I'd Like To See Ted Lieu Doing For The Whole Country What He's Doing For California

Wednesday night I went to a fundraiser Ted Lieu MC-ed for Randy Bryce and Ammar Campa-Najjar. Ted and both candidates made compelling cases for defeating the Republicans in a couple of weeks. And tens of thousands of dollars were raised for the Randy and Ammar Joint Victory Fund. It was a fun event and we even auctioned off a couple of Nancy Ohanian prints of Ted and Randy for the Victory Fund. This came a day after Ted's joint victory fund for his California candidates announced it had raised a million dollars and one day after another fundraiser he did raised another $650,000for the California joint victory fund! And tonight... I'm getting ready for still another event Ted is hosting for his California candidates' victory fund, this one featuring music by Stephen Stills. I haven't been out of the house this much in decades!



So which candidates are getting all this money Ted has been raising so diligently and with such aplomb? More or less, this list, all Californians, most of whom look like they're going to win their races:

Nor has that stopped Ted from raising money for other candidates as well, like he did several times for Randy Bryce and for Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Jared Golden in Maine and candidates in every part of the country. Last year Ted Lieu was elected DCCC Regional vice chair for the west coast. He takes it seriously. He's been generous with his advice, time and encouragement to the candidates who have run and now he's hauled in more cash for the California candidates who won their primaries than all the other DCCC regional vice chairs have combined! In fact, unless I'm getting faulty intelligence from around the country, the only other regional vice chair significantly helping anyone in their regions in Joe Kennedy. The rest... MIA.

Wednesday night, when Ammar was talking about what the Democrats could accomplish by winning back the House, the biggest applause line was when he said "making Ted Lieu speaker." I can't imagine Ted ever running against Nancy Pelosi, who I know he respects and admires but... I can't see how the Democrats can possibly pass up an opportunity to put him into a leadership position after the job he's been doing supporting Democratic candidates. It's not a stretch to say that the California candidates who will be in Congress next year are wild about him, but the other side of the coin is that the candidates in the other regions literally are unaware that their regions even have a DCCC regional vice chair except-- from me telling them they do. These leadership positions should never been just a line on a resume; they're serious jobs and should be treated seriously... or left for someone else to do. When Jared Polis decided to run for governor of Colorado-- and he appears to be about to win that in a big way-- he did the right thing by resigning his vice-chair position rather than hold it and do nothing. It's a shame Ben Ray Lujan never put anyone else in the job. Maybe he thought Texas, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico weren't important enough to bother with.