Doug Applegate: "A Labor Family Is What's Given Me The Values That's Made Me What I Am"

Frank Schaeffer has been traveling around the country meeting with the best progressive candidates for Congress and filming them. Last week he was in Orange County. We saw his talk with Laura Oatman, the progressive woman running for the coastal Orange County district held by Dana Rohrabacher, a few days ago. The video above is the interview he did with Doug Applegate.

Doug is, by far, the best candidate running to represent the district just south of Oatman's in southern Orange County and northern San Diego County. CA-49 goes from Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and Ladera Ranch in the north, through San Clemente, Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, Vista and Encinitas to Solana Beach, Del Mar, Torrey Pines and UC, San Diego. Last cycle the Applegate-Issa election was the very last to be decided in the whole country because it was so close. The DCCC had never tried holding Darrell Issa accountable before. Doug forced them to and he came with in a small handful votes to beating one of Congress' arch-villains. The final vote was 155,888 (50.3%) to 154,267 (49.7%). Doug and his grassroots army announced that they would complete what they started in 2018.

But, almost immediately, along came the self-serving opportunists-- the forces of big money who had never objected to Darrell Issa and had never done anything to defeat him. Failed Virginia political hack and sleazy multimillionaire-- and Pelosi crony-- Ira Lechner decided he needed to put one of his own puppets into a race that looked very winnable... and he picked some clown and Hillary fundraiser named Mike Levin. Then San Diego New Dem-- one of Congress' richest men and one of the most right-wing Democrats in Congress-- Scott Peters decided the seat could be bought by one of his crooked cronies, Paul Kerr (because we all know that if there's one thing Congress needs more of it's clueless mega-millionaires). Not to be outdone, the young heiress to the Qualcomm fortune, Sara Jacobs, came flying in from Brooklyn last week to declare she's running too. What a pathetic nest of cruddy opportunists and self-servers!

Meanwhile, Issa is hoping his crooked Republican colleague, Duncan Hunter from the district next door (CA-50) gets indicted already so he can switch districts and not have to face near certain defeat at Applegate's hands next year. Issa, normally a dependable rubber stamp for the GOP House leadership, is so frightened of Applegate that he was one of only 13 Republicans in Congress to vote against Paul Ryan's tax scam last week.

This is going to be some wild race! We should make sure the Democratic Party nominee is a man of proven selfless integrity and strength, not another multimillionaire with nothing better to do than have the word "Rep" on their business card. Levin, for example, is playing the role of a poisonous snake, slithering around and whispering all the baseless and disproven charges Issa made against Applegate last cycle-- recycling the garbage... all he can do with no ideas of his own beyond "me," "me," "me."  He's the worst example of a candidate in a Democratic primary race anywhere in California. Please consider tapping on the ActBlue 2018 California Congress thermometer on the right and celebrating Thanksgiving by helping Doug Applegate in his sprint to repealing and replacing the odious career criminal Darrell Issa. Remember, there's no such thing as a contribution too small, not in a grassroots race against the richest-- and most crooked-- member of Congress.