Dan Walters makes a hell of a lot of sense about the real reason why the Governor is pushing this plan to move up the California primary. He seems to think it has nothing to do with the primary itself, but about the other proposal being tossed about for that February 2008 ballot.
Schwarzenegger could legally seek a third term only if the term limits were to be modified, and lo and behold, he and legislators are talking about doing exactly that. While the public discussion of changing term limits has centered on legislators, there’s no particular reason why loosening the limits on constitutional officers couldn’t be part of any deal.
I think that Arnold’s outsized ego just makes him want to be in the thick of the Presidential race, but this is an absolute side effect. You can bet that if the term limits change for the legislators, they’ll similarly change for the constitutional officers, and we won’t get the opportunity to pick one but not the other. It’ll all get tied up in one big redistricting/term limit ball.
Plus, this would give Republicans in the Congress until 2014 to amend the Constitution to allow foreign-born citizens to ascend to the Oval Office. And I don’t see Arnold wanting to be anywhere else but the Governor’s mansion or the White House.
Walters ends the piece by calling this idea “possible but not probable,” but I think he convinced me that it’s actually likely. Are you all ready for 8 more years of math-challenged budgets and more attempts to break up unions and universal health care plans that aren’t universal or even health care?
Well, enjoy getting to see part of Barack Obama’s head at some rally in late January! That seems like a fair trade-off!
Following reports and complaints of fishy land deals, the Feds have been investigating Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA), making him the 20th member of the 109th Congress to fall under federal scrutiny.
Miller, a real estate developer by trade, came to the attention of the FBI when a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group complained last summer that the congressman hadn’t paid taxes on two land deals he was involved in, The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports.
I’m losing count, how many CA Republicans from the 109th Congress have been under investigation? Cunningham, Hunter, Lewis, Doolittle, Miller… who am I missing?
This investigation started last year, perhaps after this article in the LA Times, which recounted how Miller was trying to use eminent domain laws to get out of paying taxes on real estate he sold in Monrovia. Later, I wrote about the almost cartoonishly evil case of Miller’s property in Rancho Cucamonga, where he played upon a family’s grief to drive down the purchase price of a property, which he then threatened to overdevelop and turn into a deathtrap unless the city bought him out.
I can tell you good news – there IS a movement afoot to have a netroots-backed challenger in this district. That’s all I can say for right now. Miller is not only being watched by the FBI, but by the progressive community, and he will be hard-pressed to escape either.
I think this is a significant development in the future of California, both political and otherwise. According to this report (PDF) from the California Budget Project, job growth in the inland counties of the state grew nearly FIVE TIMES LARGER than job growth in the coastal counties between 1990 and 2005. In fact, they’ve contributed to more than half of the total job growth in the state, despite having only 1/5 of the jobs currently. What used to be bedroom communities in the Inland Empire of SoCal, for example, are now very much self-sustaining and thriving, particularly in the western edges of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
If this trend continues, it could either be very ominous or a great opportunity, depending on your outlook. On the one hand, it tracks with a pattern of population shift from areas that are reliably Democratic into areas that are reliably Republican. On the other hand, it represents a demographic shift in those “red” areas, and could lead to opportunities to build a Democratic resurgence inland, as possibly evidenced by Jerry McNerney’s victory in CA-11.
Whatever the case, it’s something that progressives must deal with. The power bases in LA and SF are only going to retain their power for so long. Places like Ontario and Auburn are goin to have more and more importance, and it’s time RIGHT NOW to ensure that there’s some Democratic infrastructure in place to identify and engage people in those areas who share progressive views. Take Back Red California is an organization of Democratic activists trying to do just that, but more attention must be paid. This is a generational shift, and it will only grow and grow.
I hope to see more of our friends from the inland counties here in the coming months.
Maybe I’m alone on this site in my opposition to moving up the CA Presidential primary, but just remember that, for the Democrats, this will make two people in this state inordinately rich and powerful.
1) Garry South (take THAT, BL!)
2) Phil Angelides
There was a reason every Presidential candidate flocked to Angelides’ side last fall, despite the polls. They wanted his donor list and his volunteer base. It’ll be even more valuable now. And South’s one of the consultants who will be the recipient of the one-way flow of progressive movement money.
This Capitol Weekly article notes some continuing controversy in the CDP delegate elections held nearly two weeks ago, particularly in AD 51, which appeared to be a backroom battle between former rivals for the Assemblyman position:
Democratic activist Tim Goodrich sent a complaint to party chairman Art Torres and secretary Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer on Sunday. It alleges six different improprieties in a delegate election held in Hawthorne on January 14. This includes charges of improper voting and unethical use of power by the presiding officer of the election. Goodrich was one of seven candidates on a “Democrats for Progress” slate; he said he lost by four votes.
“We decided to contest this election so this fraudulent activity doesn’t
happen again and to send a message that the people want fair elections
within the CDP,” Goodrich said.
The Democrats of Progress slate was led by Price’s opponent in the primary, Steve Bradford. Bradford was nearly able to win the party endorsement in last year’s state primary; Price went on the win the primary by a mere 113 votes.
Bradford was elected as a delegate. So were two other members of his slate, Alexis Beamon and Sheila Mickelson. But Price’s slate swept the other nine slots, essentially ensuring he will keep the party endorsement when he runs for re-election in 2008.
Goodrich’s complaint makes several allegations: that voters’ eligibility was not properly verified before people cast their secret ballot, that Price led a Martin Luther King Jr. Day barbecue in a park next to the polling place and did not invite people associated with the Progress slate in order to stack the election, and that election presiding officer Pablo Catano improperly used his role in a successful effort to get elected to represent the district on the state party Election Board.
I don’t know about the stacking, but I can attest that there was no verification that I saw of anyone’s eligibility in the 41st AD election. The E-Board portion of the race was confusing as well, because you had to wait to see who won the delegate elections before you could vote on that, but nobody wanted to do that, so most people voted for E-Board early. It didn’t matter in the 41st, but this ended up being highly confusing, and I think there could be an IRV (instant runoff voting) element added to the elections, where you rank your 12 votes on the ballot from 1-12 for E-Board, or something.
on the flip for more controversy, of which the netroots is involved:
Meanwhile, two separate complaints were filed with the CDP over the delegate election in AD 42. This district is represented by freshman Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, but the complainants said that Feuer was not present and did not appear to do anything to affect the election.
One, signed by four delegate candidates and one voter, alleged that convener Andrew Lachman illegally used the voter rolls to send out a mailer promoting executive-board candidacy. Lachman lost by 11 votes.
The other complaint was filed by voter Mona Pastor. She said when she showed up for the meeting at the Beverly Hills Public Library, a poll worker advised her to vote for Andrew.
“Thankfully it didn’t affect the outcome, but the poll workers need to be taught the basic rules of running an election,” Pastor said.
Lachman denied the allegations, saying he stepped aside from running the meeting, as the rules called for. As for the mailer, he said it went to only 160 people from a list he compiled himself.
“I’m active in six or seven Democratic clubs,” Lachman said. “I’ve gotten to know a lot of people.”
I know Andrew occasionally posts here, and the complainants are members of the Progressive Slate on which I also ran. I’m not going to pass judgment, as I have no idea what happened. I just thought it was interesting, and it brings up the point of having someone involved in the election also running the election and setting the rules. I don’t know how this could be avoided in the future, but it should be.
There was a surge in interest in the CDP elections this year and in 2005, and the CDP tried to codify the rules somewhat. But some more needs to be done, I would say, to ensure transparency and fairness.
Last night we were treated to a health care “plan” that would reward those who have shitty health insurance, punish the middle-class union workers who’ve bargained for better health insurance, and keep the private insurance industry afloat in the process. Ruth Marcus thinks that this actual reading of the evidence of the plan is unfair.
If George W. Bush proposes something, it must be bad. Such is the knee-jerk state of partisan suspiciousness that when the president actually endorses a tax increase — a tax increase that would primarily hit the well-off, no less — Democrats still howl.
….Listening to Democratic reaction to Bush’s new health insurance proposal, you get the sense that if Bush picked a plank right out of the Democratic platform — if he introduced Hillarycare itself — and stuck it in his State of the Union address, Democrats would churn out press releases denouncing it.
Kevin Drum and Jonathan Cohn do away with this nonsense so easily that it’s not worth taking an extra swipe, showing that Bush’s plan is actually an attempt to preserve the health insurance industry and allow it to offer less and less services to their customers. But there is an important issue in here that needs to be addressed, that I seem to keep coming back to in this health care debate.
Republicans who say the words “universal health care” do have the effect of pushing the debate in a more progressive direction, and setting out universal coverage as the desired goal. But IT’S NOT ENOUGH for them to be lionized for doing something that human dignity and a basic belief in humanity demands.
Catherine Siepp of the National Review makes this mistake, and throws in a nose-thumbing at all Democrats for good measure.
But for some reason, the only politicians pushing expanded access to health care right now are Republicans: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who’s just left his post to become a (mean old) Republican presidential candidate in 2008.
The name’s Wyden, Ron Wyden. And Ted Kennedy. And John Edwards. And Barack Obama. And Ed Rendell, who’s moving forward with his own health care plan in Pennsylvania, which (while marginally similar to Schwarzenegger’s in California) actually addresses cost-containment and quality of care, frankly the only issues that are going to make health care more affordable and more desirable.
So if you agree that the broad cross-section of the public, and the broad cross-section of the political spectrum want universal care (though the Democrats have been waiting for the Republicans to get there since 1994), it behooves you to actually take a look at the plans, and not give them a free pass because they kinda sorta seem like they want to help people. Which is how Mitt Romney got so much praise for getting a plan through in Massachusetts that actually will slowly begin to bankrupt the uninsured:
Uninsured residents will have to shell out a quite a bit more than originally expected to get mandated health-care coverage, according to the group charged with introducing the coverage.
Monthly premiums to meet the state’s minimum coverage under last year’s universal health-care law would cost $380 on average and could cost up to $580 for a 56-year-old.
The plans are meant for roughly 200,000 uninsured Massachusetts residents who aren’t eligible for publicly subsidized insurance programs, said Bob Carey, director of planning and development at the Health Care Connector Authority. The group sent out requests for proposals to health insurance companies asking for the cost if they provided 60 percent of the benefits from an above-average health insurance plan. The cost ended up $100 higher than expected.
“This is bad news,” said member Jon Gruber. “We used to think it was going to cost $260.”
So it’s not enough to come up with some magical way to insure everybody. Content matters, and some fundamental principles must be preserved. I believe health care is a right and not a privilege for those who can afford it. I believe in the importance of covering all children regardless of any other factor because it’s cheap, it promotes wellness throughout life, and it can prevent diseases which are more serious in children than adults. I believe that trying to partner with the private insurance industry is like making a deal with the devil, and that the only market-oriented solutions that make any sense include things like guaranteed issue and community rating, so nobody is discriminated against for health care based on who they are. I believe in baseline minimums for basic care that are far above what is typically considered in these plans. I believe that forcing a marketplace through an individual mandate that doesn’t include a “Medicare for All” option does nothing but subsidize for-profit industry. I believe that health care with a huge deductible and giant co-payments is not health care. And I believe that single-payer is the best way to keep down costs and keep the system efficient, and that anyone who studies the issue will come to the same conclusion. Failing that I like Jacob Hacker’s solution from the Agenda for Shared Priorities.
A far better alternative was recently proposed by Yale Professor Jacob Hacker and the Economic Policy Institute. Employers would either have to provide good insurance, or pay a tax of six percent of payroll. People without insurance could buy into a public program much like Medicare, on a sliding scale. That same program would enroll people whose employers elected to pay the tax instead of providing insurance.
Hacker estimates about half of all Americans would soon be in the universal pool. Over time, the superior efficiencies of the public program would attract more people. The private health insurance industry, as a superfluous and inefficient middleman, would gradually dwindle. We’d eventually get universal and public coverage without the fragmentation.
Of course, the people who brought us HMOs will fiercely oppose it, but that’s not necessarily bad. Harry and Louise, the stars of the insurance industry commercials that helped kill the Clinton plan, have a lot less credibility these days. Reformers seeking universal coverage should recognize that the private insurance industry is less a credible partner than the prime obstacle.
For the Beltway punditocracy, their bretheren in the states, and people who don’t pay a lot of attention, having a health care plan means that you are a beneficent soul trying to improve people’s lives. I don’t begrudge motives, but it’s not enough just to be FOR the general principle. You have to support something that’ll actually work.
(h/t to Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny!, who has a great “Brent Wilkes tag cloud” you should all have a look at if you want to understand his importance)
We know that US Attorney Carol Lam has been forced out of her post for her insistence to prosecute lawbreakers of a particular political stripe. One thing you may not know is that her dismissal will not take effect until February 15. Well, it appears that Lam has planned one hell of a last act:
…the Wall Street Journal says that federal prosecutors are under orders to deliver a grand jury indictment against Wilkes by Feb. 15.
A note of caution: a Wilkes indictment has been rumored for months. But this has a ring of truth to it. Why? Because according to WSJ the order comes directly from just-ousted U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, who’s been overseeing the case — and who gave the order to take Wilkes down before she leaves on — you guessed it — February 15.
Brent Wilkes is the central figure in at least three pending investigations among California’s Republican delegation in Congress, and could easily be the impetus for a fourth. Wilkes is named in the Duke Cunningham indictment as “Coconspirator #1”. He provided actual cash, half a million dollars’ worth, for Cunningham to help pay off a mortgage, in exchange for an ungodly amount of Pentagon contracts for his defense contracting company, ACDS. This is the content of the investigation currently being conducted in San Diego, and this is what would be the substance of the indictment.
However, Wilkes’ tentacles reach far beyond just former Republican Congressmen who are currently in jail.
Rep. Jerry Lewis (I’m following the mantra of Googlebombing), the former head of the House Appropriations Committee, has a close relationship with a lobbyist named Bill Lowery, having authorized ” hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects for clients” of his. One of the people Lowery was in the employ of was Brent Wilkes. Lewis and Lowery have exchanged staff members on occasion; it can be said that their offices are not materially different in their goals.
helped steer defense funding, totaling $37 million, to a California company, whose officials and lobbyists helped raise at least $85,000 for Doolittle and his leadership political action committee from 2002 to 2005.
That California company was owned by Brent Wilkes.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, longshot candidate for President and former head of the House Armed Services Committee, is also tied up with Wilkes, having received hundreds of thousands in campaign funds from him and his companies in exchange for useless boondoggles of government contracts:
Cunningham and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, worked closely with two local companies – ADCS Inc. of Poway and Audre Inc. of Rancho Bernardo – to make the Pentagon pay for converting printed documents to computer files. They and a few other lawmakers got Congress to allocate $190 million for “automated data conversion” projects from 1993 to 2001.
Did the Pentagon want this “help”? No. As a 1994 General Accounting Office report noted, it already had the tools for such work.
But Cunningham, Hunter and their House allies didn’t care. Audre and ADCS were generous with contributions – and ADCS executive Brent Wilkes allegedly was bribing Cunningham…This led to such absurdities as a $9.7 million contract for ADCS to digitize historical documents from the Panama Canal Zone that the Pentagon considered insignificant. This isn’t governance. This is looting.
Wilkes was also a high school buddy of Dusty Foggo, the ex-#3 at the CIA who resigned last year amid both corruption allegations (he was the lead procurement official) and rumors of hooker parties set up by Wilkes where he would entertain lawmakers, staff, and CIA officials with poker and drinks and… hookers and stuff.
Trapping Wilkes in the vice could be the spark to send all of these California legislators tumbling down. Carol Lam won’t be on the case should the indictment come down, and it’ll be interesting to see if the replacement decides to interfere with an ongoing investigation. But clearly she wants to make Brent Wilkes sing before she is forced out of her post. And the ripple effect could be tremendous.
Does Governor Schwarzenegger have to say something like this before people believe him?
What do you think the biggest mistakes you made in your first term of office as governor were? DENIS MILMO, by e-mail
I never should have called a special election in 2005. All the reforms I pushed are important and I’ve not given up on any of them. But I went about it the wrong way. The people want the governor and legislature to work together to solve problems. They don’t want to vote on every issue before us. I was impatient and my heart was certainly in the right place, but I should have been more inclusive and worked more to find the common ground. It is interesting how life works, though. Going through that made me and the legislature that much more determined to work together in the future and got some amazing things done last year for the people of our state.
Union busting is not a good idea. Giving virtually all budgetary power to the executive is not a good idea. Decreasing job security for teachers is not a good idea. And trying to get legislators to accept these ideas won’t be a good idea either, nor would it work, as you’d be asking Democrats to engage in a suicide mission, against the interests of their biggest backers and the entire public of the state.
(Redistricting, if the proposal is tweaked significantly from that in 2005, is another matter, although I hope it’s correct that any redistricting measure approved would not take effect until Census data from 2010 is completed.)
I also found this exchange from the Independent (UK) interview of interest:
Do you think there is too much money in American politics? Can anything be done to cut the power of special interest groups? ROD HALLORAN, Lancaster
Money is a fact of life in American politics. You cannot get your message out without money to run a campaign, buy advertising or reach voters. The important thing is that politicians should not make decisions based on this. I have an absolute rock-solid rule that I never make a decision based on who did or did not contribute.
Shorter Arnold: I can raise a lot of cash, so suck it, but trust me, none of that is reflected in any policy, just look at my health care plan! But don’t look at the part where insurance companies get a forced market and a license to print money.
(Also, how come it takes a British paper to get this level of engagement from the Governor, other than any paper in this state?)
We always like to talk about how a strong Democratic Party needs to be unwavering on specific issues to let the electorate understand the core concerns of the party and attract people to the brand. This is no less true in California, where the Democratic brand is somewhat invisible (better than the Republican brand, which is shot). This is a bold move on sentencing guidelines, and those who are supporting it are probably going to catch hell from the law-n-order crowd, but it’s important to plant the flag for sane sentencing so that we don’t turn massive percentages of the state into an unmanageable prison population.
Launching what promises to be one of the year’s fiercest debates in the Capitol, the Senate’s top Democrats on Thursday moved toward reforming California’s byzantine criminal sentencing system.
Unveiling legislation to create a sentencing review commission, Senate leader Don Perata of Oakland and Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles said California should join 16 other states now revisiting the question of who goes to prison and for how long.
The lawmakers also urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to use his executive powers to create an interim working group that would begin collecting and analyzing sentencing data as early as February.
“We can’t wait,” Romero said, noting that prison overcrowding is so severe that federal judges may impose a cap on the inmate population, now at 172,000. “Public safety is not served with a broken corrections system.”
more…
Schwarzenegger has already proposed a sentencing commission, but asked them to spend their first year looking at parole guidelines, which would have no effect on the prison population in a time of crisis. He’s constrained by a base that already hates him, who would view loosening sentencing restrictions as a final betrayal. Democrats have little to gain from this proposal other than moving the state forward. Surely it plays into the ridiculous stereotype conservatives hold of liberals as coddlers of criminals. But the fact remains that the present system is incredibly dangerous, and Democrats in the legislature are being the grownups here by trying to do something about it. Not just TALKING about it, like the Governor, but taking it out of the realm of politics and into a solutions-based environment. There’s a rapidly approaching deadline where a federal judge will start capping the number of people in prison. If something bold like this isn’t done, you’re going to see inmates let out of prisons in droves, and that STILL won’t solve the long-term structural problem. Republicans want to live in this fantasy world where they can one-up each other on being “tough on crime” as if there are no real-world consequences.
In California, many experts have urged an overhaul of the sentencing system, calling it chaotic, unwieldy and complex. The nonpartisan Little Hoover Commission, which is poised to release a report on sentencing reform, found that California has added more than 1,000 laws and sentence enhancements – lengthening prison terms – over the last 30 years. Most of the changes were made by the Legislature, though some came through ballot initiatives such as the three-strikes measure of 1994.
Some critics say the state’s fixed-term sentencing system should be altered because it compels the release of inmates regardless of whether they are rehabilitated. Under such a system, there is no incentive for felons to change their lives, some scholars say.
Other experts say the biggest problem in California is a lack of uniformity, with felons convicted of the same crime receiving different sentences in different counties.
“The system we have now is a hodgepodge, and we need independent experts to help us put some sense into it,” Perata said. “Whether the Legislature has the political will to do that is another question. I’m skeptical.”
The reductio ad absurdum of this “tough on crime” pose is this shocking report from CPR about forced sterilization (you heard me right) in the prisons:
Given California’s shameful history with the forced sterilizations of thousands of people during the 20th century, you would think that bureaucrats would think twice before suggesting that the sterilization of an imprisoned woman could ever be freely chosen. And you would be wrong.
“Doing what is medically necessary” is how the Gender Responsiveness Strategies Commission of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation termed its July 18 recommendation to consider providing, in the course of delivering a baby, “elective” sterilization of women who give birth in prison, “either post-partum or coinciding with cesarean section.”
To describe a sterilization performed under such circumstances as voluntary is absurd. One’s ability to consent to sterilization, or anything else, during pregnancy and labor is limited in any setting, not to mention in a coercive environment such as a prison. Moreover, Robert Sillen, whom U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson appointed last year as federal receiver over California’ s prison health-care system, has documented that a person dies each day in California prisons due to gross medical neglect. How, in such an environment, could we trust prison staff to ensure informed consent to such a procedure?
It’s absolutely revolting, and it’s what you get when you have this dehumanization of criminals, a lack of emphasis on treatment and rehabilitation, and a political environment where conservative frames on law enforcement are the only ones accepted as “serious.”
As this crisis reaches a point of no return, it’s not enough to just talk about blurring the lines on partisanship. You have to take a stand to do something about it. I have not been thrilled with the legislature’s performance out of the gate on health care (save for the great Sheila Kuehl). Their response to this crisis has been solid, however, and taking stands like this will eventually resonate with the public as long as they’re able to get out the message. I don’t think the state’s citizens are as conservative as law enforcement policy suggests. It’s time to take back this issue, and call for sanity, call for determining consequences before action, and call for lifting up those who transgress, rather than trying to lock the problem away.
We had our CDP (California Democratic Party) elections this morning, and I am proud to report that I and all 12 members of our Progressive Slate were overwhelmingly victorious. In what was a relatively high turnout for elections of this type, I garnered 88 votes out of 134 ballots, or 65.7%. I am now going to do a precinct-by-precinct breakdown of voting… OK, no, but I do want to tell you about what was a tremendous experience. I also have video which I’ll get up on YouTube later.
The caucus was scheduled for 10:00 this morning at the Malibu Public Library, which is about the midway point in the district between Santa Monica and Oxnard (actually, it’s probably a little closer to Santa Monica). I got there a little early and stayed in my car until the library opened up (it was literally the coldest morning of the winter). All the members of our slate were armed with flyers and ready to greet the voters. I was fairly confident, because our slate included Marcy Winograd, progressive champion and former Congressional primary candidate against Jane Harman in 2006. But there was also a competing slate, composed of a grassroots group from the San Fernando Valley. This included the convener of the meeting and 2005-06 Executive Board representative for the AD. So this wasn’t going to be easy.
People had about an hour to come in and register themselves for the election, pay the fee (or poll tax, whatever you want to call it), and get their ballot. This was basically an hour of full politicking, handing out flyers, talking to people, making your case. Retail politics at its finest.
I want to tell anyone reading this who is running tomorrow to look for a few pitfalls that really impacted my meeting, which was far more of a free-for-all than it needed to be.
• Make sure the person running the meeting has control over the ballot distribution. There were people handing out ballots all over the place. In the end, this wasn’t a major factor, but there ended up being 134 ballots and only 133 people who registered for the caucus. In my view, this could have been far worse but for the honesty of the people in the room.
Ballots should at the very least have a number on them which corresponds to each voter, or something. This was a nightmare waiting to happen.
• Please note that registration CLOSES one hour from the scheduled time of the meeting. If voters are in line for registration at that time, they can participate. If not, they’re out of luck. This was a MAJOR point of contention in our meeting because it was not really information that was distributed to anyone prior. There were a couple people who were a couple minutes late who they tried to turn away, and the room just erupted, the voter started yelling the he was disenfranchised, people were walking out of the room in protest, it was CHAOS. You know, just another Democratic meeting.
I would say that all candidates should make very clear that their voters must be there within an hour of the meeting schedule.
• The rules for counting the votes are at the complete discretion of the organizer of the meeting. We ended up with a process where supporters of the two competing slates (not candidates) could observe the counting, and people unaffiliated with the slates were the counters. But this should be worked out beforehand, or it could descend into more squabbling (especially if there are competing slates).
OK, that procedural stuff’s out of the way, so let me tell you how it went. I spent an hour talking to people, meeting with my fellow slate members, and watching the craziness that surrounded the caucus. There were friends of mine who came out to vote for me. There were people I met at MoveOn meetings and people who read about me online. It was an inspiring hour where I got to tell my story to people, and have them understand why I should be sent to the CDP convention. Eventually, we got around to candidate statements. You had one minute to give a speech about your candidacy. Being that they went by alphabetical order, I actually was second. I have video of this speech which I’ll be putting up on YouTube later. I didn’t go off notes, but here’s a paraphrase:
“My name is David Dayen. I am a proud progressive. I come from the grassroots, and I’m a blogger, so i come from the netroots. The reason I am running is that I think we have a tremendous opportunity in California. The Republican brand is shot, they can’t get elected unless they act like Democrats for six months. But we’re not going to get anywhere without a strong and vibrant party of our own. As your delegate, I will work to make the CDP more responsive to the grassroots and to the concerns of everyday Californians, more effective, by reaching out to every Assembly District, to every county, and more relevant, not just for 2 weeks every two years, but every day, every week, telling voters who we are and what we stand for. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I’m asking for your vote, because I want everyone in this state to be as excited about participating in their democracy as everyone in this room is. Thank you.”
0 minutes, 59 seconds. It felt good, I haven’t looked at the video yet.
Anyway, everybody got through their statements (there were about 35-40 candidates), and then final balloting was completed. (that’s another thing, candidates, you can vote at any time during the meeting, before anyone makes their statement even. Quite a few people voted and left. I don’t know who that benefits, but it should be known.
Vote-counting took TWO HOURS. They counted the number of ballots, made sure every ballot counted no more than 12 people (a few people over-voted, and their votes were then discarded), counted once, and I think counted twice before arriving at a decision. My friend ended up getting chosen to help count, so what he probably thought would be a five-minute ordeal turned into 4 hours!
So we all waited on pins and needles for the results. And finally, they finished. The organizer put up the entire results for all candidates, and circled the winners. And sure enough, our ENTIRE slate, 6 men and 6 women, was elected. We all turned out our voters, and defeated the other slate by a wide margin. Marcy Winograd was then elected by unanimous consent as our executive board representative.
It was exhilirating to really participate and get involved in the political process at the local level. I was really inspired by seeing some of the other candidates there. There was a mother-daughter tandem, with the daughter in her early 20s. There was a Hispanic lady from Oxnard who was only naturalized as a citizen a couple years ago. She spoke about the importance of getting involved. Seeing the energy at the local level bodes extremely well for my party. And now I can truly say that it’s MY party: I’m an elected official!
GET INVOLVED in your state parties. It’s so rewarding and vital. Movements like this start from the bottom up. It’s the only way real change ever happens in America.
