At Voice of San Diego today, David Washburn asks Where are the Democrats?

It’s a question that I’ve been contemplating and broaching in conversations since June 3 which was, to put it mildly, a disaster for Democrats of San Diego. In a Democratic majority city, the official mayoral nominee of the Democratic Party received 6.3% of the vote. The contested Democratic primary in the 50th Congressional District received in total just 70% of the votes that incumbent Rep. Brian Bilbray received running unopposed. In the 52rd district, Democratic candidates combined for 81% of the total received by Duncan Hunter Jr. himself in a four-way primary.

Not a single Democratic challenger to the Board of Supervisors reached 30% of the vote. One fresh face was added to the Unified School Board- running unopposed. Democrats could not force a runoff in all four City Council races or reach 50% in any, leaving a very real possibility that Dems will lose control of the nominally non-partisan Council in November. Dems in the race for City Attorney split the vote three ways, allowing Republican Jan Goldsmith to slide into pole position for the November runoff against incumbent Mike Aguirre who clocked in at under 29%. Heck, the Chair of the San Diego Democratic Party came in 7th in a vote-for-six race for Central Committee (and then won a DNC spot over the weekend). I could go on.

Each of these races on their own might be justified. But when it represents the entire strength that the San Diego Democratic Party can muster in the midst of a pro-Democratic tide across the country larger than anyone has seen in decades, it’s cause for concern. So what happened? Washburn offers a few thoughts as do I:

One of the most glaring issues is money. As Washburn notes,

In the just-finished primary, the Democratic Party spent $35,000 on direct mail and other support of Stephen Whitburn. His chief competition for the District 3 seat came from two other Democrats — Todd Gloria and John Hartley. Gloria and Whitburn made the runoff.

“Why would you spend a penny on that race?” asked Andy Berg, the director of government relations for the National Electrical Contractors Association and a Democrat. “Gloria and Whitburn would likely vote the same (on council) 100 out of 100 times.”

Meanwhile, Berg noted, Democrats are in dogfights against well-funded Republicans in Districts 1 and 7. The party spent nearly $70,000 in the primary to support Marti Emerald and oppose Boling in District 7. The GOP spent more than $200,000 in that race.

In District 1, the funding disparity is starker. The Democratic Party spent just more than $5,000 supporting Sherri Lightner in a race against Thalheimer and Marshall Merrifield, Republicans who combined raised more than $700,000, most of it coming out of their own pockets.

In the mayoral race, the GOP spent $230,000 on Sanders while the Democrats spent $1,869 on [Democratic nominee Floyd] Morrow.

I should note that District 1 is current represented by Democrat and City Council President Scott Peters, so losing that seat could mean losing control of the Council.

Current state GOP Chair Ron Nehring came up in San Diego, where with unlimited national-level resources he rebuilt the SD GOP with a focus on infrastructure and electoral victory, leaving ideology as incidental. As designed, it has almost completely eliminated the ability of local Democrats to win or often contest elections- which makes the ideological debate moot since…well…there isn’t one.

One wonders what exactly the point is of even nominating someone for Mayor if there will be no support at all. The most prominent Democrats in San Diego looked past Morrow, with former state Sen. Dede Alpert, former Assemblywoman Lucy Killea and former Rep. Lynn Schenk endorsing Jerry Sanders and Councilmember Donna Frye doing everything but endorsing GOP challenger Steve Francis. There’s a time and a place for pragmatism, but completely giving up on even having a debate of the issues that ranges outside the far right-to-center right continuum should be embarrassing. If we can’t even talk about these issues in an election, when are we gonna do it?

Washburn goes on to touch on another issue that I’ve discussed many times with local Democrats: Where the hell are the candidates and the infrastructure? Lorena Gonzalez lost an exceptionally tight race for City Council in 2006 in a district that covers beach communities and downtown urbanites that should be favorable for a Democrat:

“Here we have a Stanford-educated woman with brilliant ideas and Democratic ideals — she epitomized what the party is about,” Berg said. “And [the party] couldn’t muster the support to win a City Council race.”

Gonzalez, who is now the secretary-treasurer of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, said she felt, to a degree, like she was on her own during the race.

“Speaking as a candidate, we don’t have the same infrastructure that the GOP has,” said Gonzalez, who estimates she was outspent 7-to-1 in the race. “And there have been no real attempts to create an infrastructure and professionalize the party.”

Gonzalez might be going a bit further than I would there, because the SD Dems and Chair Jess Durfee have in fact been making tremendous strides recently. Indeed, Washburn notes “Since taking over as chairman four years ago, Durfee said he has increased the organization’s budget from $60,000 to $300,000. Also, he said, and the party has gone from having no field operations at all, to more than 700 trained precinct leaders in the county.”

That’s a darn good start, and one that should be commended. But when the money is being misallocated, when candidates don’t feel like they’ll be supported by a vigorous infrastructure, and when leading figures in the party check out and throw their lot in with the GOP under the guise of some cop-out notion of pragmatism that simply justifies the opposing point of view, there’s been a fundamental and catastrophic breakdown.

The infrastructure that is beginning to take root here is encouraging, but remain small steps in the right direction. These few encouraging steps are more than outweighed by the colossal “DNP” on the coaches’ scorecard for prominent Democrats throughout the County. If they weren’t busy with in-fighting, they flat did not show up. And with that kind of leadership, building from the ground up- even in times as conducive as these- becomes a herculean task. If June 3rd’s results are any indication, local Democrats won’t be done wandering in the wilderness any time soon.

This is what conservative fiscal leadership looks like: a broke Republican state party.  Grover Norquist’s right hand man, Ron Nehring has been running the CRP into debt and the proverbial ground.  Because he has been unsuccessful at fundraising a moderate with a big check book is trying to control the direction of the party.  This is what happens when you rely on big donors and not an army of small contributors.  They pwn you.  SacBee:

The California Republican Party once again faces an identity crisis heading into its annual spring convention, and this time a major donor is calling on the party to become more inclusive.

Businessman Lawrence K. Dodge delayed writing a check to help the party pay off $3 million in debt and wrote a scathing analysis of the party in a private letter, raising concerns similar to those cited by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he said Republicans were “dying at the box office” last year.

The internal strife comes as state records show the party continues to suffer a decline in registration and carry a debt incurred to help Schwarzenegger win re-election in 2006.

Their governor created a “scheduling conflict” and will not be attending the convention.  That is how highly he thinks of the direction of the organization.  He took them to the cleaners actually.  I am quite amused at the fact that he managed to convince them to dump a bunch of money into his race and then never actually helped them erase that debt.  That must rub them something wicked.

The conservatives are not pleased with Dodge and give his platform the worst insult a Republican can throw at a fellow Republican.

Mike Spence, head of the conservative California Republican Assembly, said of the moderate proposal that “Hillary Clinton could say every word in it and agree with 80 percent of it.” He also called Dodge’s letter, particularly his call for a toned-down platform, a “blackmail threat.”

Oh my this is fun to watch.

I do love the twisted logic Jon Fleischman uses to defend the exclusion of Decline-to-State voters from their presidential primary.

Jon Fleischman, a party vice chairman, said the party is stronger for having a closed primary. He is proposing a rule change that also would block independents from state primary contests, though GOP sources said the proposal is unlikely to pass.

Fleischman said the closed presidential primary will help the party unify, because GOP voters can be assured that only Republicans chose McCain. “I think John McCain is a stronger, more legitimate Republican nominee because he showed he could win votes from Republicans in California,” he said. “I know a lot of Republicans would be less excited about backing him if he had won because of crossover votes from decline-to-state voters.”

AKA McCain has serious problems within the Republican party and they were willing to deal with the long-term impact of snubbing these voters because McCain has issues this year.

I hope that works out for them.

Meanwhile, an old scandal reared it’s head again.  Did you know that the staffer who resigned last year over his immigration status was here illegally while he was working for Norqist’s Americans for Tax Reform?  Yes, the California Republican Party employed an undocumented worker.  It’s hard to know what pieces of this Chronicle story to grab.  It is all so delicious.

Michael Kamburowski, an Australian citizen who served briefly as chief operating officer of the state GOP, worked from 1995 to 2000 as a vice president of Americans for Tax Reform in Washington, D.C., an organization headed by Norquist – an architect of modern conservatism who has advised President Bush and top GOP political leaders.

For Norquist, Kamburowski lobbied Congress on dozens of issues, including immigration reform, according to his resume. He also directed the Norquist organization’s Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, an effort to rename public buildings to honor the former president.

But when he went to work for Norquist, Kamburowski had no legal right to live or work in the U.S., according to documents filed recently in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., in connection with a wrongful-arrest lawsuit he filed against U.S. immigration officials.

This guy was working on immigration legislation while he was violating current U.S. law.

Kamburowski quit his post with the state GOP in June after The Chronicle disclosed that he had sued the federal officials who jailed him in 2004 in an attempt to deport him.

At the time, he said he had a valid work permit when he was hired by state party Chairman Ron Nehring, who has done consulting work with Norquist. Kamburowski refused to discuss his immigration status when he first came to the United States in 1995 and was hired by the Norquist organization.

But documents filed late last year in the lawsuit – including portions of Kamburowski’s pre-trial testimony – show that he remained in the United States illegally to work for Norquist after he came to this country on a tourist visa.

There is absolutely no way that this guy was legally allowed to be in this country and it appears that he committed fraud while filling out his I-9 and that Americans for Tax Reform did not verify his legal status.

On the form, Norquist’s group was required to verify that Kamburowski possessed documents proving both his identity and his right to work in the United States – a passport, a permanent residence or “green” card and a Social Security card.

Because Kamburowski had no green card, the I-9 submitted by Americans for Tax Reform must have contained false information, said the experts who reviewed the case. Under federal law, employers who hire undocumented workers can be fined, and if they knowingly make false statements about an employee on an I-9 form they can be prosecuted, immigration experts said.

With staffers like this guy, it is no wonder why the CRP is doing so well.

We gripe a lot here about the state of the Democratic Party, but it is pretty clear that the CRP is a heck of a lot worse.

In October I wrote an article for San Diego CityBeat called Down PERA-Scope which discussed the bumpy road being encountered by state GOP Chair Ron Nehring relative to the Dirty Tricks Initiative.  In part, the article said

…many GOP activists, strategists and observers expressed concern over the impact of Nehring’s two high-profile personnel problems on party fundraising. Later in the summer, these concerns were seemingly validated when Schwarzenegger was forced to help retire the state party’s debt after rumors surfaced that it could barely cover operating costs.

Well, PERA is super-duper dead now and it looks like Nehring’s tenure is continuing to be a problem for the donor base.  Big time GOP donor Larry Dodge has called out Nehring

Among his complaints, Dodge says the party has not had an effective finance chairman-the key fundraiser-in place for more than a year. He suggests that party officers are squandering money without accountability. Major donors, he said, were promised a hand in the party’s operations committee but “nothing has happened.”

“The party needs professional management,” he writes.

The whole article is like that, and it’s pretty neat.  Dodge is aligned with the Schwarzenegger/McCain outlook on things more than he gets down with the theocon vibe, but nevertheless it’s time to bust out the popcorn if the donor base is rebelling against Nehring’s stewardship of the state party.  Nehring of course goes back like crack to to the 80s with Grover Norquist and used San Diego as the launching pad to his current state-level exploits.  He literally administered the GOP playbook on how to turn an urban area Republican, so with any luck his failures mirror the fundamental failing of GOP urban strategy (such as it is).

Is it just me, or does “Nehring Republican” sound like an enticing electoral slur? Maybe it’s just me. Unless McCain is the GOP nominee. Oh wait…

Among other sources, the AP reported yesterday on the many issues up for debate as Republicans consider overhauling their current platform.  Schwarzenneger has lined up support from GOPers in the legislature to move away from divisive (and presumably NOT post-partisan) “values” issues like gun control, abortion and gay rights.  Arnold is pushing for a more practical, Reagan-worship focus, hoping to distill things down to just low taxes, strong defense, and small government.  And if you think those three items were intentionally ordered to contradict themselves, you’re quite right.

It’s hardly news to find the Governor at odds with the socially conservative wing of the Republican Party, but what’s been brewing for a while has the potential to boil over at the Republican Convention as the battle over the state party’s soul comes to a head.  While Schwarzenegger thinks it might be time for the Republican Party to abandon platform points like overturning Roe v. Wade and opposing gun registration, President of the California Republican Assembly Steve Pence laments that “[t]here’s a move afoot to make sure the Republican Party stands for nothing… [it’s]…a direct assault on Republican Party principles.”

State GOP chair Ron Nehring for his part says the party is in the midst of a “healthy discussion” and has a draft platform with fun terms like “one man and one woman and “the unborn.”  Bob brought us Nehring’s excitement over the “significant step” of endorsing the Dirty Tricks maneuver and in the same day, while jockeying for position heading into the debate, Julia noted Schwarzenegger belittling the Dirty Tricks Initiative.  One wonders if there are broader implications as Reagan worship squares off against “values.”  Is this a sign of the unholy Republican alliance finally splintering in the face of reality?