It Was Never A Matter Of IF Greuel Would Go Negative-- Only When

CA-33 is a blue, blue district encompassing iconic California dreamscapes like Santa Monica, Venice, Malibu, Beverly Hills, Westwood, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, El Segundo… a canvas for a David Hockney painting-- or a Beach Boys career. One of the most well-educated congressional districts in the country, it isn't friendly to the Republican message. The PVI is D+11 and McCain only managed 34% in 2008 while Romney took 37% in 2012. Henry Waxman has represented the district since 1974 and his dignified, sensible retirement next year has voters considering 18 candidates this year. Republican Big Business interests have no chance with an overtly GOP candidate, so they are behind a former" Republican who now calls herself a Democrat for political expediency: Wendy Greuel, a political hack from the Valley, best known as the careerist who ran, along with her supporters at EMILY's List, an ugly-- and failed-- smear campaign against Eric Garcetti last year.

Greuel was a registered Republican for 13 years and. presumably, voted for both Reagan and George H.W. Bush, two vehemently anti-Choice rightists. Yet this week she began her vicious, negative attacks against women's rights advocate Marianne Williamson. And, like her mentor Karl Rove, she is attacking Williamson's strength, her lifelong advocacy on behalf of women. Greuel, having commissioned a private poll showing that she can't win with Williamson pulling so many women voters-- a poll she has refused to make public, of course-- used 3 cut-outs to start the smear attacks. The L.A. Times picked right up on it, although they had the decency at the Times to leave out the parts of the attack claiming that Williamson is worse for women's reproductive rights than the states of Mississippi and Texas. Wendy Greuel is the sickest and least honest politician in Los Angeles. Her big money backers are determined to get her elected and will do anything to get her through the primary.

The Greuel camp thundered in a letter to Williamson that they immediately rushed to the L.A. Times "For years, you have called for a series of restrictions on access to abortion, including mandatory waiting periods, that appear to be even more onerous than laws enacted in states like Texas and Mississippi, and 8 other states across the country… As a bestselling author and a nationally known thought leader you used your voice not to ensure that women’s health care decisions were protected, but rather to suggest that states like Texas and Mississippi had the right to enact laws that are oppressive to women." They then decided they could determine her motivations and accused her of political expediency, the disease that has defined Wendy Greuel's entire ugly political career.

Now Greuel is trying to hide behind her surrogates, the same way she did when she launched her horrifying, sexist, anti-woman smear campaign against Eric Garcetti. She and her EMILY's List allies ran that out of desperation-- and lost the election. They're replaying the same game against Marianne Williamson, a woman who has spent her entire life in service to other people. While she was founding and running Operation Angel Food, Greuel was clawing her way into a political career.

One of the more trustworthy Members of Congress watching this race closely asked me, rhetorically, I think, "What has Wendy Greuel ever done to touch anyone's life?" Good point-- and, basically, it's what a lot of Angelenos ask themselves about Greuel, including former allies who helped finance her shady, failed campaign against Eric Garcetti last year.

Clowns in the political establishment and their media mouthpieces may try to paint this district as "the Botox zone" and laugh off Williamson as the celebrity candidate, but CA-33 is one of the most admired-- and envied-- areas anywhere in the world and Marianne Williamson is addressing a progressive perspective that Greuel has admitted to friends that she doesn't even comprehend and will need help to understand and deal with.

On her Facebook page, Marianne answered Greuel and her cadre of poisonous consultants and operatives and their ugly charges with dignity and aplomb:

NO, I’M NOT SOFT ON CHOICE

I guess I must be ahead or something, because the smear attacks have begun.

Through well-targeted and well-funded innuendo and attack, I am being labeled as soft on the issue of choice.

I support Roe v. Wade 100 per cent, and always have. I have never spoken one word, privately or publicly, to the contrary. I abhor and repudiate the current “war on women,” by which several states have in fact introduced restrictive legislation that limits women’s reproductive rights.

I did say in the past-- in 2006, in fact-- that I would support "speed bumps," a series of three neutral counseling sessions for any woman considering an abortion. I said this in the context of my experience in counseling women to be wise and reflective about such a momentous decision, but even then was not suggesting that a woman ever be denied the right to choose. When it was pointed out to me that the speed bump idea was a bad one for several reasons, I came to agree. Something that was good therapeutic advice was not in fact a good idea for a law.

From my book A Woman’s Worth, to countless seminars and speeches in support of women and women’s causes, to my Sister Giant seminars encouraging women to take a more active role as leaders, I feel my life’s work speaks for itself. I hope all who agree will do what you can to spread the word that the “soft on choice” attack currently being waged against me is simply not true.

Many thanks.

This morning, Salon reported about a campaign statement from another Republican, this one who didn't switch parties the way the politically expedient Greuel did. Florida corporate whore Ted Yoho, echoed the down-low line that all Republicans believe-- Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips: "If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners." Here's how Yoho put it to a rich, white Southern Baptist congregation in Ocala, "I’ve had some radical ideas about voting and it’s probably not a good time to tell them, but you used to have to be a property owner to vote."

Don't expect to ever hear Greuel say that. She isn't that stupid. But look at her record and you'll see that that's how she operates, always putting her wealthy patrons' interests first, no matter what it does to communities and the environment. It's the kind of politician she is and the kind of congresswoman she would be, the exact opposite of a good government type. There are enough Ted Yohos in the GOP, we don't need any more play-acting like they're in the Democratic Party.

I don't watch a lot of TV and I've never seen Glee so I don't know Jane Lynch as a celebrated actress. I know her because we both sit on the board of People for the American Way and I know her as a powerful and uncompromising advocate for women and for justice. She's someone I admire based entirely on her political positions. This morning she gave us this message in response to the attack by the Greuel camp: "I'm supporting Marianne Williamson because we line up on the issues that are important to me, and this includes a woman's right to choose what she does reproductively with her own body and life. Marianne Williamson's eloquent and uncompromising pro-choice stance lines up completely with my own." I think it's a message every woman familiar with Marianne's work will want to stand behind, fully.