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LACDP Summit Lunch Liveblog: Coalition Building

David Atkins (thereisnospoon) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:13:03 GMT

Following is the liveblog of the LACDP Summit Lunch Panel on Coalition Building with:

Assemblymember De La Torre
Peggy Moore of OFA
Henry Vandermeir of the CDC
Orisha Michelle Hash of the Courage Campaign
Dorothy Reik of PDA
Gary Vaughn of SEIU 721

This very interesting panel was moderated by Assemblymember John Perez.
John Perez: Great to be here, we've got a great panel of people who have been involved in coalition politics. People use the term "coalition" in many different ways, some not so good, such as Bush's "coalition of the willing", some good such as when progressive groups come together. Coalitions are a coming together of different groups for a shared interest. They've identified that interest in themselves, and someone else.

First and foremost, you have to frame the issue around which people will coalesce. Second, you need to have trust between the partners. Third, there has to be a mechanism to mitigate when coalition partners have a dispute. Last, there have to be ways to measure success, and ways to build on that success to move forward.

One example of a coalition coming together on a specific approach will be presented by Assemblymember Hector De La Torre.

Assemblymember De La Torre: AB1060 is a bill that requires that all alcohol sales at grocery stores be done where there is a human checkout person who will check all the codes. Currently you can go to an automated stand with only one person monitoring 4 or 6 machines. One person can't monitor all of this, and it's not just about minors. It's also illegal to sell alcohol to someone who is already drunk. If you aren't next to the person and able to check, you can't tell. Also, teenagers have figured out how to bypass the the freeze mechanism to get around the alcohol sales barrier. No one is saying that the alcohol has to be locked away like cigarettes, just that a human has to be at the checkout.

Labor is with us on the bill, but it couldn't be UFCW versus the grocery stores. So we need to build a coalition. Young people, parents' groups, PTA, MADD, etc. And it was hard, because there were other issues including Mike Feuer's lock device bill. It took a while but we were able to convince them that this was in their interest and necessary. And in the end, UFCW never appeared publicly as the supporter of the bill, but rather PTAs and MADD and those other groups. You have to figure out who the best spokesperson and the best face for the issue is. It's nice to be right, but winning is important. You have to have the right face on it. And AB1060 is still on the Senate Floor, so please sign in favor of it.

Question: These machines are anti-employee! We need to boycott any stores that have them.

De la Torre: I get askede a lot about whether it's a labor bill. It's not: it's about how we conduct business in this state. We the people get to decide how business is conducted in the state.

Perez: That was a great example of how to build a coalition. In terms of format, we're going to take 20-25 minutes to go through the panel. Each panelist will take about 4-5 minutes to give their presentation, then I will moderate the Q&A. First presenter is Peggy Moore. Peggy is Political Director of OFA, has organized various campaigns for social justice in Oakland.

Peggy Moore: OFA serves as the President's field team. The election last year was exciting and folks got involved who had never been involved in a campaign before. It was an historic movement, but getting into office was just the beginning of making the change. OFA was created so that we can support the President on the ground. Staff of 9 in California, but we're in 48 states. We have a phenomenal group of volunteers, and we were phonebanking our hearts out from one congressperson to another, depending on who we needed to give our love to. Right now it's all about supporting the healthcare agenda. But pretty soon it'll be energy, and immigration and other issues. So we're working with HCAN, labor, done press conferences, actions, phonebank, etc. And when we move to education, we'll be expanding our coalition building.

We are a part of the DNC. OFA is a project of the DNC. Our structure works where we have community organizers who create neighborhood teams. We want to have people ready and waiting on the ground in an instant when we need to support the president. We have 150 to 175 organizers ready on the ground. We're training people to be ready for action. The issue is transferrable, doesn't matter what it is. We're just trained to be on the ground and help people organize. We've also been working with Learn to Win.

Perez: Thank you Peggy. Next up is Henry Vandermeir, serving in second term as Chairman of the CDC, and Political Director of the Orange County Democratic Party.

Henry Vandermeir: Obviously, one of the things from the party's point of view from the coalition point of view is to get our own party working together. With over 400 clubs across the state, getting them to cooperate is important. Or if there is a speaker coming and you don't have enough people in your club, invite people from other clubs to come. Work together on it and help activate people and get a candidate elected.

It's important to reach out to PDA, Wellstone and all the other groups out there. We're all working toward the same goals. Not a single one of all these organizations has the resources to do what needs to be done in California all by themselves. So we need to make them realize that in order to make things happen in this state, we need to cooperate. Leave our egos at the door when you walk in, work together, quit worrying about "these are our people, these are our precint leaders". That's what gets us into trouble.

There have been issues getting cooperation between clubs and OFA. We need to reach out to them and make sure that we're all working together. It's not rocket science, it's all common sense. That's what we need to do at the club level. We cannot reinvent the wheel, we don't have the resources individually, we need to work together on all of this.

Perez: Next is Orisha Michelle Hash, the Southern California field manager of the Courage Campaign. She's responsible for organizing volunteers on a county by county basis.

Hash: We're like MoveOn.org but for California. We like to call ourselves the greenhouse for the grassroots, in that we have a lot of different members with a lot of different interests. I work for the Equality Program, which was established after the passage of Prop 8. We sent out a viral video ad called Don't Divorce Us, which got a lot of new members. While many of those are interested in marriage equality, most are interested in healthcare, and secondarily education. I joined Courage because they were trying to emulate what Obama did during the election. The Equality Program was founded because every 4 years, California does a great job exporting labor and talent to the battleground states to the detriment of California, so we're out here to build a permanent progressive infrastructure in California. In terms of Equality, it's not just about marriage: it's about making sure the playing field is level in all areas such as education and healthcare.

Perez: Next is Dorothy Reik, Vice Chair of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, delegate to the CDP from the 41st assembly. Led a series of forums on single payer healthcare, Gaza, food safety, etc. She comes to us through the peace movement, and her club has close ties to the Topanga Peace movement.

Reik: PDA was started by Tim Carpenter after the 2004 DNC convention. The idea was to further our progressive agenda by working inside and outside the party. That means working with groups that don't traditionally work with the party. We have six issues: healthcare for all. We don't support hte public option, and stick to that. We're upset about the removal of the Kucinich Amendment. We want out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and want to end all wars. We want economic and social justice, everyone should be treated equally. And as far as right to marriage, we want everyone to be able to marry. Clean and fair elections, which we don't have in this country: we can't have voting machines at the front end or the back end either. Stop global warming, environmental issues we're on the front lines working against the corporations who want to keep overheating our globe and world until our children don't have a world to work in. If you think oil wars are bad, wait until we get water wars. And accountability, because Obama's Attorney General won't prosecute for torture. We want Obama to address our issues, not Obama's issues. We want OFA to work with us, and take directions from us, because we believe Obama has been taking directions from the corporations.

We have conference calls where you can talk to Tim Carpenter. I get jealous listening to OFA talking about paid staff. Outside of Tim Carpenter who gets a stipend, almost all of our people are volunteers.

Perez: Final panelist is Jerry Vaughn. Public Relations Director of SEIU 721, the largest public employee union in CA since 2005. 721 represents more than 80,000 public works from Santa Barbara to Orange County to the border.

Gary Vaughn: With such a large region like that, we have a diverse region that we represent. Social workers, sanitation workers, RNs, attorneys. We've worked with OFA on various issues and a number of other orgs. Oftentimes, unfortunately, we are good at making use of other organizations, but we have a difficult time reciprocating. We don't have a permanent structure in the community, but rather come in to help win an election. That's where we can make improvements to build coalitions. And we can work better with people on the other side of the ideological divide.

Question from Deana Igelsrud: I'm the e-board rep from the 47th district and co-chair of CA Majority Rule. A lot of your volunteers were new to the process and excited about the election. Many of the more seasoned veterans are more interested in the issues. How do you build coalitions with new people and keep them engaged when it comes to issues?

Perez: Part of the difference is between building an electoral coaliton and a governing coalition.

Peggy: We all supported Barack, but many of us have issues with how he's handling healthcare. So we've had camps and trainings to invite people to participate. We are organizing people around healthcare. We're online, calling structures we have in place. And then when it comes to education and energy, those issues pop in too. People will show up based on their passion. Our job and focus is to teach people to organize effectively in their communities.

Perez: It seems like every election cycle, you see a peak of activism, but then some people drop off, and some stay involved. So people who were involved in 2004 now see themselves as old hands. How has that experience been, Peggy?

Reik: PDA truly is a movement. We reach out not only to Democratic clubs to work with us, but we also reach out to other groups in the city and the state to groups like One Care Now, and the group standing against the Three Strikes Law. So we try to reach people and bring them into the Party and into the progressive movement who may not have been politically involved before. If someone came to me interested in food safety legislation, we did a forum for that to help teach people about that.

Thom O'Shaughnessy: How do we follow and deal with these three tenets: 1) learning how to agree to disagree, 2) how to marry orthodoxy with pragmatism, and 3) how to trade horses in a soft IOU for working on each other's issues?

Gary Vaughn: We don't have an answer to those dynamics. When we have 30 asks of the legislature, given what we can accomplish, can we make 30 asks effectively? Maybe we need to bullet down to 3 or 4. Others would say no, we have to push all our issues. But in other circumstances, we need to know what we have to walk away from the table having gotten. Our first rule is, do no harm, especially since we have so many budget cuts. And let's look at who is doing the work. And certainly, having wealthier Americans and Californians paying more is worth looking at.

Perez: There's been a significant debate about gay marriage, given CA and ME. One complaint is that the LGBT movement hasn't been involved in coalition politics, that they ask for help but don't necessarily provide it. Orisha, what are the challenges in bringing people out of their comfort zone?

Orisha: Courage is well-situated to work on this issue. Courage is multi-issue unlike some of the other organizations. One of the things we're trying to stress in our organizing work is trying to get people to show up, and stress the importance of showing up for community organizing work. One of the things we've been trying to do is stress the importance of not being a one-issue movement. Bringing people along in their feelings about marriage equality is important, but has to be paired with helping with the issues that matter to them.

Carolyn Fowler: These are not, or shouldn't be competing organizations. What is the best way for organizations to reach out to the clubs?

Henry Vandermeir: One of the things you need to do is find out who you're actually going to talk to. Know what your resources are. Common sense would tell you we have all the contact information for all the clubs. If we want OFA to contact them, well, why not just go to the source? Make it easy. It's a two way situation though. We don't just need to contact the presidents. They also need to contact us.

Peggy: We work closely with the CDP, and getting a list of all the clubs. We're going to be at the eboard meeting coming up next weekend. Coming up and saying, this is who we are and how we work together.

Dorothy Reik: We do it the old-fashioned way, pick up the telephone and call up the club leaders in our area, see if they'll cosponsor, or join our food safety or other forum. We have organizing calls, ways to reach out to club presidents and other people, and would love to work with OFA and other groups.

Question: Republicans by and large stand together and are united in their ranks. We have as Democrats got not to do that among ourselves. If you don't like something Obama is doing or whatever, that's fine and do it in private. But in a public forum, I find it very offensive to be attacking Obama and what he's trying to accomplish.

Perez: I'll take that as a comment.

Question: We have a challenge of people not voting for candidates or working for candidates, and focusing instead on issues. They need to work for candidates as well.

Gary Vaughn: We do trade with candidates: we work on your campaign, and we'd like you to work with us on these issues.

Question: I'm very disappointed in Organizing for America. And I love PDA. You've had time to organize your people, and i've been to several OFA house parties. But they don't teach people how to organize. They don't have to join a Democratic club, but they are afraid to even visit a club. You are spending money giving orders, call this person and say that, not teaching them how to think. I would like to see Obama people not be afraid of us.

Perez: People take various tones, some more positive and some more critical. I would ask us to be as productive and respectful in our discourse as possible. Sometimes it's hard not to feel the passion we feel about these issues. There is concern with the difference between a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach, so speak to those issues.

Peggy Moore: I'm proud to work for OFA. And I'm a president of an East Bay Democratic club. I understand some of those frustrations that people might have. But there is a focus we have. We decided that the issue was healthcare, and this is how we're going to organize around healthcare. And there are some groups that think we should be approaching it in a certain way. I'm not going to be on the street with Organizing for America, challenging the President. That's not going to roll. Other organizations can do that, and they have every right to. By pushing Single Payer, we may have gotten a public option, which wasn't on the table before. But we have a job and responsibility, and we have other issues to deal with as well. We listen to people about how to do our job better. We are training people to do the job, and we've been around less than a year. And a lot of the people who voted for Obama and who need healthcare are not Democrats. So it's important that we continue to have these conversations. I will come to a Democratic club and have a conversation with you, I'll give you my card. We may not always agree, and I'm OK with that.

Perez: It is a very difficult transition to go from being an activist to running an electoral campaign, and then move to how to govern. Understanding that as a legislator, understanding that I had to choose often between a number of undesirable options, it's very difficult. But it is incredibly valid for us to be frustrated and to express that frustration, because we too came to the campaign with expectations and we want to see many of those expectations met. So thank you for your openness and commitment to working with all the clubs, and you hear the frustration expressed, and after all these years in the wilderness we want to get as much as we can as quickly as we can.

Question: The point was to encourage Obama activists to get involved in the clubs.

Peggy Moore: We do encourage people to participate. We have several members from the Obama campaign, that once the campaign was over, were looking for a place to go. And some of the members have participated in the Democratic clubs. And some of the clubs are better than others. And when you get them in the door, we need to keep them in the door.

Eric Bauman: We need to be careful about putting fingers in people's eyes. There are Obama activists who don't like the Party or our movement. Just as there were Dean activists with the same perspective. We need to be figuring out how to do this together. The other side is together and working together. We need to work together and stop poking fingers in each other's eyes.

Question: I'm from the John Muir Democratic Club. How do we raise consciousness of a particular Get Out of Afghanistan bill?

Henry Vandermeir: As far as getting resources, you need to figure out which organizations are going to be more receptive to what you're working on. As mentioned previously, some organizations are particularly focused on certain issues, so it has to be a targeted campaign. Same thing goes for organizations, you have to figure out which organizations are going to be helpful and cooperative, and which will not.

Perez: Just take a last minute from each of you to talk about any takeaway messages in terms of investing in coalition politics.

Dorothy Reik: We need to work together, but we need to give our message to the powers that be to tell them what we think are the best policies. We need to elect Democrats, but not just any Democrats. We need to elect the Democrats who are in favor of what we believe in. We have one of those, Marcy Winograd, running against Jane Harman.

Gary Vaughn: When we talk about coalitions, we have to try to make connections outside of our norm, including with moderates and conservatives. Break through the partisanship.

Peggy Moore: Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I need all of you, your mentorship, need you to keep us on track. We're working for a better America. I want to personally invite you over to the opening of our new office at Centinela and Jefferson in Culver City on Thursday.

Orisha Michelle Hash: I'm personally a baby of the Obama movement. I challenge you as leaders and organizers to plug into the energy of the movement, and challenge you to question whether you're creating an environment conducive to plugging in.

Henry Vandermier: Tolerance is a virtue. If people agree with you 50%-75%, then consider yourself lucky. Remember that when you go to work on coalitions.

Perez: I want to thank the panel, and bring back Eric Bauman.

Eric Bauman: Thanks to our moderator Assemblymember Perez.

How Noble of You, Meg Whitman

Brian Leubitz — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:00:00 GMT

As if she was reading from Ralph Nader's new book, Only the Super Rich Can Save Us, Meg Whitman has come down from her ivory tower to inform the plebes that she will not be accepting the governor's salary.

How generous of her. She's worth a billion, give or take a couple hundred million, and she's willing to pass on the $200 K or so. Incidentally, the Bee has it on good authority that Tom Campbell will accept the salary (he's not a billionaire, you know) and Poizner (who is) will also accept the salary.

Why do we need to know this? Perhaps so that we can feel just how small we really are. It's certainly not to solve any budget problems, as the amount of money won't by itself really break the budget one way or the other. No, this is a gesture that says to the people of California that she is making a big sacrifice to take this job, and that we should be thrilled to have her experience and ill-informed judgment to save us.

For the record, I'll be happy to pay a governor for the work he does. We got the last one on the cheap, as Arnold isn't accepting a salary either, and look what that got us. Sometimes you get what you pay for. And trust me, it'll be worth it to pay the cash for a governor who has a clue about the problems facing the state, can reasonably discuss the issues, and isn't there to shock doctrine the state.

Don't do us any favors, Meg Whitman.

3 California Democrats Vote To Go Anti-Choice from the Public Option

Brian Leubitz — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:14:32 GMT

Depressingly ironic, that choice is no longer part of the public option. The Stupak amendment, which bans the public option from covering any elective abortions, passed by a fairly wide margin in the House today.

Of note to us here at Calitics is that, along with the entire California Republican delegation, three California Democrats voted in favor of the Amendment. The names will hardly surprise anybody: Jim Costa, Dennis Cardoza, and Joe Baca. Our three biggest conservaDems strike again.

You can see the full vote total here.

UPDATE by Robert: All CA Dems voted for the final bill, including Baca, Cardoza, and Costa.

Candidates Rush in for Miles for Benoit's Senate Seat

Brian Leubitz — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:29:30 GMT

There's nothing like an Assemblyman who abandons his old seat mid-term to run in a district that he doesn't represent. This is the case with Asm. Bill Emmerson (R-~~Redlands~~ Hemet) as he clearly wants the SD-37 seat that is being vacated by John Benoit.

Emmerson, R-Redlands, said he will formally announce his candidacy in the next few days. Assembly members Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, and Jeff Miller, R-Corona, said Thursday they are strongly considering a run, as is former Assemblyman Russ Bogh, R-Beaumont.
Democrat Justin Blake, a member of the Palm Springs school board, announced his candidacy for the seat Thursday.
*** *** ***
Redlands, though, isn't in the 37th, which extends from Corona to Coachella and includes none of San Bernardino County. Emmerson said he is renting a home in Hemet, which is where he grew up and ran a dental practice. The city is fully within the 37th.
"I have a lot of friends there," he said.(P-E 11/06/09)

Oh, yes, why I heard that Tom McClintock knew a cat in CA-04 too. And hey, it worked for him, so why not! Asm. Brian Nestande, one of the members who represents a portion of the District, has now said that he will not run for Benoit's seat.

While Justin Blake might have something of a Google problem, I can assure you that he is not the Internet rip-off guy. He is a Palm Springs school board member and 12 year resident of Rancho Mirage, which, you know, is in the District. No website for him yet, but we'll be sure to provide plenty of links when he does.

CA-10: Sworn in and Looking forward to Voting on Health Care Reform

John Garamendi — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:26:39 GMT

On Tuesday, communities across America voted in hundreds of local and state elections. In Northern California's 10th Congressional District, voters saw fit to send me to Congress. To all my supporters who voted, volunteered, donated, and spread the good word about our campaign, you have my sincere gratitude.

Today I was sworn in by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to represent the people of the 10th Congressional District (video here, about 1:35:00 in). It is an honor to serve my constituents and my country at such an important moment in U.S. history.

When we started our campaign for Congress this spring, we knew we would run a forward-thinking campaign with unwavering support for comprehensive health care reform that includes the public option. With a team of hundreds of volunteers and the support of more than 66,000 voters, we won our special election with a double digit lead. I look forward to voting for a House health care bill worthy of support as early as this Saturday - a bill that includes a robust public option, ends the denial of coverage for so-called pre-existing conditions, creates cost-savings, and protects Medicare for our seniors.

More over the flip...
It was a pleasant surprise to browse the stories about Tuesday's elections and find so many pieces written about my health care position and record. A sample includes:

Keith Olbermann and Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's Countdown

Olbermann: "The Democratic candidate is John Garamendi. ... He supports the public option, also single payer, he's Medicare for All from the start, he supports an exit strategy in Afghanistan right now. In the last polling, he was up by 10. Two questions: if he wins by anywhere near ten, is that not a national story? And why hasn't this race already been a national story if New York 23 has been one?"

O'Donnell: "You have kind of a super overqualified candidate for a first time Congressional race. But yes, he did not just look to the particulars of that district the way Tauscher did, the woman that just left that seat. He went in there and just said, 'I'm going to run basically as a loyalist of Nancy Pelosi' who is nearby in San Francisco, but this is suburban, this is different from San Francisco. And so he just went in there and said 'I'm going to run.' It reminded me very much of the way Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to run up state, used to run up in the 23rd district. He would go up there as a New York City liberal, be honest about it, and he would get their vote not because of agreement, but because they thought, 'This guy has the experience and the integrity.' And that's how John Garamendi is going to win this."

Get This Guy a Committee Assignment by Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic

"Most of you know John Garamendi (if you know him at all) as the former California state official who won a special election for Ellen Tauscher's old seat in Congress. But those of us in the business of health wonkery know him as one of our own. In the early 1990s, he developed the "Garamendi plan" for California, which later became a model for the Clinton health care plan of 1993-94."

Tale of Two Special Elections: One Shifts Right, The Other Left by John Nichols at The Nation

"An old-school progressive with an activist bent, Garamendi has been portrayed by some as being too liberal for the suburban district. But Garamendi has not pulled his punches; he has based his populist campaign on his enthusiasm for health care reform and promised to fight for a robust public option in any federal reform measure. And the former California insurance commissioner says he wants to go to Washington to take on the big banks and insurers."

Congress gets another voice on health-care reform by Ezra Klein at The Washington Post

"Garamendi has a long history in health-care reform. In the early '90s, he was serving as California's Insurance Commissioner. Working alongside Walter Zelman and, later, Paul Starr, he developed the framework that would later become Clinton's health-care plan - a triumph of health-care policy, if not politics. ... In other words, Pelosi got more than another health-care vote out of Tuesday's election. She got another health-care wonk."

Health Care and the Elections by Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress

"The governor of New Jersey doesn't have a vote on health care or energy or financial regulation or the budget or anything else. The Representative from the 10th District of California does, and so does the Representative from the 23rd District of New York. One can debate the larger meaning of it all as much as one cares to, but the situation is what it is."

Garamendi puts his brand on politics by Dave Newhouse in The Contra Costa Times

"Meet your new 10th Congressional District representative - Democrat, cowboy, outdoorsman, environmentalist, health care advocate, insurance industry jouster, Peace Corps volunteer, and former UC Berkeley football and wrestling standout. Garamendi, 64, is a man of the land and a man of the people - the two main characteristics of his 35 years of public service."

Yesterday's Overwhelming Historic Republican Victory Makes Democratic Health Care Reform Just A Bit Easier by Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo

"That creates some simple arithmetic. Yesterday, Democrats had 256 voting members in the House. By week's end, they'll have 258. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could afford to lose no more than 38 Democratic votes on a landmark health care reform bill. Next week, after Owens and Garamendi are sworn in, she can lose up to 40. For legislation this historic and far-reaching, she'll need every vote she can get--and both seem likely to support reform."

New congressman John Garamendi joins health care debate by Kitty Felde at 89.3 KPCC

"Garamendi will likely be sworn in on Thursday - just in time to cast his first vote in the House on health care. Democrats need every vote they can get to pass the measure. ... Garamendi knows something about both insurance and negotiating with other lawmakers - he served two terms as California's first elected insurance commissioner and 16 years in the state legislature."

Congratulations, Congressman Garamendi! by Anthony Wright at Health Access California

"Garamendi, Lt. Governor for one more day until he takes his seat, is a advocate for consumers and a verified health policy wonk, as a former Insurance Commissioner who was very active and influential in the health reform debates in the early 1990s. Last year, he helped us launch the Health Care for America Now campaign in Los Angeles in July 2008, and became then the first elected politician nationally to sign the HCAN Statement of Principles. It is totally appropriate that his first act in Congress will likely to be to vote for the historic health reform package."

The Impact on Health Care by Steven Benen at Washington Monthly's Political Animal

"In fact, by winning both of yesterday's congressional elections, Democrats have not only managed to expand their House majority, they've also moved the caucus ever so slightly to the left. Bill Owens is a moderate, but he's more liberal than the Republican he's replacing, John McHugh, and he's endorsed a progressive approach to health care reform. Likewise, Garamendi is more liberal than Tauscher was, and he, too, favors a progressive approach to health care reform. In this environment, every vote counts, and Democrats just picked up two more that are likely to prove helpful."

California Wins House Seat, Adds Another Vote for Health Care Reform at California Healthline

"During his campaign, Garamendi said he will vote with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on health care reform legislation. He also told supporters that he plans to fly to Washington, D.C., this week for his swearing-in ceremony (AP/San Diego Union-Tribune, 11/4). Garamendi said, "I may very well be there this weekend to provide a critical vote on health care. I would be very happy to make that 'yes' vote my first vote in Congress" (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/4)."

How the State Elections Could Strengthen Health Care Reform by Max Fisher at The Atlantic Wire

"With Harry Reid predicting that reform is unlikely to receive a final vote until next year, new Democratic Reps Bill Owens and John Garamendi will be present to vote on health care. They may not be the deciding factors on reform, but could their votes help Democrats pass a more ambitious bill?"

2 More Votes For a Public Option In the House by Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left

"That's two more votes for a public option. That's the biggest story of the night."

I've seen our side lose too many high stakes health care battles over the years, and with President Obama in the White House supportive of real health care reform, we cannot let this opportunity slip through our fingers.

I'm prepared to do what is necessary to pass health care reform, and I am ecstatic that I am able to enter Congress perhaps only two days before my colleagues and I put into place the most significant improvement in health care delivery since Medicare.

If we succeed, tens of millions of Americans will soon no longer be one broken leg or infection away from bankruptcy or worse. What was once hope for care can become health care, with leadership from President Obama and members of Congress.

It's a new day in America. I look forward to working with you to solve the many problems we've inherited, to progress our nation forward and to make our beloved country and my beloved district and state places where quality health care is available to all. Now let's get to work.

Congressman John Garamendi represents Northern California's 10th Congressional District, which includes portions of Contra Costa, Solano, Alameda, and Sacramento counties. Prior to his election to Congress on November 3rd, 2009, Garamendi served as California's Lieutenant Governor, where he fought to keep college affordable for students, developed innovative strategies to create green jobs, and kept California's coastline pristine by preventing oil companies from drilling off California's coast. With more than three decades of public service experience, Garamendi has been an Insurance Commissioner, Senate Majority Leader, Deputy Interior Secretary under President Bill Clinton, University of California Regent, California State University Trustee, and Peace Corps volunteer. To learn more, please follow Garamendi on Facebook and Twitter.

Maldonado for LG Gains Momentum

Brian Leubitz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:07:31 GMT

I'll admit I'm a little incredulous, but Media News has Sen. Abel Maldonado as the Governor's pick to replace John Garamendi as Lt. Governor.

The choices seem endless as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ponders his pick to fill the now-vacant lieutenant governor's job. But the path that many expect the governor to take invariably leads back to one person: Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria.
Several sources close to the administration said privately that Maldonado is the likely choice for two reasons: He has bailed out the governor with a number of critical votes - on budgets and taxes, for which the governor may feel some debt - and would sail through the Democratic-controlled Legislature for confirmation.
"Schwarzenegger has settled on Maldonado. I'm hearing it's him," one person close to the administration said, asking not to be identified. (CoCo Times 11/6/09)

The relationship between Maldonado and Arnold really is a complicated one. Arnold didn't endorse Abel back in his statewide primary for Controller, which he eventually lost to Asm. Keith Richman. However, a day after the primary, Abel attacked Arnold for not doing enough for him, saying "When he needs Latinos, Latinos are always there for him ... when Latinos need him, the answer's been no.". And then a day later he apologized. It was all very dramatic.

But since that time, Maldo has done everything he can to get back in the Governor's good graces. Going so far as to basically being his bad cop on negotiations to get the Top-2 primary system that will end up being a waste of Democratic resources.

And from a standpoint of getting this through, it seems to have less enemies throwing roadblocks. In the senate you will have the 4 LG candidates opposed, but whether they can muster the votes to block confirmation is an open question. It seems the only way to get a Republican LG, and for the Dems it gives them a shot at Maldo's senate district. Can anybody say Sen. John Laird?

If Arnold is really serious about this, I think he just keeps Bob Hertzberg as Plan B or perhaps just leaves the office empty.

Oh Dianne, You Tease

Robert Cruickshank — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:22:23 GMT

With Gavin Newsom dropping out of the governor's race and leaving Jerry Brown as the only Democratic candidate, speculation was sure to rise about Senator Dianne Feinstein and whether she would seek to avenge her narrow 1990 defeat and run for governor in 2010. Sure, most observers don't think she'd do it, but until she flatly denies it, the chatter will continue.

And it's going to continue after the AP caught up with her and asked her about the governor's race. She didn't rule it out, but made it obvious that she's primarily in it for the attention:

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Thursday she will base a decision on whether to run for California governor next year largely on the solutions the announced candidates put forward to deal with the state's fiscal problems....
"What does affect it is watching to see what precise programs are put forward by various candidates to handle what is a very serious structural budget deficit in this state," Feinstein said. "It's of major consequence and California is in considerable distress, and there have to be reforms."
Feinstein said she would take a close look at candidates' dedication to enacting their proposals as well as their ability to develop enough support to enact the changes.

There's really only one way to read this: she's going to endorse Jerry Brown, say he meets her standards, and wait to do so until a moment when it will be of maximum benefit to Brown.

Feinstein and Brown are good friends. She officiated his wedding in 2005, and speaking as someone who's officiated a wedding himself, one of the last things I'd do is challenge the groom in a race for the state's top office.

Feinstein also will likely be loath to give up her Senate seniority, which is likely to become even more important in the coming years. Ironically, a loss of Democratic seats in the Senate would make DiFi even more powerful and important than she is now, as she's seen as a bipartisan dealmaker.

For those and other reasons, it seems unlikely that DiFi wants to run for governor. Instead she's teasing the media, enjoying the attention she gets. As the interview made clear:

When asked if she had the patience to deal with a state Legislature that has often been described as dysfunctional, she replied: "That's a very good question. It shall be unanswered for the moment."

The reason "it shall be unanswered for the moment" is because she doesn't want to give up the attention she gets out of being seen as a possible candidate. And the "for the moment" statement seems to reinforce the argument I laid out above, that she isn't going to run, and is going to endorse Brown at some moment in the spring of 2010.

California Democrats who think a contested primary is good for the party and good for the ultimate nominee are going to have to keep looking for another candidate - it ain't gonna be DiFi. And thank god for it. As uncertain I am about whether Jerry Brown would be the right person to lead California out of our present crisis, I am completely certain Dianne Feinstein would be the wrong person. Let's hope she decides to retire in 2012 and trouble us no more.

How to win equality

Dante Atkins — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:42:12 GMT

I was just on the verge of typing up this post when I saw Julia Rosen's latest about not knowing what went wrong. A strong campaign, good fundraising, excellent field, a state that would have seemed fertile ground...and still, no go. 0 and 31. To my mind, it's not that anything went wrong. It's simply that not enough went right. And I have a good thesis as to why.

On a lengthy car trip one time, my brother read me a big excerpt of Drew Westen's book The Political Brain. It's all about the role of emotion when deciding for whom or what--or against whom or what--voters are going to cast their ballots.

One thing the book makes pretty clear is that there's only a certain amount of the electorate that's persuadable. On an issue like marriage equality, there's likely around 40% who are dead set on supporting it and 40% who are dead set on opposing it--and there's nothing any campaign can do to change the minds of these voters. That leaves a "mushy middle" audience of persuadables that both campaigns are vying for. That audience of persuadables is likely going to consist of political moderates who don't have religion-based intolerance of gay people, but probably think less of gay people and hope their children don't "end up that way." That seems to me to be a fair middle-of-the-road depiction of the persuadable audience on these things.

Now think about the strategies that equality campaigns and their opponents are using to persuade voters. The anti-equality strategy is very simple: take the supposed worst face of the equality movement, put it front-and-center, and tell these voters that the gay agenda wants to turn their children gay starting from the first grade. Meanwhile, the supporters of marriage equality run a very good, relentlessly positive message featuring gay families--oh, and by the way, that stuff about us indoctrinating your children isn't true, really.

Between those two, where do you think the persuadable voter is going to turn? Are those persuadable voters going to vote to provide benefits to other people they probably don't know when they're being told that rogue elements will seek to indoctrinate their children? Probably not.

Opponents of marriage equality are very good at one thing: making people vote against the other cause. It's the only thing they've got. And what the marriage equality movement in Maine was very good at was motivating people to vote for their cause. But what marriage equality movements have been afraid to do is motivate people to vote against the other cause. Best as I can tell, rarely, if ever, were voters told in a repeated, systematized way that their opponents were so desperate to preserve intolerance that they were willing to lie about schools to get it done. Opponents of marriage equality use fear exceptionally well--and that's a stronger emotion than the sweetness and light of equality, especially when those voters don't stand to benefit directly.

One way to counter fear? Anger. Make the voters angry at your opposition. Does that lead to the dark side, as Yoda proclaims? Perhaps. But at 0-31, as someone who wants marriage equality for my LGBT brothers in the coming decade, not in the one after that, I figure it's worth a shot.

McClintock Says No, No, No

Be_Devine — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:13:27 GMT

Congress voted today to extend the $8,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers, to extend unemployment benefits, and to provide tax refunds to companies losing money. It wasn't a controversial bill in the least. It passed the Senate 98-0 (and I don't think you could get a unamimous Senate vote on a bill that said it's November.) And of all the crazy wingnuts and teabaggers in the House, only 12 were vindictive enough to vote against this bipartisan and badly needed bill. One of those 12 was Tom McClintock.

McClintock's district is being hit hard by the economic mess. Its unemployement rate is among the worst in the country, recently over 20 percent, and still between 12 and 15 percent. It also has some of the worst foreclosure rates and depressed house prices in the country. Yet, when McClintock's constituents need his help, he turns his back on them.

Maybe if McClintock actually had any ties to the district he represents he would vote for the things his constituents need. But instead, he serves his masters at the Club for Growth.

Loss and Resolve: Lessons from Maine

Julia Rosen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:38:01 GMT

(full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign and was on loan to No on 1)

A year ago I knew what went wrong and I knew how to fix it.

A year later, I don't know what went wrong. I don't know how to fix it.

We had the money. We had a stable campaign. We had the a robust well-oiled field campaign. We had a strong campaign manager. We had the turnout we wanted. We had great coordination between the netroots and the campaign. We had a not particularly religious state. We neutralized the church issue. We had a manageable voter universe. We had an opposition with an inferior media and field operation. We had TV ads with gay people in them. We responded to their attacks swiftly.

And we still lost.

Our campaign wasn't perfect. But it was damn good.

And that's why this loss is so hard. The lessons to be learned are not as obvious. Not knowing how to fix it makes it tempting to throw our hands up in the air and say at 0-31 we just can't win marriage rights at the ballot box. Or we have to wait a decade until we can.

But that would be letting them win. That would be giving up. That would be accepting inequality.

We can't. I won't.
We need to learn how to neutralize the schools issue better than we did this time. We must continue telling our stories, one by one, person by person, door by door.

Nate Silver as usual has some smart thoughts:

I certainly don't think the No on 1 campaign can be blamed; by every indication, they ran a tip-top operation whereas the Yes on 1 folks were amateurish. But this may not be an issue where the campaign itself matters very much; people have pretty strong feelings about the gay marriage issue and are not typically open to persuasion. There's going to be an effort by many on the left to blame Barack Obama for his lack of leadership on gay rights issues; I think the criticism is correct on its face, but I don't know how much it has to do with the defeat in Maine. A more popular Democratic governor, for instance, who had been a bit quicker on the trigger in his support of gay marriage, might have helped more.

Persuading voters to change their minds about marriage equality is extremely difficult, but it is possible and it happens every single day. It just takes a lot of resources and is most effective on a one-to-one level.

That means we must continue to invest in grassroots organizing, training new leaders to work in their communities and supporting their efforts over time. We need to continue to build connections and relationships with faith communities. We can organize in churches. We can even organize in Mormon Temples and Catholic Churches. It has happened. It is happening.

There are lessons to be learned out of Maine. We know that we can build a massive GOTV operation. We know how to build a model where a campaign invests in the netroots and reaps the rewards. The church issue can be neutralized. It's possible to set aside differences and focus on a common goal. We can build a campaign to be proud of as a community.

What we can do now is have experts in Maine politics analyze the results to understand better how we lost. We need talk to the No on 1 campaign leadership/consultants to get their advice like they did from our Prop 8 loss.

We can win marriage back in California. We will win marriage back in California. We can win marriage in Maine. We will win marriage in Maine.

I am not quitting. You better not be either.

This weekend I am picking myself back up and getting right back to work, training hundreds of activists in Sacramento how to organize at Camp Courage. They will and I will come in with heavy hearts, but leave empowered.

We will leave and fight the next fight together.

Michael Hiltzik Clearly Adores Carly Fiorina

Brian Leubitz — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:35:17 GMT

Rarely do you see such an epic takedown from the left in a dead trees major newspaper. Sure, sometimes you see something on the paper's blog, and you get the dissembling manifestos from the right. But, the combination of a progressive perspective and actual readers? Well, that's a rare one.

But, in today's column entitled "Carly Fiorina's Senate campaign an uninspiring product launch" in the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik does just that. Let's start with the broad stuff.

So here's the tally thus far on Fiorina the candidate: Business celebrity with an equivocal record, cancer survivor with a secure employer-sponsored health plan, "problem-solving" candidate spouting ancient Republican nostrums. I can hardly contain my excitement.

At one point, I thought Hiltzik was even eavesdropping on my gchats during her launch event. During a segment where she called for bills to be on the internet, specifically pointing to the health care bill, I said to my friend who was also watching, "well, maybe she can't steer her HP windows computer over to thomas.loc.gov." Because, you know, if she had, she would find on the home page of that site, a list of the major health care bills pending right now. I took a peek at the main house bill right here. It even has these things called hyperlinks to let you move around the bill easily.

Hiltzik has a similar takedown of her whole transparency argument. He then moves on to health care, where her "big idea" is pretty much the health insurance lobby's wet dream:

More disturbing is her advocacy of allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines. This is a "reform" the insurance industry has been after for years, because it would allow them to evade the more stringent regulations of some states by selling all their policies out of states with hands-off regulators.
For a clue to how this works, notice how credit card companies issue their cards from banks in places like South Dakota and Nevada, which have no usury limits, rather than, say, California, where the cap is 10%. But even Californians can't sign up for a card issued in California, so we're stuck with the South Dakota sky's-the-limit variety.

If this is what Carly Fiorina is going to bring, perhaps she will be able to get some big checks from Blue Cross. However, she won't be able to get the votes from Californians that one assumes are her ultimate goal.

November 4 Open Thread

Open Thread — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:00:00 GMT

A quick reminder to all of you Android and iPhone users, check out the Calitics App, available in their respective AppStores. It's pretty rocking! To the Links:

? Check Speaker Bass's video regarding the water deal -->

? Meg Whitman has already spent $19 million, and plans on spending a lot more. If her pace continues according to the normal trendline, we're talking about a campaign that will rival the presidential campaigns from just 10 years ago. In 2000, George Bush raised $193 million and Al Gore raised $133 million. Well, I guess this will be the test of whether money can buy the governor's race, because Whitman looks set to dump as much money as necessary.

? The AG's office and medical marijuana advocates are trying to overturn an appeal's court decision to invalidate the ID cards associated with the program. The interesting part is that both parties in the lawsuit are opposed to that portion of the court of appeal ruling.

? Tom Del Beccaro, a CRP bigwig, praised David Harmer, despite Harmer's failure to get within 5 points of Garamendi. At any rate, it looks like this isn't the last we've seen of Harmer. AD-15 perhaps...

? Speaking of Garamendi, Speaker Pelosi wants him in DC and sworn in for the health care vote on Friday.

? More from the Chronicle, Carla Marinucci has got VC John Doerr on the record as not being interested in running for governor.

? Republicans want a probe of the taped phone calls incident in the AG's office.

Benoit to Leave Senate for Riverside Supervisorial Gig

Brian Leubitz — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:58:19 GMT

Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Republican State Sen. John Benoit to fill a vacancy on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. This will create yet another special election cycle, but as David Dayen reminded us, he was already equivalent to an empty chair, since he already votes "no" on budget bills.

Benoit had been lobbying Arnold hard for the job...but that wasn't why he voted for all of the water bills. You know, that was because he's totally down with the peripheral canal.

Earlier in the week, Benoit said there was no connection between his desire for the supervisor's job and his support of the water package, which includes an $11.1 billion bond.
"One thing they told me is that they're not going to do anything until after (water) is done, because it's a critical issue facing California," Benoit said of the governor's office Monday. "I'm expecting nothing to happen until after this is done.
"Tying the two together is not right, no." (P-E 11/4/09)

As for the Senate seat, SD-37 includes about half of Palm Springs, so the registration advantage isn't that huge for Republicans at about 4 percentage points (41-37). And in fact, Obama won the district, 50-48. As for who could take a stab at the seat, the most obvious Dem candidate would be Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet. However, he's currently running against Mary Bono Mack. There are a slew of Republicans looking at the seat, but has anybody heard about any Democratic interest?

Did Chris Essel's campaign circumvent campaign finance laws in Council District 2?

Dante Atkins — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:56:41 GMT

disclosure: I have leadership positions or membership in multiple organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party that have endorsed Paul Krekorian for City Council.

Forgive me for continuing to write about Los Angeles City politics on a statewide site, but this is too interesting to pass up. I've written previously about the race for Los Angeles City Council District 2 here because it has statewide implications: if Paul Krekorian wins, we will have a vacancy in AD-43. So it does matter, and since it is my hometown and I'm somewhat enmeshed here, I've been following the race. And there's something very interesting afoot.

For any of this to be interesting or relevant, I want you to review two brief snippets of election-related ordinances from the Los Angeles Campaign Finance Ordinance:

No candidate for City Council who files a statement of acceptance of matching
funds, nor any controlled committee of such candidate, shall make qualified
campaign expenditures above the following amounts: $330,000 per primary
election and $275,000 per general election.

And even more importantly:

If a candidate who declines to accept matching funds makes qualified campaign expenditures in excess of the expenditure ceiling, or if an independent expenditure committee or committees in the aggregate spend more than $50,000 in the case of a City
Council race, $100,000 in the case of an election for City Attorney or Controller, or
$200,000 in the case of an election for Mayor, in support of or in opposition to any such candidate, the applicable expenditure ceiling shall no longer be binding on any candidate running for the same office.

That's the applicable law. There's a $330,000 spending cap for City Council races--unless one or more IE's comes in and busts it by spending a total of at least $50,000 on the race--either for or against any candidate. So that basically means that if a candidate is up against the spending limit, all that candidate needs to do is quietly arrange for an independent expenditure of a certain amount, and then...voila! Spend away.

Which is exactly what it seems Chris Essel's campaign has done. It seems intentional and coordinated, too. True, the evidence is entirely circumstantial--but when you add the evidence all up, there's only one logical conclusion. Follow me below the fold for more.
Let me begin by stating that Chris Essel's campaign accepted matching taxpayer funds from the City, subjecting her campaign to the $330,000 spending limit. There are a couple of other things to know too--first, that the special primary election was September 22nd; and second, the spending limit in the special general election goes down to $275,000 for those with matching funds who make it to the runoff. Why am I telling you this? Well, you'll find out soon enough.

So now that you're familiar with all this, I'd like you to take a look Chris Essel's next-to-last campaign spending report of the general election. The end-of-period for the filing is September 16--six days before the general election--and look at how much the report show her campaign as having spent to-date: $321,464.57. Now, I can do arithmetic. That means that legally, the Essel campaign would, under normal circumstances, have only been able to spend a paltry $8,433.43 the entire last week of the campaign--which is basically when you need the money most.

Essel's only hope at being able to finance the campaign for the last week of the election? Hoping that someone did an independent expenditure campaign that made the total IE expenses for the election total $50,000, which would bust the cap for all candidates. But what would be the chances of that happening?

Very good, apparently, if you're Chris Essel. Now take a look at this: it's the spending report of independent expenditures for Chris Essel's campaign. And miraculously, on the 16th of September, there is an IE of $32,500 from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, based in DC. Even more miraculously, this IE--spent on a cable buy (and much more on this later)--just so happens to be just enough to push the Essel campaign over the $50,000 threshold required to bust the salary cap and allow it to spend an unlimited amount of money through election day on the 22nd. (Technically, the $12,000 or so of IE's spent on behalf of Tamar Galatzan's campaign also counts toward the $50,000 threshold, but because of the circumstances behind the reporting deadlines, there would have been no way to know how much had been spent.)

Now, one might think that it's no surprise that a union--even if it's a DC one and not a Los Angeles local--would go to bat for its endorsed candidate. Until, of course, you take a look at the FEC data for exactly what the Allied Painters have contributed to. Follow that link through, and you'll see that the union's IE's have been on behalf of mostly Presidential candidates, as well as Kendrick Meek and Ciro Rodriguez--both federal candidates--and that you can scroll through that entire list without finding a single IE or cash contribution to a municipal candidate.

So, as things stand right now given all the unusual circumstances and convenient coincidences, I'd have to be born yesterday to even get started believing that this expenditure wasn't knowingly done to bust the cap and allow the Essel campaign to receive taxpayer campaign cash and not be subject to the limits anyway. But it gets even worse.

I linked to the script of the ad earlier. Here's the video on Youtube. Now, I decided to go a step further here. I got a contact in the cable industry to tell me where the ad money went. Here's something fascinating: the ads were placed, as you'd expect, in the cable regions encompassing Council District 2: the East San Fernando Valley and South San Fernando Valley regions. Now, as it is, that's horribly inefficient, especially for the South San Fernando region, which stretches for a couple dozen miles outside CD2 all the way to Calabasas on its Western boundary. But even worse? The ad was also placed in two regions entirely outside Los Angeles: The regions encompassing the cities of Glendale (a Charter cable zone) and Santa Clarita (Time Warner, like the SFV regions). For those of you that really care, you can see the map of the cable zones. I want to repeat something here: there is no overlap between those two regions and the Council District in question. So if they decided to put the ad there, it was because they were intentionally wasting money just to achieve a certain target amount. And then, of course, there's the issue of what stations they put them on. Normally, you put political ads on political/news stations. You don't do what these guys did and put them on Court TV and Lifetime, which is where these apparently went.

So...we've already got a lot of evidence that the entire reason for this IE was just to bust the cap and allow the Essel campaign to spend unlimited cash. Now, I don't know what the City's ethics division would think about that. But I do think that they'd look very askance at it if they knew that it was being done with prior knowledge of the campaign. And there's plenty of evidence for that too.

First, let's take into account the fact that Chris Essel was still raising money at maximum contribution fundraisers during this critical time. All you need to do is look through the full list of communications reports provided by the City Ethics commission to see that there were fundraising events that had to have been in the planning stages before the Painters' union dropped their IE, even though at that time, there would have been no legal way for the Essel campaign to spend all the money they were raising--unless they knew that the Painters were about to make their play. After all, if you're distributing invites for fundraisers where the asking price is $500 (maximum contribution for City Council candidates), and as of the 16th you've only got $8,500 you can legally spend...you're doing something wrong.

So at this point, you're stuck with two options. Either the Essel campaign was unknowingly raising gobs money they couldn't legally spend and got miraculously bailed out at exactly the right time by a union that has absolutely no history playing in Los Angeles politics that put up exactly the right amount of money on a completely ineffective cable buy with an ad produced by a company that has no reputation for political ads...or there's something fishy going on here.

Something I haven't mentioned--but it's particularly ironic in this context--is that the ad in question prominently features City Controller Wendy Greuel, who is responsible for ensuring that the City's taxpayers are treated fairly, doing a voiceover discussing Chris Essel's ethics. It would indeed have a certain ironic twist if Controller Greuel were being used to basically defraud taxpayers out of the $100,000 in matching funds that they contributed to Essel's campaign.

But now comes a piece of evidence that--at least in my mind--proves the case. Per the independent expenditure reports, the $32,500 cable buy that busted the cap was made on 9/16. Disclosure was made about the buy on 9/17. So that means that the campaign would have been informed only on 9/17 that the cap had been busted and they would be allowed to spend more money. And now let's look at the Essel campaign's spending report for that time period.

Quite coincidentally, a payment was made on 9/17 to Burnside and Associates, Chris Essel's paid field ops consulting firm, followed the next day by $50,000 to Shallman (Essel's mail consultant) and another $8,000 to Burnside. Now, while the $50,000 the very next day to Shallman may stand out, it's actually the most within the realm of plausible deniability because once the cap had been busted, the Essel campaign may well have put out money in a hurry to fund a last-minute mail piece. It's the payments to Burnside, by contrast, that are problematic.

Burnside is a field consultant. Unlike her chief opponents in the primary, Essel had to rely on paid field for canvassing operations. Keep in mind how much money the Essel campaign would have been legally allowed to spend from 9/16 to 9/22 without the cap being busted: a shade under $8,500. Meanwhile, based on the payments made on 9/17 and 9/18 referenced above, the Essel campaign apparently owed Burnside $21,250. So again, you're left with two options here: either the Essel campaign knew not only that the cap was going to be busted, but knew exactly when it was going to be busted, OR the Essel campaign had--whoops!--spent so much money that it would have been unable to pay the bills for the paid field operation it was depending on in the last week of the campaign. Keep in mind, of course, that all of these financial reports are public--which makes you wonder if Burnside was concerned at all that the Essel campaign was spending the type of money that would leave it unable to actually pay their field consultant.

And speaking of Burnside, there's something else odd going on here that's tangentially related. I sorted the Essel campaign's expenditure list to reflect all the payments to her consulting firm. Let's add them up, shall we?

$58,855.90. For a field operation in a City Council district. Now, my evidence for this is entirely circumstantial, but I know people who were active in the primary campaigns of both of Essel's main opponents (Tamar Galatzan and Paul Krekorian). They all told me that Essel's field campaign was only active in the last 7-10 days of the campaign. So either the Essel team paid for what has to be the most paid field week I've ever seen, or they're paying for something else too in that total. Not sure what.

I've contacted the City Ethics Commission--not about this specific case, but about the applicable law in general. And I've been told that if indeed the supposed independent expenditure was coordinated with the campaign--and all the evidence suggests exactly that--then it would no longer be considered independent, and penalties could certainly apply.

I have a call in to the Essel campaign requesting to talk to somebody on the financial end of things about this, but haven't heard back. I did, however, get through to the Krekorian campaign to give them a brief overview of my findings. A short time later, Eric Hacopian with the Krekorian campaign gave me this quote:

"Throughout this campaign, Chris Essel has shown a consistent disregard for the truth and now it is becoming clear that she also has no respect for the law.
"Apparently her lust for campaign funds is so great that she's even willing to manipulate the system to rip off taxpayers to pay for her attack mailers."

Now, maybe I'm entirely wrong and I've read all of this wrong, and this is standard practice for LA politics. But the whole thing does seem kind of suspicious, no? I'll be doing my best to follow up on this to see what, if any, connections exist between the Allied Painters and Chris Essel's campaign to see if there are further connections to be fleshed out here. Be expecting more in the coming days about this issue.

Reaction to the Water Deal

Brian Leubitz — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Reaction to the water deal that was approved over the last few days, first by the Senate and then by the Assembly, has been trickling in. If you care to listen to an hour-long program, I recommend the KQED Forum program embedded here.

There was some question as to what the federal response to the measure would be. And, well, apparently Sec. of the Interior Ken Salazar is on board:

Thanks to the California legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger, Californians now have the opportunity to choose a more secure and sustainable water future. This landmark package is a critical step toward bringing California's water infrastructure into the 21st century while restoring California's Bay Delta, on which millions of Californians depend for clean drinking water and their livelihoods. I applaud the leadership, courage, and vision of everyone who helped bring this desperately-needed legislation across the finish line. We will continue to need all hands on deck - at the federal, state, and local levels - in the coming months as we face the possibility of a fourth year of drought and sobering water realities.

And as for DiFi, who has long been close to the Westlands Water District, well, her reaction wasn't such a mystery.

It should be clear to all of us that the current water infrastructure is inadequate to support California's growing population and businesses that depend on clean water. This includes people in our cities, the high-tech sector, fisheries, tourism, and of course, our State's multibillion-dollar agricultural sector. So, this package is really critical to all Californians.
I urge all Californians to support the bond issue. It must be said once more that California has a water infrastructure built for a population of 16 million people. Today, our population is rapidly approaching the 40 million mark. So, the modernization and improvement of our State's water infrastructure is long overdue.

Meanwhile, on the other side of this, you have a growing crowd of organized labor, including the United Farmworkers Union, the California Teachers Association, and the SEIU State Council. They all have slightly different concerns, but at the heart of it is the financing. They are concerned that the debt service will start devouring the budget, and at an estimated 10% of the budget, that is a reasonable concern.

As others have noted, this package opens the door wide open for a peripheral canal. Whether you think that is a good thing appears to depend on your perspective, with the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District (SRCSD) pounding on this issue.

There's a long time between now and November 2010, but we will be hearing a lot about this bond by the time we go to the polls.