Blue, Blue California... Has Plenty Of Grotesquely Corrupt Republican-Lite Dems In The State Legislature

California needs more progressives like Senate President Kevin de León and fewer shady corporate shills like Gavin Newsom

Wonderful blue California, right? Well... yes, at least compared to the country as a whole. Hillary won the state's 55 electoral votes 8,753,788 (61.73%) to 4,483,810 (31.62%). She won the dozen most populous counties in the state; the only population center Trump won was the Bakersfield area. But California's legislature... well, that's another story. On paper, the legislature looks as blue as Texas' is red. The 80-member Assembly has 55 Democrats and 25 Republicans and the 40-member state Senate has 27 Democrats and 13 Republicans, giving the Democrats supermajorities in both chambers. Combine that with a Democratic governor and...

Yes, "and" hasn't been quite what it could be. Once again, the Courage Campaign has launched it's state legislative scorecard to help explain why California isn't the progressive powerhouse it ought to be-- not even with a dedicated progressive like Kevin De León heading the Senate and a progressive-enough-sounding Anthony Rendon in charge of the Assembly. The problem is that certain Democrats, the mis-named ultra-corrupt and conservative "mods," habitually team up with the Republican rump to defeat legislation that makes it to a floor vote-- like one bill that would have created common sense protections for people in bankruptcy, or another that would have outlawed the sexist and exploitative practice of charging more for women's products than for men's. These corrupt corporate Dems have delayed the California Values Act, which will protect immigrants from Trump's indiscriminate wave of deportations. They could sink efforts to eliminate our state's unjust, discriminatory money bail system. And they could once again stand in the way of introducing real transparency and accountability for police officers who may abuse their power.

So which Democrats have been failing us in Sacramento? The worst of the lot-- the ones with scores of "F" are Assemblymembers:

• Adam Gray (Modesto, Merced, Los Banos)
• Jacqui Irwin (Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks)
• Jim Cooper (Elk Grove, Lodi)
• Jim Frazier (Vacaville, Fairfield, Antioch)
• Joaquin Arambula (Fresno, Coalinga)
• Rudy Salas (Bakersfield, Delano, Wasco, Hanford)
• Tom Daly (Anaheim, Santa Ana)

And Senators:

• Bill Dodd (Davis, Vacaville, Fairfield, Vallejo, Napa, Sonoma, Petaluma)
• Cathleen Galgiani (Modesto, Manteca, Stockton, Lodi)
• Richard Roth (Riverside, Corona, Moreno Valley)
• Steve Glazer (Concord, Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Livermore, Antioch)

And that doesn't even get into the Democrats with D and C scores or into the new members who haven't amassed enough votes yet for meaningful ratings, including reactionary Republican-lite types like Laura Friedman (Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, Los Feliz), the worthless charter school hack hoping to run for Adam Schiff's congressional seat if he gives it up to run for the U.S. Senate. As the Courage Campaign warned, "Some of our allies are shocked that we’re calling out these Democrats, since-- occasionally-- they do the right thing. But we’re the Courage Campaign. We believe that our leaders must be COURAGEOUS, standing up to big monied interests and putting their constituents first, in order to create real solutions to the many problems we face. If we use our strength to drive progressive policy forward in California-- the world's sixth largest economy-- we can help power national or even global change."