Mulholland blasted the bloggers and activists supporting the censure resolution as “fringe” and “pre-nursing home”. “The Democratic party’s purpose is to remind armchair activists that the duty is to elect a Democrat to the White House so we can end the Iraq mess”, he said. “Nothing should get in the way of that.” (Emphasis mine)

I hope you observed enough of my actions this weekend, speaking seriously and politely on issues of life and death (including my successful effort on a resolution to return the California National Guard from Iraq), to know that reports that I am ready for the “nursing home” are greatly exaggerated. More importantly, while you and I might have different opinions on the value of the censure resolution, you must agree that I was given a great responsibility in being asked to advance and represent this weighty topic. In fact, I felt honored to be selected as point person for this by the Co-Chairs of the Progressive Caucus (The Party’s second largest caucus, its more than 1,000 members alone represent a major fraction of the Party’s 3,000 delegates- decidedly not “fringe”.) The resolution of censure was endorsed by that caucus, as well as by the Women’s Caucus, the Irish-American Caucus, and by the members or executive boards of dozens of chartered Democratic clubs, County Central Committees and activist groups- not to mention over 30,000 citizens who took the trouble to individually sign on for censure.
It’s one thing for Mr. Mulholland to wishfully dismiss such numbers as fringe; it’s quite another for him to so grievously insult the loyal Party Executive Board representatives and delegates who were exercising their rights within our bylaws.

I’ve worked closely with many of these Party members- at phone banks, on bus trips to get out the vote in Arizona, etc. We’ve organized major efforts to protect the vote and the environment. I doubt that the featured speakers of the Election Protection forum that I initiated, including Rep. Maxine Waters, now-Secretary of State Debra Bowen, and Stephen Rohde (past President of the ACLU of Southern California), would call me an “armchair activist”. Nor would the other volunteers at Ohio Democratic HQ in 2004. You also saw Dr. Jo Olson address the Assembly on her successful resolution for single payer health care; Susie Shannon, who spoke of her tireless efforts as an advocate against poverty; and Marcy Winograd, who authored the language of the Party’s new resolution on voting systems. These three were all early endorsers of the resolution to make Senator Feinstein adhere to core Party principles; they are not armchair activists.

I shouldn’t have to prove the bona fides of these Party members. But even if Mr. Mulholland’s comments referred only to unaffiliated activists and bloggers, our Party consultant has ridiculed and insulted the national leaders and all the members of MoveOn, Progressive Democrats of America, the Courage Campaign, and the many other groups who endorsed this censure of Senator Feinstein. As if that wasn’t enough, Mr. Mulholland also managed to insult the elderly.

The situation begs the question, why did Bob Mulholland say this? Was he ordered to say such things? Or was this just his usual M.O., as profiled in another Guardian article, which began: “Bob Mulholland is the US Democrats’ leading dirty trickster.” Regardless, I wish to state, on behalf of all the good people I may claim to represent, that his language is unacceptable. Given the Party’s recent resolution on decorum, these inappropriate, insulting comments from a Party mouthpiece are especially ironic, and should have the Party leading the charge to rectify this situation.

Allow me to note that, besides believing that our elected (and endorsed) Democrats should be held accountable to Party principles, I believe their frequent failure to represent public and constituent sentiment is our Party’s greatest problem. I’ve been asked, Wouldn’t censure give the Republicans ammunition to use against us? I reply that no one could do more to lower our Congressional ratings than the Party has already done itself, by its failure to stand up to Bush- especially on civil liberties and Iraq. Chairman, if you want to get out the vote, start with the fact that we give people very little reason to register or vote Democratic; that factor trumps a million phone banks. Perhaps you’ve never seen emails from those saying that votes such as Senator Feinstein’s vote for Mukasey have forever sundered them from the Democrats.

The Party’s strategy of supporting Democrats – no matter what – is killing us. Likewise, the demonization of those who disagree with the Party line, as exhibited by Bob Mulholland, is counterproductive. I believe the CDP should seriously reconsider the face it presents to the public, and its policy of paying Bob Mulholland to be our advisor and frequent spokesperson. His vision, and the Party’s reflex action to circle the wagons, may win individual election battles, but it’s losing the wider war. At the least, he – and the Party – owe a lot of good people a very serious public apology.

  Respectfully yours,

    Michael Jay
  Delegate, 42nd AD

( – promoted by Dante Atkins (hekebolos))

First and foremost, I appreciate Mr. Mulholland’s words of regret for his dismissive characterizations of bloggers and activists.  And secondly, I appreciate his and his family’s service to this country, as well as his sincere commitment to ending the occupation of Iraq.

I agree sincerely with Bob’s desire to end the war in Iraq–it is a goal that we all share as Democrats and progressive activists.

Where we disagree is on princples of scope and methodology.

More below.

To begin with, I must take issue with the fact that Bob Mulholland’s seemingly sole focus for both the Congressional election and the Presidency is the occupation of Iraq.  At the California Young Democrats retreat in South Lake Tahoe, Bob Mulholland expressed the opinion that no other issue mattered to voters besides Iraq; that the economy did not matter, that global warming and environmental concerns did not matter, that the energy crisis did not matter.

I disagree with this in the strongest possible terms.  Iraq–as well as Aghanistan and a potential impending strike against Iran–are obviously enormous issues, and voters are judging our Congress by its effectiveness in reining in the Bush Administration on issues of military foreign policy.  But I think it goes without saying that we ignore all the other areas of failed Republican domestic and foreign policy at our own peril.

But even when it comes to the objective of ending the occupation of Iraq, I completely disagree with the idea that standing up for Democratic values and encouraging our politicians to support the values the Democratic Party stands for–such as obeying the Constitution, for instance–hinders our ability to win back the White House in 2008.  This could have been a legitimate argument back in 2002 and 2003 when the traditional media was comfortable with calling Democrats who had concerns about the policies of the Bush Administration traitors or other such inflammatory terms, but I strongly believe that standing up for our values can only help our chances of winning back the Presidency in 2008 now that the public trusts the Democrats on just about every single issue around, including national security and taxes.

Even if it were true, however, that standing up for our values could potentially harm our chances in 2008, the things at issue are far bigger than just the Iraq occupation.  The fight we’re waging here–and the reason that we as grassroots and netroots activists put so much effort into the resolution to censure Senator Feinstein–is a fight for the future of our democracy, and what the values of the country will be.  Try to picture, if you will, an Attorney General being confirmed by the U.S. Senate who publicly professed that torture was legal and that the President is above the law before 9/11.  What we’re fighting for is to restore our country’s respect for the constitution, for equal rights, and for equal representation before the law.  We’re fighting to make sure that the the co-equal branches of government are actually co-equal, which will go a long way to making sure not only that we can end this occupation, but also that no president will have the executive poewr to singlehandedly start such a war ever again.

And when America sees a Democrat being a prime enabler of torture and of executive power, it has the effect of normalizing these concepts in the minds of the American public, and blurring the distinction between Democrats and Republicans that will be essential to the chances of Democratic victory in 2008.

And that is precisely why it is so important for us, as the Democratic base, to oppose those who, like Senator Feinstein, grant an air of acceptability to these notions put forth by the Republicans that are, in fact, in complete opposition to traditional American values.  It’s nothing personal, really.  But if our Democratic politicians will not draw a contrast with Republicans, then we as Democrats must draw a contrast with them.