Here’s what’s happening on the campaign trail.

• CA-11: Apparently trying to win some kind of award for the worst attack website in history, Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report (a terribly designed website in its own right) has put together One Term Is Enough, in all of its way-too-large masthead, ridiculously-spare with no action items or columns, design out of Quark X-Press glory.  Man, that’s ugly.  And I think the focus on Jerry McNerney’s earmarks, given the summer of scandal that Dean Andal has lived through which is entirely about a construction contract with a community college (if he was in Congress, that would be, basically, an earmark), is kind of silly.  Meanwhile, McNerney is up with his first ad of the cycle, focusing on his work on behalf of troops and veterans.

• AD-80: As soyinkafan noted, Manuel Perez and Gary Jeandron had a debate where Jeandron stated his support for a tax increase in Imperial County.  That’s not likely to help him with the conservative base, but clearly Jeandron understands that he has to move to left if he has any chance to win this seat.  The Palm Springs Desert Sun has a debate report here.

• SD-19: Tony Strickland’s latest endorsement is Erin Brockovich, of all people.  However, this could be less of a reach across the aisle as it appears.

Ventura County Star columnist Timm Herdt got Strickland’s Democratic opponent Hannah-Beth Jackson on the phone, who said she was “a little surprised” by Brockovich backing her opponent.

While Brockovich says she is a Democrat in the ad, she writes on her blog that she’s ready to leave the party and become an independent.

“I am ready to turn because both parties are acting foolish and judgmental and attacking,” she writes.

She also has kind words for GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

“I am proud to be a member of the same Strong Woman’s Club that Sarah Palin is in.” Brockovich writes.

• AD-15: As has been noted, Joan Buchanan released her first campaign ad of the cycle.  Her opponent Abram Wilson responded with his own ad, also biographical in nature, and his campaign has questioned the Buchanan spot and her commitment to fiscal responsibility.  I suppose signing a “no-tax” pledge is the height of responsibility, then.

• AD-30: We were all expecting it, and now Nicole Parra has officially endorsed Republican Danny Gilmore in the election to replace her.  This is a family fight moved into the political sphere – the Parra-Florez feud is well-known.  

Parra’s support of Danny Gilmore angered Democratic Party leaders, but comes as no surprise because she has been praising Gilmore for months.

“I will endorse Danny Gilmore in the near future and I will campaign for him and do commercials,” Parra said in an interview. Gilmore, a retired California Highway Patrol officer from Hanford, is running against Democrat Fran Florez, mother of state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, a longtime Parra rival.

• LA Board of Supes: Turns out that not only is Bernard Parks turning to Republicans to help him get elected over progressive State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, but for ten years he was a member of the American Independent Party (!).

According to voter registration forms certified by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder:

Bernard Parks left the Democratic Party and registered as an American Independent on February 12, 1992 – just in time to miss the opportunity to vote for President Bill Clinton.

He registered again as an American Independent on August 9, 1996.

President George Bush was elected in November 2000 – but Parks still wouldn’t become a Democrat for nearly a year and a half.

Parks was fired as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department on April 9, 2002. Shortly thereafter, he began to prepare to run for Los Angeles City Council, and re-registered as a Democrat on May 30, 2002. Less than a year later, he was elected to the City Council.

That is very strange, especially for an African-American to sign up with a party which is the legacy of George Wallace.

(Righting a bit of a wrong here. This should have been frontpaged when it first appeared; not everything is or should be about the day-to-day slugfest. – promoted by jsw)

For lack of a nail, the shoe was lost;
for lack of a shoe, the horse was lost;
for lack of a horse, the rider was lost;
for lack of a rider, the message was lost;
for lack of a message, the battle was lost;
for lack of a battle, the war was lost;
for lack of a war, the kingdom was lost.

Northern California Democrats have been hearing a lot lately about how the CDP is targeting two of our most important races, CA-11 and AD-15. Both of these districts have historically elected Republicans, with CA-11 holding a 5.5% Republican registration advantage and AD-15 recently dwindling to a 2% Republican advantage. Now that the AD-15 seat is turning over due to term limits, the CDP is hoping to pick up a new Democratic Assembly seat while protecting the sole Congressional gain that California Democrats made in 2006.

Unfortunately, the Democratic definition of “targeting” seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to catnapping. Take, for example, the City of San Ramon elections for mayor and City Council that were scheduled for this November.

As is true in most locales, San Ramon’s city offices are considered non-partisan. Yet in San Ramon, the mayor and the entire City Council are all Republicans, despite the fact that city-wide Democratic registration  stands at 9,988 compared to 10,589 Republicans, with a pool of 6,033 DTS voters.

So exactly what happened to San Ramon’s November 2007 election? Well, there’s not going to be an election. That’s because when the August 10 filing deadline rolled around, nobody had filed to run for mayor against the Republican incumbent; nobody had filed to run for City Council against the Republican incumbents. With nobody challenging them at the polls, the three incumbents were appointed to new terms on August 20.

So how does the lack of a nail lose the war?

Well, for starters, San Ramon’s incumbent mayor, H. Abram Wilson, is also running for the Republican nomination for AD-15. As the highest-ranking elected in the race, he has excellent name recognition and a sizable network of supporters, all of which led to him being considered by many as the early favorite in the Republican field. But his pesky mayoral race was widely viewed as a big negative, siphoning his time, money and energy away from the AD race. Would he be able to spend the bulk of 2007 running for mayor and then immediately jump into a heated AD race?

He addressed those questions head-on earlier this summer:

San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson has loaned his campaign $95,000. He has received $18,474 from other contributors.

Wilson described his loan as a pragmatic jump-start to his Assembly campaign, which he’s running concurrently with his re-election bid for mayor. San Ramon city elections will be held in November; the Assembly primary election is June 2008.

“People have asked me if I’m committed to the Assembly race because I am running for mayor and how could I do both,” Wilson said. “But when people see that you are willing to put your own funds in, they will see that you believe in yourself and you believe you can win.”

As of August 10, all of Wilson’s troubles vanished. Freed up from any work or expense in that mayoral race, he’s been able to focus exclusively on the AD-15 seat. That means that, three months ahead of schedule, all of his fundraising activities, along with all of his time and energy, are able to be fully deployed into the Assembly race, and the doubt that plagued his candidacy has been cast aside. Wilson’s position as the frontrunner seems stronger than ever.

And if Wilson wins the primary, he is clearly the most difficult of the Republican candidates for a Democrat to defeat. Genial, experienced, and very careful to present himself as a “moderate” Republican, Wilson’s presence on the November 2008 ballot would make the AD-15 seat that much more challenging for a Democrat to win.

But it’s not just AD-15 that’s impacted by the San Ramon race. As one of my readers pointed out, Jerry McNerney also has a dog in this hunt:

Why should building a farm team should be the responsibility of McNerney’s team?

He is the sole beneficiary. The farm team helps by eliminating officeholders down ballot that could be hostile and sling arrows at every opportunity they get. […]

Now I envision [Republican Congressional candidate Dean] Andal’s people using those GOP officeholders to close ranks and rally their base to take down McNerney, probably in direct mail to San Ramon and Danville voters, maybe not even use party affiliation, but just the fact that they are local office holders and they support Andal. It will be something like, “The entire City Council of San Ramon supports Dean Andal. Join us, as he shares our commitment to low taxes and economic growth” — or something like that.

So the Democrats’ inability to field a single candidate in San Ramon has serious consequences for a whole host of other races. And exactly who is to blame? Well, the list is long. As another of my readers pointed out, there was a fundamental failure at the local Democratic club and Central Committee level to get involved in the race and recruit candidates.

Likewise, with the CDP bragging loudly all year about how they were targeting AD-15 and CD-11, one might have imagined that, in addition to money, they would provide a little planning and a little effort on the ground. And, frankly, it just wasn’t that hard to look at the AD candidates, see Wilson as the strongest contender, and think, “Gee, maybe it would be good to throw up a few roadblocks to his campaign — like, you know, a competitor in his mayoral race.”

Then there’s Jerry McNerney, the Congressman who represents San Ramon. As the regional party leader, he had both the opportunity and the responsibility to recruit good candidates for the San Ramon races. And let’s face it, McNerney’s involvement in the race wouldn’t just have been an altruistic party-building mechanism; it would have come back to help him immeasurably — a classic win-win.

But instead, all of these Democrats complacently snoozed through the San Ramon city elections. So here we have, in this one race, a ripple that has the potential to be felt over a very large area. A contested race in San Ramon might have resulted in a Democratic counter-balance to the all-Republican San Ramon city government, might have helped build the Democratic base locally, might have helped develop a bench of Democratic officeholders, might have hampered the strongest Republican in his AD-15 primary race, and might even have shored up Jerry McNerney’s Congressional base. We’ll never know, though, because it didn’t happen.

This post is an amalgam of posts found here and here and here at The Progressive Connection.