I’m sure we all remember Jason Hodge, the conservadem being supported by big business interests desperate to have a Senator in the 19th State Senate District who will be more pliant than the progressive Hannah-Beth Jackson. Clearly, undermining your own party by campaigning as “the Democrat who doesn’t think you need higher taxes” will convey that impression.

Well, Hodge is still campaigning as a Democrat. And in an effort to bolster in Democratic bona fides, he told Timm Herdt, the political correspondent at the Ventura County Star, that he had been a Democrat all his life. Problem? He was lying:

A couple of weeks ago in an interview, 19th Senate District candidate Jason Hodge told me he’d been a Democrat “all my life,” and I quoted him as saying so. County Democratic Central Committee vice-chairman David Atkins checked out the claim at the county registrar of voters’ office and asserts it’s untrue.

In fact, Hodge was from 2002 until 2008 registered as “decline to state” a party affiliation.

Hodge acknowledged that today — but asserted that doesn’t mean he hasn’t always been a Democrat in his heart. For example, he said that in primary elections he has always requested a Democratic ballot. A person can be a Democrat, he said, but the voter registration cards give a people an option whether to state or decline to publicly state their party orientation. He chose to decline, he said.

Let’s start the simple fact that Hodge’s explanation is a pile of crap. Before Prop 14 took effect, voters had the option to register with a political party, or as a “decline-to-state” voter–in other words, not to register as a member of any party. Decline-to-state doesn’t mean that you’re really registered as a member of a political party, but you just choose not to share that information with the public.

Even worse? Hodge is lying to cover up his lie. He claimed that he has always requested a Democratic ballot. Problem? That’s also not true. Here is Hodge’s voter registration history, straight from the Ventura County Registrar of Voters (edited to remove his address for privacy reasons):

Notice the entry for the June 2006 gubernatorial, where it says quite clearly that Hodge pulled a non-partisan ballot. If you recall, there was a hotly contested Democratic primary for the right to challenge Arnold Schwarzenegger that year. And apparently, despite being a “Democrat in his heart,” Hodge didn’t have enough of a Democratic heart to vote for either one.

Here’s a piece of advice for Hodge. If you’re going to be a business-friendly centrist, then be a business-friendly centrist, be honest about it, and campaign that way. But don’t try to become a Democrat out of convenience when you decide it’s the best way to suit your political aspirations, and then try to lie to us about it, and then lie again to cover up those lies. People like us who actually have been Democrats all our lives might get a little upset.

One of the many flaws of California’s term limits law is that it creates needless conflict and enmity between would-be allies each vying to do their part to make the State a better place, as each candidate is forced to abandon a job they have just barely learned, to campaign for a different job.  Conflicts arise in this perpetual game of musical chairs, accountability is minimal, and activists are left in a jam deciding whom to support.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in AD-35, where Assemblymember Pedro Nava has been termed out, forcing a run at the Attorney General job.  The power vacuum left by Nava’s absence has opened the field for two impressive candidates, both of whom are well-liked in the district: Susan Jordan, Mr. Nava’s wife and co-founder of the California Coastal Protection Network (CCPN) and Vote The Coast, and Das Williams, Santa Barbara City Councilman and longtime community activist through CAUSE as their legislative analyst.  Williams also serves as a national board member of the National Organization for Women, and is on the Peabody Charter School Board.

The Republican banner will be carried by former Santa Barbara County Supervisor Mike Stoker.  However, given the 20-point voter registration advantage favoring Democrats in the district, the winner of the Democratic primary is almost certain to hold this safe Democratic seat.

Most activists here in the Ventura and Santa Barbara areas know each of these individuals well, and have worked with them on multiple issues.  As the race intensifies, it is painful for many to make a choice between them, and many have avoided doing so to date.  I personally have endorsed Mr. Williams, having worked with him on a number of different issues here already in less than a year of local activism, while my contact with Ms. Jordan has been more limited.  Each candidate has amassed a long list of endorsers (in-fighting remains about who exactly has endorsed whom at this point, adding to the confusion), and a large number remain on the fence.  Ms. Jordan’s biggest ally, obviously, is Assemblymember Nava; Mr. Williams, however, counters with the almost equally hard-hitting support of Hannah-Beth Jackson, whom he served as Chief of Staff in the SD-19 2008 election.

On a personal level, there is already significant rancor between the two sides: while both have promised a positive campaign, and neither candidate has made overt attacks on the other, various operatives have been busy attempting to earn support with some negative charges.  Williams is extremely active in the community and had expected to be next in line for the spot; his backers have hinted at nepotism between Nava and Jordan; Jordan backers paint Das as overly ambitious and opportunistic because Williams previously ran unsuccessfully for Supervisor, because of his comparative youth at 34 years of age, and because many say that Williams had told them earlier in the year that he would not run for the seat.  Williams is in his second term on the Santa Barbara City Council, and will be termed out–needlessly adding increased stakes under the guise of “reform” through term limits.

Also an issue in the race is the vaunted PXP drilling at Tranquillon Ridge: during the early days of the proposed deal, Williams backed a variety of local environmental organizations in supporting the deal.  Jordan and Nava were opposed, due to precedent and the belief, later reinforced by various agencies, that the deal’s sunset provision would be unenforceable.  The deal eventually became the famous statewide issue it is today, and it is sure to be a major attack avenue against Mr. Williams by Ms. Jordan.

To date, the race is playing out similar to the Clinton-Obama primary war in a battle between youth/change and experience/responsibility–but with an added wrinkle.  While Mr. Williams is young, he also boasts greater experience in elected office, particularly in the field of balancing budgets, an issue particularly crucial to Assembly candidates.  Mr. Williams has repeatedly referenced Santa Barbara’s continued balanced budgets as proof of his ability to make difficult budget choices in a progressive fashion in a tough economic environment, and contrasted his record in Santa Barbara with that of the legislature in Sacramento (somewhat unfairly, as the SB city council is not hamstrung by a 2/3 rule).  Ms. Jordan, meanwhile, will be running ostensibly (and probably unfairly) to the left of Mr. Williams on environmental issues, will be leveraging her longstanding statewide activism, and will portray herself as something of an outsider to the political process despite her connection with Mr. Nava, while attempting to frame Mr. Williams as a career politician.

It is in this somewhat unpleasant context that the Williams campaign released their surprisingly strong fundraising numbers yesterday evening (the Jordan campaign released its own press release this afternoon.)  While it was expected that Ms. Jordan would outraise Mr. Williams due to greater large-scale institutional support and an earlier head start (including a high-profile fundraiser at the home of Pierce Brosnan), the campaigns are essentially even in terms of fundraising, with each campaign spinning the numbers as coming out in their favor: the Williams campaign is emphasizing Jordan’s $12,000 loan to her own campaign to even up the numbers, while the Jordan campaign is emphasizing its $10,000 advantage in cash on hand.

The full text of the competing press releases follows below the fold:

Local Santa Barbara City Councilman Das Williams Outraises Main Opponent In Campaign for Assembly District 35

Santa Barbara, CA – Showing that local residents are looking for a new kind of elected leader in Sacramento, local Santa Barbara City Councilman Das Williams today reports having raised over $120,000 in his campaign for Assembly District 35 as of the June 30th reporting deadline.  In significantly less time, Das Williams outraised his main opponent Susan Jordan – wife of the District’s current Assemblymember Pedro Nava – who raised $110,000.

Das’ strong financial showing complements his already strong grassroots network and growing list of local endorsers and supporters.  

“Das Williams raised more money than Susan Jordan in just half the time,” said campaign spokesperson Josh Pulliam.  “Loaded with a $12,500 personal loan and strapped with unpaid debt, Susan Jordan’s financial report comes straight out of the same Sacramento playbook that brought us a historic budget crisis.  These financial reports illustrate that voters in the district are ready for change.   As a local councilmember, Das already represents nearly a quarter of the Assembly District, and today’s numbers prove that he’s going to have the necessary resources to mount a successful campaign.”

Das Williams is campaigning to succeed termed-out Assemblymember Pedro Nava.  

Das Williams grew up on the Central Coast and is a product of local public schools. In 2003, Das Williams became the youngest person ever to be elected to the Santa Barbara City Council, and was re-elected in 2007. Das has worked as a teacher, a policy aide for former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, and a community organizer working to stop the development of a Wal-Mart in Ventura and enact local living wage laws in Santa Barbara and Ventura. Das serves on the Peabody Charter School Board and is a national board member of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Das received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley and holds a graduate degree in Environmental Science & Management from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Jordan Shows Strong Support for Assembly District 35 Race

“Never before has it been so important that we make fundamental changes to the way of doing business in Sacramento. The voters know that fixing the problems won’t be easy, and it will take someone with experience, integrity and determination to stand up to the special interests,” said Assembly candidate Susan Jordan.  “The people in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties who encouraged me to run have backed up their encouragement with campaign contributions. In my first run for elective office, I am inspired by their early show of support.”

Jordan leads fundraising for the primary election, which will be held June 8, 2010, with an impressive $124,129 raised between January 1 and June 30.  Jordan notes that she is very fiscally conservative, spent little during that period, and has $119,228.07 cash on hand.

Jordan added, “I am deeply honored to have the help of so many local and statewide leaders who have placed their trust in my abilities to get the job done, including Santa Barbara County Supervisor Janet Wolf, Oxnard Mayor Tom Holden, Oxnard City Council members Bryan MacDonald and Dr. Irene Pinkard, Former State Senator Sheila Kuehl, Former Santa Barbara County Supervisor Susan Rose, Former Santa Barbara Mayor Harriet Miller, and many more.”

Jordan is an award-winning environmental leader, a successful business woman, health advocate and mother with 15 years of experience working to protect the coastline of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties – and for all of California.  As a former Chair of the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission, Jordan tackled regional planning concerns with an analytical and balanced approach.  After leaving her business career, Jordan founded the California Coastal Protection Network (CCPN) in 1999 and serves as its executive director.  CCPN is considered one of the most effective environmental advocacy organizations in the state and Jordan has received numerous awards for her precedent-setting work.

Jordan is being challenged by Das Williams.  Williams initially supported Jordan, and stated in the Santa Barbara Independent that he would not run and that his own personal ambitions would have to take a back seat for the “greater good of the community,” while praising Jordan’s environmental credentials and statewide connections.  Williams and Jordan split largely over the issue of offshore oil drilling, with Williams supporting a proposal to open the coast to new drilling, while Jordan opposed it.  Jordan is leading a statewide coalition of more than 60 groups who oppose the governor’s efforts to approve the first new offshore oil lease in state waters in 40 years.

“As I walk this district, people tell me that they want someone in Sacramento who has life experience and can be trusted to stand up to special interests and address the serious challenges facing our state, our economy and our livelihoods.  This is a responsibility I take to heart. I will not let them down,” said Jordan.

Susan Jordan for Assembly 2010

Ending cash    $119,228.07

Das Williams for Assembly 2010

Ending cash    $108,767.62

Susan Jordan for Assembly 2010

Reporting period    01/01/2009 – 06/30/2009

Contributions from this period    $124,129.00

Expenditures from this period    $11,006.82

Ending cash    $119,228.07

Das Williams for Assembly 2010

Reporting period    01/01/2009 – 06/30/2009

Contributions from this period    $122,656.08

Expenditures from this period    $13,988.46

Ending cash    $108,767.62

Republican challenger Mike Stoker has not filed any reports.

Given the heated nature of the releases even at this early stage, this will an interesting race to watch going forward.

In a stunning but not too surprising revelation, Josh Richman of the Oakland Tribune is reporting that Don Perata transferred $1.5 million from his PAC to his legal defense fund – one day after the election. Instead of using that money to help defeat Prop 11, which narrowly won, or to help elect more Democrats to the state senate – such as Hannah-Beth Jackson, who lost by 1,200 votes – he took it for himself, leaving California Democrats and the state itself worse off.

Contributors to Don Perata’s political action committee this year might have thought their money would bankroll the attempted recall of state Sen. Jeff Denham or opposition to a legislative redistricting reform measure.

But one day after Election Day and with only a few weeks left as state Senate President Pro Tem, the Oakland Democrat moved $1.5 million from Leadership California into his own legal defense fund, formed to counter a years-long FBI corruption probe.

This sum dwarfs the California Democratic Party’s $450,000 contribution to Perata’s legal fund over the past year, which had caused an outcry from some party activists. It also dwarfs the $555,000 Perata had moved from his Taxpayers for Perata committee – ostensibly created for a 2010 Board of Equalization run – into his legal defense fund in several chunks since 2005.

The transferred amount is more than the entire $1.4 million the committee had raised in this year’s first nine months, and more than half of the $2.7 million it had on hand as of Sept. 30.

Jason Kinney, Perata’s spokesman, is quoted as saying there was nothing illegal here. Even if that is true, it’s beside the point – $1.5 million is a huge sum of money that should have been spent on winning the 2008 election, not pocketed by a termed-out legislator.

Our own David Dayen is quoted in the article making that very point with forceful eloquence:

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.”

David makes a key point here – this is not just about how Perata screwed California Democrats. It’s about what he called “closed loops” and a party leadership hostile to open accounting. This should become a rallying cry for all Democrats to demand more accountability from their leaders, and a greater commitment to winning elections as opposed to pocketing those funds for your own uses.

Many in the Democratic grassroots, including a large number of CDP delegates, want to build a better, more successful party, using the disappointing results on the state level as a motivating force to produce change. That is made easier by Perata’s long overdue exit from the Legislature. But this should serve as a wake-up call for the CDP as a whole, which must take a strong stand against this kind of action and take whatever steps are within their power to prevent it from happening again.

Well, this has been a tight race for a long time, but at this point I think there have been quite a few people that were writing this off. Well, as of 7:06 this evening, Alyson Huber holds a lead of 531 votes.  That’s about .3% for you folks looking to see if we’ll get to the .5% automatic recount. If this holds up, the Central Valley will have themselves a fine Assemblywoman next week.

You can find this info at the SoS’s “close election” page. On the disappointing side, Hannah-Beth Jackson remains 1717 votes behind and Charlie Brown is 1578 votes back.

UPDATE: AD-10, Meet your new Assemblywoman, Alyson Huber.  I’ve heard from somebody close to the Speaker that there are relatively few votes remaining.  Alyson Huber will be sworn into the Assembly next week.

Huge news in the continued counting of Charlie Brown’s race against Tom McClintock.  The latest round of counting has Brown within 329 votes as the provisionals, which tend to favor Democrats, get counted in the larger counties in the district.

Charlie Brown (Dem)    170,168    49.9%

Tom McClintock (Rep)    170,497    50.1%

There are still tens of thousands of votes left to count, and there’s a virtual assurance of at least a partial recount.  Tom McClintock has been sending his list these smug reports of the day’s counting, telling them how everything’s looking great.  I haven’t seen an update from him in a couple days.  Probably because this is shaping up as a replay of the 2002 State Controller race, when the late provisionals put Steve Westly over the top in his race against… Tom McClintock.

Extended races like this cost money to maintain staff and pay lawyers.  You can help Charlie out at the Calitics ActBlue page.

…meanwhile, Hannah-Beth Jackson is moving closer in SD-19.  That race is down to 1,283 votes.

…I guess a slew of votes came in from Placer County and widened McClintock’s lead in a big way.

“We’re not claiming victory, but we just think it’s mathematically impossible for (Brown) to win,” said Bill George, spokesman for McClintock.

George said the thousands of Placer County votes tallied Friday stretched McClintock’s lead from barely 300 votes to 1,793, with only about 4,500 more votes to count in the nine-county district.

Brown spokesman Todd Stenhouse said Brown would not concede, noting that thousands more votes remain to be counted, most of which are provisional ballots that “have been breaking very, very strongly for Charlie.”

“We remain committed to the same goals that we’ve been committed to all along and that is that every vote is counted in this historic election,” Stenhouse said.

As TINS posted yesterday, Hannah-Beth Jackson has now fallen behind in the latest count of her race in SD-19, and according to local reports the remaining votes to be counted are mainly in Strickland-friendly areas.  This one looks grim.  At this hour Strickland leads by 1,560 votes, and it’s actually outside of the 1/2 of 1% required for a partial recount.

Hannah-Beth Jackson (Dem)  186,071    49.7%

Tony Strickland (Rep)              187,631    50.3%

The other two races we’re monitoring are actually in better shape than Hannah-Beth’s.  In AD-10, the latest numbers from the Secretary of State show Jack Sieglock leading Alyson Huber by just 506 votes.

Alyson L. Huber (Dem)     80,507    46.4%

Jack Sieglock (Rep)           81,013    46.8%

This is currently inside recount territory.  According to Randy Bayne, the remaining ballots left to count are mainly in Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties.  The ballot count is done in Amador County and mostly done in El Dorado County.  With some luck, the Sacramento County ballots will swing for Huber; she beat Sieglock 52-41 there.  Sieglock won San Joaquin County 51-42.

In CA-04, Charlie Brown is within 569 votes of Tom McClintock.

Charlie Brown (Dem)     168,378    49.9%

Tom McClintock (Rep)  168,947    50.1%

The question is how many ballots are left in Nevada County, where Brown won big.  According to the unprocessed ballot report, there are still 10,000 left up there, but I think that’s outdated information.  It’s probably more like 5,000, if not less.  Still, we are well within the .5% required for a partial recount.  So that’s where that’s likely to be headed regardless of what happens with the final numbers.

Again, counts and recounts cost money, so if you can chip in a couple bucks for these Democrats at the Calitics ActBlue page, I’m sure they’d be grateful.

UPDATE: I just learned that Hannah-Beth Jackson had to evacuate her house today, owing to the Montecito fire.  Hopefully everything will work out OK.