Everybody Wants To Know Who Gavin Newsom Will Appoint To Fill Kamala's Senate Seat

 

I've been saying that Newsom's first choice is Secretary of State Alex Padilla... but I now hear from a reliable source that I've been wrong. The people around Newsom favor Padilla, but Newsom has a mind of his own. The Governor wants a Hispanic senator as part of his legacy-- and part of his own run for Dianne Feinstein's soon-to-be-former seat when she dies, retires or gets shipped off to a home for the criminally insane. But a Latino isn't what Gavin is looking for; a Latina is.

Inside Newsom world-- where there's a tendency to do whatever crooked consultant Ace Smith says-- everyone knows Smith is pushing Padilla, one of his clients (as is Newsom). But when Newsom runs for the Senate, he doesn't want anyone to point out that he would be the second male representing California in the Senate. Scott Wilson at the Washington Post got it wrong this afternoon... well half wrong.

The obvious choice would have been former Congresswoman/former Secretary of Labor and current Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, a perfect choice. But there are persistent rumors that she prefers to stay in L.A. than go back to DC and that she is planning on running for mayor. There's another Latina who is also perfect for the job though-- Inland Empire Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, who was just reelected with 70% of the vote.

She originally took on a corrupt conservative Democrat, Cheryl Brown, and beat her by ten points with a big boost from organized labor. She has a stellar record in the state legislature, is a proponent of both Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal, and chairs the Human Services Committee. She has been a vocal and successful proponent of environmental and job safety reform, passed legislation on police violence, prisoner re-entry, a victims of crimes bill, and corporate governance. And her enemies... two of the most corrupt power blocs in the state, hated by one and all: the charter school industry and Big Oil. Good enemies to have in California.

This morning, the California Democratic Voter Guide predicted that the finalists Newsom is considering are Barbara Lee, Karen Bass, Alex Padilla, Xavier Becerra and... Eloise Reyes.

Something like 39,937,500 people live in California. The biggest ethnic group is Latino (39%), followed by White (37%), Asians (15%), Black (6%), mixed race (3%), Native American and Pacific Islander (less than 1%). There has never been a California senator of Hispanic heritage.

Why Jimmy Gomez's Victory In CA-34 Was A BFD

Tuesday night Jimmy Gomez became the first Democrat to win a House seat since Trump was elected president. He won pretty overwhelmingly-- 60-40%-- in a deep blue Los Angeles district. Generally Republicans don't even try in districts like CA-34. The jungle primary, in fact, resulted in 2 candidates with "D" next to their names facing off this week in the general election. One was Gomez-- a nose-to-the-grindstone progressive Assemblyman and proven, recognized champion of working families. The other was a wealthy, conservative "ex"-Republican, Robert Lee Ahn, who was backed by prominent Republicans and flagrantly campaigned for GOP votes.

It didn't work out for Ahn. He spent $498,400 of his own money ($1,372,545 in total) on the race and appealed strictly along ethnic lines to fellow Koreans, the second biggest ethnic group in the district. Korean-American turnout was very high, but not high enough, especially when Republicans wound up not turning out, just staying home-- a warning to other Democrats around the country who think this is a viable strategy for career advancement.

When Gomez declared for the seat, he was not favored to win. The establishment was already getting behind a far better known and more senior political leader, former Assembly Speaker John Pérez... and Gomez was viewed as the "too far left" interloper. "Too far left" is a weird idea in the only congressional district in Los Angeles where Bernie beat Hillary-- a a district that Democrats regularly win with over 80% of the vote. Blue America was the first group to urge Gomez to run and the first group that endorsed him when he decided to. And the reason we did is the same reason, essentially, he was able to win the primary (among two dozen candidates!) and then win the general on Tuesday. The magic formula? To be honest, there are two pieces of this: his record and his campaign.

Forget about the Republican stooge and his incoherent conservativism. In the primary, several candidates tried running to Gomez's left based on two things: basically meaningless utopian promises and the fact that each had licked envelopes in Bernie's campaign. What Gomez had to offer instead-- aside from a robust record on constituent services-- was an admirable and inspiring list of actual progressive accomplishments. So not just a good voting record but actual accomplishments. He co-wrote the state's Medicare-for-All bill. He wrote and passed a Paid Family Leave bill that fixed flawed legislation that saw virtually all the benefits going to women making over $80,000 and none going to the women who most needed it. His approach is now the national model. He conceptualized, wrote and passed-- in a bipartisan manner-- a green energy bill that didn't just subsidize wealthy Tesla buyers and people putting expensive solar panel arrays on their roofs, but also working class communities. Talk is cheap. A record of accomplishment like Gomez's goes way beyond talk.

As for the campaign... Monday a contact at the DCCC was trying to sell me on their new DCCC University-- "better," he told me, "than Trump University." Ha, ha. DCCC U is supposed to train campaign operatives. "There are less than 30 competent campaign managers in the whole country," he told me. That's true, although I didn't mention that the DCCC has been turning out scores of incompetent ones for at least a decade. But the point is that Gomez was lucky enough to snare one of the 30: David Keith.

Keith had just finished a successful Assembly campaign for Eloise Reyes, beating a corrupt conservative Democratic incumbent, Chevron Cheryl-- no one even remembered her name after Keith tarred her with that monicker. He knows how to win races, not by following the flawed one-corrupt-size-fits-all DCCC playbook but by eschewing expensive and ineffective TV ads that do nothing but make consultants very very wealthy, instead putting together the kinds of field operations and GOTV efforts that crooked organizations like the DCCC and EMILY's List hate (since they can't use them to rake off any dough for themselves through commissions). Today top Washington Democratic Party officials are begging him to fly to Washington to "debrief" them on how to win races. He laughed. Rumors are running wild that he was packing his bags to fly to Racine, Wisconsin... where some say he plans to spend the next 17 months helping Randy Bryce beat Paul Ryan.

"I've been asked to work on a couple of Senate races and some interesting House campaigns here in beautiful sunny California," he told me this morning. "But repealing and replacing Paul Ryan with @IronStache... is something any red blooded, patriotic American would have to give real consideration to. You know how much I love my mother and this great country... Any idea what the weather is like in Racine," he asked earnestly.

The Democrats' Super-Majorities In Sacramento-- Basically Rendered Meaningless By Corrupt ConservaDems

Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez

Yesterday, Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, who represents a huge swath of hipster and Hispanic Los Angeles (Silverlake, Echo Park, Boyle Heights, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Montecito Heights, Cypress Park, Chinatown, East L.A.) yielded to an animated draft movement by progressives in his district to run for the congressional seat Xavier Becerra is giving up to become California Attorney General. There is tremendous fear that charter school shill Sarah Hernandez, backed by the usual array of anti-union, anti-education fanatics and, of course, EMILY's List, will be able to sneak her into Congress. Last month, Jimmy was reelected to the Assembly with a nice healthy 86.4% of the vote.

The Assembly... the Democrats just regained a super-majority-- and there's a Democratic governor. So Jimmy and and the Democratic Party would be able to get a lot accomplished, right? (The state Senate also regained a super-majority.) But... not right. The state government can't do much-- and that's because lobbyists have so much sway in Sacramento. How is that even possible? The misnamed "Moderate Caucus"-- corrupt right wing Democrats, the Republican wing of the party always looking to get it's collective palm greased-- work with the Republicans to stop anything and everything that smacks of a progressive vision for governance. Celebrate that Democrats have a super-majority in each house but remember that the anti-union charter school thugs, for example, just elected more garbage Democrats-on-the-take (cash pouring in from robber barons like Gap co-founder Doris F. Fisher, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Carrie W. Penner, the granddaughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, developer Eli Broad and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg) like Tom Grayson from Contra Costa and Solano counties and, worst of all, Laura Friedman in Glendale and Los Feliz. Friedman was just elected in my own district and she's basically a pro-Choice Republican masquerading as a Democrat with TONS of money from the bad guys allowing her to absolutely swamp the district in deceitful advertising about her progressive opponent.

Back to the problem of the conservatives disguising themselves as Democrats and getting elected to the legislature. Dan Walters explained for Sacramento Bee readers why the super-majorities the Democrats just won mean little in practical terms.

In fact, it could result in more real clout by business, education reformers and other interests that do battle in the Capitol with liberal groups such as unions, consumer advocates, personal injury attorneys and environmentalists-- and more frustration for Gov. Jerry Brown’s legacy war on carbon emissions.

As Democrats were capturing enough Republican-held seats to reestablish the supermajorities they lost in 2014, the ranks of moderate Democrats were also increasing, thanks to big infusions of campaign cash from business and its new, albeit informal, partners in the education reform movement.

The Assembly’s “mod squad,” as it’s been dubbed, was instrumental during the 2015-16 session in blocking key elements of Brown’s multi-point assault on climate change, which he describes as an “existential threat.” He couldn’t win approval of a tight “low-carbon fuel” mandate or reauthorization of the “cap-and-trade” program of emission allowances.

One member of the loose moderate coalition, San Bernardino’s Cheryl Brown, was taken out by a union-backed campaign that dubbed her “Chevron Cheryl.”

However, the coalition’s ranks were bolstered by several victories in other Democrat vs. Democrat clashes. The education reform activists were particularly pleased by the defeat of Mae Torlakson, wife of state schools chief Tom Torlakson, who had strong backing from their foes in school unions.

Meanwhile, the Senate, which had supported Brown on climate change, may be developing a mod squad of its own with wins by business-backed Democrats such as Bill Dodd of Napa and Steven Bradford of Gardena.

In theory, the supermajorities could be used to impose new taxes or place constitutional amendments on the ballot. But they had almost no effect when Democrats had them during the 2013-14 session, and they may be even less likely to be employed in the 2017-18 session that begins next week.

Mod squad influence is rarely demonstrated in showdown votes on specific bills. Rather, legislation that fails because of their presence is usually placed on the shelf without votes after legislative leaders count noses and come up short.

The 17-year, 90.4 percent record of the California Chamber of Commerce in defeating bills it labels “job killers” is a testament to the clandestine nature of the perennial war between business interests and liberal groups.

Typically, the chamber pins its epithet on a few dozen major bills and only one or two of them make it through and are signed into law, but decisive votes on the vanquished measures are rare.

Thus, mod squad influence will not be apparent from official voting records, only in the final tally of what makes it into law and what doesn’t.

Eloise Reyes

Progressive champion Eloise Reyes defeated Chevron Cheryl Brown in San Bernardino (54-45%) and that's one very bright spot. This week Eloise was the very first freshman to introduce a bill in the Assembly. Another bright spot for California progressives is that the single most corrupt conservaDem in Sacramento, Isadore Hall-- yes, even more corrupt than Chevron Cheryl-- left the state Senate to run for Congress and, although heavily favored and backed by the entire disgustingly corrupt Democratic Party establishment (which pretends to oppose the conservaDems), was defeated by progressive underdog Nanette Barragan in the L.A. South Bay area. Her district, CA-44, stretches from San Pedro up through Wilmington, Carson, Rancho Dominguez, North Long Beach, Compton, Lynwood, Watts and South Gate and her colleagues were so impressed with her strength as a fighter that last week she was elected co-president of the new congressional freshman class, basically taking over for Ted Lieu in that spot.

Meanwhile, one of the worst former corrupt Sacramento conservaDems, Lou Correa, was-- like Hall-- heavily backed by California's utterly vile Democratic Party establishment and he managed to beat a devoted progressive for Loretta Sanchez's congressional seat in Orange County. He immediately joined the Blue Dogs and New Dems and will be a reliable vote for much of the damage Paul Ryan plans on doing-- just as he voted with the GOP consistently in Sacramento. Many say that now that ultra-reactionary Blue Dogs Gwen Graham (FL) and Brad Ashford (NE) have been driven from Congress, Lou Correa will quickly supplant Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) as the worst Democrat in the House. Do you think that's too bold a statement? See if this changes your mind at all. The problem with electing these garbage fake Dems, like Laura Friedman, to legislatures is that, aside from doing irreparable damage, it puts them in position to build power and move up the political ladder. Don't we have enough problems with Republicans without allowing the same sort of monsters to take over the Democratic Party? Democrats need more members of the working class in elected position; here's a suggestion:

Yes, The Democratic Establishment Dragged Us Into Another Loss, But Why It's Not All Gloom And Doom Around Here

A few years ago Blue America's list of endorsed candidates had the biggest success rate of any PAC recruiting and endorsing candidates. We beat NARAL, the Sierra Club, the Human Rights Campaign and the League of Conservation Voters that year-- not to mention the NRA and Club for Growth. I laughed when I read the stats. Blue America isn't about picking candidates who will make the PAC look good. Blue America is about endorsing and working with the candidates-- like unlikely winners Donna Edwards, Alan Grayson and Elizabeth Warren-- who will fight for the legitimate aspirations of working families.

Last year, for example, we worked hard to elect Eloise Reyes to Congress in the Inland Empire. The DCCC had their own candidate, corrupt conservative Pete Aguilar. Aguilar won-- and promptly joined the New Dems and ran up one of the worst voting records of any Democrat in Congress. ProgressivePunch-- whose CEO argued with me wen I told him how terrible Aguilar would be before the election-- gave him an "F" this year and, according to their algorithm, shows his crucial vote score for his one term to be less progressive than all but 10 Democrats, 2 of whom (reactionary Blue Dogs Gwen Graham and Brad Ashford) are leaving Congress in January. Meanwhile, Eloise took stock of her loss, learned the appropriate lessons from it and one week ago absolutely clobbered one of the most corrupt conservative Democrats in the California state legislature, Chevron Cheryl Brown, beating her decisively and spectacularly catapulting herself into a position where she can do a lot of good for the working families she represents (and who Brown ignored).

Reyes' whip-smart campaign manager, David Keith, told us this morning that she "proved you can be outspent by large margins-- in her case from an enormous corporate super PAC running negative communications against her-- by running an efficient grassroots campaign that communicates to voters what in fact electing the challenger (Eloise) will do for them and their families." We count that as a big Blue America win, even though it isn't something you'll read about in the Washington Post or NY Times or hear about on MSNBC.

Eventually, all the progressive groups came around and endorsed state Senator Pramila Jayapal for an open seat in Seattle and we all worked to raise her the money she would need to win a tough primary and then the general election. Blue America was the first to endorse her and encourage her compelling leadership style and emphasize it to other national progressives, some of whom whined about how it was "unfair" to take sides because the other candidates were good too. Last week Pramila made history, as the first America with South Asian roots to win a congressional seat.

When Nanette Barragán, a small town mayor and environmental activist, decided to take on the entire stinking California Democratic Party establishment by challenging their handpicked conservaDem candidate to fill a deep blue seat in one of Los Angeles' poorest congressional districts, Digby, John and I invited her to dinner, got to know her and Blue America became one of the first national PACs to endorse her and help make her case and raise her the money she needed to beat the "impossible" odds she faced in beating the establishment-- impossible odds she overcame to win a jaw-dropping victory last week.

Blue America didn't look for candidates who were likely to win; we looked for candidates who had a reasonable chance to win-- with help-- but who would be likely to be great legislators. We look forward to seeing Ruben Kihuen (NV), Jamie Raskin (MD), Carol Shea-Porter (NH)-- along with Nanette-- and possibly Doug Applegate (ballots in his tight race against arch-villain Darrell Issa are still being counted today) take eventual leadership roles in a House Democratic minority that sorely lacks cohesive and inspiring leaders.

And this was a good year for Blue America in terms of helping build a progressive, activist Democratic bench on the state legislative level. Aside from Eloise, we helped elect Marcia Ranglin-Vassell and Mike Connolly, both of whom beat powerful, entrenched corrupt Democrats to win seats, respectively in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Stanley Chang-- like Eloise, a 2014 Blue America congressional candidate-- came roaring back this year and beat the last remaining Republican in the Hawaii Senate-- and in the reddest district in Hawaii! Justin Bamberg, our Berniecrat candidate in South Carolina, was reelected and Wenona Benally, another 2014 congressional candidate, introduced to us by Raul Grijalva, won a hard-fought Arizona congressional seat last week. And our Berniecrat legislator in Colorado, Joe Salazar, not only won his state House seat but was already leading the Denver mass anti-Trump protests this weekend.

But before we say thanks for helping make this possible with your generous contributions, I want to point to one more victory-- an old one. When Sheldon Adelson suddenly struck in 2014 in the open CA-33 seat, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a last minute sneak attack, then-candidate Ted Lieu went to Steve Israel at the DCCC for help in responding. Israel flat out refused-- not one dime, not one nickel to answer Adelson's half million dollar SuperPAC. So Blue America did it instead. (That's the L.A. Times ad we ran twice in the final two weeks of the campaign, above.) Ted won, was elected congressional freshman class president, has been one of the most outspoken and successful bipartisan advocates on a series of crucial issues, from cyber-security to peace and climate change, and this weekend was in the news again, standing up against Trump "crazy shit", urging concerned Americans to follow him in becoming a supporter of the ACLU, while other congressional Democrats just cower in fear or plot personal career advancement. Ted Lieu-- one of Blue America's best ever investments!

So, from the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank the mind-boggling generosity of the Blue America members who gave-- and then gave again and again-- and helped progressive champions get into office when they are needed more than ever. And, fyi, right now we're busier than ever recruiting progressive candidates to run for what could be a really good 2018 cycle.

Hispanic Voters Won The Day For Two Progressive Women In Southern California-- Nanette Barragán And Eloise Reyes

Our last post on Tuesday night was about how Latinos tried but couldn't do it on their own. In two little discussed California races Blue America was active in, though, Latinos, helped progressives beat two truly horrible and corrupt conservatives. Nanette Barragán appears to have come from way behind to beat state Senator Isadore Hall for the congressional seat the Democratic Party Establishment tried to give him. And in an Inland Empire assembly district, it was Latino voters who helped Eloise Reyes oust one of the most conservative (and corrupt) Democrats in the state legislature, Cheryl Brown (AKA, Chevron Cheryl).

The race in CA-44 hasn't been officially called yet. With all precincts in, Nanette has 61,828 votes (51.2%) to Hall's 58,983 (48.8%)-- an amazing showing for someone who was given no chance at all. Ambitious career politician, Janice Hahn-- who gave up to seat for a supervisorial seat that she reckons is a better path to statewide office than a congressional seat-- tried engineering an easy path to victory for Hall. And it wasn't just the slimy politicians from Hall's Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- like Gavin Newsom-- who were pushing Hall. It seems like just about every African-American member of Congress (not Barbara Lee, who knew better) was playing identity politics and backed Hall, as did the New Dems (which endorsed him). Virtually the whole state legislature, well aware of how corrupt he is, backed him (along with Gov. Brown, Senator-elect Harris, and even progressives like Betty Yee and John Chiang. Disgracefully, even Supervisor Hilda Solis, who started her career by taking on a corrupt Establishment incumbent, endorsed Hall.As did the California Democratic Party, party chair John Burton, some clowns calling themselves the Progressive Democratic Club, and the bulk of the labor movement (as well as Planned Parenthood, NOW, Equality California, even the Mexican American Bar Association PAC!

Nanette had a much smaller list of backers including Blue America (the first outside group to endorse her), DFA, the Latino Victory Project, the Sierra Club, Climate Hawks Vote, Our Revolution, the California League of Conservation Voters, EMILY's List and all the newspapers in the district, from the L.A. Times and the Daily Breeze to the Compton Herald and the Spanish-language press. The congressional Hispanic Caucus' Poder PAC also backed her, as did Progressive Caucus chair Raul Grijalva.

But, of course, it was the gigantic surge in Latino participation-- registration and voting-- that put Nanette over the top and help slay the whole disgusting establishment attempt to bolster one of its own. In the last week she told me that early voting was through the roof and that Latinos were voting in record numbers. They weren't just voting against Trump; they were voting for Nanette. Meanwhile, Hall is crying racism, even claiming his skin looked too dark in her literature.

Similar story down in the Dem vs Dem race for the San Bernardino Assembly seat occupied by corrupt conservative Cheryl Brown. I call it the Sammy Hagar district-- Fontana, Colton, Rialto, Bloomington, Grand Terrace, Muscovy and a little of San Bernardino. It's not easy ousting an incumbent, but, again, Latino voter participation for Reyes surely helped-- as well as a powerful campaign led by labor and environmentalists sick and tired of Brown's record of voting with the Republicans on union and Big Oil issues. All precincts are in and of the 73,350 votes cast, Eloise won 39,092 (53.3%) to Brown's 34,258 (46.7%). She's also whining her skin looked too dark in the mailers sent out against her. She doesn't want to face the fact that she lost because Eloise ran a strong, issue-oriented grassroots campaign that engaged voters directly with an incredible field operation, while Chevron Cheryl depended on Big Oil and her lobbyist cronies in Sacramento.

Looking For Candidate Advice-- From The U.S. Senate To State Legislatures

Blue America spends most of its time and energy on House races. As far as the 2016 Senate races go, after Donna Edwards (MD), PG Sittenfeld (OH) and Alan Grayson (FL) were defeated in their primaries by establishment candidates the only Senate endorsements we have left are for Russ Feingold (WI), who looks like he'll probably win a week from tomorrow, and two long-shots who beat their more conservative opponents, Ray Metcalfe (AK) and Misty Kathrine Snow (UT). Still, people are always asking who's worth supporting and who isn't. For anyone interested in my opinion, I have a list below of the 34 states that have Senate races being decided next Tuesday and what I would do in each one. Obviously, there is not a single Republican worthy of voting for, even Republicans running against the worst Schumercrats that the Democrats have put up.

I've rated the candidates from 1-4. A 1 means, they're good enough to contribute money to and badger your friends into voting for. A 2 means they're good enough to vote for. A 3 means bring along a clothespin and vote for the crap candidate. A 4 means don't vote at all in that race because the candidate is so bad that it would be better to see Schemer choke on their loss than see them win a Senate seat where they would be in position to do grievous harm for years if not decades.

• Alabama- Ron Crumpton 2
• Alaska- Ray Metcalfe 1
• Arizona- 4
• Arkansas- Conner Eldridge 3
• California- Kamala Harris 2 or 3
• Colorado- Michael Bennet 3
• Connecticut- Richard Blumenthal 2
• Florida- 4
• Georgia- Jim Barksdale 3
• Hawaii- Brain Schatz 2
• Idaho- Jerry Sturgill 2 or 3
• Illinois- Tammy Duckworth 2 or 3
• Indiana- 4
• Iowa- 4
• Kansas- Patrick Wiesner 2 or 3
• Kentucky- Jim Gray 2
• Louisiana- Foster Campbell 2 or 3
• Maryland- Chris Van Hollen 2
• Missouri- Jason Kander 3
• Nevada- Catherine Cortez Masto 2 or 3
• New Hampshire- Maggie Hassan 3
• New York- 4
• North Carolina- Deborah Ross 2
• North Dakota- Eliot Glasheim 2 or 3
• Ohio- Strickland 3
• Oklahoma- Mike Workman 2 or 3
• Oregon- Ron Wyden 3 (although Gaius, who lives there, says 4)
• Pennsylvania- Katie McGinty- 3
• South Carolina- Thomas Dixon 2 or 3
• South Dakota- Jay Williams 2 or 3
• Utah- Misty Snow 1
• Vermont Patrick Leahy 2
• Washington- Patty Murray 2
• Wisconsin- Russ Feingold 1

On the other end of the power spectrum are the folks running for state legislative seats, another area that Blue America hasn't gotten as involved with as we wish we could. But we have endorsed several of the best candidates who we've gotten to know. There are literally hundreds running. You can see all the ones we endorsed by tapping on the thermometer on the right. Below are a couple of random bits and pieces about the campaigns that have kept in touch. Let's start with our old friend and comrade Darcy Burner up in Washington state. Her race is a twofer-- getting an incredible progressive woman, a born leader, into the legislature and making sure the Democrats maintain their precariously narrow hold on the state House. Darcy is ahead by a fraction but the GOP is throwing a lot of money against her.

Thanks to Trump, Washington state Republicans are on the defensive down-ballot. The polling average has Hilalry up by 13.5 points-- 48.8% to 35.3%-- and the most recent poll, by Elway, just over a week ago, shows Democrats up and down the ticket picking up momentum. Hillary is up over Trump 48-31%, as he continues hemorrhaging support. Democratic Governor Jay Inslee in beating GOP challenger Bill Bryant 51-39%. Democratic Senator Patty Murray is beating GOP challenger Chris Vance 58-34%. Democrats are leading in most of the statewide races-- Lt. Governor, Auditor, Lands Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, Treasurer and Superindant of Public Instruction. The Republican is leading, narrowly, in the Secretary of State race. Likely to help Democrats next week is the big lead-- 58 to 31%-- for increasing the minimum wage, gradually, to $13.50/hour by 2020.

“I think we have a lot of seats in play,” said Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon of the House Democratic Campaign Committee.

“Our plan all along has been to run as if we were behind, and as if we had a chance to lose the majority of the House. I don't think we're going to lose the majority of the house,” he continued.

Instead, Fitzgibbon believes his Party is in a position to grow its majority, in large part because of Donald Trump.

House Republicans, meanwhile, downplay concerns about a possible Trump effect down ballot, arguing voters will identify local candidates with local issues, not the national presidential race.

“I’m still pretty optimistic,” said Rep. Drew Stokesbary of the House Republican Organizational Committee.

“I know that Trump isn’t the most popular person in Washington State or the United States right now, but the fact of the matter is that Hillary Clinton is the most unpopular major party nominee in history among anybody not named Donald Trump, so there’s really an effect on both sides of the ticket,” Stokesbary argued.

But recent polling shows Clinton with a double-digit lead in Washington State, and Democrats believe that will give them the edge.

“A lot of voters who have traditionally considered themselves to be Republican voters feel more alienated from that party right now because of the kind of rhetoric they’re hearing at the state and national level,” Fitzgibbon told KING 5.

“I feel like there’s a realistic shot we’ll be at 52 (seats),” Fitzgibbon predicted.

Stokesbary believes Republicans could take the House 51 to 47.

So, here’s a look at some the most competitive races that both Parties are targeting:

...District 5 , East King County, Carnation, North Bend, Snoqualmie, Issaquah, parts of Renton.

House Position 2—An open seat vacated by Republican Rep. Chad Magandanz who is running for state Senate. Republican Paul Graves led Democrat Darcy Burner in the August primary.

Money raised: Graves, $249,698.20; Burner, $186,240.66

Independent spending: $14,140.91 in support of Graves, none in opposition, as of Thursday.

$1,131.96 in support of Burner, $45,938.91 in opposition.

Helping Darcy close that gap this week is urgent. Please contribute if you can. Another progressive woman, like Darcy, who we first met when she was running for Congress is our old friend Eloise Reyes, in San Bernardino County. She's running against a corrupt Democratic hack, Cheryl Brown, for a state Assembly seat. Brown is being heavily financed by Big Oil, which is running a massive SuperPAC independent expenditure campaign-- over $8 million-- against Eloise. Bernie has stepped in and has been helping Eloise raise money to combat the flood of oil money. This is the most expensive state legislative race anywhere in the country. And Eloise is running against a bribe-happy buffoon who abused her expense account more than any legislator in Sacramento and who solicits personal gifts from lobbyists and others with a legislative agenda. She's infamous for a gold watch she sports that was given to her by Russia when she was on a junket there.

Last week, the L.A. Times reported that the League of Conservation Voters named Brown to a list of what it calls the "most anti-environment" state candidates nationwide. The group's 'Dirty Dozen in the states' list, maintained by state chapters of the League of Conservation Voters, was first compiled in 2010."

Brown is the first Californian to be named to the state-level list, which is modeled after a "Dirty Dozen" list of federal candidates that the national organization has kept for 20 years.

Brown's environmental record in the Legislature has become a central issue in her pitched battle against fellow Democrat Eloise Reyes, who has received endorsements from the California League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups.

Reyes has criticized Brown for helping block a major provision in Gov. Jerry Brown's climate change bill last year, and for the $1.1 million Chevron has contributed to an independent expenditure committee supporting the incumbent. Overall, oil companies have contributed more than $8 million to various committees supporting Brown as well as other candidates this cycle.

Local environmental groups were up in arms earlier this year when Brown supporters sent out mailers calling the assemblywoman an "environmental champion," and some have dubbed her "Chevron Cheryl."

“The Inland Empire has some of the dirtiest air in the country. Yet time and again Cheryl Brown has sided with Chevron and Big Oil, who fuel her campaign, rather than act to protect the health of her constituents,” said CLCV Political Director James Johnson in a statement Tuesday.

This, in short, is LCV's case against Cheryl Brown:

• Chevron is spending a mind-blowing $1 million to help re-elect Cheryl Brown, earning her the moniker “Chevron Cheryl.”
• In addition, Cheryl Brown has accepted huge direct campaign contributions from Big Oil including BP, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Tesero, and Valero.
• Brown voted against a bill that would have prevented oil companies from cheating customers by manipulating the price of a gallon of gas.
• Brown not only opposed expanding California’s landmark climate and clean energy law, but she tried to help Big Oil dodge complying with the law.
• Brown is key player in the “Oil Caucus,” a group of oil-funded Democrats who work against reducing California’s dependence on oil.
• Brown voted for MORE fracking and FEWER regulations on fracking.

Last race-- a third progressive we first met in a congressional campaign-- is Stanley Chang in Hawaii. There's is an especially interesting race because of the potentially historic ramifications. In 1980 the state Senate in Alabama was 100% Democratic. Same in Louisiana-- all Democrats, no Republicans. Today, only 8 of the 35 Alabama state senators are Democrats. And Louisiana has 14 Democrats in it's 39 seat state Senate. Hawaii has 25 state senators-- 24 Democrats and one Republican, Sam Slom. (The state House has 51 members and 7 of them are Republicans.) Our old friend, Stanley, is taking on Slom, who's been the state senator for 20 years. Obama beat Romney with about 66% but the district is wealthy and other Republicans have been elected there. But it's very tough because many people think it's unique to have the only Republican in the state Senate and people feel sorry for the 74 year old Slom, who's been in the seat for 20 years and who is sick and has been rushed to the hospital from the Senate floor several times.

But Trump is playing a role even in this race. His presence on the top of the ticket is so revolting to many Republicans that they've decided to just stay home, although Stanley says he's counting on his record to win, not on Trump's toxicity. Slom is a friendly guy but a big NRA supporter and a total economic reactionary. Stanley describes himself as an Elizabeth Warren Democrat-- and that's how we remember him as well.

Stanley Chang with Alan Grayson

Oh... and speaking of Alan Grayson... yesterday he asked his supporters to lend a hand to Russ Feingold's campaign. Like many of his, he was offended by loathesome right-wing billionaire, Diane Hendricks, shoving $5 million into negative TV commercials to poison Wisconsin voters' minds against Russ Feingold. "Feingold is winning," he wrote. "But some faceless whatsis billionaire has calculated that Ron Johnson might deliver a personal tax cut to her, so she has put her money where her math is.

If Feingold wins, then you can at least make the case that America is a democracy. (“Demos” = people. “Cracy” = form of government. “Crazy” = this year’s election.) Thanks to you and people like you, I was first among Senate candidates this year in percentage of money from small donors. Feingold was second.

But if Ron Johnson wins, then the only debate left is whether America is a plutocracy or an oligarchy. Kind of like Diet Coke vs. Coke Zero. One billionaire swings a Senate election with ten days to go by peeling off 0.1% of her net worth? Fuhgeddaboudit. Democracy R.I.P.

Please contribute $15, $40, $75 or whatever you can give in order to help Russ Feingold win, and help perpetuate government of the people, by the people and for the people.

On the day that the Citizens United decision was rendered, I appeared on MSNBC, and I said “if we do nothing, you can kiss this country goodbye.” This really is one of those crucial moments.

California's Democrat vs Democrat Conundrum

-by Samuel Hagar

How to cross party lines for votes without abandoning your ethnicity-- The first thing a pollster tells you when you ask “how do you win a Democrat on Democrat” general election (a phenomenon we're finding more and more frequently on the West Coast due to the somewhat dysfunctional jungle primary system) is:

You need to create a coalition. Democrats, Decline to States, and Republicans must be patched together to create a coalition across demographics...

This may seem simple and not worthy of the thousands of dollars in consulting and pollster fees, however it is true. To win a Democrat on Democrat race, a candidate must build out from his or her natural constituency (race, gender, region, ideology etc) to attract the necessary support in order to earn 50+1 percent of the vote.

The glaring example of this type of race is the United States Senate race to replace Barbara Boxer this year in California. This race pits California Attorney General Kamala Harris (an African American statewide elected official and Establishment fave from the Bay Area) against Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (a Latina Blue Dog congresswoman, somewhat reknowned for being the dumber of two congressional sisters). The nature of the race (and the candidates in it) is that Loretta (having only received 18% of the vote in the primary) faces a general election in which she must get a ton of votes (compared to Kamala) that are outside of her geographic territory (where she picked up most of her votes in the primary)-- let’s face it, a Congressmember in a state as large as California has a minuscule base of support (speaking in geographic terms) as compared to a candidate who’s name has appeared on a statewide ballot before.

Loretta is a Blue Dog Democrat, a conservaDem who frequently votes with the GOP against the best interests of working families, so there was no way that the progressive/liberal community in California (a lot of votes!) would rally around her, leaving the remaining winnable votes for Loretta in the following constituencies: Latinos and Republicans.

Now, given her voting record, Loretta can make (and has made) a play for Republican votes. Her courting of an endorsement from Congressman Darrell Issa, not just a Republican but one of the best-known and most hated Republicans in the state, is the prime example of this strategy. But let’s remember, California is a deep blue state with far more Democratic votes than Republican votes, so the Republican vote alone cannot get Loretta Sanchez across the finish line (even after adding that to her Orange County name identification base).

So, as a Latina, Loretta must win a significant number of latino votes and add those to her base and iffy Republican support. While that may seem simple (such as 1+1 = 2), it is not.

Latinos have faced a year and a half of absolute brutal, vitriolic language from the Republican nominee. Polling indicates that the latino vote identifies Republicans as espousing the Donald Trump view points. And, it is no secret that Issa, who has a stridently anti-immigrant record, is one of Trump's most devoted followers in the state.

Unless Loretta thinks she can win every latino who agrees that “we must build a beautiful beautiful wall” along the Mexican border (and assumes that that plus her Republican vote is enough) then her strategy points to the exact problem facing so-called Democrats in these intra party races: to cross party lines for votes often involves stabbing your natural constituency directly in the back.

Today Christopher Cadelago reported for the Sacramento Bee that as part of her campaign to entice Republican voters, Sanchez has one of her SuperPACs running a radio spot blasting Kamala Harris as "another Barbara Boxer," something most California voters hope is true but that Republicans, of course, fear. Two Republican Party operatives, Stu Mollrich (California’s New Frontier PAC) and Dave Gilliard (Jobs, Opportunity & Freedom PAC) are running SuperPACs smearing against Harris for Sanchez.

Sanchez's latest ad from the PAC she is illegally coordinating with features a mock discussion between two Republican voters about the fact that the Senate race-- for the first time-- is between two Democrats. When one of the Republicans says she may not vote, she is instructed to cast her ballot for Sanchez-- described in the ad as an "anti-establishment Orange County moderate" with a "reputation for working across the aisle to solve problems."

There is another race in California (in which shockingly almost as much money has been spent as in the statewide U.S. Senate race) that points to this exact problem: the race for Assembly District 47, pitting so-called "moderate" Democratic incumbent, Cheryl Brown, a blatantly corrupt conservaDem, against her challenger, progressive reformer and attorney Eloise Gomez Reyes.

First, let’s look at the District. Assembly District 47 is set in San Bernardino County (one of the poorest counties in America) and home to a majority latino population. Analysts agree that nearly 54% of the General Election Vote (could be higher due to Donald Trump) will be latino, 10% will be black, and the rest will be white, Asian, etc… This is a minority majority district.

Now let’s look at the candidates. The incumbent legislator is Cheryl Brown, an African American former newspaper owner who proudly calls herself a “moderate Democrat” and has voted 100% of the time with the oil interests in California. Her largest contributor is Chevron and public polling has consistently shown her hovering between 40% and 44% of the general election vote. The challenger is Eloise Gomez Reyes, a labor attorney and community activist who proudly tells voters how she picked onions and grapes in this district as a little girl to pay for her school clothes. Her largest contributors come from the labor community.

Thus far OVER $4.6 MILLION DOLLARS has been spent in this contest. That is broken down as follows:

Brown Campaign - $800,000
Reyes Campaign - $500,000
Brown Independent Expenditures - $2,100,000
Reyes Independent Expenditures - $1,200,000

In a district this compact (no wider than 20 miles in any direction such an incredible amount of spending (already the costliest state legislative race IN THE COUNTRY) has a significant diminishing return to scale. This phenomenon makes this race a perfect example of a Democrat on Democrat race because it takes the financial advantage largely out of the equation.

Maybe Loretta can win Republicans and Latinos to bring her across the 50% mark, however it will take a hell of a lot more money than Loretta currently has, in order to do so.

So, in District 47 (where the last report, as of the Tuesday after Labor Day showed the race at 42-38, Brown) how does the African American incumbent get across the finish line? 2 scenarios:

1- Convince enough latinos to vote for her (she would need to win 50% of the latino vote for this to be the case) or 2- Convince a super majority of Republicans and Republican leaning Decline to State voters to vote for her, while retaining a super majority (not just majority) of the Black vote.

This is exactly why Chevron (the largest contributor to the Brown I.E., independent expenditures using Dark Money) has run ads that one would find a Republican running against a Democrat (Brown believes in lower taxes while that liberal Reyes wants to raise yours, they claim ominously-- and untruthfully). It’s of no surprise that Chevron would run these types of ads, given the fact that Chevron is run by Republicans and has benefitted for years from Republican relationships both in California and nation-wide.

There is a problem for Brown here (much like in the Sanchez scenario) in that Brown’s natural constituency-- African Americans-- have benefitted from years of Democratic policies that influential donors from say, Chevron, have worked diligently to abolish. Can Brown go win her Republican votes while convincing enough blacks that the only thing they have in common with her is their skin tone? That remains to be seen.

This race is a toss up and the one to watch. Blue America, of course, has endorsed Eloise Reyes and you can contribute to her progressive, grassroots campaign here.

California-- Not Quite As Blue As You Might Imagine

Eloise

Yesterday, Jon Wiener, writing for The Nation picked at the ugly scab of California's Democratic politics, something few outside the state know about, namely that deep blue California has a Democratic Party very much under the thumb of corrupt conservatives calling themselves, inaccurately, "moderates." And these moderates represent, primarily, their campaign donors and their campaign donors' lobbyists-- oil and gas, agribusiness, real estate developers, Big Pharma, the charter school industry and, of course, the banksters.

Democrats hold the governorship and every statewide office in California, as well as huge majorities in the state Assembly and the state Senate. The Assembly has 52 Democrats and 28 Republicans and the Senate has 26 Democrats and 13 Republicans. And the Democrats have delivered to their constituents in some significant area. As Wiener wrote, "Democrats raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour and introduced paid sick days and paid family leave; they increased abortion access; they passed automatic voter registration; they expanded Obamacare and health insurance for poor people; and just before Labor Day they required overtime pay for farmworkers, and established the nation’s most far-reaching targets for renewable energy and limits on greenhouse gas emissions." Not too shabby. It sure ain't Texas.

"But," he wrote, "there’s a shadow over California politics. When the corporations’ favorite political party became hopelessly weak, they set out to gain power in the other one. Their tool, of course, was money. So now we have some Democrats taking corporate money and doing the bidding of the oil and gas industry, agribusiness, the real estate developers, Big Pharma, and some of the billionaires. It’s 'the new reality of California politics,' says Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect, an op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. In Sacramento a new caucus was formed in 2014: Democrats who call themselves "moderates," and are known as 'the mods.' But “we shouldn’t call them "moderates,"' one progressive labor leader told me. 'We should call them "opponents of working families and the poor."' It’s simpler to call them 'corporate Democrats.'"

The corporate Dems have piles of cash-- they spent at least $24 million in the June primary-- and several goals. Number one was probably blocking Governor Jerry Brown’s effort to cut motorists’ use of fossil fuels in half by 2030. The oil lobby succeeded at this last year, but failed this term. And three years ago eight mods joined the remaining Republicans to block a bill that would have required big companies to provide medical care for low-income workers and their families who were not on Medi-Cal. “The bill’s opposition comprised a Who’s Who of California’s most influential corporate interests,” according to Capital and Main, a news website reporting on progressive issues in California. Then there’s a group of billionaires led by Eli Broad, fighting the teachers’ unions and seeking to expand charter schools. And there are the real estate interests who want to end restrictions on development, especially along the coast. And the agribusiness-funded resistance in the Assembly to overtime pay for farmworkers was especially intense and prolonged.

...After the launch of Our Revolution, the group’s website unveiled the list of candidates it endorses, and urged Bernie people to work and vote for them. But of the 79 candidates currently endorsed, only one is challenging a corporate Dem in the California Assembly: Eloise Reyes in San Bernardino and the neighboring working class cities of the “Inland Empire” east of Los Angeles-- Rialto, Colton, and Fontana. (San Bernardino of course is also site of last December’s terrorist attack.)

If Our Revolution was going to pick only one, this one is probably the most important challenge underway right now. The incumbent, Cheryl Brown, is a leader in the Mod caucus who is running for her third term in the Assembly. She’s an African-American who comes from a business background. In 1980 she and her husband founded a local African-American newspaper, Black Voice News, and then in 2001 expanded to run a network of 22 African-American newspapers and media enterprises across the state called California Black Media. Cheryl Brown is good on some issues: she voted for the minimum wage hike-- her district desperately needs it-- and for the farmworker overtime bill. But she voted with Big Oil against Jerry Brown’s historic climate/environmental targets that passed just before Labor Day. That vote came after she received $1 million in “independent expenditures” from Chevron to help her fight off what the Sacramento Bee called “a rare challenge from the left over her environmental record.”

DWT readers should remember the progressive reformer running against Brown well-- Eloise Reyes, who almost beat corrupt conservative Pete Aguilar in 2014 but had her campaign destroyed by aggressive incompetents from EMILY's List. Lesson learned. Aguilar has been as horrendous a corporate tool in DC as was predicted, but Eloise has turned her attention closer to home, the state Assembly. She's been endorsed by the AFL-CIO's Central Labor Council (which represents more than 289,000 workers in the Inland Empire) and by virtually all of the local unions, including several that endorsed Brown in 2014 and feel betrayed by her today. Eloise also won the endorsement of environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the California League of Conservation Voters, and of Planned Parenthood, DFA, Blue America, Xavier Becerra and the legendary Dolores Huerta.

When Wiener asked her about the most significant differences between her and Cheryl Brown, she said simply, "I’m pro-worker, she’s pro-business." She explained that, "when the legislature tried to close the loophole that allows big corporations like Walmart to reduce workers’ hours so they would no longer have to provide medical coverage, she voted against. On the proposal for double pay on holidays, she abstained. On the bill to stop wage theft, she voted against. On rights of temporary warehouse workers, she voted against." But that isn't going to stop certain groups that try to pass themselves off as progressive from endorsing Brown-- including a laughable state Democratic Party and most of the African-American political elite, including the less-than-trustworthy Kamala Harris and the aforementioned crooked conservative Pete Aguilar. And much of the state legislature has circled their wagons-- if less than enthusiastically-- around Brown, including one of the few members widely considered even more corrupt that Brown herself, Isadore Hall.

This morning Eloise told me that when she "was told this race was an uphill battle, I accepted the challenge. We finished the primary less than 8.5% behind the corporate incumbent. New polls have us 4% behind her without messaging. With messaging, we are ahead with double digits... In Sacramento, I will work and fight for the best interests of our district. I will remind corporate special interests that our vote is not for sale. Our community is made up of extraordinary people  and extraordinary businesses looking for a representative who is willing to put them first. I am committed to doing this. San Bernardino county suffers from one of the highest poverty rates, a high drop-out rate, gun violence, the dirtiest air in California and a great number of people who feel disenfranchised.  Unless we put the people of our district above the profits of big corporations, we will continue to see our communities worsen without a hope for a brighter future... I will work to ensure Sacramento's Democrats are no longer beholden to corrupt special interest lobbyists. For too long Sacramento has been a joke to people who truly want progress. Well, I'm here to tell you the joke is over, and I will come to town with the will of the people on my side, looking to shake some things up."

Wiener speculated that "the political battle for the future of the state continues. If Eloise Reyes defeats Cheryl Brown in San Bernardino, that will put the remaining corporate Dems in the Assembly on notice: they will be challenged in two years, and could face the same fate. Our Revolution is now part of that fight." I'm not sure anyone in Sacramento fears Our Revolution or considers it a factor. If they can help turn-out the vote for Eloise, that will change-- and it will encourage other progressives and other reformers to challenge corrupt conservatives in Sacramento like Matt Dababneh, Tom Daly, Patrick O'Donnell, Mike Gipson, Luis Alejo, Jim Wood, Bill Dodd, Jim Cooper, Jim Frazier and Sebastian Ridley-Thomas. If you care to help Eloise, please tap on the thermometer below.

UPDATE: Rhode Island Too

Obama won California with 61% in 2008 and 60% in 2012. That's huge-- even huger than Texas' votes for McCain (55%) and Romney (57%). But Rhode Islanders were even more lopsidedly partisan. Obama got 63% both times he ran. Rhode Island's whole congressional delegation is Democratic-- 2 senators and two representatives. And the state legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic too. The state House has 63 Democrats and 11 Republicans and the Senate has 32 Dems and just 5 Republicans. Unfortunately, the Governor, Gina Raimondo, is a corrupt conservative, but a corrupt conservative Democrat.

Rep-elect Marcia Ranglin-Vassell

The good news is that a progressive Democrat, Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, beat the entrenched Rhode Island House Majority Leader, John DeSimone, an anti-Choice conservative with a miserable environmental record, a failing grade from the ACLU and an NRA-friendly record on guns. DeSimone had been in the legislature since 1992 and Ranglin-Vassell beat him by 17 votes-- a margin that increased when DeSimone a recount yesterday, which turned up 5 more votes for her. She's a public school teacher and will face Republican Roland Lavallee in the November general election, in the solidly blue district. 18 incumbents were challenged and 6 lost. Four of the winners had been endorsed by Rhode Island's Progressive Democrats of America. One, state Senator William Walaska (D-Warwick), who had been endorsed by the NRA, lost to Jeanine Calkin, a dedicated Berniecrat (51.8% to 48.2%), who helped Bernie win the Rhode Island primary 55-43.3%. Progressive Democrats State Coordinator Sam Bell called the results a "body blow to the political machine."


And In St. Louis

Looks like there was some vote count cheating going on all through the establishment and not just in the presidential primaries.

Six weeks after activist and business owner Bruce Franks Jr. narrowly lost his Democratic primary challenge to incumbent state Rep. Penny Hubbard (D-St. Louis), a court-ordered revote had a markedly different outcome.

Today, Franks walloped her.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Franks took 76.12 percent of the vote to Hubbard's 23.88, winning by a margin of more than 1,500 votes.

In the earlier election in August, which a judge threw out after Franks' election challenge revealed serious irregularities with absentee balloting, Hubbard had squeaked by with a 90-vote margin of victory.

...Franks and his attorney, David Roland, had successfully argued that serious irregularities with how the city Board of Elections handled absentee ballots were enough to invalidate the August 2 election. They fought all the way to the Missouri Court of Appeals to win the right to tonight's revote.

And, yes, Bruce Franks is a strong Berniecrat and Hubbard, the other kind of Democrat, was a Hillary supporter. Watch this video:

Let's Make Sure The Future Of American Education Is NOT Trump University

Last week you may have caught Señor Trumpanzee's telepromter speech in Cleveland on education. You could tell it was read from a teleprompter because he sounded like he was on Ambien and because he didn't say he would model the American education system on Trump University. Instead he pushed the charter school industry's privatization agenda. Trumpanzee spoke at a dismally failing charter school, Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, owned by crooked for-profit charter school fanatic Ron Packard. The school received a D for Performance Index, a composite of scores across multiple grades and subjects that Ohio uses to summarize results, and an F in value-added, a measure of student growth and academic progress over a school year. Packard and others trying to dismantle the public school system and privatize it, always call their efforts-- as Señor Trumpanzee did-- "educational choice." Trump pandered shamelessly-- and, of course, deceitfully-- to poor parents promising them the world if they would just back charter schools. He promised to immediately subsidize poor families with a $20 billion grant. I didn't hear a peep out of Ryan or McConnell. Did you?

What Trumpanzee said sounded so innocuous: "It’s simply a matter of putting students first, and not the education bureaucracy" while he emphasized the importance of competition in education and how parents should be able to choose the public, private or charter school of their choice for their children.



Dr. Andre Perry, writing yesterday for The Root wasn't having any of Trump's slick charter school industry sloganeering.

The Republican presidential nominee and founder of Trump University accused Democrats of trapping black and Hispanic youth in failing public schools and offered the postern door of school choice through a proposed block grant, voucher-like program in which per pupil expenditures would follow students to the school of their parents’ liking.

“I want every single inner-city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom, the civil right to attend the school of their choice,” Trump said in his Sept. 8 speech.

The philosophical basis for Trump’s policy should sound familiar. It seems to come out of the playbooks of both Republican and Democrat reformers who advocate for vouchers and/or charter schools. Charter and voucher advocates may distance themselves from the nuclear Trump and his policies, but they will have a hard time distancing themselves from his rhetoric, which reveals how gamey the word “choice” is.

After 25 years of having charter schools, it’s clearer that “educational choice” is dangling bait for black and brown parents who are desperate for change. But its becoming even easier through the thin veil of choice rhetoric to see choice policies have found ways to primarily deconstruct the “monopoly” on public schools-- not address structural inequalities that generate disparate educational outcomes.

Like many education reformers, Trump argues an estimated $620 billion spent on public funding has not translated to educational success, but for the Republican nominee it shows “obviously Common Core doesn’t work.” Notwithstanding the bad coupling of a three year-old Common Core program to decades of public education policy and not giving Common Core a reasonable amount of time to prove itself, Trump asserts parents’ power of the purse would drive improvement through competition if only they had the money. Parents who make the best possible choices for their children would naturally put failing schools out of business.

If that was only true of the school in which he gave his speech – CASSA received a “D” on its Performance Index and an “F” in value-added, a growth measure over a school year. Nevertheless to encourage choice, Trump’s first budget, if elected, would include an additional $20 billion that will be raised by “reprioritizing existing federal dollars” to create a block grant that would be dedicated to “the 11 million school-aged kids living in absolute poverty.” States would be given the option of allowing those dollars to follow the child.

Families could then use their tuition dollars to attend any school of their choice including private, traditional, magnet or charter. But Trump forgot the tiny detail that schools often do the choosing-- even among public schools-- which obviously limits families’ choices. Voucher programs provide insight in this regard. The most selective privates in eligible cities across the country don’t participate in voucher programs.

Students are then left with mediocre options that give the illusion of choice like the school in which he gave his speech. Many private and faith-based schools would close without the public subsidy (“welfare,” for the cynical). Again, research on voucher programs is showing that students in certain states are performing worse than if they attended a public school. Giving students options is not the same as giving families economic and social power, which really empowers parents the influence to enter systems of their wishes.

Most if not all black folk, who poll as supporting Trump at less than 1 percent, see Trump as a hustler, racist and bigot. Still, the choice lobby, which includes charter and voucher advocates, spews choice as fluently as Trump.

Black and brown parents are raring for change. Academic outcomes among black and brown students pale in comparison to their potentials. Black and brown suspension and expulsion rates show our appetite for punishing children. Students often learn in substandard buildings and are not afforded curricula that give them a chance to succeed in college.

Black folks’ outstretched desperation for quality schools and equity is longer than the history of public education itself. Polling done by choice advocates support this basic thirst for change, and they point to that research to make the case for reform. Just like Trump said, “What do you have to lose?”

But let’s be clear; parents may want choice, but they need the power to make the school in their neighborhood great. Black communities don’t need used-car salespeople; they need great transportation and schools. Neither children nor schools should be comparable to jean shopping. An aside-- descendants of the enslaved know too well that people are not commodities. Still, black folks are sold choice as a form of justice.

When you hear someone use the term “choice” like Trump, don’t buy what they’re selling.

Trump showed us the difference between courting and pimping the black community-- the use of the term choice.

Kevin Chavous is a major charter school whore who is always trotted out by the DeVos people as an African-American Democrat. He makes a point of not being a Trumpist but insisted "his speech on school choice demonstrates that he is giving serious thought to education issues and I strongly challenge Hillary Clinton to do the same. As a lifelong Democrat and education reformer, I urge Hillary Clinton to show more openness and creativity when it comes to embracing school reform, choice and charter schools. So far Mrs. Clinton has largely been a representative of the interests of teachers’ unions and the status quo, which is in opposition to parents and students and will serve to be on the wrong side of history."

Recently, Harold Meyerson did an OpEd for the L.A. Times, How The Charter School Lobby Is Changing The Democratic Party showing how charter school lobbies have become a conduit for a lot of right-wing money being funneled into Democratic primaries in California and New York where they can't get a Republican elected. "At a time when Democrats and their party are, by virtually every index, moving left, a powerful center-right pressure group within the liberal universe has nonetheless sprung up," he wrote. "Funded by billionaires and arrayed against unions, it is increasingly contesting for power in city halls and statehouses where Democrats already govern. That’s not how the charter school lobby is customarily described, I’ll allow, but it’s most certainly what it’s become."

In California, political action committees funded by charter school backers have become among the largest donors to centrist Democratic state legislators who not only favor expanding charters at the expense of school districts, but also have blocked some of Gov. Jerry Brown’s more liberal initiatives.

In New York’s upcoming primary, such longtime charter supporters as Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to a PAC seeking to unseat several Democratic legislators who’ve defended the role and budget of traditional public schools.

In future decades, historians will have to grapple with how charter schools became the cause celebre of centrist billionaires-- from Walton to Bloomberg to Broad-- in an age of plutocracy. The historians shouldn’t dismiss the good intentions behind the billionaires’ impulse: the desire to provide students growing up in poverty with the best education possible. But neither should they dismiss their self-exculpation in singling out the deficiencies, both real and exaggerated, of public education as the central reason for the evisceration of the middle class.

  If Wal-Mart, the corporation from which Walton derives her wealth, hadn’t compelled its suppliers to make their products abroad to reduce the price of their goods, more public school students’ parents might have the kind of stable employment and adequate incomes that foster learning-friendly upbringings. Despite the fact that our traditional ladders of mobility-- decent blue-collar and service sector jobs, unions, cross-class marriages-- have largely collapsed, seemingly sentient billionaires insist that teachers and their unions are the main obstacles blocking young people’s escape from poverty.

The poor, or their tribunes, don’t necessarily agree. In the past couple of weeks, both the Movement for Black Lives (50 organizations active in the Black Lives Matter movement) and the NAACP passed resolutions declaring that charter schools increase segregation and leave school districts with both fewer resources and a more challenging student body. While many in minority communities dispute these views, there’s clearly some real skepticism about the merits of charterizing education among the very people it purports to help.

...[C]harter advocates don’t need to win the high-visibility offices to prevail. By spending sufficiently to shift the composition of Democratic caucuses in legislatures, city councils or school boards to the right, they can undermine public education. Whether they mean to or not, by backing more conservative Democrats, they can also impede unrelated progressive initiatives for greater environmental protections and worker rights. And by making Democratic elected officials even more dependent on the mega-donations of the 1%, they make campaign finance reform all the harder to win.

In their mix of good intentions and self-serving blindness, the billionaire education reformers have much in common with some of the upper-class progressives of a century ago, another time of great wealth and pervasive poverty. Some of those progressives, in the tradition of Jane Addams, genuinely sought to diminish the economy’s structural inequities, but others focused more on the presumed moral deficiencies and lack of discipline of the poor. Whatever the merits of charters, the very rich who see them as the great equalizer are no closer to the mark than their Gilded Age predecessors who preached temperance as the answer to squalor.

That's why Blue America has been urging progressives to find out where candidates for local offices stand in regard to public education. Earlier today we celebrated the primary victories of Mike Connolly in Massachusetts and Eloise Reyes in California. Mike beat an entrenched incumbent who has voted to expand for-profit charter school in Massachhusetts, something Mike campaigned against. Similarly, Eloise's opponent has been bought off by the charter school lobbyists, while Eloise is a firm supporter of public schools and for expanding free education on the college level. She pointed me to an OpEd by Ken Pennington in yesterday's Guardian, High school is free in the US. College should be too.

Conservatives have pushed for-profit education schemes on America for decades, insisting private industry can better serve students than our government.

But this week we saw exactly what happens when you let capitalists run college education: ITT Tech.

The school is closing its doors on the heels of a federal crackdown on for-profit institutions that make a buck off of young (and some older) people who want an education and pathway to success.

Research shows that the for-profit sector generally targets lower-income people, communities of color and the elderly with campaigns promising job prospects that may never materialize. All the while, taxpayers and students footed the bill to pad the pockets of shareholders. Millions of dollars in federal financial aid flowed into these schools, and when students graduated they were left deeply in debt. For-profit colleges enroll a tenth of our students but are responsible for generating nearly half of college loan defaults.

At Donald Trump’s for-profit Trump University, a former sales manager admitted they regularly preyed upon vulnerable populations to “separate them from their money.” Students were encouraged to max out credit cards to attend, but were offered only a joke of an education in return.

We let capitalists run our colleges and they screwed it up big time. They left our students with broken promises, inadequate job training and insurmountable debt.

It’s clear that these profit-centric schemes are a failure, and the only prescription moving forward is more government.

Over many decades, Republican lawmakers have spearheaded efforts to cut funding and investments in public higher education, and massive cuts have been accompanied by simultaneous rises in tuition. Forty-six states are spending less in public funds per student than they were before the start of the great recession.

But hope remains if we change course and embrace the socialization of higher education.

In the mid-1800s, Americans began to transition to publicly funded high school education for the vast majority students. It must have been a daunting prospect at the time-- paying for the education of so many children for such an extended period of time, transferring a potential workforce away from productivity for an investment like schooling.

But the experiment paid off. America set itself up for 20th-century success, creating the most educated workforce in the world. It turns out socialized programs like free K-12 education and the GI bill work well.

We as a society consider it immoral not to put somebody through primary and secondary education. Why should higher education be any different?

Numerous studies have mapped out the incredible public benefits of investments in higher education including measurable boosts to economic activity. In the age-old battle between capitalism and socialism, the results are clear for the education sector. For-profit schools are a bust, and America’s public education initiatives on the other hand proved effective as major drivers of economic competitiveness, scientific discovery and cultural development.

We know socialized education is a successful model. It is now incumbent on us to double down on our investment.

Bernie Sanders put free college tuition at public schools on the map in the 2016 presidential debate and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for that service. But we should go further than his plan to provide tuition breaks. Germany in 2014 realized that even a bill as small as $1,300 discouraged students from attending school. In America, there are too many barriers beyond tuition costs holding students back from higher education.

More than one in every two public school students from pre-K through high school qualifies for free or subsidized meals. But what happens when those students go to college? In University of California schools, more than four in 10 students suffer from hunger. And a recent study says more than half of community college students struggle with food security. We should be cognisant of financial barriers outside of the traditional tuition cost in seeking to expand the availability of higher education.

We should take steps in America to erase the cost of tuition, but also to eliminate burdensome fees and cover expenses for food and schooling supplies. We must embrace a comprehensive public model that removes as many barriers to entry as possible.

In the 21st century, America should lead the world in extending public education beyond current bounds. Every child who wants to attend college must be encouraged and empowered to do so at absolutely no cost. It’s good policy for our students, our country and our world.