John Burton has pulled something of a rabbit out of a hat with his request to the gubernatorial candidates to not seek the pre-primary endorsement. He just sent an email trumpeting his early success:
Not long ago, I wrote you about next year’s governor’s race. The California Democratic Party’s Statewide Officers, Regional Directors and Caucus Chairs and I had concluded that our gubernatorial candidates should not seek the party’s pre-primary endorsement.
The Party sent letters to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Jerry Brown urging them to avoid dividing the Party – and draining Party resources – during the primary season.
Attorney General Brown and Mayor Newsom have since responded. Both of them have agreed in writing that they will not pursue the Party’s pre-primary endorsement so long as other Democratic gubernatorial candidates play by the same rules.
Even if another candidate would enter the race, it would challenging to get the necessary votes on the floor of next year’s convention. That being said, neither of these two candidates are really grassroots champions. If the dark horse, competitive candidate were to emerge with significant support from the grassroots, perhaps all bets are off. But neither Newsom nor Brown really loses anything by casting aside the CDP pre-primary.
…if by ‘grassroots’ you mean someone like ‘The Magic One…’ I’m sorry but that don’t get it for me. As for Newsome he’s way too much like our great President.
Jerry’s done some truly great things contrary to what one Gen Xer at the Bottom of the Hill told me. Dude did not even know where windmills came from.
One last thing:
Sim van der Ryn
Is that both candidates will instead compete to get support from other groups and people instead of activist Democrats. I personally think it’s too bad because you really stop the education of grassroots activists when you take real power away from them and those same activists are the people that through the years (Hopefully) bring change to the local levels of politics. I think this is a shame.
This is a good move by both candidates, and by the CDP. It may actually increase the time and effort spent pursuing smaller Democratic groups, because in the absence of a state party endorsement, the support of clubs and groups with recognizable names may be of increased importance.
Pre-primary endorsements by state party delegates make little sense anyhow. It should be the role of registered Democrats to tell state party leaders who the party is supporting — not the other way around. The state party should facilitate registered Democrats becoming familiar with valid Democratic candidates — and then let the voters speak.
First most local Democratic clubs don’t have large followings. That’s why even in places like San Francisco, the most important thing that happens in terms of single factors changing an election result are the elected officials endorsements in the area and the Levine slate. None of the clubs have any significant impact even though they are all larger and better organized than anywhere else in the state. So anywhere else, it becomes stronger. No real voter knows or takes seriously who these clubs are and to make a real effort to garner large numbers of club endorsements would just take too much time and effort for the value. But voters do understand that it is rare if the entire Democratic Party takes a stand in support of a candidate and the fact that a candidate can get such support moves voters quite a bit. It also helps establish party groups because voters start to understand that there are people out there who are involved in this stuff on at least a semi-regular basis that they can turn to for help in making their decisions. But dodging the issue just takes that off the table and since most clubs won’t take a stand on what might be considered “tough” calls,they don’t develop a reputation among voters for what they believe in and since they don’t have that reputation, candidates spend time and money going after groups that are going to take a stand (and matter) in the election. The CDP move doesn’t save money for the general election. If they wanted to do that, all they had to do was require candidates to pay a lot of money (say ten grand) for the right to compete for the endorsement with the understanding that the money would go to the winner to be used in November. Instead they dodge the issue and so the candidates spend more time with other groups that won’t dodge the question. It also doesn’t mean the campaign will be any less negative, it just means that negativitiy won’t be aimed at any issues party activists might care about unless someone of real importance cares about the same thing. This is like a baseball player in triple A asking to go down to the C league.
Although the clubs are a lot stronger in San Francisco than in most parts of the state, they still are not major players. Virtually every club has their own slate, often disagreeing with the official party slate and if you had to pick the strongest, you would probably pick something like the Stonewall slate which has a following in a specific community. The value of a slate is hard to judge because most of the issues and candidates are on multiple slates. However a few years ago there were a slew of school board and issue races where all of the slates were on the other side except for the Levine slate and the polls showed that side winning, but the Levine slate’s side won all of those races. Since that time, the consensus has always been that the paid slates were more effective in San Francisco because they were put together more professionally. In fact Willie Brown was quoted on that issue in the Chronicle. But that wasn’t the main point of my post. My point was that if the party doesn’t endorse, that money and effort will still be used to get support from groups that will. Nothing about this makes the primary any nicer or causes less money to be spent. It’s just one more way the party bosses con activists into keeping quiet.