Democratic endorsement process has a strange relationship with the grassroots

by Brian Leubitz

The pre-convention caucuses are one of the most grassroots friendly processes in California politics, while at the same time, there is a potential to game them from above.  Last weekend, a number of competitive races, especially in Southern California where redistricting tossed a number of districts into chaos.

Around the Capitol has a great district by district listing of the competitive races and the CDP has a PDF of all the races, but the dynamic is worth focusing on.  As John Myers points out, in a Top-2 world, these could make a bigger difference than in the past:

For casual political watchers, it may be hard to believe that small gatherings of diehard Democrats in January will decide who wins races for the Legislature or Congress come November. And yet, in some cases, that’s exactly what could happen after this weekend. Welcome to the world of intraparty competition under California’s new primary election rules. (KQED Capitol Notes)

Typically, the value of the CDP’s endorsement is limited.  You get to ask the party to work with you on mailers, and use their lower mail rate, which can save a few dollars.  (It’s like a coupon!) And the party can spend money on your race. But, traditionally, the party itself will likely spend very little, if any, on the endorsed candidates in the primary.  But with Top-2, the word “primary” is something of a sketchy term, and candidates are labeled only as preferring one party or another.  So, the state party’s imprimatur could mean something more this cycle. The biggest thing is that this year, the sample ballot will include a listing of the endorsed candidate.

Since John Myers referred to the IKEA-instruction-like voting eligibility, I figured I would explain that as a way of explaining how thinks like Torie Osborn winning every Dem club endorsement but losing the Dem party happens.  To that specific district, AD-50, it seems clear that Torie Osborn, a progressive grassroots rock star and organizer for the California Alliance, has the support of the grassroots Democrats.  But Butler is getting support from the Assembly Democratic caucus.  Why does that matter, you ask?

Well, here is how the voting eligibility works for the pre-convention caucus:

1. Democratic clubs get one vote for every 20 verified active members in the district.
2. Democratic County Central Committee members in the district get a vote.
3. Democratic State Central Committee members in the district get a vote.  But this is where it gets complicated, as there are a number of ways you can become a delegate to the state party.
   • 12 members per assembly district elected in January of every odd year.
   • Members appointed by the county central committee
   • Members appointed by legislators and executive office holders.

The last two is where it gets really dicey.  The County chair usually appoints all of the central committee members to be delegates and in a county with an abundance of Democrats like LA, will have some left over. Those that are left over can be moved around into a district of need for endorsement. I don’t know if that happened with LA County chairman Eric Bauman or not.  (UPDATE: Most counties, including LA, elect their additional delegates, so it wouldn’t really be possible to game the system this way.)

The bigger target of delegate movement is the legislators.  Legislators can appoint half of their delegation outside of their own district, and those appointees get to vote in their own districts. Speaker John Perez has been pretty vocal in encouraging Ms. Osborn to “wait her turn” until Ms. Butler is termed out.  The problem with that is that she had been waiting her turn for Asm. Mike Feuer to term out in 2012.  Butler’s district barely touched this new AD-50, in fact she represents less than 10% (CORRECTION: Less than 2%) of the new AD-50 now.  However, as Butler decided not to run for the now more Republican friendly district that encompasses much of her new district, Osborn is now being told to wait again by the Assembly caucus.  Except she is not waiting, and has continued to run her campaign.

As a result, Speaker Perez has been organizing a dump of delegates into the new district, tilting the balance from Osborn to Butler.  At the convention, where the Democratic club members do not get to participate, this tilt of power towards legislators becomes more pronounced.  If Butler is able to get 2/3 of the delegates in her column, the only way to remove the endorsement from the consent calendar is to get 2 members from the Pre-primary endorsement review panel (PERC) to agree to pull it off the consent calender for PERC review.  If less than 2/3 support Butler, Osborn supporters will be able to gather 300 signatures to bring the endorsement to the floor.

(UPDATE: Note that the PERC consists of all DSCC executive board members in the district as well as the regional director, two e-board members appointed by the Chair and the state officers)

This process can happen in a few more districts around the state that are marked “caucus” on the PDF of all the races.  If you are coming to San Diego, keep an eye out on that 2/3 threshhold in the district level caucuses.

Democrats across the state will meet to begin the first step towards legislative endorsements

by Brian Leubitz

UPDATE: AroundTheCapitol.com is tracking the contested races.  Some of the big news already is that in SD-13 (San Mateo, Jerry Hill/Sally Lieber), there was no consensus, so there will be no official endorsement.  Also, no endorsement in AD-8.

The same is the Democrats across the state will meet at pre-convention caucuses across the state to begin the somewhat complicated process of endorsing for assembly, senate and congressional seats.  (Note: I have a part in this, as I am running the SF-based Region 4 endorsement process)  This might get confusing, but here’s a quick run-down of the process. If you’d like all the details, the CDP has a handy endorsement process memo written for campaigns.

1) Pre-convention: The voting population is made up of all the democratic state central committee (DSCC) members (delegates to the state convention) as well as 1 representative for every 20 members for all chartered democratic clubs in the district. If one candidate gets 70% of the vote in the district, he or she receives the endorsement.  If no candidate receives 50%, there is no endorsement in the race. If a candidate receives between 50 and 70%, the process moves to the convention.

Voters can attend the pre-convention caucus for each of the 21 regions and vote there, or they can mail, email or fax in their ballots to their regional directors.

2) Convention:

The voting population is made up of the DSCC members in the district, club representatives are no longer involved. Incumbents need to receive only 50% of the vote, while non-incumbents need 60%. If the recommendation is less than 2/3 of the vote, the recommendation can be pulled to the convention floor by signatures of 300 members of the DSCC. If the recommendation is by more than 2/3 of the vote, it can only be pulled by the pre-primary endorsement review committee.

3) Floor

If it does get to the floor, the entire DSCC gets to vote on the endorsement. Endorsement requires the same threshold as the convention caucus in part 2.

So there you have it. Fun stuff, huh? Well, if you are at the convention in San Diego in Feburary, you are sure to here more about this process. Until then, if you are a voter, be sure you get your ballot in today!  

Just a rundown of events in the CA-10 race with a week until primary day:

• Late last week, fundraising reports were due, showing that over $2 million dollars has been raised by the various candidates seeking Ellen Tauscher’s old seat in Congress.  By any metric – total cash raised, cash raised in the last cycle, cash raised since June 30, cash on hand, and cash on hand less debts – John Garamendi has the lead, though much of his money comes from big donors.  Anthony Woods, and to a lesser extent Mark DeSaulnier, have found a smaller-donor base, though Woods’ is mostly out of district.  Joan Buchanan has basically not raised money at all; she has given herself as much as $750,000 in loans and is generally self-funded (and what donations she has not given herself have come from such health industry interests as Wellpoint, one of the largest insurers in America).  I would say the top four candidates probably have enough money to get out the message within their budgets, however.

• The Contra Costa Times, the main newspaper in the main population center of the district, endorsed John Garamendi for the position.  However, their criticism of Mark DeSaulnier, that he “acced(es) to the wishes of organized labor, particularly public employee unions,” gives you an indication of their orientation and whether or not you find them a trusted source.

• DeSaulnier continues to hammer on the largely irrelevant point that Garamendi doesn’t live inside the district.  Here’s a mailer to that effect.  And practically every missive from campaign staff re-emphasizes this point.  I would like their research department to find one instance of when a residency issue like this had any impact on a Congressional race.  I just really think DeSaulnier has missed his target here.  He’s better off showing his progressive bona fides on issues like health care, transportation and the environment, IMO.  This is such a critical time, and residency issues do not appear to be at the top of the minds of people who want to see this country make good on the change agenda from 2008, particularly Democratic partisans who would vote in a special election primary.

• Anthony Woods held another live chat at AmericaBlog this week.  His position in local endorsements always comes at the end and reads something like “we were very impressed with him and think he has a bright future.”

The San Francisco Chronicle, which is not completely the local paper in CA-10 (I would imagine the Contra Costa Times has more readers) but which is a large regional paper with reach into the suburbs, endorsed John Garamendi for Congress today.

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi stands out in this crowd because his vast portfolio of experience is so well aligned with the issues of the times and the big concerns of the district.

Garamendi said he withdrew from the governor’s race when this seat became open because “these are the issues I’ve spent my life on.” Others might suggest his decision was conveniently pragmatic – his bid for the Democratic nomination was going nowhere – but there is no doubt about his qualifications for Congress, especially in this district. He was an aggressive and effective insurance commissioner (think health care, consumer issues such as foreclosure), deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior (delta, climate change) and a state legislator from 1974 to 1991.

The 64-year-old Garamendi has the confidence and depth of knowledge that would allow him to hit the ground running in Congress – and his history suggests he would be unabashed in doing so.

The op-ed had good words for practically everyone running, particularly Anthony Woods, but went with Garamendi.  In a weird example of symmetry, Bruce Brugmann and the SF Bay Guardian wrote almost exactly the same editorial today.

Meanwhile, Joan Buchanan debuted a spot for the last two weeks of the campaign, which looks pretty much like a generic bio spot, although with her being the only prominent woman in the field, an ad just repeating “Joan Buchanan, Joan Buchanan” for 30 seconds would be somewhat effective (and basically that’s what this spot does).  The three electeds are all up on cable TV now.  Will Anthony Woods use some of his money for TV?

Sen. Mark DeSaulnier has based a lot of his campaign strategy in the quick-sprint Congressional race for CA-10 on endorsements.  Not a day goes by when he doesn’t release some endorsement by one character or another into my inbox.  The other day he touted that he received a “majority of endorsement votes” from California Democratic Party delegates at their endorsement meeting over the weekend, without mentioning that he did not reach the 60% threshold that would be required for an official CDP endorsement.

However, one endorsement has caused DeSaulnier a bit of a headache – the support of the former holder of this seat, Ellen Tauscher.  DeSaulnier has made no secret of that endorsement, including it in mailers and on his TV advertisement.  One problem with all this: with Tauscher now at the State Department, some have raised concerns that her endorsement while working at a federal agency violates the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from participating in partisan politics.  DeSaulnier’s camp has countered that the endorsement, which was made before Tauscher was confirmed for the post at State, always says “Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher” and thus indicates that it was made prior to that appointment.  But the State Department has weighed in, asking DeSaulnier’s campaign to remove the endorsement.

The U.S. State Department has asked 10th District Congressional candidate and state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier to remove all references in his campaign materials to his endorsement from former congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, who is now undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. State Department.

While a legal adviser to the U.S. State Department concludes that the endorsement broke no laws or policies, “Under Secretary Tauscher is committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct. To avoid even the appearance of impropriety, on behalf of Undersecretary Tauscher, I have asked Senator DeSaulnier to remove all references in his campaign material of any endorsement she may have made,” wrote James Thessin, deputy legal adviser and designed agency ethics official.

The DeSaulnier campaign is fingering John Garamendi for complaining to the State Department about the use of Tauscher’s name.  Actually, the complaint was made by Jason Bezis, an individual who claims not to be affiliated with any campaign, but who apparently enjoys filing complaints with the State Department and the FEC (he filed one there against DeSaulnier’s campaign over a health care mailer).  It looks like the DeSaulnier campaign won’t change current materials already printed, but will consult the State Department “about what qualifies and what doesn’t under their request.”

I actually question whether this means as much as the DeSaulnier team seems to think, but their strategy all along has been to gather up local endorsements.

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

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

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

The California Democratic Party “split the baby” on the six propositions for the May 19th ballot – endorsing Propositions 1B, 1C and 1F, while not supporting Props 1A, 1D and 1E.  This shifts the dynamic for the last three weeks.  No longer can Prop 1A’s defeat be a mandate against tax increases – because the measure’s “spending cap” is why progressives oppose it.  Likewise, “no” on Props 1D and 1E is now a vote for the state to fund children’s health programs and mental health services.  And while many liberals fear the short-term “budget gap” if the measures all go down, the Party endorsed a “yes” vote on Prop 1C – which would have the most immediate impact.  The Party’s support for Prop 1B is a mandate for public schools – and while Prop 1A’s defeat would prevent 1B from going into effect, a “yes” vote could pressure Governor Schwarzenegger to stop gutting education money.  Democrats in the legislature promoted all six measures as a “budget package” to avert fiscal disaster.  But it was a rotten deal, and the strategy would leave us no better off on May 20th towards a long-term solution.  With this new dynamic, we can build momentum for scrapping the “two-thirds rule” in the state budget.

This weekend’s State Convention showcased the disconnect between the Party grassroots and the Sacramento leadership.  Our legislators cut a deal with Schwarzenegger they honestly believed was the right thing to do, but the rank-and-file was angry at sacrificing core fiscal values just to kick the can down the road.  California’s budget woes are structural, and until the state passes major reform the right-wing Republicans will keep holding a gun to our heads.  Getting rid of the two-thirds rule – as soon as possible – is the only acceptable “budget reform” for the ballot.

At the Young Democrats’ caucus on Friday night, various legislators urged us to support these flawed measures – because there would be dire consequences if they failed.  As a friend said to me while we listened to each politician, “Q: How do you get young people to disagree with you?  A: Tell them they have no choice.”  That summed up the sentiment of many delegates, who felt pressured to back something they had no power in crafting.

Some of the arguments we heard in favor of Proposition 1A were: (a) our right-wing foes at the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association oppose it, and (b) if it fails, it will send a message that the public opposes tax increases.  Of course, the latter is only true if the sole opposition is right-wing zealots and the Republican Party.  Prop 1A is a lot more than just extending a few temporary tax increases.  It gives the state – which already has layers of fiscal straitjackets on the revenue side – another fiscal straitjacket on the spending side.

After the Democratic Convention vote on Sunday, press coverage on Prop 1A started to change.  The Los Angeles Times called it a “state spending cap,” while the San Francisco Chronicle said it was a “proposed spending cap and rainy-day fund.”  Before progressives began to oppose Prop 1A, the media only focused on tax increases – even though these temporary measures will stay on the books for two years if Prop 1A fails.  That’s because the only ones complaining about 1A were Republicans like Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman, and the “tea party” crowd.

Rather than allow right-wing zealots to “own” the opposition, liberals began to articulate a fiscal agenda to drive the post-May 19th debate.  If our ultimate goal is to scrap the “two-thirds rule,” it is smart politics to influence what happens when the Governor and legislature go back to the drawing board.  Because the state will have an $8 billion deficit even if all measures pass, making the progressive case against 1A is a sound strategy.

Going back to the drawing board will mean choosing what budget priorities need to be fought for.  If the Democratic Party had endorsed Propositions 1D and 1E, it would have sent the message that children and the mentally ill are expendable.  And the combined “savings” from diverting these funds to help balance the budget is less than one billion dollars – or about 1% of the entire budget.  Non-profits who directly work with these constituencies have campaigned against the measures.  Defeating them will be a mandate to protect progressive fiscal priorities.

Nevertheless, liberals are anxious and fearful about the next round of painful budget cuts.  It’s understandable that many delegates at the Convention held up placards to endorse the measures while holding their noses.  Which is why the Democrats endorsed Proposition 1C, the measure that borrows up to $5 billion against future lottery revenues to balance this year’s budget.  Of all six measures on the May 19th ballot, Prop 1C has the biggest short-term downside if it fails.

Robert Cruickshank wrote a solid piece yesterday on Calitics, advising Democratic leaders to dump the “yes on everything” strategy – and focus on Prop 1C.  “Aside from the flawed nature of the proposals and how they came onto the ballot,” he wrote, “selling them as a single package was a disastrous move. If they want to salvage anything from this sinking ship, they could tell Californians why take a chance on borrowing against the lottery via Prop 1C, and how it will help our Democratic leaders more strongly resist Republican demands for massive cuts, instead of assume those cuts are a foregone conclusion.”

The Democratic Party endorsed Proposition 1B, which would give the public schools $9.3 billion of money that already belongs to them.  But because it would only take effect if the voters approve Prop 1A, legislators have dismissed progressive groups who are “No on 1A” and “Yes on 1B” for being inconsistent.  However, it has become popular for liberals to “hedge their bets” in case the voters pass Prop 1A.  If the state is going to have a spending cap, it makes sense to secure a slice of the money for schools.

On the other hand, advocates have an alternative to Prop 1B – which is to go to court to enforce the Constitutional requirement of education funding.  But if voters pass 1B while defeating 1A, it could strengthen the hand of Democrats who negotiate with Arnold and the Republicans – because the voters have affirmed public schools.

At the Democratic Convention, newly elected Chairman John Burton urged delegates who disagree on the propositions not to let these divisions keep us apart.  The state will be in bad fiscal shape regardless of what happens on May 19th, and progressives must keep their focus on eliminating the “two-thirds rule.”  This weekend’s split decision on the various budget measures can help forge a path towards a sane fiscal policy.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Paul Hogarth is the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron, San Francicso’s Alternative Online Daily, where this piece was first published.  He was a delegate at the California Democratic Party’s convention, and gave one of the floor speeches against Proposition 1E.