A Dysfunctional California Democratic Party Moves To Endorse Candidates

The Republican lottery winner who already spent $243,798 and got 1 vote for his efforts (one)

This is too funny to pass up. Various factions at the the DCCC have been working against each other and recruiting sundry terrible candidates to run in Orange County congressional districts. In CA-48-- Rohrabacher's district-- one goof-ball (Kyle) recruited New Dem Harley Rounda while a more powerful goof-ball recruited the other New Dem, Hans Keirstead. Meanwhile the DCCC persuaded 2 other DCCC-type schlemiels from the district-- wealthy doctor Mai-Khanh Tran and even richer lottery winner Gil Cisneros-- to run in the 39th district instead. While that's happening, a rich right-wing lawyer from the 39th, Omar Siddiqui, declares he likes GOP incumbent Ed Royce too much to run against him so he's running in CA-48 instead) and while we're talking about Siddiqui's declarations, he also announced that he's a "Reagan Democrat." Now Royce has announced he's retiring from Congress and Siddiqui is stuck being a carpetbagger for no reason.

OK, for background, let's look at the festival of self-funding going on in the vulnerable Republican-held seats in Orange County. These are some mighty rich fellas who want to buy congressional seats (and prestigious business cards) for themselves, don't you think:

• Andy Thorburn (CA-39)- $2,000,000
• Gil Cisneros (CA-39)- $561,656
• Omar Siddiqui (CA-48)- $458,498
• Paul Kerr (CA-49)- $262,728
• Ron Varasteh (CA-45)- $250,000
• Harley Rouda (CA-48)- $230,500
• Mai-Khanh Tran (CA-39)- $200,000
• Michael Kotick (CA-48)- $130,452
• Phil Janowicz (CA-39)- $112,518
• Hans Keirstead (CA-48)- $55,400

Note: The Quaalcomm heiress, an utterly ridiculous candidate that EMILY's List parachuted into CA-49 from Brooklyn, hasn't posted how much of her daddy's fortune she's self-funding into the primary yet, but, knowing EMILY's List, expect a lot of Beltway consultants to get a lot richer off this poor (rich) sucker. Now look at the chart just above, of this past weekend's CA-39 Democratic Party pre-endorsement results. You'll notice that the two progressive non-self-funders, Jay Chen and Sam Jammal, scored just over 61% between them. Cisneros, the Republican lottery winner pretending to be a Democrat-- and pretending to be somehow qualified to be a congressional candidate-- has already spent $243,798 (mostly on consultants who are laughing their asses off on the way to the bank), for which he got one vote (1)-- or 1.8% of the votes. Mai-Khanh Tran, the other candidate the DCCC persuaded to run in CA-39 instead of in her home district, spent $115,389 for which she too got one vote. Andy Thorburn, whose campaign at least makes good videos, has spent $151,224 and he got two (2) votes, AKA, 3.5%. Is this sad or what?

You may be wondering what a pre-endorsement conference is. It's basically another opportunity for California Democrats to show the rest of the country how utterly dysfunctional they are as a party and how lucky they were that a Republican governor declared war on Hispanics, who now make up close to 40% of the state's population. These are the rules: The California Democratic Party (hereafter "CDP") Pre-Endorsement Conferences are held locally in each CDP Region in which the Assembly Districts, Senate Districts, and Congressional Districts are located to issue endorsement recommendations. Those who are eligible to vote in the CDP Pre-Endorsement Conferences include: 


• Democratic State Central Committee Members (CDP Convention Delegates) including

• Winners of ADEM elections

• Representatives of County Democratic Parties

• Democratic Elected Officials or the Highest Vote-Getting Democrat (HVGD)
• Appointments by Elected Officials or HVGDs (if registered to vote in the appointer’s district)
• Appointments by Legislative/Congressional Leaders or CDP Statewide Officers

• Ex-Officios including Members of the DNC and Representatives from CDC and CYD

[Notice all the opportunities for rigging in favor of the corrupt establishment candidates and, especially, incumbents.]

• Regular Members of the County Democratic Parties
• Representatives of the Democratic Clubs

Another rigged rule: "Incumbent Members of Congress (as well as incumbent state legislators) are automatically placed on Convention consent calendar unless 20% of the delegates in the legislative district file an objection 10 days prior to the CDP Pre-Endorsement Conference. The only congressional candidate who was not endorsed this weekend was conservative crook Ami Bera, an embarrassment to American politics and the Democratic Party and the state of California. Next step on the way to a convoluted state party endorsement will be at the end of February for candidates who received between 50% and 70% of the pre-endorsement votes. There are 3 more pages of rules governing all this crapand reading it often gets normal people to quit the Democratic Party and become a Decline to State Voter.

So this is what happened in the Republican-held districts this weekend:

CD-01 (Doug LaMalfa)- no consensus
CD-04 (Tom McClintock)- moves to endorsing caucus
CD-08 (Paul Cook)- moves to endorsing caucus
CD-10 (Jeff Denham)- no consensus
CA-21 (David Valadao)- Emilio Huerta endorsed
CD-22 (Devin Nunes)- Andrew Janz, the guy who said his 2 main motivations for running are to make sure the death penalty is used more often and that the 2nd Amendment is protected, endorsed
CD-23 (Kevin McCarthy)- boycotted by leading candidate, Wendy Reed, on principle, so a silly vanity candidate, Tatiana Matta, was endorsed
CD-25 (Steve Knight)- After a poll came out showing Dave Caforio would lose to Knight again but Katie Hill would beat him, Caforio was endorsed (of course)
CD-39 (Ed Royce)- see graphic above-- but... no consensus
CD-42 (Ken Calvert)- Julia Peacock endorsed
CD-45 (Mimi Walters)- moves to endorsing caucus
CD-48 (Dana Rohrabacher)- moves to endorsing caucus
CD-49 (Darrell Issa)- moves to endorsing caucus
CD-50 (Duncan Hunter)- Ammar Campa-Najar endorsed

Just confirmed: Ian Masters will be hosting a special UCLA/Hammer forum on Monday evening, February 5, at the Hammer Museum.  The topic for the evening is flipping red seats in California and the discussion will feature 3 candidates who are working on doing just that: Doug Applegate, northern San Diego County and southern coastal Orange County, Katie Porter, southern and central Orange County and Katie Hill, Santa Clarita, Simi Valley and the Antelope Valley. The forum begins at 7:30 PM and goes until 9. Note that this is not a fundraiser, although... if you want to contribute to Doug or either of both of the two Katies-- or any of the other California progressive congressional candidates-- you can do it by tapping on the Blue America "Bluer California" thermometer on the right.