There’s an interesting dynamic happening in California.  At the national level, the state’s power is growing.  Californians hold the Speaker of the House and four key committee chairs, including the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.  The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and now the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have Californians at the helm.  Any energy and environmental policies will have to go through the committees of Californians, and they’ll have California allies inside the Administration, with the selection of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  Other Californians are up for possible Administration jobs, like CA-31’s Xavier Becerra (US Trade Representative) and CA-36’s Jane Harman (CIA Director).  It’s a good time to be a California politician in Washington.

It’s a TERRIBLE time to be a California politician in California, as it dawns on everyone in Sacramento that the state is ungovernable and hurtling toward total chaos.  The two parties are miles apart from a budget deal, and even their biggest and boldest efforts would only fill about half the budget gap.  The peculiar mechanisms of state government, with its 2/3 rule for budget and tax provisions, and its artificial deadlines for bills to get through the legislature, which causes remarkable bottlenecks and “gut and amend” legislation changed wholesale in a matter of hours, and the failed experiment with direct democracy which has created unsustainable demands and mandates, make the state impossible to reform and even get working semi-coherently.  The state’s citizens hate their government and hate virtually everyone in it with almost equal fervor, yet find themselves helpless to actually change anything about it, and believe it or not, ACTUALLY THINK THEY’RE DOING A GOOD JOB setting policy through the initiative process, which is simply ignorant (though they paradoxically think that other voters aren’t doing a good job on initiatives).  The activist base does amazing grassroots work, very little of it in this state.  We have a political trade deficit where money and volunteerism leaves the state and nothing returns.  And the political media for a state of 38 million consists of a handful of reporters in Sacramento and a couple dudes with blogs.

Many of these problems have accumulated over a number of years and cannot be laid at the feet of anybody in particular.  But in general, the reason that we’ve gotten to this crisis point, the reason that California is a failed state, is because by and large the dominant political parties WANT IT THAT WAY.  I’m not saying that the state Democratic Party or its elected officials, for example, wants the state to be flung into the sea, metaphorically speaking, but there’s certainly a tendency toward the closed loops of insiders that prefer a predictable and stable status quo, that naturally restricts reform and leads to corruption, gridlock and crisis.  I’ll give you an example.  Last night I was on a conference call where Eric Bauman, Chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, announced that he would drop out of the race for state party Chair and run for Vice-Chair, because when 78 year-old former State Senator John Burton entered the race, all his labor, organizational and elected support dried up.  Fitting that he didn’t mention his grassroots support, because it clearly doesn’t matter who they prefer.  

There is little doubt in my mind that John Burton will run the party, or rather delegate it to whatever lieutenant will run the party, in the exact same way it has been run for the last decade or so, characterized by missed opportunities to expand majorities, a lost recall election for Governor, cave-in after cave-in on key budget priorities and a failure to capitalize on the progressive wave of the last two electoral cycles.  These are not abstractions, and they have real-world effects, $41.8 billion of them at last count.  And honestly, the Special Assistant to Gray Davis didn’t represent all that much change, either.

We have an ossified party structure, and a phlegmatic legislative leadership that is unable to get its objectives met because the deck is essentially stacked against them.  The times call for a completely new vision, one that can energize a grassroots base and use citizen action to leverage the necessary unraveling of this dysfunctional government to make it work again.  The work on Prop. 8 since the election has been tremendous, but ultimately, if public schools are closing and unemployment is above 10% and the uninsured are rising and the pain felt in local communities is acute, then we have a much larger problem, one that requires a bigger movement allied with the civil rights movement to make change.

The key flashpoint is the 2010 Governor’s race.  There is currently no one in the field with the ability to break the lock that the status quo has on California and deliver a new majority empowered to bring the state back from the brink.  In an article published last month, Randy Shaw put it best.

None of the current field appears likely to galvanize a grassroots base, or to be willing to take on the “third rails” of California politics: massive prison spending, Prop 13 funding restrictions, or the need for major new education funding. Dianne Feinstein? She’ll be 77 years old on Election Day 2010, and she has long resisted, rather than supported, progressive change.

Jerry Brown just finished campaigning to defeat Proposition 5, which would have saved billions of unnecessary spending on the state’s prison industrial complex. This follows Brown’s television ads for the 2004 election, which helped narrowly defeat a reform of the draconian and extremely expensive “three strikes” law. Brown’s consistent coddling up to the prison guards union is the smoking gun showing that he is not a candidate for change.

Gavin Newsom came out against Prop 5 on the eve of the election, undermining his own “break from the past” image. He also spent another local election cycle opposing the very constituencies who an Obama-style grassroots campaign would need to attract.

With her Senate Intel. Committee post, it is unlikely that Feinstein will run.  He forgets John Garamendi, who supported Prop. 2 (!) because of his fealty to farming interests and who first ran for governor in 1982.

Shaw mentions that the state is ready for a Latina governor, and mentions the Sanchez sisters.  He’s right in part, but has the wrong individual in mind.  I am more convinced than ever that the only person with the strength, talent, grassroots appeal and forward-thinking progressive mindset to fundamentally change the electorate and work toward reform is Congresswoman Hilda Solis.  She authored the green jobs bill that Barack Obama is using as a national model.  She is a national leader on the issue of environmental justice and has the connections to working Californians that can inspire a new set of voters.  She beat an 18-year Democratic incumbent, Matthew Martinez, by 38 points to win her first Congressional primary.  She has worked tirelessly for progressive candidates across the state and the country.  In a state whose demographics are rapidly changing, she could be a powerful symbol of progress that could grab a mandate to finally overhaul this rot at the heart of California’s politial system once and for all.  This is not about one woman as a magic bullet that can change the system; this is about a woman at the heart of a movement.  A movement for justice and equality and dignity and respect.  A movement for boldness and progressive principles and inclusiveness and openness.  A movement that can spark across the state.

I know that Solis is interested in the Vice Chair of the Democratic caucus if Becerra takes the job in the Obama Administration.  Congresswoman, your state needs you desperately.  Please consider running for Governor and leaving a legacy of progress in California.

When Josh Richman, the fine reporter for the Oakland Tribune, called me for comment yesterday on the breaking news that Don Perata transferred $1.5 million dollars the day after the election from an IE account intended to elect Democrats to the State Senate and wage initiative campaigns into his personal legal defense fund, my initial reaction was “I’m not surprised.”  My slightly longer reaction is captured in the article:

David Dayen, an elected Democratic State Central Committee member from Santa Monica, blogged angrily this summer about his party’s contribution to Perata’s legal defense fund, contending the money would’ve been better spent on legislative races. The same goes for Leadership California’s money, he said Wednesday; despite a Democratic presidential candidate carrying California by the largest margin since 1936, Democrats netted only three more Assembly seats and none in the state Senate.

“Every time I asked the California Democratic Party about getting more active and involved in local elections, they said the state Senate and the Assembly control those races “… and we don’t have a lot of flexibility. So Perata, at that time, and Nunez or Bass had the authority to run those elections,” Dayen said. “Now we see what happens when you vest power in these closed loops – suddenly self-interest becomes more important than the good of the party.”

He believes this is why Perata didn’t step aside as Pro Tem earlier, as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez relinquished his post to Karen Bass in May: “Darrell Steinberg was sitting there ready to go “… and we were all like, ‘What the hell is going on?’

“We speculated it had to be that he still needed the leverage to make the calls to raise money for himself.”

I want to expand on that.  The behavior of Don Perata can be directly tied to the continuance of a status quo that has failed and is failing California families.  At no time is the way elections are run – without transparency, without accountability, without meaningful checks on the potential for corruption – questioned by the powers that be.  It is enabled through a shrug of the shoulders and the words “that’s the way things are.”  What Perata did was perfectly legal, although that is subject to change, as the state Fair Political Practices Commission votes today on making such transfers illegal.  But as Michael Kinsley famously said,  “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what’s legal.”  The bigger scandal is that there’s no desire or even interest at the top to see that change.  And why not – it suits them just fine.

California has 63% majorities in both chambers of the legislature, has just seen a 61% share of the vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate – and yet this state is completely, inescapably and hopelessly beholden to right-wing interests, as a function of a backwards set of governing rules that have climbed the budget hole over $40 billion dollars, without any reasonable hope of getting out of it.  It’s been beyond clear for several years now that the ultimate solution will come at the ballot box, and yet the state party has entrusted the most crucial elections, the ones that could net a working 2/3 majority in the Senate, to someone more concerned with saving his political hide.  And so Hannah-Beth Jackson, who came within 1,200 votes of flipping a Republican seat, reads a story like this in shock and anger.  And the citizens in SD-12, promised a recall of Jeff Denham; and those in SD-15, expecting a candidate in their majority-Democratic district to take on Abel Maldonado; they are similarly angry.  Money they had every right to expect would go to help them now goes to help one man.

(By the way, the alibi from the defenders of Perata on this doesn’t scan at all.  First of all, nobody begrudges him from raising money in his own defense – the problem lies in taking that money from an account intended for campaign work.  And second, if this is a “political witch hunt,” as they say, why would he need this lump sum of money 75 days from the time when a Democratic Administration with no inclination to prosecute Democrats on allegedly bogus charges is about to be installed?  It’s either a witch hunt about to end or a going concern.  The alibi is pathetic.)

But the larger point is that the status quo, the closed systems at the top of the Democratic leadership, the lack of transparency and accountability, create the crises we see in our state, or at least disable anyone from reacting to them.  And this is not likely to change.  John Burton is going to be the next state CDP Chair.  He’s been in politics for 205 years, and he’s basically muscled out the competition for the job.  Does anyone think that a lifelong pol, with a long history of backroom deals, the guy who was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cigar-smoking buddy (that seems like a good profile for the opposition party chair), gives a damn about urgently needed reform?  He’s making sweet little noises about turning red areas blue, but there’s absolutely no hope that he will provide any change from the insular, chummy, mutual backscratching society that exists in Sacramento.  Grassroots activists should be furious that, in the wake of seeing countless opportunities wasted and crises lengthened, we’re boldly taking off into the future with a Party Chair who was first elected in 1965.

The future of California is a mystery right now, because there is a crisis of leadership and an unwillingness to reform.  At the very least, activists should look to electing Hillary Crosby as State Party Controller so that someone in the room will have a reform message that can spark a modicum of change.  But until the fundamentals are altered, we will lurch from one disaster to the next.

On the first day of the legislative session there was an irrational burst of optimism that the roadblocks put forward by the Yacht Party on the budget and taxation would somehow be hurdled.  It’s true that Democrats have three more seats in the Assembly (though currently one less in the Senate, pending the filling of Mark Ridley-Thomas’ vacant seat), lowering the amount of Yacht Party members they’d have to bring aboard for any solution.  But the idea that these new Republicans represent any kind of fresh thinking or newfound moderation is a fantasy.

Though Democrats picked up an aggregate of three seats in the Assembly, Niello said, they still need at least three Republicans to cross over and vote for any legislation that requires a two-thirds vote, such as a state budget.

Because the GOP caucus is united around opposition to any new taxes and wanting to see reforms such as a state spending cap and improving the state’s regulatory environment on businesses, Niello said, Democrats will have to give to get any of those crossover votes.

“We’re still solid, still firm on the things that are priorities,” Niello said.

Newly sworn-in Assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Linda) sounded a similar note.

“We’ve got to create wealth, and we’ve got to grow our way out of trouble, not tax our way out of trouble,” Logue said. “Raising taxes will drive more jobs to Nevada.”

Some of this could be bravado, and there are a couple legislators who were in close races – Steve Knight in AD-36, Bill Berryhill in AD-36, Tony Strickland in SD-19 – who would, in theory, do well to part ways with ideology and compromise to enhance their chances in the next election.  But this would contradict the Iron Law of Institutions – “the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.”  Republicans who give in on the budget will be primaried and feel far more fear from that internal challenge than from the opposition.

The only way to counteract this is to make the challenge from without more vital than the challenge from within, and to make the power inside the institution line up with the power of the institution.  It means getting 2/3 and making anyone who rejects the will of the people pay.  SEIU has the right idea with their new ad campaign about the budget, playing off of Obama’s popularity in the state, and John Burton’s curt response to Yacht Party efforts to roll back labor and environmental regulations as payment for a budget solution – “The Republicans are full of crap” – ought to be said a bit more often, maybe in less colorful language, to make clear who is causing this crisis.  

I’m not sure any of it will be enough, though.  The Yacht Party is still the Yacht Party.