Tag Archives: SD-19

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SD-19: Conservadem Hodge lies to media, lies again to cover lies

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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.

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Tony Strickland Never Changes

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PhotobucketDuring his narrow victory over Hannah-Beth Jackson, I found this picture of a beaming Tony Strickland in front of some political signs he had stolen from an opposing campaign. Very cute.  Apparently being a little (or, in Strickland’s case, a big, tall) huckster is in his political DNA.

Back in 1998, fresh from his first election to the Assembly, he helped depose the guy who got him there, Rod Pacheco.  I guess if it worked for him once, Strickland figured why not do it again when he was central to deposing Dave Cogdill:

Next week marks the 10th anniversary of former Riverside County legislator Rod Pacheco’s unceremonious ouster as Assembly GOP leader.

Pacheco, now the county DA, was the last county lawmaker to lead any legislative caucus until restive Senate Republicans installed state Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta as minority leader during last month’s budget standoff.

At the center of both moves was Ventura County lawmaker Tony Strickland. (Press-Enterprise 3/30/09)

And guess what, Strickland got a promotion to assistant minority leader out of the coup.  Works out well for the hoops-shooting Senator from Ventura.  It appears that Strickland is trying to angle for the minority leader gig when Sen. Hollingsworth is termed out in 2010.  But, the fight between Runner will be a brutal one. Both are extremely ambitious, and extremely out of touch with the political views of the majority of the state.

Central Coast

Is Phony Tony Strickland Really a Phony?

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Tim Herdt over at the VC Star’s 95 Percent Accurate* is a veritable fountain of information today.  This time he brings us news about our favorite new state senator, “Phony” Tony Strickland.  As readers may recall, Tony Strickland ran a bogus campaign claiming to be an alternative energy entrepreneur though his alternative energy company has yet to secure a contract, and his voting record has been a boon to oil companies and other polluting industries who richly rewarded him with a major infusion of campaign contributions.

But according to Tim Herdt, Strickland may actually be persuaded to honor at least a few of his environmental campaign promises, in order to lend real credence to what had been essentially dishonest fabrications concerning his views on environmental issues based on his record:

New Ventura County Sen. Tony Strickland, who ran this fall as a “renewable energy businessman” promising to promote the development of alternative energy, has taken the first step to show that he meant what he said.

Strickland told me last month that he does not agree with the provision in his fellow legislative Republicans’ budget proposal that calls for a delay in implementing California’s landmark global warming law. That regulations to implement that law, AB 32, call for aggressive steps to promote alternative energy, including a requirement that utilities purchase a third of their electrical power from renewable sources such as solar and wind energy.

Furthermore, Strickland said he intends to soon introduce a package of clean-energy legislation.

Sounds good, but several caveats spring to mind:

1) Promises made by Strickland to a media figure like Herdt may well turn out to be as unreliable as most of the other claims Phony Tony has made over the years.

2) His promises to oppose his fellow Republicans on environmental issues in the Senate mean little if he knows that said environmental initiatives will be blockaded by his other Republican allies.  If Strickland knows that these bills and addenda will be blocked by others, his support means little; in fact, his “support” would only serve to give him cover while still maintaining his preferred anti-environmental policy aims.  We will know Strickland is serious if he makes real attempts to persuade his Republican allies to alter their votes.

3) Strickland’s promise to introduce a “package of clean-energy legislation” is worse than meaningless if his bill is merely a watered-down version of a stronger Democratic bill.  Claiming to support popular Democratic policies by offering a weaker version of a Democratic bill is a tried and true Republican tactic.

4) Supporting clean energy bills that provide aid for renewable energy development mean little if they do not come at the expense of the current establishment of corporate polluters.  It is easy for a Republican to recommend spending money or creating incentives on windmills or solar panels; it is far harder to take the just as necessary steps of disincentivizing the use of pollutants.

5) California is in a major budget crunch, and has numerous other problems besides.  Even if Strickland has come to a true conversion on energy issues (which has yet to be seen), his retrograde Republican views on all other aspects of state business make him a bad fit for the district, and unacceptable for California as it struggles to regain its footing after the fiasco of Enron’s energy deregulation, Schwarzenegger’s mismanagement of the state at the Executive level, and the intransigence of the extremist Republicans in the statehouse.

In any case, the fact that Strickland is at least paying lip service–phony or no–to support of alternative energy is a small victory for progressive causes in itself.

Cross-posted at Ventura County Democrats

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Don Perata Gives a $1.5 Million Middle Finger to California

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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.

Central Coast

Hannah-Beth Jackson Concedes; Tony Strickland Watch Begins

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The protracted count is finally over, and it appears that Hannah-Beth Jackson’s outsize effort to defeat Phony Tony Strickland has come up just short.  With only a few hundred ballots left to count, Strickland currently maintains a 903 vote lead out of 414,587 ballots cast.  That margin is .2%: well within the margin necessary for a mandatory recount request by the Jackson campaign.  Unfortunately, as the pro-Strickland blog Policy Report correctly notes, such a recount effort would almost certainly be insufficient to net Hannah-Beth the votes she would need to overtake Strickland’s lead, even were the final votes to close the gap to 700 or 800:

According to some experts, a recount of all 400,000+ ballots might yield a variance of 150 votes in one direction or the other at great cost.  Gaining 800 votes in an election of this size is next to impossible.

Hannah-Beth has done the gracious thing and conceded the race:

With the latest totals showing Strickland hanging on to the lead by a little over 900 votes, Jackson said a victory was not mathematically possible.

“I’m disappointed, but I think that it’s pretty clear at this point in time, we’re not going to be able to catch up,” she said.

Strickland is due to be sworn in Monday in Sacramento. He will represent voters in most of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties as well as the northwest corner of Los Angeles County, including Santa Clarita and Stevenson Ranch.

The outcome has been in doubt since the Nov. 4 election, but by Wednesday both candidates agreed that Strickland had won.

Congratulations to Hannah-Beth Jackson and all her volunteers, supporters and staff who ran a courageous campaign against a less than honorable opponent, giving it everything they had to deliver quality representation to the people in SD-19.

This marks the end of two long and arduous races eked out by narrow margins in Ventura County by both Tony and Audra Strickland, who will be attempting to consolidate their power base.  Unfortunately for them, however, their electoral future does not look bright.  It was Ventura County that gave Strickland his victory, but that result is a relic of a Ventura whose demographics and electoral distribution are rapidly changing.   By 2012, there is little doubt that Ventura’s Democratic Majority will deliver a majority of votes for the Democrat.  As I said before, there are three chief reasons for this:

The first is that Ventura County flipped from red to blue earlier this year in terms of voter registrations–and those numbers have shifted even farther in our direction since. This is not just due to discontent with Bush and the Obama Effect: emigres from Los Angeles are swelling Ventura County’s ranks as more and more Angelenos come to appreciate this oft-overlooked area’s natural advantages. The path to victory for Republicans like Tony Strickland is only going to get steeper from here.

Second, Obama’s first term will likely end up going smoothly with good approval ratings, or very poorly with low approval ratings. Given the precarious, sour and moody state of the nation, we’re unlikely to see an apathetic, middling result. As a consequence, the next presidential election is unlikely to be a close contest one way or another. Our poor experiences in California this year will likely have taught us that we need to Stay for Change–especially if a Democratic Governor is elected in 2010, putting GOP legislators as the biggest remaining obstacle to real change in California.

But Tony’s third and biggest problem is that as an incumbent he will have 4-year voting record in the State Senate. Tony’s campaign this year was built entirely on lies; so much so, in fact, that I can say with all sincerity that he ran the most dishonest campaign I’ve personally had the misfortune of seeing up close. He will no longer be able to run as an “independent”, as all his yard signs and mailers deceitfully claimed. He will no longer be able to claim “green” credentials by posing as an alternative energy entrepreneur. He will simply be the incumbent: the Republican incumbent, and with a track record to boot.

So assuming that demography is destiny and the remaining ballots sort themselves out as poorly as we expect, it’s not the end of the road, but merely the beginning. The Stricklands will have earned themselves 2 to 4 years of respite through dishonest campaigning. More Democratic voters, increased intensity, and an unequivocal track record will see them on their way out of Sacramento in a few short years.

But we can’t do it without your help.  Today we begin Strickland Watch: it will be our duty to shadow every move and every vote Tony and Audra Strickland make in Sacramento.  So far, the Stricklands have made their careers by pretending to be something other than the hard right, corporate sockpuppets they are.  The only antidote to such poison is sunlight and exposure, and a full accounting of every single vote and dollar taken by each of them over the course of the next two to four years.

For his part, Tony Strickland is mouthing the right words:

“We need to definitely do whatever we can to reach across party lines to fix the problems of the state,” he said.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard this from Strickland before.  How he and his wife actually vote is another matter.  If their history is any indication, their bipartisan rhetoric will be belied by a hardline ideological stance.  Democrats in Ventura County-myself included–did an inadequate job of informing  our friends, neighbors and community of the Stricklands’ extremist record.  It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and to deliver to Ventura County the competent, progressive representation it has long deserved and been waiting for.

Also at Ventura County Democrats

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CA-04: Down To 329 Votes…UPDATE: Back Up To 1,793

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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.

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Election Update: Now Behind In All Close Race Counts

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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.

Los Angeles Area

Prospects for Hannah-Beth Jackson Are Grim in SD-19

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(sometimes, close recount elections don’t go our way. – promoted by Dante Atkins (hekebolos))

It is with a heavy heart that I report the news that things aren’t looking good in the Jackson-Strickland race in SD-19.  Strickland has retaken a lead in the provisional and absentee counts that he is unlikely to relinquish barring a small miracle, as favorable Santa Barbara County is nearly entirely counted, leaving pro-Strickland Ventura County and the pro-Strickland sliver of L.A. County to probably pad his lead.  The Santa Barbara Independent has more:

Tony Strickland surged to a 1,560 vote lead over Hannah-Beth Jackson Wednesday, on the strength of newly counted ballots in Ventura County. Santa Barbara county’s registrar also reported counting new ballots, which favored the Democrat, but not by nearly enough to make up for the Republican’s strength in Ventura.

It is the first significant lead for either candidate in the closely-contested 19th state senate district since Election Day, and puts Strickland in a commanding position, as counting continues in three counties with portions of the sprawling district.

The overall tally now stands at:

Strickland 187,631 (50.20)

Jackson 186,071 (49.79)

A 1,560 vote lead normally wouldn’t be insurmountable with well over 50,000 votes left to count.  Unfortunately, most of those voters are likely to accrue in Strickland’s favor:

About 1,000 vote by mail ballots remain to be counted in Santa Barbara County, the only place where she has run ahead of Strickland, in addition to about 6,000 provisional ballots; the latter are likely to favor Jackson, as many of them are believed to have been cast by late-registering UCSB students.

However, Strickland is winning handily in Ventura County, which has about 40,000 absentees and 15,000 provisionals outstanding; he has also run well ahead of Jackson in the small part of the district that is in L.A. County. There, the registrar has about 225,000 more vote by mail ballots to count, but only a small number of them are in the 19th district.

Make no mistake about it: this is a tough loss to take if all goes as it appears.  For me, it’s even tougher than Prop 8, and not just because I live in the district.  With Prop 8, there was a sense that we lost due to complacency and poor messaging; with Hannah-Beth, we made our best case and put everything we could into the fight, given the simultaneous urgency of a national election.  The idea that extremist Phony Tony Strickland will be my State Senator for the next four years is literally sickening to me.

But there is some good news for the future that should worry both of the execrable Stricklands.  Red Zone candidate Ferial Masry ran a surprisingly close race against Audra Strickland in the 37th Assembly district representing parts of Ventura and L.A. counties, coming within 3 points of victory in that tough district (and this despite numerous disadvantages in funding, candidate support and perceived “Americanness”).  There is no reason to believe that we cannot build on this success by holding Audra accountable for her votes.

As for Tony?  He’s got three big problems.  The first is that Ventura County flipped from red to blue earlier this year in terms of voter registrations–and those numbers have shifted even farther in our direction since.  This is not just due to discontent with Bush and the Obama Effect: emigres from Los Angeles are swelling Ventura County’s ranks as more and more Angelenos come to appreciate this oft-overlooked area’s natural advantages.  The path to victory for Republicans like Tony Strickland is only going to get steeper from here.

Second, Obama’s first term will likely end up going smoothly with good approval ratings, or very poorly with low approval ratings.  Given the precarious, sour  and moody state of the nation, we’re unlikely to see an apathetic, middling result.  As a consequence, the next presidential election is unlikely to be a close contest one way or another.  Our poor experiences in California this year will likely have taught us that we need to Stay for Change–especially if a Democratic Governor is elected in  2010, putting GOP legislators as the biggest remaining obstacle to real change in California.

But Tony’s third and biggest problem is that as an incumbent he will have 4-year voting record in the State Senate.  Tony’s campaign this year was built entirely on lies; so much so, in fact, that I can say with all sincerity that he ran the most dishonest campaign I’ve personally had the misfortune of seeing up close.  He will no longer be able to run as an “independent”, as all his yard signs and mailers deceitfully claimed.  He will no longer be able to claim “green” credentials by posing as an alternative energy entrepreneur.  He will simply be the incumbent: the Republican incumbent, and with a track record to boot.

So assuming that demography is destiny and the remaining ballots sort themselves out as poorly as we expect, it’s not the end of the road, but merely the beginning.  The Stricklands will have earned themselves 2 to 4 years of respite through dishonest campaigning.  More Democratic voters, increased intensity, and an unequivocal track record will see them on their way out of Sacramento in a few short years.

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Quick Update On Close Races

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Unfortunately the news is not good.  In CA-04, Charlie Brown has fallen behind of Tom McClintock by 1,092 votes, with still over 52,000 left to count.  In CA-44, the number is now 5,896 votes separating Ken Calvert and Bill Hedrick.  Both are trending away.  In AD-10, Jack Sieglock now has a 614-vote lead on Alyson Huber.  Only in SD-19 are we still on top, with Hannah-Beth Jackson leading Tony Strickland by 1,203 votes, which is exactly where the race was over the weekend.

A roundup of the close races at a glance is here.  And you can help defray the costs of the lawyers to watch the counts and the staffs to support them at the Calitics ActBlue page.

UPDATE by Brian: Strickland has now taken a small lead over Hannah-Beth (178920 to 178380) after a bunch of votes came in from Ventura County. Frank Russo has the story. There are still a bunch of votes to count though.

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Counting Madness: Huber within 319 votes, Clark and DFA Come Out For Brown

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Everyone should bookmark this site monitoring the close races that haven’t been called in California.  There are four such races within 2% at the moment.  There’s Prop. 11, which is trending toward passage with a 131,000 vote lead.  There’s SD-19, which has some breathing room now, as Hannah-Beth Jackson leads by 1,203 votes.

And then there are the two Sacramento-area races.  Alyson Huber’s race in AD-10 has really tightened up.  She now trails Jack Sieglock by just 319 votes out of 154,000 counted.  That is well within the 1/2 of 1% territory that would trigger an automatic recount.  Which brings up an interesting question which perhaps some election junkie could answer.  The Secretary of State certifies the count on December 2.  But the new legislature is sworn in on December 1.  If there’s a race with no clear winner at that point, what happens?

Finally, we have CA-04, the race between Charlie Brown and Tom McClintock.  This has bounced around a bit, but we’re now looking at an 889 vote lead for McClintock.  There are anywhere between 48,000 and 55,000 votes left to count, based on this chart (which you can also bookmark) of unprocessed ballots.  This race also appeared headed to a recount, and if you believe this Daily Kos diarist, Brown has a good shot at making up ground, because there are so many outstanding votes in Nevada County, where Brown did best.

We know these counts and recounts are expensive, and now two groups have stepped up with their support of Charlie while we sort this out.  Wes Clark sent an email to his list today:

Our friend Charlie Brown needs our help. The margin in California’s 4th Congressional District is razor thin, and they’re still counting votes. After more than 300,000 ballots were cast in CA-04, the race is tied. The current difference stands at less than half of 1% (less than 500 votes).

With 40,000 vote-by-mail and provisional ballots still to be counted, the race is way too close to call. That’s why it’s critical for us to make sure all the votes are counted in CA-04.

Please contribute to Charlie Brown’s Election Protection Fund today!

Charlie’s opponent, Tom McClintock, has hired an election attorney and brought in a team of lawyers to “watch” the locations where absentee and provisional ballots are being counted. McClintock’s team is doing everything they can to challenge the votes of thousands of people who faithfully cast their ballots.

Charlie needs our help to fight back.

And DFA has done the same:

In 2000, we lost the election when the Bush campaign beat us in the legal and media fight that followed.  In 2004, we had to force a recount in the Washington State Governor’s race and we won because you delivered the resources to make it happen.

We need to raise at least $40,000 by Monday to back up these races with the resources they need right now.

CONTRIBUTE $50 TO THE DFA COUNT EVERY VOTE FUND

In 2004, we raised over $250,000 for the Washington State recount. This year, we need $40,000 right now to keep the GOP dirty tricks at bay and make sure every vote is counted fairly.

DFA’s Grassroots All-Star Charlie Brown needs resources to fend off a team of Republican lawyers who, as I write this message, are challenging every Democratic ballot before the FIRST count has even been completed. Charlie is down by less than 500 votes with over 15,000 votes still to be counted. He needs our help to make sure every vote is counted.

(Note: it’s now 889 votes with over 48,000 votes left to be counted)