3 Versions Of Why The DCCC Threw Hans Keirstead Overboard And Endorsed Harley Rouda

The coastal Orange County district occupied by Putin ally Dana Rohrabacher, CA-48, has been pretty red for a long time. As crazy as he is, Rohrabacher has never had any serious competition and Obama lost both times there, 51-46% the first time and 55-43% the second time. In 2016, though, Hillary beat Trump 47.9% to 46.2%. The PVI went from R+7 to R+4. I looks fairly winnable, especially in a wave cycle and especially when the GOP tax scam hits California suburbanites especially hard.

That picture up top is from the DCCC's Red-to-Blue page. They added one of the candidates, Harley Rouda, to the page on Friday, a shock since the DCCC recruited two candidates for the seat and have been trying to stay neutral. (Rouda, a former Republican who has been endorsed by the New Dems, was recruited by right-wing DCCC staffer Kyle Layman and then Hans Keirstead was either also recruited by Layman or was pushed on the DCCC by corrupt money-hungry consultant Achim Bergmann.) Anyway, the DCCC, confused and dazed, had been neutral until they started getting uncomfortable with Hans last month-- but I'll get to why in a moment. First, the "official story" from the Beltway press release machine, Roll Call:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is taking sides in a crowded California primary in the 48th District, backing businessman Harley Rouda, in an attempt to avoid a nightmare scenario of being shut out of the November ballot.

Rouda was added to the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program on Friday, giving him additional access to committee resources. The move is also evidence that Democrats are stepping up the effort to coalesce around one candidate.

In California, the top two vote-getters in the June 5 primary advance to the November election regardless of party affiliation. This district is one of a handful of California races where Democrats are concerned multiple candidates on their side could split the Democratic vote, allowing two Republicans to advance to the November ballot.

...“Harley has demonstrated that he is the strongest Democrat in this race and best prepared for the general election, and with the grass roots and numerous California delegation Members strongly behind him, we know we will flip this district this fall,” DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) said in a press release.

...[T]he DCCC's move does contradict the state Democratic Party's endorsement process, where delegates backed prominent stem cell researcher Hans Keirstead.

State Party chairman Eric Bauman said in a statement that the California Democratic Party and the DCCC have had a "productive and successful partnership", and he encouraged the DCCC not to attack the state party's candidate.

"Throughout our partnership, I have been consistently clear on one key point: when CDP delegates endorse a candidate, that candidate is the official candidate of the Party, and the DCCC should tread carefully in openly supporting a different candidate," Bauman said.

"California Democratic activists value our independence and the grassroots nature of our endorsement process," Bauman said. "Decisions that undercut the independence or our endorsed candidates have the potential to be extraordinarily counterproductive."

So that was the official story for the public. The official story for insiders is that the DCCC is disappointed that Hans didn't spend enough of his own money on the race. As of the March 31 FEC reporting deadline Rouda had spent $1,130,500 of his own on the campaign and another "ex"-Republican masquerading as a Democrat-- and calling himself a "Reagan Democrat," Omar Siddiqui-- had self-funded to the tune of $764,856. But Keirsteaf had "only" put $430,400 of his own into his campaign. That made the DCCC sad.

Frick and Frack... neither would make a good member of Congress

And that may be true. But there's a third story for "inner" insiders, like Pelosi, who seemed punch-drunk at a big end-of-the-day meeting last week between DCCC staffers and interested members when the final decision was made to jettison Hans and endorse Harley. (By the way the two are both New Dems and are basically as indistinguishable ideologically as their names are.) Before I get into the "real" reason, this was Han's response the the betrayal by the DCCC hours after they dumped him and started pressuring him to drop out of the race for the good of the party:

I was shocked this morning when I saw that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added our opponent Harley Rouda, a former Republican, to its "Red to Blue" program.

“Red to Blue” is meant to help strong, committed Democratic candidates in key districts. On every measure, Harley Rouda doesn’t make the cut.

• Harley Rouda was a registered Republican before he announced his run for Congress in 2017.
• In 2016, Harley Rouda donated $1,000 to anti-choice, anti-union Republican presidential candidate John Kasich.
• The California Democratic Party endorsed Hans Keirstead over Harley Rouda by an overwhelming margin.

"Red to blue" should be adding committed progressive Democrats to its program. Not recent Republicans who failed to win local support.

We’re running the only true grassroots campaign in this district. We’re fueled by more than 3,200 grassroots donors across 49 states, far outpacing our opponent’s level of support.

We’ve built the strongest ground game in the district-- our volunteers and organizers have knocked on tens of thousands of doors.

But this isn’t the first race that D.C. insiders have meddled in. In Texas, New York, and elsewhere, they’ve swooped in and tried to prop up their chosen candidates-- creating chaos and angering local activists.

One of the DCCCers on the now infamous phone call and meeting that settled Hans' fate, first told me the incredible real story and then sent me the back-up documents to prove it, obviously on condition that I wouldn't rat him out. I was so shocked that I took two days before publishing so I could get absolute confirmation. I also worried that I was being used by the scumbags at the DCCC to help disseminate this smear campaign against Hans which is very much the same kind of nightmare they used against Laura Moser in TX-07 and against Andy Thorburn in CA-39. Their excuse is always the same: the Republicans have the info already and if the candidate-- in this case Hans-- gets into the general election the Republican candidate will eviscerate him with it and we'll lose an opportunity to win a crucial red seat. (Is that true? Do the Republicans already have it? Or am I doing the DCCC's dirty work and giving it to them? I was told by several sources that Harley has had the documents for weeks and chose not to use them.)

The documents accuse Hans of having had sexual affairs with multiple students and employees at UC Irvine. Even worse, it documents a scene that Hans promised for weeks to refute and then never could, that he punched a young woman in the face when he was drunk and in a limo filled with female students he was partying with. The first memo is 14 pages. Here are the first 2 pages that the DCCC was handing out internally and seems to have decided it would be a good idea to send to me as well:

You'll have to click on the 2 images to read them

Is there a moral to this sordid story? The DCCC needs a new staff and a totally new direction. And the DCCC should stop interfering in primaries and spend its resources fighting Republicans, not other Democrats. Nor should the DCCC be recruiting such totally flawed candidates like Harley and Hans. There was a grassroots activist in the race, Laura Oatman, but the immense self-funding and DCCC pressure drove her out of the race. Today she would surely look like the best candidate to beat Rohrabacher.


UPDATE: Why The Mess in Orange County?

A DCCC source-- someone different from the one who sent me the documents-- called to congratulate me on the story. He also wanted to remind me that Hans is the reason for the mess in another Orange County district-- the 39th in the northeast part of the county. "Kyle Layman is the most incompetent and pig-headed staffer I 've ever met. He recruited Hans and, to help clear the field for him, he pushed Cisneros and Dr. Tran to run in the 39th, where neither of them lives. We are in our mess in the 39th largely because the DCCC was in love with the concept of Hans... We fucked up royally and, thanks to Kyle, may now lose both districts.