Don't Democrats Want More People To Vote? That Depends

I don't know many people who like Pelosi any longer. It's hard to imagine she could win the Speakership again with so many Democrats pledging they will not vote for her The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that most voters are "sour"on her. So sour that "45% say they’re less likely to support a candidate who wants Pelosi as speaker, versus 21% who are more likely to back such a candidate." McInturff, the GOP pollster for the bipartisan poll pond out that "She continues to be a serious drag and a net-negative" for Democrats."

A few months ago I spoke at some length with the top two Democratic candidates who primaried her this year, Shahid Buttar and Stephen Jaffe. Both thought they could beat her and both had the feeling that no one in San Francisco could stand her any longer. They were very wrong. In fact the 12th district had the highest turnout of any district in California-- 130,36 voters turned out. (For comparison sake, there were half a dozen California districts with contested primaries where less than 50,000 voters turned out last Tuesday. And, one (CA-35) had only 38,993 people voting. Pelosi took 89,337 votes (68.5%) to Buttar's 10,090 (7.7%) and Jaffe's 7,639 (5.9%). I used to live in San Francisco. I guess I lost track of how the voters feel there.

Nationally, the population of the average congressional district is 710,767. Two real outliers are the Montana at-large district with 994,416 people and Rhode Island's first CD (526,283). There's a huge difference between districts in terms of how many people turn out to vote-- especially in primaries. That was clearly demonstrated Tuesday in California. This list only includes the 41 districts where there were at least 3 candidates.

CA-12 (San Francisco)- 130,360
CA-04 (northern Sacramento suburbs)- 124,713
CA-49 (south Orange Co, northern San Diego Co)- 112,000
CA-24 (Santa Barbara)- 111,710
CA-48 (coastal Orange Co.)- 109,343
CA-01 (northeast state)- 108,301
CA-33 (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills)- 103,301
CA-45 (Orange Co.)- 102,688
CA-02 (Marin, Sonoma)- 102,669
CA-52 (northern San Diego)- 102,182
CA-03 (western Sacramento suburbs)- 94,097
CA-18 (silicon Valley, Palo Alto)- 92,566
CA-50 (Inland San Diego Co.)- 88,782
CA-53 (eastern San Diego)- 87,349
CA-26 (Ventura)- 87,608
CA-05 (Napa Valley)- 85,946
CA-39 (northeast Orange County)- 85,786
CA-30 (souther San Fernando Valley)- 82,544
CA-11 (San Francisco N.E. suburbs)- 81,921
CA-28 (Burbank, Glendale, Hollywood)- 81,205
CA-23 (Central Valley, Bakersfield)- 80,313
CA-25 (Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley)- 78,205
CA-22 (Central Valley)- 73,534
CA-36 (Palm Springs, Idio)- 72,244
CA-08 (High Desert, San Bernardino suburbs)- 70,879
CA-47 (Long Beach)- 69,374
CA-15 (Hayward, Fremont)- 69,264
CA-07 (eastern Sacramento suburbs)- 66,076
CA-10 (Central Valley)- 65,342
CA-20 (Central Coast)- 64,241
CA-17 (Silicon Valley, San Jose)- 61,530
CA-42 (Inland Empire)- 59,233
CA-43 (Inglewood, LAX)- 58,358
CA-31 (southwest San Bernardino)- 56,717
CA-09 (Central Valley)- 55,191
CA-51 (San Diego to Nevada)- 46,938
CA-34- (Downtown L.A.) 43,506
CA-29 (Central San Fernando Valley)- 41,954
CA-46 (Noah Orange Co.)- 40,404
CA-44 (Southe L.A. San Pedro, Compton)- 40,041
CA-35 (East L.A., Inland Empire)- 38,993

Let's turn to NY-14 for a moment. The NRCC doesn't contest the district which spans a section of northern Queens and the Bronx. The PVI is a prohibitive D+29 and Trump only drew 19.8% of the vote. It's Queens Country machine boss' Joe Crowley's district and this cycle, ardent progressive Alexandria Ocasio is making an excellent case to the voters to replace him with her. No one primaries Crowley and 2014 not even a Republican ran against him. In the general election the Conservative Party ran a candidate instead, Elizabeth Perri, who won 6,735 votes (10%), considerably less than events blank and voided ballots (15.3%). In total only 67,372 people voted. In the 2016 general election 178,132 people voted, 82.9% for Crowley (AKA, the Democrat) and 17.1% for the vanity candidate, a random Republican. Crowley spent $3,107,073 and Frank Spotorno, the Republican, put $140,000 of his own into the race and spent $95,880.

This year will be Crowley's first real contest. He and his family live in Virginia and few in the district know who he is. He's counting on a low turnout-- but not taking any chances. as of the March 31 FEC reporting deadline he had already spent $2,306,48 (most of it from PACs). Alexandria raised $115,653 and spent $67,128. Please watch this:



Crowley wants to hold down voters participation. Alexandria wants to get as many people registered and voting as she can. That's what her campaign strategy-- aside from her platform-- is all about. The political boss of Queens has made sure as few people of color register as possible. Only 19% of the voters are white and that's his base. Let's compare the number of voters who turned out in 2014 in NY-14 with the other districts in Queens.

• NY-05- 94,400
• NY-06- 77,306
• NY-07- 68,522
• NY-08- 95,113
• NY-12- 117,420
• NY-14- 67,372
• NY- 16- 138,655

See that thermometer above and on the right? Please click on it and consider helping Alexandria to get more people out to vote, not fewer. I knew Buttar and Jaffe, both good people, had no chance to beat Pelosi; Ocasio does have a chance to beat Pelosi's hand-picked successor. And Crowley far worse than Pelosi is, far, far worse. And please, be sure to check this out... and pass it along to your friends and family.