By Steve Smith

The results are in. While workers are celebrating some huge victories this morning, the corporate crowd is wondering what went wrong in some key races. Last night’s California primary election presented some very clear choices to voters that are critical to the direction of our state.

The corporate political machine went all in, spending big in an effort to defeat labor champions in a number of races, and for the most part, came up empty. Union workers, who pounded the pavement in the final weeks to talk to voters face-to-face about the importance of the election, likely made the difference in a number of races.

Five reasons last night was a boon for workers (and mostly a bust for big corporations):

It was a bad night for corporate Democrats and a good night for worker-friendly candidates.

In a number of races around the state, big business spent heavily to elect corporate Democrats to do their bidding in the legislature. The most high-profile of these races was Assembly District 16, where a coalition of oil companies, tobacco firms, developers, realtors and other business interests sought to advance corporate Democrat Steve Glazer over former teacher and Dublin mayor Tim Sbranti. Sbranti easily beat out Glazer for a spot in the general election, garnering 29% of the vote to Glazer’s 22%. It was a stinging defeat for Glazer, who, backed by a gaudy $3 million in corporate cash, made attacking union workers central to his campaign.

In another important race, corporate interests spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking labor champion Connie Leyva in Senate District 20, only to see Leyva advance to the general election. Leyva, the president of UFCW Local 1428 and the California Labor Federation, is a lifelong advocate for working families who will be a strong voice for workers in the legislature.

Governor Jerry Brown wins BIG.

There was no doubt Gov. Brown was headed to the general election, but by running up the score on his Republican counterparts, Brown showed just how formidable he will be come November. After the masterful job he’s done in turning California around, there’s simply no credible case to be made that he doesn’t deserve another term as Governor. And while the Republican establishment was happy to avoid the party bus to crazy town, population Tim Donnelly, they may not fare much better with former Goldman Sachs executive Neel Kashkari. Like Meg Whitman before him, Kashkari is the type of Wall Street candidate that California voters have little appetite for. In fact, given Kashkari’s involvement in the bailout of big banks at the expense of taxpayers, his resume may even be less palatable than Whitman’s. And his platform of cutting taxes on big corporations and eliminating regulations that protect workers and the environment isn’t going to sit well with working people.

Pro-worker candidates advance in every statewide constitutional race.

California is poised to retain the most worker-friendly slate of constitutional officers in the country after a number of huge wins by labor-endorsed candidates in the other statewide constitutional races. But just because big corporations took a drubbing last night, don’t think they won’t reload for the fall. Look for big corporate money to come in to support anti-teacher candidate Marshall Tuck against education champion Tom Torlakson. The California GOP will also likely throw in big for their only viable statewide candidate, Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who likely faces off against former Speaker of the Assembly, labor champion John Perez.

Mike Honda wins big in Congressional District 17.

Honda has been a champion for workers for decades, standing with labor in many key workers’ rights battles. He received an unexpected challenge from Democrat Ro Khanna in the primary. Khanna has done some good things for working people during his career, so it was a bit of a head-scratcher as to why he’d challenge a labor stalwart like Honda. Regardless, Honda showed his support in district is rock solid by garnering a decisive 49% of the vote in last night’s primary. The two will face off again in November, and working people are likely to ensure the same result, sending Honda back to Congress for another term.

Measure to provide much-needed assistance to homeless veterans cruises to victory.

The California Labor Federation was a huge supporter of Prop 41 as part of our ongoing effort to advocate for our state’s veterans. It was great to see voters show such strong approval (65%) of a measure to support our heroes in uniform, especially given the desperate need for increased housing options for veterans. The Labor Federation and affiliate unions look forward to continuing our efforts to support veterans through our new program, Veterans and Labor – Partners in Service. Learn more at www.veteransandlabor.com

Dear Friends and Volunteers,

Thank you for your enduring support and activism on behalf of a myriad of issues, many of which are at the core of my congressional campaign.  I’m talking about our work to transition from a permanent war economy to a new green economy, to protect the accuracy of our vote, to stop new offshore oil leases, and to advance prison reform.

Marta Evry is a blogger who, despite her good work on the California budget crisis, wants to re-elect my opponent, arguing that Jane Harman is a progressive.  With a flick of her wrist, Marta dismisses Harman’s repeated votes for war and occupation, for an onerous bankruptcy bill, for a free trade agreement that lowers labor and environmental standards, for her reported collusion with AIPAC to advance her own career in exchange for a promise to subvert due process, for her vote against affordable breast cancer medication, and for her cover-up of the Bush administration’s massive illegal wiretapping program.

The last time I checked the above credentials were not ones a progressive would trumpet.  For the record, Harman is a member of the corporate Democrats’ Blue Dog coalition.

In terms of the attacks Marta has leveled against me, please know that 98% of the stocks in question were sold years ago, and today I do not own any of the stocks to which Marta raised objections.  My opponent, however, invests up to eight million dollars in weapons manufacturers, and has never once recused herself from war supplemental votes.  Nor did Harman recuse herself from the  overnight bank bailout vote, despite the fact that her most recent disclosure statement indicates she had up to 5-million invested in Goldman Sachs at the time of the bail-out.

My husband and I do have family investments in property in Santa Monica, approximately six blocks outside the district.  For the record, however, I do not live in Santa Monica.  My husband and I have lived in the 36th congressional district in Marina del Rey for nearly two years.  Prior to that, we lived in Pacific Palisades, in Congressman Waxman’s district.

Unfortunately, a year ago Marta published on her blog misinformation, accusing me of not living in the district — and refusing to correct her mistake when asked to clarify for the sake of her readers.

I’m sure Harman, with her net worth of 300-million plus, has plenty invested in real estate outside of the 36th congressional district.

Additionally, I am sorry Marta fails to value my work on behalf of our community, our state, our nation, and our world.  For the last 15 years I have worked either as a classroom teacher, school facilitator, or literacy coach, with four of  those years working at a variety of schools, from West LA to Wilmington, in our district to improve education.  I feel fortunate to have worked with many dedicated educators collaborating to embed research-based literacy strategies in every subject.  Most recently, I taught and coached at Crenshaw HS in South Los Angeles, where I worked to establish a Social Justice and the Law Academy.  South LA is a few miles from our district, but what happens there impacts us all.  In short, education matters.  Youth matters.

Many of you know of my leadership in the anti-war movement, from the days when I marched in Los Angeles and San Francisco to end the Vietnam War to the present tense when, in the last few years, I co-wrote resolutions putting the California Democratic Party on record calling for an end to US military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I am honored to have organized with Congresswoman Maxine Waters a 1,000 strong Out of Iraq town hall, and to have led a peace delegation from Los Angeles to Capitol Hill.

On the state level, you may also know that I worked hard to protect our vote, testifying in Sacramento against empowering the electronic voting industry, promoting Debra Bowen as Secretary of State – and beyond that working to make sure Bowen stayed in office.  My campaign manager Michael Jay and I, hearing that our own local Registrar was organizing to drive Bowen from office, circulated petitions and visited every county supervisors’ office to support Bowen and her courageous stance to rid our polls of hackable touchscreen machines.

On another occasion, I testified in Sacramento against prison expansion — this on the heels of the state assembly’s passage of a bill to expand our prisons, despite the cost to our youth in California – where one out of every four African American men in their 20s is behind bars.

For those committed to single-payer health care, know that I have spent the last several years mobilizing support for single-payer, via letter-writing campaigns, party resolutions, and town hall forums.  At the start of my current congressional campaign, I ran a commercial challenging Jane Harman to sign on to Congressman Conyers’ bill HR676 for single-payer health care.  Harman never did.

Finally, on the timely subject of the middle east, I distinguish myself from my opponent who chooses to appear at AIPAC conferences calling for the Balkanization of Iran and on Fox News announcing a military attack on Iran is still on the table.  In contrast, I am committed to a just and lasting peace that recognizes the equality and dignity of all in the middle east.  In that regard, I co-founded LA Jews for Peace and have worked to raise money to rebuild homes Israel has demolished in the West Bank.  There is no safety, nor security, nor dignity in perpetrating human rights violations.  I have repeatedly invited my opponent to join me in supporting universal human rights — but she has not been forthcoming.

Clearly, the voters in the 36th congressional district have a choice on Tues., June 8th.  They can cast their vote for an incumbent who stands for war and Wall Street or a grassroots leader committed to peace and social justice.  While Harman is awash in corporate contributions, I am not taking a dime of corporate money because this is a people-powered campaign.  If you have not already gotten involved, there’s still time, albeit only a few days left.  Email [email protected] to phone bank or precinct walk and donate at WinogradforCongress.com Again, I want to thank you for your support and grassroots leadership. I am proud to work with you for progressive change in America.

Sincerely,

Marcy Winograd

In response to the potential “logistical nightmare” of counting ballots by hand in February’s primary election, San Diego county is starting a huge push for absentee voting.  Reported today in the Union-Tribune, San Diego County’s registrar of voters will send out postcards to more than 1 million voters pushing the absentee option, hoping to offset the number of paper ballots cast on election day.  This, of course, is in response to Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s ruling that only one touch screen machine per polling place would be allowed following her extensive study of potential security problems.

While San Diego has a particular love affair with Diebold which sets it apart from many other parts of the state (Diebold is, by contract, required to replace any decertified machines), it seems unlikely that it will be only San Diego that makes this sort of push for absentee voting.  So what does this mean?

It means that absentee ballots would start being mailed to a huge portion of California on January 7.  What is the significance of January 7? It’s exactly one week before the current date of the Iowa Caucus and the beginning of the primary voting season.  In 2004’s presidential primary, 34.31% of votes were absentee, and in 2006 that number in the primary jumped to 46.9%.  So if California sees a major jump in the number of absentee voters from 2006 and 2004 numbers, it could set California up as, in practical terms, the first state voting.

This is hardly a given.  Chris Bowers has a series of posts predicting that Iowa and New Hampshire could move into the end of 2007, in which case much of the traditional buzz from their events would remain influential.  But if not, early candidate impressions in California completely change the delegate math.  Almost 6.7 million ballots were cast absentee in 2004’s primary, and simply a jump to 50% would mean that 9.75 million people voted absentee, largely without the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire performance (also, by the way, more than twice the combined populations of Iowa and New Hampshire).  That’s a huge swing.  And so where are California’s Democrats trending?  According to pollster, pretty strongly and consistently towards Hillary Clinton.

About a month ago on Calitics, Julia Rosen asked “Where is Obama’s California Campaign?  In light of the early reactions to Secretary of State Bowen’s decertification, the question may more specifically be, what’s the absentee strategy?  If Californians are voting in mid-January, all previous bets are off and maybe the state actually gets all that presidential love and attention it’s been lusting after.  The impact on the conventional wisdom and the cable news won’t be immediate because these votes won’t enter the public consciousness until February 5 along with all of the votes cast at the polls.  So Iowa, New Hampshire, and all pre-national primary states will still get the attention and the glory.  But if the biggest prize has already been awarded, February 5th becomes much less about hype and much more about the early action.  And depending on how it manifests itself, it’s probably not such a bad thing to have people vote on the candidates and not the media hype out of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Debra Bowen, candidate for California Secretary of State, is in a tight battle for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday.

During her tenure in the State Senate, Debra Bowen has been working tirelessly for reliable voting systems and improving the public’s access to the government.  She was overwhelmingly endorsed by the California Democratic Party and by groups and newspapers up and down the Golden State.

You can help Debra Bowen by donating to a grassroots-sponsored radio campaign!  Latinos for America has produced pro-bono Spanish-language radio ads for the Los Angeles market that will run in Spanish talk and religious radio on Monday and Tuesday of next week.  We need your help to get them on the air.

Valley Grassroots for Democracy has teamed up with Latinos for America to collect contributions for the ads. Please go to https:/secure.actblue.com… and make a contribution and end the contribution with $.06 so we know that the contribution is for the radio ads.  For example, give $25.06 or $50.06 or however much you can give.

Please pass this along!  The election is neck and neck and your contributions will make this happen!

Remember to add $.06 for victory in ’06!

Learn more at:
http://www.debrabowen.com
http://www.latinosforamerica.com
http://www.valleygrassrootsfordemocracy.com