Far Far Away-- In The Northeast Corner Of California, One Can Sense Something Is Starting To Flip

We try to say it at least once a week-- and we've been doing that for over two years: Audrey Denney would make a kick-ass, effective member of Congress. It's not her fault she was born and raised and still lives in a sprawling rural district that voted for Trump by 20 points or that the PVI is a daunting R+11. That was certainly enough to make the DCCC look elsewhere. But it didn't discourage Denney. She campaigned like she could actually win. She knocked on doors and did town hall meetings and phone-banked and raised $1,088,140 (to her opponent's $1,028,857). In the end, she couldn't overcome the gigantic Republican registration advantage-- but she sliced it in half. In fact, she did better on election day than anyone remembers any Democratic congressional candidate ever doing before. Although Doug LaMalfa beat her 160,046 (54.9%) to 131,548 (45.1%), she took the the biggest county in the district, Butte, and did even better in the 3rd biggest, Nevada County.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus just sent their superstar political director, David Keith, up there to suss out the district. "She can win this time," he told me today. "She's on fire and the district knows her now. She's them; they're her. She's turned Siskiyou around and Placer is going her way. You watch in November when the votes start being reported from Shasta... They love her in Redding now." I've never heard anyone from the DCCC talk about anything like that before. I hope he tells them.

Alex Kotch wrote a powerful piece about her opponent and about the CA-01 race for Sludge. I recommend that you read the whole thing. If you like these excerpts do it-- and think about contributing to her campaign by clicking on the Blue America congressional thermometer on the right. Kotch introduced his subject by pointing out that LaMalfa is cozy with the fossil fuel and logging industries and that Denney recently announced a second campaign to oust him. "The first candidate to sign the Green New Deal Pledge, Denney, an agricultural educator, scored the first 2020 endorsement by environmental activist group Sunrise Movement on April 27."

“In 2018, 93 lives were lost in my district in the Carr and Camp Fires,” said Denney in a Sunrise Movement press release. “Wildfires exacerbated by drought, climate change, and a lack of forest management threaten the lives, homes, and livelihoods of the people who live in California’s 1st District. I’m running for Congress because we need a representative who is only beholden to their constituents, not to corporate interests and political gamesmanship.”

Denney has pledged to reject campaign contributions from corporate political action committees and is a No Fossil Fuel Money pledge signer, meaning she’ll also refuse large donations from executives of oil, gas, and coal companies. This won’t affect her campaign finances much, as she received less than $2,000 from individuals and PACs in the energy and natural resources sector in the 2018 elections.

LaMalfa, on the other hand, has benefited from support from fossil fuel companies. From 2013 through 2018, LaMalfa’s campaigns received $192,156 from PACs and individuals in the energy and natural resources sector, with 84% of that total coming from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has received over $103,000 from PACs and individuals in the oil and gas industry.

Denney is a foil for LaMalfa, who has denied man-made climate change, as well as its role in increasing the frequency and intensity of forest fires, which roiled his district just last year, killing dozens of people.

“The congressman’s ineffectiveness given his status on the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry goes far beyond his denial of science and speaks to his failure to serve in his most basic capacity as the voice of our rural district in Washington,” Denney told Sludge. “Under his leadership, we’ve seen increased mismanagement of our forests, policy missteps between federal and state government agencies that have limited our land management strategies, and increased cuts to federal conservation and forestry funding that have crippled our rural economies and made forest health the most urgent public health crisis facing rural Californians today.”

As deadly forest fires ravaged his California district, LaMalfa, the ranking member on the Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee, sponsored legislation to open up more federal lands to the for-profit logging industry while bypassing standard environmental assessments.

...[In 2017] LaMalfa co-sponsored the Emergency Forest Restoration Act to loosen environmental regulations on national forests. Sponsors claimed their legislation, which would open up more national forest lands to commercial logging and exempt certain areas from the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, would protect and regenerate forests.

In 2019, LaMalfa continues his effort to expand logging and derail environmental protections. He is the primary sponsor of the CARR Act, which “exempts wildfire mitigation activities [including forest thinning] conducted within 300 feet of a road from all laws governing” environmental review and endangered species protection.

Speaking about wildfire protection to a room full of government officials and representatives of the logging, forestry, and construction industries in February, LaMalfa said, “We need to advance the force of the private sector.”

LaMalfa’s campaigns have received contributions from officials at Anderson, California-based Sierra Pacific Industries, the nation’s fourth-largest lumber producer. Mark Emmerson, the chief financial officer and a member of the billionaire family that owns the company, gave the LaMalfa campaign $500 last October, while corporate affairs director Andrea Howell donated $250 on the same day.

...This year, LaMalfa’s biggest donor by far is Take Back the House PAC, a committee that supports Republican candidates and took in millions of dollars in the first quarter. On March 29, LaMalfa got $72,000 from the PAC, which had received $25,000 from Mark Emmerson [CFO of Sierra Pacific Industries, the nation’s fourth-largest lumber producer] one week earlier.

...Denney told Sludge, “We must have policies that bring diverse stakeholders to the table in order to support selective sustainable logging, to restore appropriate density to the forests, and remove excess and dead trees. A healthy and fire-safe forest requires that we support education and implementation of scientifically proven forest management strategies that provide for the diversity of species and ages of trees in the forest, reducing the chance of massive die-off from disease or pest outbreaks that exasperate our fire risks.”

The challenger said that to address forest health and climate change, solutions include “training foresters to adopt climate-friendly practices, utilizing selective sustainable logging to restore appropriate density to forest land, supporting education and implementation of proactive fire control measures, new industry utilization of woody biomass removed from public land…and increasing incentives for investments in renewable energy.”

LaMalfa is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and sits on the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, which has jurisdiction over oil and gas pipelines, and the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, which oversees oil spills and other water pollution issues.

Accordingly, from 2013 through 2018, LaMalfa’s campaigns took in significant amounts from the PACs of oil and gas companies and utilities that burn or deliver fossil fuels. For example, he has received $11,000 from the Occidental Petroleum PAC, $7,500 from Exxon Mobil’s PAC, and $6,500 from Chevron’s PAC. In addition to other petroleum trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the American Gas Association, the California Independent Petroleum Association has given his campaigns $1,000.

From the PAC of California-based Pacific Gas and Electric utility, he has received over $21,000, and he’s gotten $6,000 from the PAC of California-based Edison International, a utility holding company based in California, and $3,000 from California-based Sempra Energy.

...Denney was critical of LaMalfa’s extensive corporate funding.

“The people who live in my district deserve a representative that only works for them,” she said. “I have pledged not to take money from any corporate PACs-- including fossil fuel PACs-- because I will only answer to the people in my district. How can we expect our leaders to take bold action to protect citizens when their re-election depends on checks from fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and telecom company PACs?”

LaMalfa has displayed his interest in the oil and gas industry in other ways besides campaign fundraising. In 2017, he sent a natural resources legislative assistant on a tour of Texas oil and gas facilities sponsored by the American Exploration and Production Council and oil and gas private equity firm Enervest.

The California congressman may have a personal financial stake in climate change denial. According to his 2017 financial disclosure, LaMalfa owns partial stakes worth between $1.1 million and $5.25 million in a rice farm and a rice drying facility, LaMalfa Farms, Inc. Rice farms that are intermittently flooded can produce huge amounts of greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, while continuously flooded rice farms emit methane, another greenhouse gas.

As of December 2017, LaMalfa was the “highest earner of farm subsidies in Congress,” according to the Chico Enterprise-Recorder, a Chico, California, local paper. His spokesperson told the outlet that LaMalfa had “voted to end direct farm subsidy payments in the very first farm bill he worked on.”

“Science has proven that our changing climate is the driver behind forest fire regularity and intensity, and no one knows that better than California’s First Congressional District,” said Denney. “We must take a bold and aggressive approach to combating the effects of climate change.”

Will Trump Shut Down The Government Again-- Or Rescue Himself By Stealing Money From California And Puerto Rico?

UPDATE: Trump caves again-- won't shut down the government. Earlier this morning, beaten like a dog, Trump was reported by CNN to be preparing to sign the bill to keep the government open without any money for his foolish vanity-wall. The deal falls far short of all his demands but he's knows he's been beaten and has no choice, despite the rantings and ravings of Ann Coulter. CNN also reported that "Even as lawmakers haggled over details of their agreement, the White House had been planning behind the scenes to secure the funds for the wall unilaterally. The White House says Trump is continuing to weigh his options to fund a border wall, which still include taking executive action to secure funding for a wall. It's not clear which combination of actions the President might use, and the topic has been under debate for weeks."

Audrey Denney, a progressive congressional candidate in northeast California (CA-01) made a video Trump ought to watch before he goes on spouting his ignorance about Climate Change and before he tries stealing money Congress allocated for hurricane disaster relief in Puerto Rico and wild fire relief in California to build his vanity-wall. When Trump started threatening to take away the crucial money, the Republican rubber stamp who represents the most burned part of the state, Doug LaMalfa, Audrey's opponent, said he trusts Trump to do the right thing. Audrey doesn't and she was incensed by Trump's comments which she said "make it clear that he does not have a grasp on the science of climate change, the complexities of forest ecosystems, or the basics of fire prevention. Last November we were experiencing weather patterns and dryness levels that mirrored peak fire season (July). High winds and these extraordinarily dry conditions led to a creating the most devastating fire in California’s history. Our changing climate will continue to threaten lives and property in Northern California and across our country. Many of California’s forests are overgrown and need to be restored to healthy forested ecosystems. It is complex and important work that must be done. However, nearly 60% of the forests in California are under federal control-- it is the federal government who has chosen to divert resources away from forest management-- not California. As we look ahead to increased risks for people who live in urban-wildland interface areas, we need to devote resources to proper community planning, emergency preparedness, and innovative solutions for minimizing risks. We need leaders that understand the complexity, nuance, and science surrounding these issues." (Trump's idea of climate change has to do with deriding people who talk about Global Warming by pointing out heavy snows.)

On Monday, writing for Politico, Nancy Cook and Eliana Johnson reported that the Regime is firming up plans to shift federal dollars allocated by Congress for unrelated purposes build his wall. Clearly attorneys working on this unconstitutional endeavor should be disbarred down the road. For now, though, this planned executive order, which Mulvaney referred to on Meet The Press last Sunday, will be Trump's response to the bipartisan compromise Congress offered him to solve the impasse. "The emerging consensus among acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and top budget officials," according to Politico "is to shift money from two Army Corps of Engineers’ flood control projects in Northern California, as well as from disaster relief funds intended for California and Puerto Rico. The plan will also tap unspent Department of Defense funds for military construction, like family housing or infrastructure for military bases, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations."

Part of Ted Lieu's district, Malibu, also suffered severe wild fire damage. His reaction to Trump's threats was very much in line with what all the California Democrats had to say. "'Let's hurt military families and disaster victims,' said no one ever. Trump's latest scheme to raid federal funds designated for military construction projects and disaster relief in order to pay for his pointless border wall is not just irresponsible, but likely unconstitutional. Congress has the power of the purse and decides how federal dollars are spent. While it is true the executive often has a fair amount of discretion in how federal money is allocated, the President does not have the power to simply ignore the will of Congress and redirect funding as he sees fit. So to summarize, Trump is planning to steal from military families and disaster victims in order to pay for a pointless wall that he promised Mexico would pay for-- it's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it is pretty darn close."

Mark DeSaulnier's congressional district (especially Antioch, Pittsburg and Bay Point) is immediately to the south of some of the hardest hit areas of the fire zone. Earlier today he told me that "Investing in disaster prevention and recovery is proven to be effective in the long run, both at reducing damage to life and property from disasters and economically. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is no analysis that suggests that President Trump’s border wall would be worth a single penny we invest in it. We should go where the facts lead us, not the President’s political biases."

Alan Grayson, whose old district in the Orlando Metro has one of the largest Puerto Rican populations of any on the mainland. "Trump," he told me this morning "seems to think that highly absorbent paper towels are the best form of hurricane recovery. But honestly, the Democrats deserve some of the blame, because they could have prevented it. There have been something like 20 appropriations bills passed since Trump took office. How hard would it have been to offer an amendment in at least one of them, saying no diversion of funds for a wall?"

But the strategy is far from a cure-all for a president with no good options, and it has already sparked debate within the White House. Moving funds by executive order is virtually certain to draw instant court challenges, with opponents, including some powerful members of Congress, arguing the president is encroaching on the legislative branch’s constitutional power to appropriate funds.

Some Trump officials, including those aligned with senior adviser Stephen Miller, have argued internally that the gambit might be even more vulnerable to court challenges than a national emergency declaration. And in a sign of the political fallout, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee has argued that tapping military construction money would hurt the armed forces’ potential readiness.

Until now, Trump officials had focused on the drawbacks of a possible national emergency declaration. But as the alternative option of moving money by executive order has come into clearer relief ahead of a Feb. 15 deadline for a spending deal with Congress that could avert a new government shutdown, so have the risks of that alternative option.

“It will create a firestorm, once you start taking money that congressmen think is in their districts,” said Jim Dyer, a former staff director for the House Appropriations Committee. “You will cause yourself a problem if that money was directed away from any type of project or activity because I guarantee it has some constituency on Capitol Hill.”

Inside the White House, the president’s lawyers have for weeks grappled with the question of how to defend Trump should he choose to assert broad executive powers to build the wall. While the phrase “national emergency” has an extreme ring, some administration attorneys note that it is a well-established power under a 1976 law that has been invoked 58 times by past presidents. They call it uncontroversial that presidents have broad discretion to declare a national emergencies and similarly broad authority to deal with them.

“President is on sound legal ground to declare a National Emergency... this is hardly unprecedented,” Trump tweeted on Sunday, quoting comments by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA)

Like LaMalfa, McClintock is taking his political life in his hands by backing Trump on this. His region will also be a loser and independent voters in Truckee, Auburn, Placerville, Lincoln, Roseville and in the suburbs north of Sacramento. McClintock's district also includes Yosemite, the Stanislaus National Forest, the John Muir Wilderness, the Sierra National Forest and the Ansel Adams Wilderness. Trump won the R+10 district with 54% of the vote and last year McClintock under-performed his previous wins, beating under-funded Democrat Jessica Morse 184,401 (54.1%) to 156,253 (45.9%), with very close margins in the 2 biggest counties, Placer and El Dorado. In another wave election-- which looks likely-- Trump on the top of the ticket will be deadly for both LaMalfa and McClintock.

This morning, Audrey Denney told us that her "home county was ravaged by the most deadly and destructive wildfire in California’s history. We are still reeling from the effects of the fire. Around 30,000 people have been displaced. Many residents have moved away permanently because there is no available housing to accommodate them. We are mourning the loss of 85 of our community members.  Residents are grappling every day with how to piece their lives back together when everything they had was taken away traumatically and instantly. Homeowners are grappling with whether or not to rebuild, where to live in the coming years, and wondering how they will ever get fire insurance again. Renters across our county, myself included, are having to move in with friends because there are no rentals available and the pre-fire housing crisis in Butte County is exponentially worse now." She continued, passionately:

Three weeks after the fire I had the privilege of leading a delegation of Camp Fire survivors to D.C. to lobby for the federal aid we need to help our broken communities recover. I got to watch as the heroic nurses from Feather River hospital told their story of evacuating the most vulnerable to safety before being trapped in the flames and nearly perishing. The representatives and senators who heard the testimonies of those heroes were moved with empathy for the loss and struggle in our county. My question is this: Where is our President’s empathy?  How can his conscience allow him to use the citizens of Butte County as pawns in his political war? The lives and livelihoods of Americans must come before his partisan political games. Recovering from this disaster is going to take billions of dollars and many years-- we need help-- and we need leaders who will fight for us.

The recovery of our communities is entirely dependent on receiving this Federal disaster funding. This is not the time for the President to cause more uncertainty while we try and move forward. This is not the time for our Congressman Doug LaMalfa to be content to stand by idly while his constituents are further harmed and traumatized by these political games.

Blue America has an ActBlue page specifically designed to send contributions, directly, to progressive Democrats running in the Golden State. Last year, conservative establishment-oriented Democrats with big money connections moved in rapidly to make headway in crowded California primaries. The Democrats flipped 7 seats, but-- and it's a big but-- only one, Mike Levin, is showing any kind of consistent support for the progressive values they all ran on. Levin has signed on as a co-sponsor of Medicare-For-All and the Green New Deal resolution. He's the only California freshman who has. Meanwhile Gil Cisneros-- who never stopped vowing he was a progressive-- joined the Wall Street-owned New Dems, as did Harley Rouda, Josh Harder and Katie Hill. Worse yet, many who pledged over and over and over to chew PAC money-- watch Cisneros here-- are now scooping up the slimiest sewer money in DC hand-over-first, counting on their constituents being to stupid or preoccupied to notice. That's why it's so important to back-- and back early-- dedicated across-the-board, working class progressives like Audrey Denney. Please consider tapping on the thermometer on the right and chipping in what you can. $20.20 would be nice, for example. But $5 and $10 contributions are what power these grassroots campaigns.

Meanwhile, in crazy-land Trump's base hates the compromise. Coukter called it the "Yellow New Deal" and Hannity called it "garbage" and threatened Republicans who back it.

Doug LaMalfa Has To Start Thinking About His Constituents Instead Of Continuing To Enable Trump's Whims-- A Guest Post By Audrey Denney

-by Audrey Denney,
Candidate for Congress, CA-01

I spent the last year traveling around beautiful California District 1. I had the privilege to sit in coffee shops, on farms and in community centers with the good people who live here. One of the most common concerns I heard from people across the political spectrum was that Congressman Doug LaMalfa does not effectively do his job of representing the real people of our communities. Two days ago, we saw that exemplified. Rep. Mike Thompson wrote a letter condemning the recent statements from the President about withholding federal aid to those of us struggling to recover from our recent disasters. The letter firmly demanded the President retract the statement, apologize and commit to making sure we get the funding we need to recover. Our Congressman’s signature is not found on that document and instead, he released a note stating he trusts that the President will keep his promise to assist in this tragedy.

None of this should surprise us. Our Representative, Doug LaMalfa stood by as the President stood in the ashes of the fire and repeatedly misstated the name of the city where so many of my friends, 2018 campaign supporters and neighbors lived. The President then took the opportunity to minimize an extraordinarily complex number of factors such as forest management, urban planning, disaster planning, climate change, and simple unfortunate weather into blaming the residents themselves for their devastation when just days before they were fleeing for their lives through an unfathomable inferno.

In that moment, an effective Representative should have defended those who survived and those who failed to make it out alive. An effective Representative’s number one priority in times of disaster and tragedy is to assist and make the path forward easier, not to stand by silently while survivors and victims are blamed when the fires were still burning. This is not the moment for partisan games where our elected officials blame those struggling to take a step forward in recovery. This is not the moment for the President to threaten to stop all federal disaster funding to California because he is losing a political battle and needs to save his unnecessary border wall funding. This is not the moment for the President to cause additional pain and suffering for an entire region that is already traumatized.

I am grateful for those I see every day from across California and across the nation who are standing up to these threats made from the White House. Elected officials from across the political spectrum have come forward to condemn these funding threats like the two Republicans who represent this area in the state legislature-- State Sen. Jim Nielsen and Assemblyman James Gallagher who released a statement that called Trump’s tweet "wholly unacceptable.”

Yet, there has been no outrage from our own Congressman. The same man who I have personally witnessed sitting with fire survivors continues to support the rhetoric coming from Washington that hurts our ability to recover. Rep. LaMalfa should be fighting.  He should be using every moment, every opportunity to fight for the needs of the people who live right here in CD-1. It is in these moments we show who we truly represent.

In order to be effective every one of our elected officials must only be beholden to the people they represent, not corporate interests and not political partisanship. Our Congressman has shown us once again that he is not that kind of representative.


A Little Context From Howie

If you like what you read you'd like help Audrey's grassroots campaign, please click ion the thermometer on the right and consider making a $20.20 contribution to her 2020 campaign. CA-01, in the northeast corner of the state, is California's most rural district-- and one of its reddest (R+11 PVI)-- stretching from Grass Valley, Oroville, Chico and Paradise in the south, up through Red Bluff, Redding, Susanville, Lake Shasta and Yreka to the Oregon border in the north and the Nevada bodger in the east. Doug LaMalfa is serving his 4th term in Congress, a garden variety xenophobe, homophobe and NRA poster boy (their 2007 "Legislator of the Year"). A backbencher who reflexively backs whatever Trump wants, he sits on the House Agriculture Committee and, owner of a rice farm, has been, for over a decade, the recipient of the largest amount of money from agricultural subsidies (over $1.7 million) in the history of Congress. He takes massive amounts of money-- bribes-- from corporate PACs, primarily in the AgriBusiness sector, nearly a million dollars since getting too Congress and $275,824 just last year alone.

Audrey did better in CA-01 in November than any other Democrat had done since LaMalfa was first elected-- by far. She held the very right-wing Republican down to a 54.9% win number. This cycle, she should do even better.

New Blue America Candidate Endorsement-- Meet Audrey Denney

It's kind of last minute to endorse a new candidate. But last week, Ted Lieu, the West Coast regional vice chair for the DCCC, told me about a candidate way up in the northeast wildness of California (CA-01) where the state meets Oregon and Nevada-- Audrey Denney. She's running against right-wing backbencher and Trump enabler Doug LaMalfa. There is only one redder district in California, Kevin McCarthy's CA-23 which includes the white part of Bakersfield and the whitest parts of Kern County. CA-01 is huge and the population centers aren't exactly urban metropolises: Redding, Chico, Paradise, Red Bluff and Grass Valley. The district PVI is a daunting R+11 and Trump beat Hillary here 56.1- 36.5%. But Audrey Denney is no Hillary Clinton. This is Bernie country. He won every county in the district-- some by huge margins. And Audrey, like most of her neighbors favored him and his reform policies.

"Audrey," Congressman Lieu told me in a written statement, "is a fantastic candidate in a flippable seat. Will it be a hard race? Yes, but if Audrey can get her message out and turn out her voters, she will win. And her message is awesome: Medicare for all, strengthen social security, and prevent cuts to Medicaid. This seat is under the radar and Republicans are not focused on it. If you focus on it and help Audrey, she can win."

The 34 year old Denney was raised on a farm and is still a farmer-- as well as a professor who taught agriculture at Chico State University. Her platform emphasizes getting money out of politics, protecting Social Security, health care, eduction and making forests healthy. She is adamant that society has a duty to seniors who have paid into Social Security and says that if the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share, the program will remain solvent. She tells voters that the government should remove caps on the taxable income that funds Social Security. She is also campaigning for a single-payer healthcare system (Medicare-for-All).



Here are the health care priorities on her website:

• Guarantee universal, high-quality healthcare through Single-Payer/ Medicare for All
• Until we can achieve universal healthcare, build on and reinforce improvements to the Affordable Care Act to immediately assist those suffering the burden of excessive healthcare costs
• Decrease prescription drug costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies
• Protect a woman's right to full family planning and women's healthcare services, including safe and legal abortion
• Increase funding for public health investments aimed at improving health and decreasing long-term healthcare costs
• Increase funding for mental health and addiction recovery services
• Support critical access hospitals that provide lifesaving care and treatment for rural north state communities and keep the doors of rural hospitals open by enacting legislation like the Rural Hospital Access Act of 2017
• Make remote telehealth services available to rural patients
• Encourage health care providers to serve in rural areas by providing student debt reduction/forgiveness when they serve in remote rural or underserved communities

When I spoke with Audrey the thing she really wanted to put forward most of all was that she believes "in putting people and love of country before politics. I believe every human being is inherently equal in worth, rights, and dignity. Washington D.C. needs a new generation of leaders who aren’t bought and paid for by corporations and special interests." She tells the people she meets that they should join her so "together we can create a future for the North State where people don’t die because of a lack of health insurance, where the color of your skin and your socio-economic status doesn’t determine your future, and where the dignity and worth of all humans is respected." Watch the video below where you can see how passionately she feels about these ideas.

As of the September 30 FEC reporting deadline, Audrey had out-raised LaMalfa $888,364 to $809,721 and-- at least so far-- there has been no significant outside spending in the district. This could be another big under-the-radar surprise result when we wake up on November 7 and the media and pundits are scurrying around asking "who the hell is Audrey Denney?"-- the same way they were doing the day after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat another Beltway insider, Queens County Machine boss and former Speaker-in-waiting Joe Crowley. This past weekend, Congressman Lieu contributed $2,000 to her campaign and Blue America matched that with another $2,000 today. How about if we try too raise another $2,000 for her this week here at our ActBlue page, Congress Needs More Progressive Women or at the ActBlue Bluer California page? Or just click on the Blue America congressional thermometer on the right. No matter where you contribute the money all goes right into Denney's Get Out The Vote efforts, efforts that will determine who wins this district, that no one has on their campaign 2018 map... except Audrey, Ted, Ro Khanna, the Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and more and more voters in California's "most remote" area... and, now, us.

Audrey and her team are running the most professional campaign the first district has ever seen, with 11 paid staff... and it's the cheapest media market in California, so she's able to get her message out over TV where candidates in major media markets can't afford to. On top of that she has 4,000 volunteers knocking doors and making calls in her extremely aggressive field program. Her campaign is building a broad coalition of voters-- Dems, Greens, NPP voters... and even disenfranchised GOP voters-- around a message of shared common values. "We’re changing the electorate," she explained, "by reaching out to college students, Latino voters, and re-engaging disenfranchised Dems."