I have it on good authority that a certain Emanuel Pleitez, a member of the Treasury Department review of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team, is prepping for a run for California’s CD-32, which is being vacated by Hilda Solis.

Pleitez has an interesting resume thus far in his career, though it seems unlikely that he’ll be able to provide a substantial challenge to the heavyweight-laden field that the CA-32 special is likely to produce, including Judy Chu, Gil Cedillo and Gloria Romero.

My instant analysis is that the addition of yet another Hispanic candidate does little except strengthen the chances of Judy Chu’s ascent to Congress.

Two years ago, a bunch of California bloggers got together and decided to run for CDP delegate slots.  The expense involved and the relative pettiness of some of the obligations make it not everyone’s cup of tea, but the time of the AD elections is here again, and the deadline to file is December 31st at 12:00PM.

The application process is easy–you can apply online here.

The caucuses themselves take place the weekend of the 10th (on either the 10th or the 11th–you can find your caucus location and time here.

Use this thread as an open forum to announce your candidacy.  I’m running for re-election in the 42nd.

This past Wednesday, NRO columnist Jonah Goldberg–who, for some reason, is syndicated in the L.A. Times–wrote an editorial condemning the “Home Invasion” advertisement I co-wrote that the Courage Campaign aired on election day.  Why Jonah Goldberg can get a syndicated spot at the Los Angeles Times when no current Mother Jones columnist would get such a prominent placement is beyond me, but I shall ignore that bias from the so-called liberal traditional media for the time being.

Jonah’s talking points were the same ones that we’ve been seeing frequently from religious organizations and right-wing commentators since the protest: that the ad was bigoted, that Mormons were just one member of broad coalition, and that homosexual radicals are suppressing harmless freedom of speech by religious groups.

Well, the Times has a section of their online version named “Blowback”–dedicated to full-length responses to editorial pieces.  Today’s Blowback features a response by Rick Jacobs, founder of the Courage Campaign, to Jonah’s mischaracterizations.

The full thing is worth a read–Rick’s piece systematically takes Jonah’s editorial to task by showing that:

a) truth can’t be libel;

b) The Mormons were the principals behind Prop 8, and have a history of obfuscation of their endeavors on that front;

c) The Mormons have every right to influence the political process through free speech; and supporters of same-sex unions have every right to expose the efforts they make.

Here’s the key quote:

The LDS Church or any other organization has every right to use its power to influence elections to any extent that is legal. What it doesn’t have a right to do is claim persecution when other organizations do nothing but expose the church’s forays into the political arena before a discerning public.

Yeah…honestly.  What’s up with that?  It seems like the “Protect Marriage” folks are really passionate about first amendment rights to free speech, but are really desperate to suppress another first amendment right–the right to free assembly.

Incidentally–if you haven’t signed up to Power the Repeal, please do so.

I was going to write up a review today of the Courage Campaign’s private screening of the movie “Milk” at the Arclight theater in Hollywood last night, but I saw that David Dayen beat me to it with a diary that is now recommended on DailyKos.  Go read it–it encapsulates my thoughts exactly.

Probably my favorite part of the event was finally getting to meet Lilia Tamm in person.  After all the conversations that we had both before and after the election, getting to meet and chat with someone I regard as one of the heroines of the fight for equality was a pleasant surprise.

The movie is superb–a lot of tears in the audience, that’s for sure.  But most importantly from my perspective is that so many different times during the movie–especially during the successful fight against Proposition 6–I found myself saying, “same shit, different day.”

The consultant class was afraid to talk about exactly who was being harmed by the disgusting Proposition 6, and tried to talk about fairness–but only in general terms.  Harvey Milk said no.  And he went out and publicly talked about the hate and the oppression of Proposition 6.  He debated Briggs in San Francisco and in Fullerton.

The parallels are similar to Proposition 8 in many ways, but what I found most noticeable is that the supporters of Proposition 6 and the supporters of Proposition 8 tried to frame themselves as playing defense.  They consistently used the framing of defense and preservation to push their discriminatory agenda.

The difference between Harvey Milk’s response to Proposition 6 and the No on 8 campaign’s reaction is simple: Harvey Milk said, “You’re not playing defense, you’re doing a witch-hunt.”  The leadership of the official No on 8 campaign basically said, “we’re not trying to hurt people, really!”  Not exactly a winning message to create an effective contrast.

If you haven’t seen the movie, go see it.  Oh yeah–Sean Penn’s performance is worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Sorry if this offends anyone, but it’s very poignant and a propos.

I was at the bank today.  There was a young African American couple behind me in line.  The TVs were set to CNN, and an image of Obama appeared on the screen.  The man said to his partner,

Yeah Obama!  But I gotta tell you, I can’t take the fags.  We should round ’em up and ship ’em back to San Francisco on that new bullet train we just got.

I told him, of course, that Obama opposed Proposition 8 because Obama believes that discrimination is never okay.  And I understand that those words could have been, and indeed have been, uttered by anyone of any race, color or creed.  But this served as a not-so-subtle reminder about Tuesday’s electoral reality.  And it’s a clear indicator that we have a lot of work to do.

At least HSR is popular.

It just may well be the case this cycle that one of our greatest regrets was not paying enough attention to CA-44.  Then again, we may not regret it at all, because Bill Hedrick may yet defeat Ken Calvert.

According to Lori Vendermeir, Hedrick’s communications director, the OC Register and the Press Enterprise called the race for Calvert, but then rescinded their call.  There are, simply put, tens of thousands of absentee and provisional ballots left to count, and Bill apparently keeps on inching closer.

HOWEVER: In typical Republican fashion, Ken Calvert’s lawyers are trying to shut down the counting process in both Riverside and Orange County.

If you live in these counties–especially if you’re a CA-44 voter–we need your help.

Call the office of the registrars, and tell them to count every vote.  Bill is not going to concede until every vote his counted, and he stands a reasonable chance at pulling out a shocker in SoCal.

Orange County Registrar: (714) 567-7600

Riverside County Registrar:  (951) 486-7200

… Dave here.  Just to put some hard numbers to this, right now, the results are here:

Bill Hedrick (Dem)  85,039  48.6%

Ken Calvert (Rep)  89,679  51.4%

That is not yet in the universe of what the Secretary of State calls a close race, one that has a spread of less than 2% between the winner and loser.  But clearly, with so many ballots left to be counted, CA-44 must be put into the realm of possibility.

By the way, if you’re wondering what is a “close race” right now, that would be AD-10, SD-19, CA-04, and Prop. 11.  None of those should be called right now based on current information.  So as I said yesterday, this election is not over.  Frank Russo also has a good report on this.

…Dave again.  Just to piggyback on this, Charlie Brown’s campaign has sent an email to their list (on the flip):

A record number of voters turned out for Tuesday’s election.  

And, after more than 300,000 ballots were cast in CA-04, the race is tied.   The current difference stands at less than half of 1% (less than 500 votes).

The race is way too close to call. And there are more than 40,000 vote-by-mail and provisional ballots still to be counted.

Once all the votes are tallied, we are confident that Charlie Brown will be the 4 th District’s next Congressman, but we need your help to make sure every vote is counted.

Please Contribute to our Election Protection Fund.

Yesterday, Tom McClintock hired an election attorney and brought in a team of lawyers to “watch” the locations where absentee and provisional ballots are being counted.    

With McClintock’s massive fundraising list, he has the financial ability to hire as many lawyers as he needs to challenge the votes of thousands of people who faithfully cast their ballots.

We need to combat this, but that takes resources.

Please click here to make a donation to help us fight for every last vote.

McClintock has history with recounts, and was on the short end of a fight with Steve Westly in 2002 after a similar situation, so we know he’s going fight.

But rest assured that we will not give up – we will not surrender – we will not rest until we make sure that every single vote is counted.

Please donate right now to ensure a fair process to count the remaining votes.

Many of us have looked forward to this post-election day for such a long time – as a country we are headed in a new direction, with so many new and excited voters participating in the process, we cannot afford to allow new voters to become disenchanted with the system already.

We all remember what happened the last time a right-wing politician started challenging election results.   Your additional contribution of $25, $50 or whatever you can afford will go a long way to helping prevent a repeat of history.

Thank you,

Todd Stenhouse

Campaign Manager

with only 12 precincts in Ventura County left to count, Hannah-Beth Jackson has a lead on Tony Strickland of just 386 votes out of over 300,000 cast.

Ventura County has gone for Strickland very slightly, but which way those 12 precincts lean is a crapshoot.  This one will go to a recount and to provisionals.

Among the few bright spots for California races tonight is the fact that tonight, voters said yes to more public transportation.  It was close, but it seems likely.

With 86.4% reporting statewide, Proposition 1A appears headed for passage, with 52.3% in favor.  While the vast bulk of the uncounted areas of the state are in the Inland Empire, which is currently opposing 1A, it just doesn’t seem like there are enough votes out there to reverse the 400,000+ vote advantage that 1A currently enjoys.  Congratulations, California, on taking the next big step toward a high-speed, high-tech transportation future.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles County, voters seem to have barely approved Measure R, which would raise the sales tax in my county by .5% (one dollar out of every 200 spent) to fund transportation projects, including a subway to the sea and a whole host of other projects.  With 97% reporting, Measure R has 67.35%.  A two-thirds majority is required to pass any tax increase, so R has a cushion of less than one percent.

Eventually, I’ll be able to get from my neighborhood to downtown San Francisco using just two trains: the Purple Line to Union Station, and the HSR.  That’s what I would call pretty cool.

I consider myself fortunate to live in the Miracle Mile neighborhood of Los Angeles–it’s a diverse, walkable and vibrant area of Central Los Angeles.  I passed by my local Starbucks and saw that there was a line out the door–which never happens at that location.

Turns out that everyone in that line had “I voted” stickers.  There’s a polling place a block away, and a lot of voters were stopping in for coffee after their vote.

I’ll post later with some pictures of my local precincts.