After the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, with its codification of imprisonment without charge or trial, I could no longer register voters for the Democratic Party – even with the hope of involving new registrants in the California Democratic Party’s popular Progressive Caucus.  If I could not ask someone to join the Democratic Party, I could not in good conscience stay in the party, even as an insurgent writing resolutions and platform planks to end our wars for oil.  

Unfortunately, too many corporate Democrats, beholden to big-money donors or to a jobs sector dependent on militarism, vote for perpetual war and the surveillance state, replete with secret wiretaps, black hole prisons, and targeted assassinations. Far too many who are fearful or bought by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee vote for legislation that relegates Palestinians to second-class citizenship and threatens to take our country to the brink of an unthinkable war on Iran.

President Obama, despite his eloquence and initial popularity, has continued, and in some cases, expanded Republican Party policies under George Bush by escalating drone attacks on Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia; hiring deregulators from predatory banks to craft economic policy; repeatedly putting Social Security cuts on the table; lifting a 20-year moratorium on new nuclear power plants; signing NDAA legislation that eviscerates due process; increasing U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests of undocumented workers.

As the US empire crashes on the shores of rapacious greed, as power shifts from the federal to the local level, the Green Party can play a crucial role in creating and promoting local economies, worker or consumer-owned cooperatives, model municipal policy and participatory democracy.  The time is ripe for municipal federalism with its emphasis on cities sharing expertise, policies, and strategies for community building in a sustainable world.

I want to be part of that movement to create a post-empire future that rejects perpetual war, addictive consumerism and vulture capitalism to embrace a life-affirming vision of sustainability with measurable goals for energy, water and food independence.

As more people struggle financially and the cost of energy and optional travel increases, Americans will stay closer to home to invest and recreate more intensely in their communities and neighborhoods.   Our challenge in the age of withering empire is to set a new economic course that helps us invest our resources in ourselves, rather than multinational companies that extract our wealth and labor for the 1%.  

While running Greens for federal office may help to register new Greens, to attract young people to the Party, the Greens’ resources – economic and grassroots – are best used at the local level where the Party has experienced the most success in the United States.

In 2011, 8 out of 12 California Green Party members running for local office got elected.

In Richmond, California, the working class city’s Green Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, representing more than 100,000 residents, took on Chevron, resulting in a 115-million dollar pollution settlement, enacted a waiver on residential solar power fee installation; and spearheaded one of the nation’s toughest anti-foreclosure ordinances that exacts a $1,000 a day fine on banks who fail to maintain foreclosed property. McLaughlin was one of several Green Mayors to publicly oppose the dirty tar sands project, signing on to a letter to President Obama urging him to reject, as he recently announced, the XL pipeline that would carry the dirtiest crude from Canada across the United States to the Gulf of Mexico.

In the city of Fairfax in Marin County, Green Mayor Pam  Hartwell-Herrero and a majority Green city council has banned intrusive Smart Meters, and authored successful ballot initiatives to ban plastic bags and the cultivation of genetically modified organisms. Fairfax is the third California city to have a Green majority on its town council, joining Sebastopol in Sonoma County from 2000 to 2008 and Arcata in Humboldt County, which had the world’s first Green majority on any legislative body between 1996 and 1998 and then again from 2000 to 2002.

While water board races are not often high-profile races, water board seats may be the front line defense against corporate privatization of our increasingly-scarce water supply. Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, President of the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, understands this. The youngest Green elected to local office,  Soppoci-Belknap is working to stop the sale of the county’s watershed to keep water in the public domain.

In Los Angeles, LA Community College District (LACCD) trustee Nancy Pearlman, elected first as a  Green before becoming a Democrat (something that happens too often to avoid Democratic Party rival candidates), advocated for tough sustainability standards which resulted  in the LACCD becoming the first community college district in the nation to adopt a LEED environmental building certification standards.  Under Pearlman’s Green leadership, all nine LA community colleges developed green jobs training programs.

Nationally, Greens are leading the “Move to Amend” effort calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish “Corporate Personhood,” or as former Green Presidential candidate David Cobb describes, “the legal doctrine that allows corporations to overturn democratically enacted laws seeking to protect citizens from corporate harm and abuse.”  Cobb is now the National Projects Director for Democracy Unlimited, a coalition of Greens, Progressive Democrats, libertarians, and Declined-to-States organizing forums and rallies to challenge unlimited independent political expenditures by corporations.

Greens are also spearheading efforts to pass city ordinances embracing a Sustainability Bill of Rights, which would set measurable goals for energy independence, local food production, and clean air, land, and water. While Pittsburgh became the first city in the nation to pass a law protecting the rights of nature against corporate exploitation, Santa Monica could be next in line, thanks to the work of a coalition called Santa Monica Neighbors Unite! led by urban gardener Cris Gutierrez and Green Party urban forest advocate Linda Piera-Avila. Greens in the city of Santa Monica, which previously elected one of the first Green mayors – Michael Feinstein, a co-founder of the Green Party in the U.S. – are in the forefront of this effort to pass a Sustainability Bill of Rights ordinance that would recognize “the fundament rights of natural communities and ecosystems to exist, thrive, and evolve” – and set a goal of 100% local water use by 2020.

Throughout the US, Greens and allies are at the fulcrum of the occupy movement, defending homeowners facing foreclosure, practicing participatory democracy in the street, and successfully altering the national discourse from deficits and taxes to wealth inequality and privilege. In Oakland, Green Samsarah Morgan helped start the Children’s Village at Occupy Oakland, where children can play and protest peacefully. Former LA County Council Co-Chair of the Green Party Rachel Brunkhe mobilizes marches on Bank of America in San Pedro, home to the largest port in the country; former Green assembly candidate Peter Thottam organizes thousands at Occupy the Rose Parade, where Wells Fargo, one of the most notorious banks for robo-siging illegal foreclosures, was one of the parade’s chief sponsors; Al Shantz, Green Vice President of Napa Valley College’s Student Senate, launches Occupy rallies downtown and on the Napa Valley College campus; Harrison Wills, a Green President of the Santa Monica College Associated Student Body tells an Occupy crowd at his campus, “There’s socialism for corporations and capitalism for the rest of us.”

Rather than running candidates for every state and federal office, Greens can invest their energy in campaigning for local non-partisan offices, in electing Greens to neighborhood councils  and city councils; union leadership positions, pension and credit union boards, associated student bodies – and to movement-building and media messaging that injects and accentuates a Green anti-consumerist pro-sustainability vision into the economic discourse.

Power to the cities!

Though our emphasis should be local, our scope global as we solidify relationships with Green Party members across the world.  Let us hold the Greens from Europe to Africa close to our hearts as we reject nationalism – its attendant racism, xenophobia, and scapegoating – and embrace global citizenry  and planetary-caretaking.

Let us look to the German Green Party, the first to enjoy national prominence and the catalyst behind Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022.  Encouraged by the German Greens, we must challenge billions in U.S. federal subsidies for new nuclear power plants and demand plant closures from California to New York.  With a void in leadership in the U.S. anti-nuclear movement, the Green Party can play a key role in re-invoking the moratorium lifted under the Obama administration.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greens have launched a Green New Deal (GND) aimed at “reducing inequalities within and between societies, and reconciling our lifestyles – the way we live, produce and consume – with the physical limits of our planet” through progressive taxation, tax incentives for green initiatives, and new economic indicators beyond the Gross Domestic Product. For example, in Vienna, Austria, a GND initiative built “bike city” – a housing project that includes bike rental and maintenance, a compressed air station, 300 bicycle parking spaces, and extra large elevators for bike transport.

Let us build a new American landscape of bike cities, urban gardens, municipal credit unions, barter economies, and city-owned utilities with Greens organizing a new power-sharing worker-member-owner paradigm a la the Mondragon Cooperatives Cooperation in northern Spain. Based in Basque region, the Mondragon is a federation of worker cooperatives employing 84,000 people in four critical sectors: finance; industry; retail; knowledge.

Electorally, I envision a fusion approach – whereby Greens support progressive Democrats, just as Los Angeles Green Party members recommended my candidacy when I challenged war profiteer Jane Harman for Congress, and just as Green Party activists in northern California support PDA’s Norman Solmon to fill retiring Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s seat.  Endorsing progressive Democrats  – a la Congress Members Kucinich, Lee, Grijalva – on the national level – and Assemblyman Bill Monning and Senator Fran Pavley on the California state legislative level – makes sense until the Green Party is ready and able to successfully elect statewide and federal candidates of its own, either because the Party has exponentially multiplied its current voter registration, estimated at 300,000 in the nation; 110,000 in California, or because enough cities like Oakland, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Portland have instituted instant run-off or ranked-choice voting to increase the likelihood that voters will not simply cast their ballots for pre-ordained winners or lessers-of-evil but instead choose a candidate who truly represents their vision of peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability.  

Ranked choice voting must be a strategic priority for the Green Party in the U.S., with Greens in every leadership position – be it a partisan office or a non-partisan environmental organization – introducing ranked-choice voting into their respective organization. Strategically, Greens might organize a coalition of third parties – Greens, Peace and Freedom, Libertarians, and the well-funded centrist Americans Elect – to institute proportional representation through state ballot initiatives for ranked choice voting.  Such initiatives would appeal to voters who want to save budget-starved states, counties or cities millions of dollars wasted on run-off elections.

In the meantime, until widespread adoption of ranked choice voting, the Green Party might leverage its power by becoming a fusion party, regardless of state laws like the one in California that prohibit candidates from becoming the nominee of more than one party.  On the grassroots level, endorsing Democratic Party candidates active in Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) would address the “spoiler” charge and position Greens as a swing voting constituency, much as a swing state can decide a Presidential election. Let the Greens be wooed; let every candidate running for city, state, or federal office feel compelled to address the priorities of the Green Party, and let our party learn the lessons of the Swedes and Norwegians who successfully challenged the 1% by building strong coalition governments and coalition movements behind those coalition governments.

While it’s true that California Democratic Party delegates can be stripped of their delegate status for endorsing Greens in elections, there is nothing stopping non-delegates active in PDA from participating in a blue-green coalition that endorses and works to elect local Greens. In fact, that should be the call to action, watering the Green seeds for the next generation.

In LA County, where there are 23,000 registered Greens, and over 900,000 Declined to States, the Party will participate in an aggressive voter registration campaign before the November 2012 election when a Green Party Presidential candidate, perhaps  pioneering environmental health advocate Dr. Jill Stein,  will likely enjoy ballot status in at least 17 states, including the largest state, California, with its 55 electoral votes, and swing states Ohio, Florida and Colorado. Other Green Party ballot access states or districts include Arkansas, Arizona, DC, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. Though Green Party strengths lies in bottom-up organizing, running a Presidential candidate can provide a strategic stage for the left to critique and challenge the status quo, while attracting “millennials” or younger voters to a party platform that refuses all corporate contributions, supports single-payer health care, advocates zero-waste, calls for a tax on the rich, and opposes not only pre-emptive wars for empire, but weapons sales to other countries.

With strategic planning and a shift in focus, those newly registered Greens can rock the world of monopoly capitalism with a sturdy footing in city soil and municipal radicalism.

I will proudly stand with them.

## ##

Marcy Winograd, a former congressional peace candidate, mobilized 41% of the Democratic Party primary vote in her challenge to war profiteer Jane Harman.  Presently, Winograd serves as as a board member of the Ocean Park Association in Santa Monica and is a member of Santa Monica Greens.Winograd, a public school English and history teacher, helped organize OccupyLAUSD to protest education cuts in the Los Angeles Unified School District.



Email Marcy at [email protected]

Follow Marcy on twitter: marcywinograd

Friend Marcy on fb: Marcy Winograd II

The countdown has begun before tomorrow's election to replace Congresswoman Jane Harman. If you've been paying close attention to the race, the media is making it sound like the election is going to be a nail biter with a photo finish, which isn't surprising because they love a good horse race. But that assessment seems rather dubious.

Without a doubt, the race is certainly closer than it should be. With an 18 point Democratic registration advantage, Janice Hahn should be walking away with this, but the polls aren't exactly reflecting that. The latest PPP poll only has Hahn up by 8 points. That's certainly lower than it should be considering the registration of that district, but it's also a far cry from being neck and neck. Any other race and 8 points isn't even close. One has to wonder if it weren't for the fact that it fits better with the media meme of an enthusiam gap between the Democrats and Republicans, if this race would really get that much coverage at all. 

Now, nobody's going to write off Huey. It's certainly true that stranger things can and have happened. Nobody thought Huey would make it into the run-off. Huey has spent a good $800,000 of his own money on this race. Huey signs are everywhere in the district. Special elections tend to help Republicans because Democrats tend to vote less frequently in them. And then there's the fabled "enthusiasm gap." But still. It will be quite difficult for Huey to pull it off tomorrow, especially if voters turnout at least at the levels that they did in the primary. It's a sheer numbers game. Progressives were split between Hahn, Bowen, and Winograd in the primary, but they know who the better candidate is between Hahn and Huey -and that's Janice Hahn.

The California League of Conservation Voters endorsed Hahn because of her dedication to protecting our natural resources and public health. She also has a bold plan for clean energy jobs to get California's economy back on track. Huey for his part called Hahn's proposal for green jobs "fantasy economics." Tell that to Silicon Valley.

Despite the enormous progress made by the Environmental Protection Agency in cleaning up our air and our water and protecting public health, Huey told reporters that “EPA policies are out of control and must be cut back and funding slashed.” He doesn't get it.

As always, turnout will ultimately decide this election, and CLCV is working hard to turnout our members in the district. If you live in Congressional District 36, be sure to go out and vote for Janice Hahn tomorrow. With your vote, Janice Hahn will be the next Congresswoman from CD 36 and continue to be a strong voice for the environment.

/(crossposted from Daily Kos)/

I received this in my e-mail today and present it as a public service:

Friends,

I have great news! Over the weekend, Governor Jerry Brown, Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Congressional Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the California Democratic Party and a host of other Democratic Leaders have thrown their support behind my campaign for Congress. These great leaders share my commitment to ending the wars overseas, investing in our communities at home and creating sustainable, green jobs. They know what it will take to get it done, and they know I’m the right person to represent this district.

(continued after the jump)

The primary campaign that ended last week was difficult – its always tough when fellow Democrats talk about what sets them apart. But now that we’re facing an extremist, Tea Party Republican in the general election we simply must bring all the members of our party together.

Will you help us unify the Party? There is too much at stake in this election to let even one Democrat sit out the election in July. If you can give $50, $75 or even $100, we can reach all those who voted in the primary, and make sure they’re with us on general election day.

Our Republican opponent does not share our vision for the future, and he doesn’t represent the people in our communities.We need your help to make sure your friends and neighbors know how much this election means, and come out on election day. A small contribution goes a long way!

Thanks,

Janice

Janice Hahn supporters, I think that this was intended for you rather than me.  I presume that, in CA-36 and given the institutional support that she received, Hahn should be able to beat teabagger Craig Huey without lots of small-donor contributions.  (If not, then nominating her was not so bright a move.)  So this fundraising effort seems more likely to pay off past debts to the advisors who encouraged her to come up with an “unqualified support for Israel” pledge — as if that was the major issue we face today — to give Debra Bowen the choice between (1) pissing off major funders who, if such a pledge existed, would expect to see it signed and (2) Marcy Winograd, who if Bowen signed the pledge would get into the race and split the progressive vote.  For those of us who thought that using the sensitivities of the Jewish community to bait such a trap for her own political gain was pretty rotten, I see no particular point in helping her retire any such debt.  Frankly, it just encourages this sort of misbehavior.

I do hope that Hahn beats the Teabagger in the runoff, but I resent now being asked to pay for it in the name of “party unity.”  Frankly, if you want party unity after the election, don’t pull that sort of crap before the election.  If you do, you should expect to pay for the runoff by yourself.  There are other races — including those recalls in Wisconsin — that also need progressive money.  If Hahn is hurting, Jane Harman might be able to get some friends together and write her some checks.

If this letter had come from someone else, on Hahn behalf, it would not rankle in quite the same way.  It’s telling that it didn’t.

What you’re about to read won’t be an exercise in sour grapes.

The candidate I supported, Debra Bowen, lost fair and square to a better-funded candidate with far more institutional support and a well thought-out strategic path to victory.  

Janice Hahn is unequivocally our best choice now to represent us in CA-36.  

Her competitor, Tea Party Republican Craig Huey, is a nasty piece of work. Fortunately for us, Janice Hahn and our union allies have the resources to make sure he won’t get elected in 2011.  

However, 2012, after CA-36 is redistricted, might be a different story altogether.  That’s why I’m writing this final piece on the election.

To better understand what might happen in 2012, I first need to tell you how we got here, and how Janice Hahn’s strategic choices, coupled with Marcy Winograd’s ego, may have created a perfect storm in which to bring a previously unknown Tea Party candidate to national prominence.

Splitting the Vote

Back in February, when Bowen announced she’d compete with Hahn to replace Jane Harman as our congress member, Hahn’s number one priority was to get Marcy Winograd in the race. Not only did Winograd have significant name recognition after running two unsuccessful campaigns against Jane Harman, her base of support drew from the same pool of voters Bowen would need to win – progressives who lived north of LAX.

So Hahn’s campaign used a story that appeared in the Jewish Journal, “Harman’s departure: what does it mean for Jews?” to manufactured a narrative of concern for the district’s Jewish community about Jane Harman’s potential replacement in congress.  I say manufactured, because the article itself expressed no such concerns, concluding,  

Harman’s departure may mean one less Jewish player in the game, but the impact of that loss on Jewish influence will likely be negligible. While the landscape for Jewish politics in the next two years includes fewer safe districts for Jewish elected officials, the community can be assured of holding sway on numerous fronts as its high level of civic involvement continues to stand out in the city and region.

But that hardly mattered to Hahn, who just needed an excuse to create a wedge between Winograd and Bowen.  

Using the article as a launching pad, Hahn’s campaign demanded that Debra Bowen sign on to a pro-Israel “pledge” genetically designed to ram a red-hot poker through Winograd’s eye. The pledge called out Winograd by name, sited some of her harshest rhetoric against Israel, and concluded with this quote from Henry Waxman,  

“In Marcy Winograd’s foreign policy, Israel would cease to exist. In Marcy Winograd’s vision, Jews would be at the mercy of those who do not respect democracy or human rights.”

At that moment Bowen had a choice to make; ignore Hahn, (and risk creating an issue with the district’s Jewish community) create her own statement of support for Israel minus the Winograd-bait, or sign on to Hahn’s pledge.

Bowen chose to sign on to Hahn’s pledge. And walked right into the buzzsaw that is Marcy Winograd’s ego.  

Two days later, Winograd, who had previously told key supporters she wouldn’t run, told those same supporters she was furious that Hahn and Bowen had tried to “silence dissent in the 36th district”, and asked them to withhold endorsements from Bowen.  Four days after that, Winograd announced she would run, specifically citing the Hahn/Bowen pledge as the reason.  

Let Loose The Dogs Of War

Hahn’s strategy worked better than she could have hoped. Despite no institutional support, anemic fundraising, and polls showing she’d be lucky to get even 6% of the vote, Winograd nevertheless ran the most aggressive campaign she could given the circumstances. Even better, Winograd and her supporters barely mentioned Hahn, but attacked Debra Bowen, Winograd’s closest competitor, relentlessly.  

One “passionate” and prolific Winograd surrogate wrote scathing posts on progressive listserves and blogs questioning Bowen’s progressive credentials, others accused her of being a closet Republican and (bizarrely) a Jane Harman clone. A paid Winograd campaign staffer, Peter Thottam, wrote a widely distributed and unsourced hit piece on Bowen, accusing her of trading votes in exchange for Enron campaign contributions  while she served in the State Senate.

In effect, Winograd’s campaign became the opposition research farm-team for Hahn, who used their attacks in her own campaign, even using Thottam’s hit piece verbatim in one of her attack mailers against Bowen.  

Republicans? What Republicans?

While Hahn, Bowen, and Winograd duked it out on the Democratic side, a previously unknown evangelical millionaire named Craig Huey from Rollings Hills Estates was quietly consolidating the Republican vote.  

Huey, who made his fortune in direct marketing, poured half a million dollars of his own money into the campaign, giving him more resources than any other candidate in the race.  

The money allowed him to blanket the district with more than just lawn signs – with it he bought cable TV and radio time,  and ran a targeted mailing campaign which rivaled Janice Hahn’s.

Backed by prominent Republicans Dana Rohrabacher, Tom McClintock, and former Assemblyman Chuck Devore, in the final few weeks leading up to election day Huey simply overwhelmed the anemic and underfunded campaigns of his closest Republican competitors, Mike Gin, the gay, moderate, pro-choice mayor of Redondo Beach, and Redondo Beach City Attorney Mike Webb.  

Yet right up until election day, the media largely ignored Huey – even as they fell all over themselves to cover stunt candidate Dan Adler, who’s entire campaign consisted of a series of bizarre YouTube videos staring himself and campaign manager/actor Sean Astin (Adler got a grand total of 355 votes)

But not everyone was ignoring Craig Huey. In fact, Janice Hahn and her campaign were paying very close intention.

The Best Opponent Money Can Buy

A couple of weeks before election day, Hahn’s campaign reportedly ran a tracking poll which showed Huey surging in the polls and consolidating Republican support.

However, Bowen’s aggressive, state-of-the-art field campaign (1,100 volunteers, 350,000 phone calls, 15,000 doors canvassed) still kept Bowen solidly in second place and Huey out of the runoff.

So Hahn, who believed Huey would be a far easier candidate to beat in the runoff than Bowen, chose her moment.

Five days before election day, Hahn invested heavily in a multi-pronged direct mail attack. A series of negative campaign pieces targeting Bowen arrived in voter’s mailboxes – one mailer appeared to support Winograd’s campaign, another hit Bowen for old campaign contributions, and yet another used attacks from the Winograd campaign staffer who accused Bowen of selling her votes to Enron.

In part, that mailer read, “Some people went to jail for this. Debra Bowen wants to go to Washington.”  

The tone and deceptive nature of the mailers stunned Bowen and Hahn supporters alike. Bill Brand, a Redondo Beach City Councilman who endorsed Hahn in the race, told supporters in a GOTV email he “wasn’t happy with the last minute negative pieces.”  With a runoff still to come, many activists in the district were dismayed Hahn had gone so negative so early against the well-liked Secretary of State.  

But Hahn’s strategy worked. Bowen’s support lagged in the final few days, even as Huey’s surged. In the end, Huey beat Bowen by 750 votes in an election where only 18% of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot.

Hahn was clearly happy with the result, telling the Daily Breeze,  

“I would rather run against him than Debra Bowen. I think the choice for voters is more clear.”

Winograd, who had received 41% of the vote when she ran against Jane Harman in 2010, barely received 9% of the vote this time around.  

Ironically, it was more than enough to ensure that Janice Hahn, who claimed to be Jane Harman’s hand-picked successor would be the district’s next representative in Congress.

Be Careful For What You Wish For

Without a doubt, Janice Hahn will be our next Congresswoman in CA-36.  

But that victory has, and will, come at a price.  

Nearly a week after defeating Bowen in a bitterly contested race, Hahn has shown little interest in mending fences with her activist supporters. Bowen herself declined to endorse Hahn, citing a long-standing policy as Secretary of State. So I don’t see this rift healing any time soon. To be frank, it really doesn’t have to, the specter of a Tea Party Republican taking the seat is motivation enough for most people. And as I said at the beginning of this piece, Hahn has more than enough resources and institutional support to beat back a challenge from Craig Huey regardless (although unions will have to commit resources to defend this seat in a way they wouldn’t have had to if pro-union Debra Bowen had been in the runoff).

But Hahn’s margin of victory probably won’t be a landslide. In 2010, Assemblywoman Betsy Butler – whose district covers most of CA-36 – had an uncomfortably close call with Tea Party candidate Nathan Mintz. In a district that has 18% more registered Democrats than Republicans, Mintz took 43% of the vote.  

In that race, over a 100,000 voters cast a ballot. The May 17th special election had only about half that turnout, and the runoff in July will likely be even worse. So barring any unforeseen scandals involving farm animals, Craig Huey has a good chance of building on Mintz’s success. Not enough to win certainly, but enough to get everyone’s attention.

But the real problem isn’t this year and this election. It’s next year, when CA-36 becomes significantly different, and potentially much more conservative, after redistricting.  

From what I’ve heard and read, CA-36 is probably going to lose everything north of  LAX, and potentially gain back Palos Verdes. Palos Verdes, connected to an Orange County district by a block-wide strip in Long Beach and a narrow strip of San Pedro, is profoundly gerrymandered. Those Republicans have to go somewhere.

If this happens, it would significantly cut into Democrat’s voter registration advantage, and create a district that more closely resembles the one in which Janice Hahn previously ran for congress in 1998.  

Hahn lost that race, to Republican Steve Kuykendall, 47% to 49%.

Janice Hahn got the opponent she wanted. But by helping to advance Huey into the runoff, Hahn has elevated him from an unknown evangelical advertising consultant to a national figure in the Tea Party movement. The media isn’t ignoring Craig Huey anymore. He has two months to build up his name recognition and base of support. And when he loses in July, he can turn right around and start stumping for the June 2012 primary race in a district likely to be far more receptive to his message.

Janice Hahn will be our next representative in Congress. She has indeed won that  battle.  

But in doing so, she may have put herself in a position to lose the war.

Note by Brian:  People, stopping tossing out Troll ratings for comments that you simply disagree with.  There are other ratings to use for comments, and frankly, the ratings should be used as a grading on quality and sincerity of the post, not on whether you agree with it.  So, I’ll be uprating a few comments, but please, think before you rate.

Repeating a pattern of going negative hard and fast in close elections, Janice Hahn went on the attack today with a 4-page negative campaign mailer against her leading opponent, Secretary of State Debra Bowen.

The mailer starts out with the word WARNING bolded in yellow against a black background, then goes on to say, “Beware of Debra Bowen’s Negative Campaign! Unable to find anything positive to say and desperate to win at all costs, Debra Bowen has been falsely attacking Janice Hahn and Marcy Winograd!”

The mailer then goes on “remind” voters that Bowen was “a lifelong Republican until she changed registration before she ran for office”, and lists a number contributions Bowen received in 1998 and 2000 from energy and health insurance companies. Hahn also goes out of her way to portray Winograd favorably in a contrast and compare section in the midsection of the piece.

Those are the basics. Now let’s deconstruct this a bit.

First of all, this mailer isn’t an independent expenditure from an outside group, it comes directly from the Hahn campaign, which means Janice Hahn not only knows about the mailer, she had to approve the content.

Secondly, it’s highly misleading in some respects, and plainly false in others. Here’s why.

It’s just flat out weird that Hahn would claim Bowen was running a negative campaign against her and Winograd. Of the five campaign mailers I’ve received from Bowen’s campaign so far, two featured Bowen’s “Profile in Courage” award for her work as Secretary of State, one featured her endorsement by the Sierra Club, and two highlighted her 14 years of experience representing most of CA-36 in the CA state legislature.  None even mentioned Hahn or Winograd. In debates and forums where all three candidates have appeared, Bowen rarely mentions either candidate by name. 

There are only two times I can think of when Bowen ever came close to going negative (on Hahn, not Winograd). The first time was at the CA-36 endorsement meeting in April, when Bowen pointed out Hahn had endorsed Republican candidates – this after Hahn dinged Bowen for not being “a life long Democrat” (a charge Hahn repeats in her attack mailer).  The second time was last Sunday during a Daily Kos interview, when Bowen was asked to compare and contrast her campaign contributions with that of her opponents. Bowen’s campaign manager and press person have made similar statements highlighting Hahn’s contributions from LA City Hall lobbyists, contributions the LA Weekly pointed out would actually be illegal if Hahn were running for LA City Council and not Congress.

But when it comes to Winograd, the only Democrat in this campaign to go negative on the candidate was Janice Hahn, who slammed Winograd in a letter urging Bowen to sign on to a pledge supporting Israel. In the letter, Hahn quoted Henry Waxman who said “In Marcy Winograd’s vision, Jews would be at the mercy of those who do not respect democracy or human rights.”

So what’s really going on here?  

From the very beginning, it was clear to Hahn (and anyone else paying attention to the demographics of this race), that it was in Hahn’s best interest to rope Winograd into running. A Winograd candidacy would be more likely to pull support away from Bowen than it would Hahn, who is generally perceived to be Jane Harman’s hand-picked choice to succeed her.

So Hahn issued a pro-Israel pledge, cornered Bowen into signing on to it, Winograd took the bait, and the rest is history. Since then, Winograd’s most active supporters on the internet have consistently targeted Bowen in the primary, but not Hahn, since they see Bowen as Winograd’s main competition. So by falsely claiming Bowen is running a negative campaign against Winograd, Hahn is doing what she can to fan those flames even more.

Hahn’s mailer also tries very hard to imply that Bowen’s congressional race is significantly funded by contributions from energy and health insurance companies. But if you look really, really hard you can see a disclaimer in teeny, tiny letters at the bottom of the mailer, revealing the contributions came from races 13 and 11 years ago.

Disclaimer or no, the information as presented is profoundly misleading – not a single person I talked to who had seen the mailer understood the contributions in question were from another race until I pointed out the fact.

A press release signed by Sheila Khuel,Fran Pavely, Assembly member Betsy Butler and a number of environmental leaders in the district slammed Hahn for the deceptive mailer,

We recall that you introduced Measure O establishing an oil extraction tax; after that, you received $24,000 from oil and gas companies, including Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, Conoco Phillips, Tesoro and Warren E & P. Was that the reason you ultimately changed your mind and voted against placing the measure on the ballot? Perhaps because, as the Los Angeles Times has reported, about half of your money comes from “lobbyists, developers, and others doing business with the city”, the person that “we can’t trust” to do the right thing, isn’t Debra Bowen, but Janice Hahn?

We urge you to stop your deception immediately as a matter of principle.

As the press release points out, Hahn’s tactic is likely an attempt to neutralize the recent spate of stories that have appeared here, in the LA Weekly, and the LA Times, listing over $300,000 in contributions and independent expenditures Hahn has received this year, in this race from LA City Hall lobbyists and developers, the nuclear industry, oil companies, medical malpractice insurance PACs, and rent control opponents.

But will it work?

It didn’t work for Hahn last year when she went negative during the Lt. Governor primary race against Gavin Newsom. Largely because Newsom  – who beat Hahn 55% to 33% – had been in the public eye long enough that voters had mostly made up their minds about his persona. When Hahn tried to paint a picture of Newsom that went against what voters already had in their heads, it just didn’t stick.

As an assembly member, then later as a state senator, Bowen was famous for keeping lobbyists at arm’s length. When Bowen was still a freshman in the state assembly, the LA Times took notice,

Bowen also is trying to keep some distance from lobbyists. On her office door is a sign that says she accepts no gifts–and she has been known to send staff members running down the hall to return gifts as simple as a single flower. She sees lobbyists as an information resource, but is wary of them. “The scariest thing for freshmen,” she said, “is figuring out whom you can rely on, whose analysis you can trust, because you can’t do everything yourself.”

When Enron ripped California off for billions, Bowen didn’t hesitate to go after them as chair of the Senate Energy Committee, pressing for criminal charges against Enron executives who refused to cooperate with the committee’s investigations.

And, most famously, as Secretary of State, Bowen defied both Deibold and the entire California political establishment when she decertified $45 million worth of flawed voting machines.

In other words, the picture most voters have in their heads of Bowen isn’t the one Hahn is trying to paint for them.

Conversely, Hahn also has a track record in the public eye. And it’s one that’s easy to associate with the dysfunction of LA City Hall and it’s insular, lobbyist culture.

In fact – whether it was withdrawing her support for Measure O, an oil extraction tax one of her campaign contributors, Warren Resources (and other big oil companies based in her district) opposed, agreeing to act as an impartial mediator for yacht-builder Gambol Industries in their dispute with the Port of LA without first disclosing she had received $12,000 in campaign contributions from the company, or helping to nullify a $600 million LAX food concession contract, to the benefit of a client of lobbyist Ek & Ek, a firm which has donated tens of thousands to Hahn’s campaigns in the past, and most recently $13,000 to her congressional campaign – Janice Hahn is the candidate with a demonstrable record of acting in the interests of her campaign contributors.

But so what? Asked the LA Weekly in a recent story about Ek & Ek and their relationship with Hahn,

The last week of a campaign, as our mailbox fills to overflowing with glossy brochures extolling the virtues of competing candidates, we often find ourselves donning black, rending our garments, and contemplating the death of a million innocent trees.

The campaign to replace Jane Harman in CA-36 is no different.

Spread out on my coffee table right now are a couple of mailers from Debra Bowen, one from Marcy Winograd that a volunteer stuffed under our welcome mat, one from Mike Gin, and even one from Tea Party candidate Craig Huey.  However, none of these candidates holds a candle to Janice Hahn and her supporters, who sent out a thirteenth full-color mailer today.

According to the FEC, Hahn leads all candidates but Craig Huey in cash-on-hand (money left in the bank after expenses), and that’s enabled her to fund this juggernaut-in-wood-pulp with over $300,000 in donations and independent expenditures from business interests and lobbyists connected with LA City Hall, real estate developers,the nuclear industry,health insurance PACs, and even rent control opponents.

Combing though the latest FEC reports, I found a number of interesting nuggets, but one recent donation worth noting in particular was from Tim Larkin, CEO of Warren Resources.

Why this donation? Because Warren Resources, a New York City-based oil company with considerable ties to the Wilmington and Harbor area oil fields, was a vocal critic of Measure O,the oil extraction tax Hahn opposed putting on the ballot after initially supporting it.  In the end, Hahn was the only LA City council member to vote against bringing the measure to voters, saying at the time,”I’ve reconsidered this and I have heard from various business groups who do feel like this might be the wrong climate to put this on the ballot.”

In addition,  The Cooperative of American Physicians IE Committee, a PAC which represents medical malpractice insurers, has upped it’s investment in Janice Hahn to over $75,000. A year ago, this same PAC  partnered with oil, tobacco and other special interests to go after 53D Assemblymember Betsy Butler in the June 2010 primary. 

Butler has endorsed Debra Bowen in this congressional race.

According to FEC reports, Janice Hahn is the only candidate so far to benefit from independent expenditures.

It’s likely to get worse before it gets better. I’ve heard rumors CAPC is planning to send out a negative hit-piece  against Bowen this week, just as they did Butler, and that Hahn will be taking a page out of the Meg Whitman campaign, sending out yet another 20-30 page full-color brochure to voters for the general election.

But hey, there’s good news too. According to the Sierra Club (who’ve endorsed Debra Bowen), it turns out all those mailers are recyclable.

I proudly stand with Veterans For Peace-LA in signing the organization’s Declaration to defund the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, except to bring our troops home safely.  To keep our troops in harm’s way, to spend 2 – billion dollars a week on these occupations is a war on America’s middle class.   We have money for bombs, but not for books – as 5,000 teachers in Los Angeles receive lay – off notices and community colleges close their summer school programs.

I ask my opponents Janice Hahn and Debra Bowen to reconsider their decision not to sign the Declaration. Congress has the power of the purse, which it exercised  to finally end the Vietnam War after an estimated 60,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese lost their lives.

Let’s not wait for the death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan to climb any higher. This week Veterans For Peace-LA carried coffins in downtown Los Angeles as the number of U.S. soldiers lost in Iraq/Afghanistan reached 6,000.  

We do not know how many Iraqis or Afghan troops and civilians have died because the Pentagon does not keep a record.

We must protect our troops.  Bring them home.  Spread this Declaration throughout the land – and ask every congressional candidate to sign it.

Marcy Winograd

Congressional Candidate, CA-36

“We, the under signed congressional candidates (CA 36), sign this declaration vowing to vote against Iraq and Afghanistan supplemental war funding, except for funding to bring our troops home safely.  We, the undersigned congressional candidates, do not wish to put our troops in harm’s way. To fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations is to continue to endanger our troops. ”

Here’s a link to a video of Verterans for Peace of Los Angeles asking CA-36 Congressional candidates to sign the delaration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Please watch it.

PEACE




Marcy Winograd

Democratic Candidate CA-36 Congressional District


 

An internal poll released by the Bowen campaign shows the candidate tied with Councilwoman Janice Hahn in the CA-36 primary. Marcy Winograd – who received 41% of the vote against Jane Harman in the 2010 primary race – is only polling at 6%, putting her in 4th place behind Republican Mike Gin.

The Feldman Group conducted the poll among 451 registered likely voters in California Congressional District 36 from April 4-7, 2011. The sample consisted of 401 registered likely voters and an oversample of 50 DTS voters. The margin of error for a sample of 401 is ± 4.9%.

In an initial match-up between all of the declared candidates, Bowen and Hahn are tied at 20 percent each, with the closest candidate, Mike Gin, at 8 percent.  Marcy Winograd, another  Democrat in the race, receives only 6 percent support. Twenty-four percent of the electorate remains undecided.  Bowen dominates in the Beach Cities and Venice with a double digit lead  over both Hahn and Winograd, and leads in all geographic regions except the Harbor area..  

In a run-off matchup between Bowen and Hahn, Bowen (40 percent) pulls ahead of Hahn (36 percent) without any messaging.  Sixteen (16) percent are currently undecided.  While Hahn may have an advantage of name recognition in the district it is not translating into an advantage in votes, perhaps because her unfavorable rating is double that of Bowen.  

Democrats continue to hold an advantage in this district. Voters in the district are more  likely to prefer a Democrat (41 percent), and 29 percent say they would prefer a Republican with another 27 percent say that the candidates party doesn’t really matter. Bowen shows her strength over Hahn among Decline-to-State voters, receiving 47 percent of the vote.  

Bowen’s lead over Hahn grows even after voters are informed about key endorsers for  each candidate (including Feinstein, Lieu, Nakano, Firefighters and others for Hahn) and positive arguments being used by the respective campaigns.  

With a July 12th runoff virtually assured, a couple of points jump out at me. At 24% in the primary and %16 in the general election, the number of undecideds in this race will be a huge factor. Hahn has high name recognition, but she also has relatively high negatives – twice that of Bowen – and Hahn’s endorsements don’t seem to have had much effect on her polling.

Hahn’s campaign manager pushed back with an impressive bit of verbal gymnastics,

“We’re stunned that Bowen would release a poll that shows 80% of the voters she represented for 14 years rejecting her.” said campaign manager, Dave Jacobson.

Forgetting the fact Jacobson apparently can’t do math (24% of voters are undecided about anyone yet),  did he really mean to highlight Bowen has already represented most of CA-36 for 14 years, and that an equal number of Hahn’s current constituents have rejected the LA City Councilwoman?