In 2007, Calitics watched as Laura Richardson ran a nasty, race-baiting campaign in a special election in CA-37, emphasizing that the seat “should be held by someone from our community” and using what amounts to an identity politics wedge to carry her to victory.  We found that distasteful, and hoped that Democrats in future campaigns would not resort to such dirty politics.  When the race to replace Hilda Solis in CA-32 began, we thought the candidates, nominally progressive Democrats, would highlight their policy positions and positive attributes instead of using divisive tactics.  The major candidates, Board of Equalization member Judy Chu, State Sen. Gil Cedillo and former Obama transition official Emanuel Pleitez, all espoused generally progressive ideas throughout the campaign.  But then again, so did Richardson, and we do believe that, at some level, how you campaign does dictate how you govern.

Therefore, we have been extremely disappointed in Gil Cedillo’s divisive and often false attacks on his rivals.  He started his campaign talking about “our community” and “our people”, clearly attempting to play upon a Latino/Asian divide inside the district, which has a larger Hispanic population (which is an odd tactic for someone like Cedillo, who has never represented anyone from the 32nd district, to take).  Cedillo’s blatantly false mailers against Judy Chu during the race, attempting to blame her for the economic crisis by associating her with unrelated headlines and claiming that “Politicians like Judy Chu give tax breaks to their big corporate contributors,” when as a BoE member she merely returned tax refunds owed corporations, were bad enough.  But the mailer against Emanuel Pleitez, using Facebook images to build a false narrative of Pleitez as a drunken womanizer who hangs around with non-Hispanic women (a deliberate effort – we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this mailer only went to Hispanic women) and throws “gang signs” (actually that’s the sign for Voto Latino, an organization for which Pleitez was a past board member), goes beyond the pale.  This slandering, not only of Pleitez but of women in general, as if appearing in a picture at a bar connotes being a slut, goes well beyond what should be expected of a public official, and certainly beneath someone asking to be given a promotion and sent to Washington.

Calitics was generally comfortable with giving no official endorsement on this race until the events of the past couple weeks.  We find Dr. Chu to be a progressive leader and Pleitez to have a significant amount of knowledge and energy, and Cedillo has been a past champion on significant issues like immigration.  But the events of the past couple weeks have forced us to end our silence.  Our somewhat unusual endorsement for voters in CA-32 is to vote for ANY DEMOCRAT BUT GIL CEDILLO.  The behavior he has displayed in this campaign should be rejected, not rewarded.

Jeremy Cohen, the Communications Director for Pleitez for Congress, sends along a comment to me about the negative mailer sent by Gil Cedillo’s campaign:

Emanuel is running for Congress because people here are being severely affected by the economic crisis.  It’s sad that the Cedillo campaign wants to surf Facebook while families are being kicked out of their home and people are losing their jobs.

We also think it’s unethical that his campaign would use the photos of these women for a political smear without any form of consent.  Many of them are highly educated professionals — teachers, non-profit directors, nurses — who would be horrified to find that their picture had been mailed to tens of thousands of voters.  Cedillo is not only smearing the name of Emanuel, but defaming dozens of women who have no involvement with the campaign.

Seems to me that Gil Cedillo probably did Pleitez a favor here.  As this story an the controversy around it grows, Pleitez has an opportunity to increase his name ID and deliver his message to more voters.  And Cedillo comes off looking really, really bad.

See also this comment.  Cedillo’s people knew exactly what they’re doing by using pictures of Pleitez with non-Latina women.

The League of Women Voters sponsored a forum in Baldwin Park last night for candidates in the May 19 special election to replace Hilda Solis in the Congress.  The two front-runners in the race, Gil Cedillo and Judy Chu, emphasized their strengths.

Cedillo said he has had about 80 of his bills signed into law and said he has worked with the governor to save 25,000 jobs. Chu told the audience that she was proud to have the endorsement “of everybody in the family” of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who held the congressional seat until her cabinet appointment this year.

At the forum at Baldwin Park’s Julia McNeill Senior Center, many of the candidates agreed on some issues, including the need for immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship, eliminating tax loopholes for corporations using offshore accounts to shelter income and the need to reform education, especially regarding the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Calitician and Judy Chu netroots advisor Todd Beeton has more at his Twitter feed.

With two weeks to go, the signals I’m getting suggest that Gil Cedillo is nervous.  The massive unforced error of those negative Emanuel Pleitez mailers makes me believe that Cedillo fears Pleitez is capturing a good bit of the Hispanic vote.  The earlier negative mailers on Judy Chu showed a similar lack of substance (attacking someone for returning tax refunds OWED?).  Negative mailers don’t inspire turnout, they suppress it.  And the May 19 election will already feature low turnout.  Which magnifies the importance of GOTV, and with the Democratic Party and key labor groups having endorsed Chu, I would probably be throwing the kitchen sink at everybody in the race myself if I were Cedillo.

What I’d prefer to hear about, instead of who endorsed whom and such and such negative attack, are concerns of the local area.  El Monte is crashing.  The city made 60% of its tax revenue off of the auto dealerships that lined the city, and with the demise of the auto industry throwing auto sales off the cliff, revenue has shrunk.  Many cities with clusters of dealerships will soon face the same problem.  What can be done at the federal level to diversify the local economy, and shouldn’t the efforts to revive the economy in auto manufacturing states like Michigan extend to cities with a proliferation of car lots like El Monte?  If anyone from the campaigns is reading, maybe we can get an answer to that.

(This story has now been covered by The Hill. We have also posted a comment from the Pleitez campaign. Welcome to all the new readers! – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

(full disclosure: I serve as the the Political Director of the Los Angeles County Young Democrats, which overwhelmingly endorsed Gil Cedillo for the CA-32 Congressional seat.  In what follows, as well as anything else I write or have ever written about this race or any other issue, the opinions written here are strictly my own personal views, and do not reflect the official views of any organization I am involved with in any official capacity.)

The CA-32 race is getting personal.  Gil Cedillo’s campaign has already gotten some criticism for the use of unrelated headlines in a mailer against Judy Chu, and now Cedillo has gone negative against the other candidate in the race with a shot at viability: Emanuel Pleitez, the 26-year-old former employee of the Obama-Biden Treasury Department transition team.

Now before I continue with the mailer itself, which is the heart of this story, I should first point out the initial implications that I perceive about Cedillo’s campaign going negative on Pleitez: by my view, it’s not a good sign for the campaign.  If the campaign is spending money, energy and political capital in attacking someone who was supposed to be a minor candidate and who has raised about a quarter of the money that Cedillo’s campaign has, it would indicate that Cedillo’s team is afraid that Pleitez is drawing a larger share than expected of the demographic that Cedillo would need to beat Judy Chu, and I don’t view it as a positive sign for Cedillo’s campaign that it’s having to use negative mailers to shore up its other flank.

But let’s get to the mailer itself, which you can see front and back at these links:

Edit by Brian for space…see the flip.

link one

link two

link three

link four

The basic point the campaign is trying to make, of course, is that Emanuel is too wild and immature to run for Congress.  And Cedillo has a strong case to make based on his maturity and his extensive experience as a legislator.  And yes, there are a few wild photos from the bunch that the campaign selected.  But I’ll bet a lot of those are innocuous photos that were taken out of context.  For instance, a lot of the pictures on there are shots of Pleitez with various women, often not even in a party setting–obviously designed to convey the impression that Pleitez is a womanizer.

Well, here’s the problem.  I’m one of the least rowdy 26-year-olds I know.  And yet, if someone wanted to troll through the photos of me on Facebook to portray me as an immature womanizer party animal, it would certainly be possible.  I’ve been in a committed relationship for a 2 1/2 years now.  But still, there’s a picture there of me with one of my blogger friends, who happens to be a female my age.  There’s also one of me with a friend whom I’ve known since my freshman year of college when we were in UCLA’s Regents Scholar Society–also an attractive woman my age.  And yet, if you wanted to take those and other pictures out of context and claim that you’re “missing a lot of women” if you haven’t seen my Facebook page…well, I guess nothing prevents you–outside of a sense of honesty or decency, both of which seem to be missing in this case.  I imagine that a lot of this site’s readers are my friends on Facebook.  Why not have a blast and put together an attack mailer against me?

The text of the mailer is also relatively amusing–“even nerdy guys want to look cool”?  The hilarity of that is only exceeded by the Spanish translation of “nerdy”: socialmente ineptos.

I don’t know what Gil Cedillo was doing for entertainment when he was in his mid-twenties.  But what I do know is that whatever it was, it wasn’t documented through the use of digital cameras and social networking.  At the risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, I was just talking with one of my students a couple of days ago about what impact social media would have on future elections from the “scandal” perspective–i.e., what if there were photos of any presidential candidate’s youthful indiscretions on Facebook?  It’s one thing to hear tell of it–it’s quite another to see the actual physical evidence.  And I suppose that question has been answered just a few days later.  And if you’re a young person contemplating a run for office, it should send just a little bit of a shiver down your spine.  Your elder opponents’ actions at your age–even if they’re just five or ten years older–aren’t a matter of public record.  But in the age of Facebook and Myspace, yours are–and no matter how innocent you may think your photos are, you need to think about the worst possible way they could be used against you–because that’s probably what’s going to happen.

Bottom line: the fact that Gil Cedillo’s campaign feels the need to use social media to commit character assassination on a lesser-known opponent is disheartening.  Gil Cedillo is a strong progressive legislator with a long career track record.  His campaign team consists of people I know who are dedicated to progressive causes.  And the negative mailers sent on the campaign’s behalf are, in my view, not worthy of Senator Cedillo or his campaign leaders.  This is really a low blow, and smacks of desperation to have to resort to this.

(This election is 2 weeks from next Tuesday. – promoted by David Dayen)

“Community organizer.”  “Coalition builder.”

These were the words that made me the proudest when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke about me as he endorsed me last week.

It was precisely through community organizing that I got my start. I was inspired to first get active on campus when I joined the movements to stop the Vietnam War, to fight for civil rights, and to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

My activism continued beyond college when in the mid-1980s, a group of longtime residents in Monterey Park scapegoated new immigrants in the city by pushing for English-only signs in the city and English-only books in the library. When they got a resolution passed in the city council saying that only English should be spoken in the city, that was the last straw. I decided to join a multi-ethnic coalition of Latinos, Asian Americans, and whites to defeat the resolution and we were successful. Out of that movement, I ran for a seat on the Monterey Park city council, and won, spending the next 13 years working toward my goal of getting the diverse groups in the community to work together in harmony.  

It was around that same time that I first met Hilda Solis. We were both fighting to prevent the political boundaries from being redrawn in such a way that the San Gabriel Valley would be divided. While I was in an Asian American coalition, and she in a Latino coalition, we realized that we would have much more power if we fought together as a united force. So together, we went to Sacramento to testify and as a result, we were the only community group in the state that got what we wanted.  

I continued my efforts toward coalition building during my time in the state assembly. Several bills required a hard-fought consensus in order to be passed. One such bill that I carried was AB 805, the Heat Illness Prevention Act, which prevented the tragedy of heat illness for outdoor workers by requiring shade, water and rest periods. To make my point about the importance of such protections, I held a “meeting in the sun.” I held it in a field in the central valley, outside in 100+ degree heat for over 2 hours, while bringing together the Governor’s representatives, the United Farm Workers, the AFL-CIO and the press. We made our point and the protections were put into law.

It is this spirit of bringing people together to work toward a common goal, and of building coalitions between people who may have conflicting interests, that I want to take to Washington DC. Even now, as I run to replace my friend, my mentor and the greatest community organizer I know, Hilda Solis in Congress, I am building coalitions of support for my candidacy. We knew from the outset that the California Democratic Party endorsement was a crucial step toward winning this seat and we also knew that my opponent, a sitting state senator, would have the advantage of institutional connections from Sacramento, so what did we do?

Organize, organize, organize.

In a mass mobilization that the California Democratic Party had never seen before, we got 400 delegates and delegate proxies out in force the day of the endorsement meeting, providing a lunch for them prior to the vote. We turned the lunch into a grassroots rally and we had stand-by proxy voters waiting up to 3 hours in case I needed them. It was a truly “people powered” campaign. In the end, my opponent saw he’d been out maneuvered, so pulled his voters at the last minute, preferring instead to get zero votes. The result? A unanimous endorsement for me from the California Democratic Party.

During this truly unique time in our history when we have our country’s first community organizer president, it would truly be an honor to take the lessons I’ve learned building coalitions and bringing communities together to Washington D.C. I hope you’ll help me do that as we head into the final 2 weeks before election day. Please join us this weekend for precinct walking:

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Canvass & BBQ

9:00am – 1:00pm

Campaign Headquarters

4153 Maine Ave.

Baldwin Park, CA

Sunday, May 3, 2009

2:00pm – 5:00pm

Campaign Headquarters

4153 Maine Ave.

Baldwin Park, CA

You can find out more about volunteer opportunities at www.JudyChu.net and, of course, donations are always appreciated at ActBlue.

(Please welcome Senator Gil Cedillo, candidate for Congress in CA-32, to Calitics. – promoted by Dante Atkins (hekebolos))

President Barack Obama’s selection of Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary demonstrated his commitment to both labor rights and the progressive community.  As an early endorser of Barack Obama and one of the founders of Latinos for Obama, it is wonderful to see our President assemble such a diverse and talented cabinet.  Secretary Solis, who has dedicated her career to fighting for working class families, will be a vital asset to this historic Presidency.  

The selection of Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary has also created a vacancy in the 32nd Congressional District, and I would be honored to represent East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley in Congress during this unique and historic time.  I am equally honored by the endorsements I have received from over 100 current and former elected officials, including Supervisor Gloria Molina, Senator Gloria Romero, Sheriff Lee Baca, and Former Assemblymember Ed Chavez.  

I have deep roots in the San Gabriel Valley and I have spent my entire career fighting for our community at a grass roots level.  As General Manager for SEIU Local 660 in the early 1990s, I fought to save thousands of jobs in the area by working to keep libraries and youth programs from closing and playing a central role in securing federal assistance to keep General Hospital open.  

Like President Obama, I understand firsthand that real change comes from working together and focusing on what unites us rather than on what divides us.  Upon being elected to the California State Legislature in 1998, I continued my fight to protect the interests of the most vulnerable members of our society and those that have no political voice. Throughout my career as both a member of the State Assembly and the State Senate, I have been one of California’s most forceful progressive advocates on issues regarding immigration reform, expansion of healthcare and improving public education.

While I am proud of my advocacy for immigrants, in particular my fight to allow the undocumented to obtain driver’s licenses, my work extends far beyond that.  As a product of the labor movement, I have worked tirelessly to elevate the stature of the labor movement and understand firsthand the importance of the right to organize.  As a member of the Legislature, I successfully passed a bill to require local governments to recognize unions based on card-check.  I also successfully passed legislation to stop contractors from using state taxpayer money to bust unions, and I proudly signed a pledge to support the Employee Free Choice Act.  In fact three bills that I successfully passed in the California Legislature were executive orders by President Obama in the early days of his Presidency.

I was an early supporter of President Obama because of his ability to energize people and inspire hope in the political process through the power of community organizing.  I am proud to have a tremendous groundswell of grass roots support for my campaign.  It will be an honor to take up this fight for the people of California’s 32th Congressional District and join President Obama in bringing about real change in Washington, D.C.  

I would be proud to have your support.  As a former community organizer, I understand first hand that campaigns are won on the ground, with support from thousands of committed volunteers.  If you have the time over the next 30 days, please click here to visit www.gilcedillo.com to volunteer or make a contribution to my campaign.  

The Special Primary Election is on May 19th and I would greatly appreciate your support.  

APA’s for Progress was invited yesterday to be on a conference call with Judy Chu, who is running for the seat that Hilda Solis vacated when she was appointed to be Secretary of Labor. Thanks Todd for arranging the call.

After introductions, Dr. Chu, who is currently Vice Chair of the California Board of Equalization, shared the story about why she decided to run for the position, her political journey, and reasons that she believes will lead to victory for the Judy Chu for Congress campaign. Aftewards, the bloggers and Dr. Chu engaged in a Q&A.

It was clear throughout the call that the campaign is highlighting the fact that she actually lives in the 32nd District, while her primary opponent (Senator Gil Cedillo) does not reside within the boundaries of the District.  After recalling the morning of December 18, when she first heard about Solis’ nomination, Dr. Chu recalls her reaction. “I was thrilled because [Secretary Solis] is a good friend… and it occured to me that this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s a chance to help President Obama change America, and someone needs to carry on [Secretary Solis’] legacy.”  Her political journey started when she won a seat on the local school board, and she joined a coalition that fought against an English-only movement in the San Gabriel Valley. She was then elected to City Council, followed by the State Assembly, where she fought for consumer rights, immigrant rights, support for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, and against hate crimes.  In discussing why she believes she’ll win on May 19, she pointed to her “deep roots in the District.” She has been elected nine times by the voters in the District, and has significant endorsements including ones from Los Angeles Mayor Villaragosa, legendary labor activist Dolores Huerta, and local unions, which she believes represent the “voices from the District.”  Other endorsements she has received include ones from the California Democratic Party and the California Teachers Association.

For my first question (I know this is a pretty soft toss of a question), I asked her what she felt were the 3 most important issues facing AAPI communities today on a federal level.  She named the “glass ceiling,” hate crimes, and language access as the most pressing issues, and cited her extensive record in working on these issues.  While it was refreshing to hear a politician not stutter when answering this question, I was disappointed that she didn’t mention immigration reform, which is a critical issue that often gets overlooked for AAPI’s since it’s generally seen as a “Latino issue.” Glass ceiling in employment and hate crimes, although they’re really important and need attention, they’re largely (I think) more middle class concerns.  I hope that Dr. Chu will choose to hold forums with CBO/community leaders and social science researchers to identify key issues facing various communities.

One of the MOMocrats followed my question by asking about Dr. Chu’s opinion on Betty Brown’s remarks and the bill in Texas on voter identification, which could potentially create a barrier to voter participation. Dr Chu responded by saying,

We have to be careful of voter ID’s. it’s been a way to prevent people of color from exercising full voter rights. We must look at such measures carefully and especially their attempts to suppress voter participation. I think that this is something that voters of color must rally around, and must, at this point, protest unless there is some proposal that makes sense. I don’t think at this point we should have such a thing. I think the Betty Brown situation is very disturbing and insulting for her to say that people should deny their heritage to participate in the electoral process. Plus, she didn’t really apologize. She had a Republican friend say that she apologized, but she never actually apologized. We also need more pressure for her to actually apologize.

WORD, Judy, WORD! Hear that down there in Texas? Pick up those bullhorns and take it to the streets!

One of the other bloggers (sorry, the dude asking the question didn’t identify himself. please let me know who you were so i can give credit where credit’s due. might have been Todd.) shared his concern that the Democratic Congress would simply be a “rubber stamp” that doesn’t challenge President Obama’s decisions. He asked what Dr. Chu thought about the torture memos, CIA, and Judge Bybee, and what she thought Congress could do. Dr. Chu’s simple answer was,

When I read the memos, I was horrified. I couldn’t believe that could take place… well, I guess I could believe it given who was President the last 8 years. It was horrifying. America is better than this, than having unlimited human rights violations. One measure that makes sense is impeaching Judge Bybee, who authorized torture. It’s inappropriate to have him in the Court of Appeals. He should be held responsible for these violations.

Finally, I had to ask about the massive bank bailouts and the fact that there’s been hardly any attention paid to student loans and education access. Fact is that some populations are less willing to take out loans and as tuition keeps going up, loans and huge debt can’t be the answer to education access. I definitely appreciated Dr. Chu’s response, and really her on point knowledge about this issue:

We need to address the barriers that students encounter in education. College is becoming less and less affordable. Tuition has increased 54% in the last decade. I think we need to cut the interest rates on student loans. I know there’s a proposal to cut it by half. We also need to increase Pell grant amounts. Pell grants have been great way to support students in obtaining higher education. We need to also give undergrad students who agree to teach in our schools tuition assistance.  It would also increase the quality of people who teach by encouraging top performing students into the teaching profession. I also think there needs to be loan forgiveness for 10 years of working in public interest/service careers.

That’s right… investing in our future! Way to go Judy Chu!

[updated to include Cedillo’s endorsements by LIUNA and UFW per David Dayen’s comment below.]

Man, I just can’t get enough of this CA-32 race.  You’ve got two Democratic heavyweights duking it out for a federal position that offers job security with no term limits.  Plus a bright, charismatic former Obama transition official who I think is younger than I am and not inclined to wait his turn.

It’s fascinating to me!  And that was before my neighborhood got dragged into this.

See, Judy Chu has been racking up her fair share of endorsements–most notably the unanimous CDP endorsement, as well as the recent announcements of an endorsement by Antonio Villaraigosa and, most recently, an email sent on Judy’s behalf by Emily’s LIST (really, no surprise there).  Cedillo, meanwhile, has gotten a few notables of his own, most recently LIUNA and UFW, as well as a nearly unanimous endorsement by the Los Angeles County Young Democrats (n.b. I am the Political Director of the aforementioned LACYD).  Well, Senator Cedillo’s team has decided to take that endorsement by Mayor Villaraigosa and turn that around on its head, using Measure R, a sales tax increase that was passed by Los Angeles County voters with a 2/3rds majority.

Now, for our NorCal friends who aren’t aware of this issue, Measure R was a somewhat controversial and complicated measure that was put before the voters of California in November.  It became somewhat of a big deal because the flagship project of Measure R, which was allowed to be placed on the county ballot by AB1213, sponsored by Mike Feuer (AD-42), was an extension to the sea of the Purple line subway along Wilshire Blvd., which is an expensive but sorely needed project in the mid-city, Century City, and, yes, the infamous Westside (I live half a block from the next stop in line to be built, and it means I could get downtown in 15 minutes, rather than 15 hours).

Well, that fact spurred outraged cries of racism and bias toward the County elite on the wealthy Westside, because more money was being spent per capita in that region than in the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley or South L.A. (for some reason, population size, rather than availability of existing infrastructure or daily commuter population, were the only valid metrics).  And these communities were quite upset with Villaraigosa for being such an ardent supporter of AB1213 and Measure R, before a series of renegotiations about local reinvestment and a whole bunch of other issues.

With that background in mind, here is Cedillo’s camp responding to Villaraigosa’s endorsement of Chu:

“Voters, not endorsements, are going to decide the winner of California’s 32nd Congressional district.  And voters in this district know and respect Gil Cedillo’s record.

Los Angeles politicians like Antonio Villaraigosa actively tried to deny San Gabriel Valley residents their fair share of money from Proposition R – the transportation sales tax – to reduce traffic along the 10, 60 and 605 Freeways so they could build a subway on the Westside of L.A.

It was Gil Cedillo, Supervisor Gloria Molina and Senator Gloria Romero who stood up to Villaraigosa and the other L.A. politicians and said there would be no Proposition R unless the San Gabriel Valley got its fair share of the proceeds.  The efforts of Senator Cedillo and his allies were successful and thanks to them, there are 1.8 billion dollars allocated to local transportation projects that benefit San Gabriel Valley families.

Gil Cedillo is a proven leader who has taken on those big money special interests for years to help workers get better wages and benefits.  He took care of the people of the San Gabriel Valley when Antonio Villaraigosa and the L.A. powerbrokers wanted to take their tax dollars and literally send it down a hole under Wilshire Boulevard.

By standing beside Antonio Villaraigosa today, Judy Chu has shown that she will cozy up to the entrenched political interests, the C-E-Os and wealthy campaign contributors and take care of their interests in Congress instead of putting the hard working families of the San Gabriel Valley first.”

Fine.  I’m sure that message will play really well in the district.  And it’s a great release.  Hard-hitting.  Just the way I like it.  Except for the way it portrays…well…my neighborhood.

Honestly, I’m not a CEO and I, as well as everyone else who would use a subway extensively in this area, do my best to pay my rent every month.  I seriously think they could have played to the interests of the district while playing down the divisiveness just a tad.  That’s my hole down Wilshire Boulevard, thank you very much.

Since it referenced me, let me start by shouting out to fellow Calitician Lucas O’Connor, writing on the front page of MyDD:

Since approximately the morning after election day in November, Dave Dayen has been writing over at Calitics about the dramatic Congressional pick-up opportunities in California that were missed in the Obama wave. Specifically, Obama carried 42 of California’s 53 districts (I won’t even begin right now to get into the state leg breakdown which is also a debacle), including eight districts held by Republicans in Congress. Well all of a sudden this week, the whole world is waking up to the Dayen gospel.

Attention started building about two weeks ago when the DCCC announced it would target all eight of these Obama-Republican California districts. But an announcement of DCCC targeting hasn’t always meant a lot, so to really get going it took a new report from California Target Book finding in part:

Not only is the current statewide Republican registration of 31% a historic low, but for the first time there is not a single congressional, state senate or assembly district that has a majority Republican registration.

Apparently Bob Mulholland sent out a press release waking up to these facts last week.  Now, I’m not going to hate on Mulholland for finally getting with the program.  But let’s make ourselves clear – this was true in 2006 and 2008 as well, and yet the state party failed to capitalize, by their own admission.  So it’s going to take more than one press release to show a commitment.  Republicans have obviously become repellent to the broad majority of Californians, and they’re too busy trying to recall each other to notice.  It’s upsetting that we haven’t used this unpopularity in the past two election cycles, and I hope that the CDP can catch up with the curve.

They can start with effective recruitment.  John Garamendi, who spoke to Greg Lucas as if he’s still a gubernatorial candidate but who by all accounts will be running for Congress, ought to be pushed to run in the 3rd District, where he is the largest landowner and where there is currently no viable candidate to beat Dan Lungren in a district that is trending Democratic, instead of the 10th, where there are multiple viable candidates.  Recruitment is an often-unremarked-upon but crucial element to winning elections.

Speaking of which…

• CA-04: This CapAlert piece certainly makes it sound like Charlie Brown might challenge Tom McClintock once again.

At the Jefferson-Jackson dinner at the Blue Goose Fruit Shed in Loomis, Brown and his wife, Jan, were honored as photographs flashed of Brown and supporters during four years of campaigning. The production was accompanied by songs from Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender” to Neil Young’s “Long May You Run.”

And then Brown stirred huge cheers when he hinted he might have the stamina for one more try for Congress in 2010.

“We’ll see what happens over the next few months – and whether you’ll have the opportunity to get into any pictures again,” Brown said.

In an interview, Brown said he is still mulling his prospects. He said he expects to decide by this fall.

We’re big fans of Charlie here at Calitics, and should he run again we’ll stand with him.  McClintock would have the power of incumbency and a red-leaning district but the rumblings I’m hearing out of there signal that residents and local pols aren’t all that enthused by the new Congressman’s performance.

• CA-32: The LA Times weighs in with an overview of the 32nd race to replace Labor Secretary Hilda Solis set for May 19.  They list Judy Chu and Gil Cedillo as the front-runners (though Emanuel Pleitez is profiled) and suggest that the race is a harbinger of the changing, minority-majority face of Southern California politics.  They also mention the Betty Tom Chu controversy, as well as some allegations on the Cedillo side.

Judy Chu supporters suspect that Republican Betty Tom Chu, a Monterey Park councilwoman and a political opponent of Judy Chu, entered the race to confuse voters and harm the chances of her distant relative by marriage. Tom Chu said last week she did not have time to discuss her candidacy, but earlier told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that she is running because she could not support any of the other candidates and wanted to offer voters an alternative.

Apparently motivated by concerns that the large number of Latino candidates in the race would split the vote in that group and give Judy Chu the edge, there also were signs of jockeying.

Democratic candidate Francisco Alonso, a former mayor of Monterey Park, and a campaign official for Democratic actor/filmmaker Stefan “Contreras” Lysenko each said Cedillo called them shortly before filing closed and urged them to drop out. A Cedillo spokesman said the state senator was merely inviting the others to “work together” with him and did not intend to discourage them from running.

Over the weekend, Cedillo won the endorsement of the LA County Young Democrats, while Chu garnered the endorsement of the state Democratic Party.

Following up on the post I just made about the CA-32 fundraising race, it seemed like Judy Chu saved the best for last:

The breadth and strength of Judy Chu’s campaign for Congress was demonstrated again today as candidates reported their first fundraising numbers for this May 19 special election.

In the first three months of 2009, Judy Chu collected an impressive $770,167, over $200,000 more than her nearest rival, State Senator Gil Cedillo.

Judy Chu, Vice-Chair of the California State Board of Equalization, reported a strong $577,609 cash-on-hand figure at the end of the period.

Chu’s consultant, Parke Skelton, stated, “Judy Chu is well on the way towards surpassing $1 million for this race.  Her fundraising reflects the enthusiastic and broad support she has attracted from throughout the 32nd District.  Just over 83% of her contributions have come from individuals, not PACS.  An impressive 1,567 individuals contributed to Dr. Chu’s campaign in this filing period.”

We’ll see how much of a difference that amount of money makes in a low-turnout special.  But those numbers were as of the end of the quarter, with over a month and a half to go in this election.  It’s entirely possible that we’ll have two million-dollar candidates in this race.