Among the 50 likeliest targets Democrats have a reasonable opportunity to capture in 2020-- assuming the anti-Trump/anti-red wave continues at the current pace, or increases-- there are 11 seats with less than 60% white populations:
A member told me yesterday that Bustos' regime has been met with an "exodus of people of color" from the DCCC's upper management. That's a shame-- and probably pretty dysfunctional. None of these seats are gimme's for the Democrats-- as evidenced by the fact that they don't hold them now-- but all of them are within reach. One worrying factor-- as always-- is the DCCC. The new chair, Cheri Bustos, a very, very conservative Illinois Blue Dog, quickly moved to abolish the regional vice chair positions, a big mistake. She then named the worst recruitment committee I've ever seen since I first started looking into the DCCC, including drunken coke fiend Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA). It's inconceivable that anything useful will come out of this committee unless they have some mighty good staffers, something the DCCC is not known for. Candidates, more than ever, are going to have to take their candidacies into their own hands and just assume they have to hand the DCCC a fait accompli. Alternatively, all recruits will be chosen by the New Dem Coalition, which may well be exactly what Bustos has in mind, since all the recruitment committee co-chairs are members of the New Dems. In fact, last cycle almost all DCCC recruits were New Dem picks. The question, this year, though, is if the Congressional Progressive Caucus will do something it has never done before-- recruit progressive candidates the same way the New Dems and Blue Dogs do. There have been rumblings that Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan, CPC co-chairs, are looking for a super-star to function as the caucus political director and whose job will be to help identify and support progressive candidates. Expect definitive news on this next week.
Close Calls… And 2020 Opportunities For Progressives
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In 2020, Trump will force voters to pick a torch again
Is it too soon to start thinking about the 2020 congressional cycle? Not for the Blue America team. We’re even starting to hope who our two first candidates will be to flip red seats blue. One district’s on Long Island-- yeah, we’re looking’ at you, Peter King-- and the other is deep in the heart of Tejas. Now is the beginning of recruitment time for us. We’re looking for solid, proven progressives who want to run and have the capacity to do two things: 1- run a grueling grassroots campaign 2- be a kick-ass member of Congress What we’re doing right now is identifying districts to begin the process. The first wave are the districts that Democrats came very close in this cycle. Some of them were districts the DCCC just missed entirely-- for one reason or another, ranging from incompetence to venality-- like TX-10, CA-50, NY-27, IA-04 and NY-02). Others were districts with woefully weak candidates, especially Blue Dogs like in KS-02 and PA-16, seats where Paul Davis’ and Ron DiNicola’s Republican-lite approaches failed to ignite any grassroots enthusiasm. Others were districts with good enough first time candidates running good enough campaigns and who built a strong foundation for a 2020 re-match, like Kara Eastman did in NE-02 and Dana Balter did in NY-24. So, try to imagine that Trump will stay the same between now and 2020 as he’s been since the mid-1940s when he was born, a malignant narcissistic sociopath and as entitled racist shit. That would make for an even bigger wave-- at least in theory-- than we had this cycle. Much of the low-hanging fruit, though, is now off the table, those red suburban seats that Hillary won in 2016, for example, like FL-27 with an R+5 PVI and where Hillary beat Trump by TWENTY points. There aren’t many quite like that left. But 2018 uncovered new opportunities election pundits hadn’t seen coming, like the aforementioned TX-10 and like GA-07. But let me give you a back-of-the-envelope sketch of the earliest map we’re looking at at Blue America. This is the first round of districts where we want to find-- or have already found-- candidates. The percentage is the winning GOP score from last week:
• CA-21 (Central Valley)- 51.0% • CA-50 (eastern San Diego County)- 52.8% • GA-07 (Gwinnett suburbs northeast of Atlanta)- 50.2% • IL-13 (downstate from St. Louis suburbs to Champaign, Springfield and Bloomington)- 50.5% • IA-04 (northern and western rural Iowa)- 50.4% • KS-02 (eastern Kansas minus Kansas City)- 48.1% • KY-06 (Lexington)- 51.0% • MI-06 (southwest Michigan)- 50.2% • MN-01 (southern Minnesota)- 50.2% • MN-08 (northeast Minnesota)- 50.7% • MO-02 (St. Louis suburbs)- 51.3% • MT (the whole state)- 51.1% • NE-02 (Omaha Metro)- 51.6% • NY-24 (Syracuse)- 53.1% • NY-27 (Buffalo to Rochester suburbs and exurbs)- 49.5% • NC-09 (southern tier from Fayetteville to Charlotte)- 49.4% • OH-01 (Cincinnati + Warren County)- 51.8% • OH-12 (central Ohio including part of Columbus)- 51.6% • PA-01 (Bucks County)- 51.3% • PA-10 (Dauphin, York and Cumberland counties)- 51.4% • PA-16 (northeast Pennsylvania including Erie and Butler counties)- 51.5%
• TX-10 (northern Austin to Houston exurbs)- 50.9% • TX-21 (Austin to San Antonio corridor)- 50.3% • TX-23 (Rio Grande Valley from San Antonio to El Paso)- 49.2% • TX-24 (Dallas and Tarrant counties)- 50.7% • TX-31 (Williamson and Bell counties)- 50.6% • WA-03 (sw Washington, Portland suburbs)- 52.9%
These were, basically, districts left on the table. Ironically, one of the first candidates we’re looking at isn’t even from one of these districts. New York state Assemblywoman Christine Pellegrino won a special election in 2017 for the 9th district in Nassau County. It’s the most Republican area of NY-02, Peter King’s Nassau-Suffolk South Shore district, still being “protected” by Steve Israel. Pellegrino, one of the best legislators in Albany beat Republican opponent 52-31% in the 2017 special but was defeated by another Republican last week. She’s probably still the best bet to take on King and retire him in 2020. Now all we have to do is try to talk her into it.
What Kind Of Congress Member Do YOU Want? We Already Know What Kinds The DCCC Wants
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Even though congressional party leaders are blocking it from becoming part of the official Democratic agenda and even though both the DCCC and the DSCC screened candidates to find ones who didn't back it, 84.5% of Americans (and 70.1% of all Americans) support Medicare-For-All. Friday in Illinois, President Obama explicitly expressed-- for the first time, at least in public-- his support for Medicare-for-All. Democrats and independents are about to turn out in droves to defeat Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress. The media is calling this a "blue wave." But that's utter bullshit. This is an anti-red wave. Pelosi and her PAY-GO, that is meant to prevent programs like Medicare-For-All from moving forward-- are hardly what voters are embracing. Pelosi is doing exactly what she did in 2006. Then she and her numbscull allies set up a catastrophic 2010. Today they are setting up what will be, inevitably, a catastrophic 2022. The Democratic establishment does not learn. I used to oppose term limits. I was wrong. Term limits is the only thing that will stop grotesquely out-of-touch yesteryear politicians like Pelosi from growing roots their positions while the world moves along without them. Her DCCC is working hard to perpetuate establishment and donor class power, while violently assaulting the progressive ideas that power the enthusiasm that is turning the anti-red wave into reality. Pelosi, Hoyer, Lujan, Schumer... the whole Democratic clown parade are picking out their outfits for the victory parade and practicing their talking points for MSNBC, CNN, Meet The Press, etc al right after the elections. What a great job they did, they will claim and their TV hosts will agree. Without the DCCC, without Pelosi and her leadership team, without the Blue Dogs, New Dems, ex-Republicans and the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party, how many more seats would the GOP be ceding in November. Imagine a party actually running on what Americans want-- instead of failed austerity programs like PAY-GO that Pelosi and the DCCC are going to use to turn Democratic victory into shit in our mouths!
Maybe the DCCC should have been screening out conservative candidates who didn't support Medicare-For-All. Instead they were busy this cycle looking for all kinds of ridiculous candidates with spurious "qualifications" that have nothing to do with what Democratic voters want from Congress. Early Saturday morning, NBC News reported on one of the ones we've been looking at (askance) all cycle: ex-intelligence officials. That's a recruitment qualification? For the DCCC it has been. Adam Edelman is as enthusiastic about them as the DCCC recruitment committee wanted him to be: "They put their lives on the line in foreign war zones, conducted secret missions to collect valuable intelligence and made enormous sacrifices for their country — only to see their former colleagues disrespected by President Donald Trump. Now, driven by the president's conduct, they're taking matters into their own hands and gearing up for a different challenge: Running for Congress as Democrats." How are they on Medicare-For-All? Job Guarantee? Free state colleges? Anything? Nah... they're just "fed up with what they see as Trump's disdain and distrust of the intelligence community." Oh, well, by all means, let's get them into Congress as members voting on (see above). Oh and, by the way, they all seem to be part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, of course. Abigail Spanberger (VA) and Elissa Slotkin (MI), both New Dems (the corrupt, Wall Street-owned conservative caucus) seem to think that running for Congress is "a matter of restoring respect for the agencies they gave so much of themselves to." And there are more: Gina Ortiz Jones (TX) is running against a Republican incumbent, Will Hurd, who was also a CIA operative. Fun. Two who lost their primaries in NY-19 were Jeff Beals and Patrick Ryan. But another one the DCCC managed to get through the primary against a progressive-- Tom Malinowski, who's running against Leonard Lance in New Jersey's 7th district-- wasn't mentioned in the NBC report. I wonder why (not really). The DCCC is trying to sell Malinowski to voters as the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor who "earned national acclaim for standing up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un." Is that so?
TOM MALINOWSKI AND THE TORTURE LOOPHOLE The campaign messaging circulated by Malinowski for Congress highlights their candidate’s background as having fought against the sanctioning of torture during the Bush administration. The particulars of this language should not be overlooked. Why? Because once Tom Malinowski became a part of the Obama Administration as an Assistant Secretary of State, his function was not to end practices that were regarded by international legal and human rights organizations as torture. Instead, he facilitated the continuation of protocols by United States that created a “torture loophole,” a framework by which interrogators could initiate tactics and practices that when used in correlation, their aggregate effects result in the torture of a prisoner. This was accomplished through his defense of the interrogation protocols sanctioned by Appendix M of the US Army Field Manual. This troubling history was recently brought to light during the confirmation hearing for CIA Director Gina Haspel. Around that context, the wider implications of the shameful legacy of US-sanctioned torture was discussed in a recent podcast by The Intercept (Intercepted, Episode 57, 5/23/18), in which Tom Malinowski’s role in the continuation of torture by the United States was discussed by author and anti-torture activist Dr. Jeffrey Kaye and host Jeremy Scahill: Dr. Jeffrey Kaye: And the Army Field Manual’s Appendix M is quite clear that its import is to prolong trauma, to prolong what they call “the shock of capture,” and to induce compliance and take away the will of individuals. And the United Nations Committee against Torture, in 2014, did its investigations on various countries’ compliance with the treaty against torture and when it came around last to the United States, it pointed out and said: You know, Appendix M is inducing psychosis in people. We have real questions about what you’re doing with isolation, and sleep deprivation is actually amounting to torture. The former member of Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, who at that point was an Obama administration State Department official, responded to the U.N. Committee against Torture and defended the use of Appendix M and said that it had, you know, plenty of safeguards against misuse and torture. Jeremy Scahill: You’re saying that a former staffer or official at Human Rights Watch, who then goes on to work in the Obama administration, was the official who was put forward to defend the techniques that you’re describing, as they exist in Appendix M, under the Obama administration. Dr. Jeffrey Kaye: Yes. He was one of four or five officials who were put forward and went to New York to formally respond to what the U.N. officials were criticizing about U.S. interrogation. Yes. Amnesty International railed against the Obama administration's Malinowski-led effort to deflect criticism for a wide assembly of international human rights advocates at the hearing of the UN Committee Against Torture, stating:
"The USA merely reiterated what the Committee found inadequate during the review, namely that an investigation into CIA interrogations had been conducted and closed, with no charges referred. It also repeated its focus on the future by seeking to consign to history and impunity what had happened in the program...Accountability and remedy for undoubted crimes under international law have fallen by the wayside in this self- congratulatory analysis... So the story on these issues is one of double standards, impunity for crimes under international law, indefinite detentions, secrecy serving to block truth, remedy, and accountability, and rejection after rejection of the recommendations of UN treaty bodies and other human rights experts."
So even though the evasive answers put forward by Malinowski and his team at the 2014 hearing of the UN Committee Against Torture gave the Obama administration the breathing room to allow US interrogation practices to continue, the facts are undeniable: allowing interrogation to operate under the guidelines of US Army Field Manual Appendix M opened up a "torture loophole" by which the human rights of prisoners could continue to be violated within a framework where the United States government could claim plausible deniability. Tom Malinowski had the opportunity to take a principled stance against this inhumane policy. Unfortunately, Malinowski instead chose to be an advocate and apologist for the torture loophole.
So where is he on Medicare-For-All? Did the DCCC ask him? Why bother? He's better than Leonard Lance... certainly the lesser evil. Isn't he? Anyone know? Of course, he's a New Dem, so not an actual Democrat. Someone wrote him a good persuasive issues page on his campaign website and he does sound good. Let's see what happens when he gets into Congress. We'll watch and report back. Malinowski's campaign ad sounds... well, also persuasive. That's what TV ad makers get paid to do. And he says he "worked with both parties to ban torture." Somewhat different from the record but, hey, everyone tells stories from their own perspective, right?
Does Expecting Candidates To Back Medicare-For-All Make You A "Purist?"
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Kamala Harris-- just like Obama... but without any substance
Saturday afternoon we noted the new book coming out by Phillip Anderson, The Case Against Andrew Cuomo, with a post entitled Anybody But Cuomo? Well Almost Anybody. Certainly as silly a prospect as Cuomo is a very mediocre, former California Attorney General, careerist freshman senator, Kamala Harris. There's literally nothing-- unless gender and identity politics bullshit are all that matters-- that would recommend her for president. In a more politically competitive state than California she would never even have been elected to the Senate. Don't get me wrong, her voting record in the Senate is excellent (98.81), nearly as good as Elizabeth Warren's and Jeff Merkley's-- identical with other smart, ambitious corporatists like Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand as well as with Schumer's. It's even fractionally "better" than Bernie's (98.78)! But in terms of leadership and accomplishments... we have a ways to go, to put it very, very mildly. A couple of months ago, Evan Halper was covering her for the L.A. Times and she was barking about "progressive purists." Harris is a total light-weight and, tragically for California, destined to be a pointless backbencher. I'm sure she'll continue voting well most of the time and that she'll mouth the "right" talking points on most policy issues, although I'd watch her down the road when her donors' interests clash with her constituents' interests. Meanwhile, last week, Jimmy Carter came out forcefully for single payer healthcare. As John Nichols noted for The Nation, he was certainly not a progressive president but this month came to the conclusion that Medicare-for-All is the path forward for the Democratic Party and for America.
Democrats remain divided on the question of whether to go all-in for “Medicare for All”-- as Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines attempted to highlight this week by proposing an insincere amendment backing a version of single payer. Daines, a right-wing provocateur, is not a supporter of real reform; he simply wanted to get progressive Democrats and their more moderate colleagues wrangling with one another over health-care reform. His move was foiled by supporters of single payer, led by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who refused to play Daines’s game. “The Democratic caucus will not participate in the Republicans’ sham process. No amendment will get a vote until we see the final legislation and know what bill we are amending,” explained a text from Sanders aide Josh Miller-Lewis. “Once Republicans show us their final bill, Sen. Sanders looks forward to getting a vote on his amendment that makes clear the Senate believes that the United States must join every major country and guarantee health care as a right, not a privilege.” While they are united in rejecting Republican chicanery, however, Democrats have yet to get on the same page with regard to single payer-- a fact frequently noted by RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of the 175,000-member National Nurses United union, and others who have grown frustrated with the party’s failure to embrace the “Medicare for All” option. Democrats should listen to Carter, as they should to the great mass of Americans who have made it clear that they want to maintain the access to health care that came with the Affordable Care Act and extend that access with an absolute guarantees of health care as a human right. That old argument for single payer, in combination for the new realities of scorching income inequality and an increasingly unstable gig economy, has made Carter and others recognize that the reform that was once morally necessary is now becoming an economic and social inevitability. ...The June Kaiser Health Tracking poll found that a majority of Americans (53 percent) now favor a single-payer health plan, while just 43 percent oppose such a plan. What’s especially notable is that not just progressive Democrats but independents are turning toward a “Medicare for All” system. “Not surprisingly,” note the Kaiser analysts,
There are partisan divisions in how the public feels about single-payer health care, with a majority of Democrats (64 percent) and just over half independents (55 percent) in favor and a majority of Republicans (67 percent) opposed. However, the recent increase in support for single-payer has largely been driven by an increase among independents. Among this group, on average in 2008-2009, 42 percent said they would favor a single-payer plan, a share that has increased to a majority (55 percent) in the most recent tracking poll.
The Pew Research Center notes that support for the argument that government has a responsibility to provide health-care coverage is especially pronounced among young people under the age of 20-- precisely the potential voters that Democrats will need to motivate in 2018 and in 2020. ...Democrats need to make their support for expansion clear. Yes, they must fight now to stop the Republican assault on the Affordable Care Act. But just saying “no” to Donald Trump and Paul Ryan is an insufficient response to the challenges that now exist and to the challenges that will take shape in the future. As Congressman John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who has sponsored H.R. 676, the Expanded And Improved Medicare for All Act, says:
Establishing a non-profit universal single-payer health care system would be the best way to effectively contain health care costs and provide quality care for all Americans. It is time for Members of Congress, health policy scholars, economists, and the medical community to begin a serious discussion of the merits of a universal single-payer health care system.
In other words: It is time to listen to Jimmy Carter’s wise counsel.
Instead, the DCCC is doing exactly the opposite. As we mentioned over the weekend, although most of the Democrats in Congress have signed on as co-sponsors of John Conyers' Medicare-For-All bill, nearly the entire leadership of Pelosi's DCCC refuses to do so. And what's worse-- much worse-- is that they are recruiting and favoring, sometimes overtly, sometimes more subtly, candidates who oppose, or at least refuse to support, Medicare-For-All. Take CA-39 for example. The DCCC has recruited a so-called "ex"-Republican lottery winner, Gil Cisneros, with nothing going for him aside from the eagerness to spend a fortune on buying the seat and purchasing endorsements from incumbents. At a candidates forum at Fullerton College last Wednesday (July 26), he and the progressive in the race, Sam Jammal-- who you can contribute to here-- were asked if they support Medicare-For-All. The lottery winner appeared to not understand the issue and refused to take a position, which is what the DCCC and their consultants urge their candidates to do. Sam has pledged to work for Medicare-For-All and to sign on as a co-sponsor as soon as he gets into Congress, just the way Jimmy Gomez did last week after he got sworn in after running against a centrist "ex"-Republican. Medicare-For-All is one of the top issues motivating Sam's entire run for office. He knows the issue inside and out, which was clear to the voters in Fullerton who were so shocked by Cisneros' inability to articulate a cohesive message on something that important to voters.
Min and mentor
In another Orange County district, CA-45, there are several Democrats forcefully backing Medicare-for-All, like Kia Hamadanchy. Yesterday he told us that "Healthcare is a universal right and no American should ever go bankrupt because they lack health insurance. Single payer is the best way of ensuring that every single person in this country has the access to healthcare that they deserve. And that means Medicare for All is something I'm going fight fiercely for when I get to Congress." That's the attitude voters want to hear. But a former Schumer staffer, Dave Min, is running-- awkwardly-- as a centrist who thinks, inexplicably, he's entitled to progressive support. He's not as thick as the lottery winner and he's likely to mouth some pablum somewhere along the line that can be interpreted, in a stretch, as support for single-payer but he hasn't felt the pressure to do so yet and if he does say it, he'll be as sincere about it as the nervous Blue Dog and New Dem incumbents who can read the writing on the wall and are starting to sign on as co-sponsors now. Virtually the entire top echelon of the DCCC is at the core of right-of-center Democrats refusing to back Medicare-for-All... and they're working furiously to recruit and support more candidates like themselves. The worst of the worst, aside from Pelosi and Hoyer who enable this:
• DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján (NM) • Recruitment chair Denny Heck (New Dem-WA) • Frontline chair Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH) • Finance Co-chair Suzan DelBene (New Dem-WA) • Finance Co-chair Don Beyer (New Dem-VA) • Heartland Engagement Chair Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL) • Partners and Allies Council Co-chair Jim Himes (New Dem-CT) • Partners and Allies Council Co-chair Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL) • Partners and Allies Council Co-chair Joaquin Castro (New Dem-TX) • Women Lead co-chair Val Demings (New Dem-FL) • Women Lead co-chair Lois Frankel (FL)
How The DCCC Has Ruined-- And Continues To Ruin-- The Democratic Party
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Yesterday I got a letter from a DWT reader asking me if I had ever "summarized the typical interaction between the DCCC and Democratic congressional candidates? I know," he wrote, "you have written about these interactions often. I think it would be helpful for candidates to have a realistic view of the DCCC and what they should expect over the course of their candidacy." That's a good idea. And he already had more than a passing acquaintance himself with what the DCCC is up to.
He has been working to persuade progressives who back Medicare-For-All to run for Congress. Remember, 116 Democrats in the House have signed on as co-sponsors to John Conyers' Medicare-For-All bill. Conspic-uously absent are the DCCC decision makers-- Nancy Pelosi (CA), Steny Hoyer (MD), Ben Ray Luján (NM), Recruitment chair Denny Heck (New Dem-WA), Heartland Engagement Chair Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL), Partners and Allies Council Co-chair Jim Himes (New Dem-CT), Partners and Allies Council Co-chair Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL), Partners and Allies Council Co-chair Joaquin Castro (New Dem-TX), Frontline chair Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH), Finance Co-chair Suzan DelBene (New Dem-WA), Finance Co-chair Don Beyer (New Dem-VA), Women Lead co-chair Val Demings (New Dem-FL), Women Lead co-chair Lois Frankel (FL). As you see, the majority are New Dems (the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. He wrote that the DCCC dangles financial support over the heads of candidates to maintain control over them. "The DCCC," he wrote, "has told them that, if they raise X amount from their own sources, then the DCCC will consider giving them money." Normally the DCCC sets arbitrary, cookie-cutter quarterly financial goals for candidates and if the candidates manage to reach it, the DCCC sets higher goals for the next quarter but rarely helps in any substantive way. Instead they try to force expensive, well-connected and incompetent consultants and staffers into the campaigns, more often than not enough to demoralize and then derail any values and policy-oriented candidate. "The DCCC never does come up with the money," he continued. "But, I think that some candidates still conform their platforms so as not to be off-putting to the DCCC and their chance for the big money. It’s a cheap trick by the DCCC that keeps progressive issues from being raised by candidates. These candidates would be better off promoting progressive issues (such as, Medicare-for-All) and giving people a reason to come out to vote. The sooner they smell the coffee and forget about the DCCC, the better." One example of this bad influence the DCCC exerts over candidates is to discourage them from putting up a policy or issues page or-- if the candidate insists-- to persuade them to keep the page bland and anti-inspiring. DCCC-backed candidates aren't the ones who are pushing for Medicare-For-All or a $15 living wage or free college education. The DCCC frets that they can't ever help their lousy candidates create personal brands. It isn't difficult to figure out why. DCCC candidates are recruited to be the very opposite of Randy Bryce and if they show any tendencies towards authenticity or passion, it's the job of Rahm Emanuel enforcer, Cheri Bustos-- a giant, from East Moline, Illinois-- to beat those tendencies right out of them. The DCCC recruits "ex"-Republicans, multimillionaire self-funders, Blue Dogs, New Dems... all the garbage that has laid the Democratic Party low in the last decade. And they're doing it again this cycle, confident they can sneak their atrocious candidates into office as part of an anti-Trump tsunami. The chances are very slim that anyone recruited by or even backed by the DCCC is worth supporting in any way other than-- at best-- the lesser of two evils in the general election. You want good candidates who were not DCCC spit out from Cheri Bustos' and Denny Heck's assembly line for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party? Click the Blue America thermometer on the right.
The DCCC Is Giving Folks In Orange County A Terrible Idea About Who Democrats Are-- Meet Dave Min
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Republican-lite Dave Min and his mentor
Do you know how many candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination to run in Orange County against Trump rubber-stamp Mimi Walters, who doesn't even live in her own district? Even if you think you know, you don't, since there are 2 or 3 more (including Brian Forde and Rachel Payne) than the already 5 declared candidates, getting ready to jump in. So far there are 3 progressives-- Katie Porter, Kia Hamadanchy and perennial candidate Ron Varsteh-- and a couple of standard centrist Dems. CA-45 is an inland Orange County district that goes from Anaheim Hills, Villa Park and Tustin in the north, through Irvine and Lake Forest to Laguna Woods, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita in the south. Mimi has refused to move out of her $8 million mansion in Laguna Beach in Dana Rohrabacher's district. The weather is much better there and, apparently, she has little interest in experiencing first hand what her constituents experience in their everyday lives. The DCCC has never contested CA-45 before but because Trump lost to Hillary there last year-- 49.8% to 44.4%-- its a big priority. Imagine if they run another non-resident like Rachel Payne or Eric Rywalski! Since we've talked a lot about Katie Porter and Kia Hamdanchy, a few people have asked me about the Chuck Schumer guy in the race, Dave Min. He was Schumer's chief banking counsel when Eric Lipton wrote the classic NY Times piece on Schumer and his disgraceful relationship with Wall Street, A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits at the very end of 2008, right when Schumer's bankster buddies were tanking the economy and bringing on the Great Recession. That was when Chuck was frantically working with Senate Republicans to deregulate everything he could for Wall Street. So either Min agreed and worked on everything Chuck was doing at this time, or he didn’t and lost every internal argument, not a good sign for his effectiveness. So he was either an incompetent staffer or he helped push through policy that weakened regulations and helped lead to the financial crisis. Whatever he says about what he might or might not do now in Washington if he wins the race, we already have a pretty clear demonstration of it. Min is a centrist, perhaps something like Schumer, maybe not as bad... maybe worse. Hard to tell. He's been telling everyone he is the "moderate" in the race, which generally means he looks forward to taking his place in the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. At the climate march he refused to say he was progressive while on camera was on because a tracker was there. He's said that one must be a "moderate" to win CA-45 and that’s his vision for the future of this country and the Democratic Party. You know he's a DCCC boy because he really stays away from talking about issues, just like they tell their candidates to. But it means that OC voters don’t know where he stands on a the specifics of key policy items. Is he for single payer, for example? He won't say. Worse yet, everyone in and around the campaign tells me he's a real asshole personally who never has anything nice to say about anyone else, especially Katie Porter. Maybe he's identified her as his top opponent or maybe he just hates women but he trashes her every chance he can get-- in the district and in DC. People in the district are starting to notice his little smear campaign-- and they don’t like it. He can't seem to help himself and his attacks are going to eventually backfire against him. Yesterday his well-connected p.r. guy, Achim Bergmann, got him into the NY Times. When he talks to Republicans he calls himself "a fiscally responsible Democrat," usually short-hand for New Dem, Blue Dog and/or Republican-lite.
In some places, like many districts in California, the Republican voter advantage has shrunk in recent years; in the district that includes Anaheim, where Representative Mimi Walters, a Republican, is seeking re-election, that edge has dropped from 43 percent in 2014 to just shy of 40 percent now. “If Republicans are telling you they are on offense this cycle, they are delusional,” said Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They had to spend $25 million to hold on to Kansas, Georgia, Montana and South Carolina. If they have to spend even a fraction of that money to defend their incumbents, they won’t be able to go on offense.” ...“There are a lot of people in this district who don’t like Trump but don’t like the national Democratic Party either,” said Mr. Min, who is one of a handful of Democrats hoping to unseat Ms. Walters, who is in her second term here and is closely aligned with Mr. Trump on contentious issues like health care. ...“I am telling people I am not a Hillary person,” said Mr. Min, who has his eyes fixed carefully on nonaffiliated and Republican voters-- Asians and parents in particular-- who voted for Mrs. Clinton last year.
Not a Hillary person... OK, but he's really not a Bernie person. So what is he? From what I'm seeing, he's just an nasty opportunist looking for a career in Congress with no fixed set agenda other than a vague and easily corruptible centrism-- the worst thing we find among House Democrats.
If The DCCC Continues To Pick Congressional Nominees, Instead Of Voters, The Democrats Will Never Win Back Congress
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The only primaries these 4 should be involved with is defending themselves
Forget that you may have an inkling that here at DWT we feel Pelosi's incompetent and corrupt DCCC has become a source for both evil and failure over the last decade, rather than a worthwhile and constructive party organ. One of my first beefs with them-- under Rahm-- is how they tried to dictate-- despite their own "rule" to the contrary-- who Democratic nominees should be. They claim they don't, but they do-- all the time. I asked a couple of dozen candidates for their views on the DCCC endorsing in primaries. First I spoke to some who either have DCCC tacit backing or are close to getting it. One told me that he wants DCCC backing in the general election when he has to face a Republican incumbent loaded with corporate special interest money. He told me he feels the voters in his district should pick the candidate, not some power-players in DC. I've never heard a candidate who the DCCC wants to back in a primary not wanting their backing before. This would be an historic first if it actually happens. Another candidate, in a similar situation said this to me off the record: "We're now hearing they might interfere on our behalf... apparently they had some consultant meeting in DC and a question was asked about if there's a candidate who, on paper, looks like the right one (pedigree, fundraising, etc.) but it's becoming clear that there is a better candidate for the district with a better chance of winning, what would they do, and they acknowledged this openly and said they would use data to try and push the other person out, use the delegation, and spend against them in the primary if needed. I've heard more from other members that it is looking like this as well. Obviously I think this is what they should have been doing all along-- supporting the candidates from the communities with the best chances of winning. Maybe there are signs they are learning?" I don't agree with him at all. He's a good candidate and I understand why he wants their help in clearing the field but it's anti-Democratic and I urged him to reject their help until after the primary. Paul Perry is in an excruciatingly tough primary in swingy PA-07, with at least 7 vying for the Democratic nomination to take on Ryan rubber stamp Pat Meehan. There are several DCCC-type candidates-- including an "ex"-Republican-- and there are also 2 other progressives besides Paul Perry, state Senator Daylin Leach and last cycle's candidate Mary Ellen Balchunis. Last cycle, the DCCC didn't want Mary Ellen as the nominee and spent $14,500 on some manufactured establishment candidate, Bill Golderer, who they helped raise $351,551 to depend against Mary Ellen, about $300,000 more than she spent in the primary. But she whipped his ass from Worcester, Whitemarsh and Blue Bell down through Radnor, Wayne, Marple Township, Springfield and down and around to Intercourse and the suburbs south of Reading-- 52,792 (74%) to 18,509 (26%). The DCCC was confused about how someone they judged as not able to win votes could beat the well-funded corporate candidate they parachuted into the district. What did they learn? Absolutely NOTHING! In fact, instead of rallying around Balchunis to defeat Meehan, Pelosi-- who in her more and more difficult to cover up dotage is always babbling her nonsense about "when women win..."-- led a campaign to sabotage Balchunis' fundraising ability. The DCCC pulled out of the district entirely and, allowed Mary Ellen to be swamped with Meehan's cash while Hillary won the same day Meehan beat her. That's what they do. They lie and tell sappy donors they don't interfere in primaries and what they did to Mary Ellen is what they have always done since Rahm was Pelosi's first tragic pick as DCCC chair. And they're doing the same thing today-- picking, for example, Pelosi's 2018 DCCC mascot to run in CA-39.
Here's how Mary Ellen explained what happened to her: "When I taught Political Parties & Elections, I told my students that primaries were when the electorate selected who they wanted to represent the party in the general election, not who the DCCC wanted to represent the party! Although, that is what the DCCC did in my 2016 congressional campaign. They went outside the district and found a wealthy candidate who angered many political committee people and leaders. In Chester County, the Kennett Area Democrats sent numerous emails to the DCCC Chair saying we have a candidate; and it is Mary Ellen Balchunis. As someone, who has worked for the party for decades and ran when the party asked me to run in what many described as the most gerrymandered district and knowing I would lose with the idea 2016 would be better, it was very demoralizing to have the DCCC put someone up against me, rather than support me. I went on to defeat their candidate who outspent me by hundreds of thousands of dollars, 74% - 26%. If the DCCC wants to be the people's party and win, they should let the people select the candidate in the primary and support that candidate in the general!"
Anyway, let's get back to Paul Perry. Yesterday he told us that he believes "the DCCC should be leading the hard work that many grassroots and independent organizations are doing to build a strong bench of progressives candidates, beyond those who can simply self-fund or raise millions in corporate PAC dollars. While it's fine to have high expectations of candidates in terms of community resources they can leverage to win elections, we need Democratic Party leadership to consider and plan for the long game of building the capacity of local leaders while empowering them to win elections and govern as just leaders. Any backdoor influencing of primaries should be brought to light and ended in order for the playing to be leveled for candidates across all lines of difference if we're aiming to build a truly egalitarian Democratic Party." With Gabriel McArthur's decision yesterday to withdraw from the CO-06 congressional primary and run for Colorado Secretary of State, Levi Tillemann is left as the progressive alternative to the shady establishment candidate the DCCC is pushing, Jason Crow. He wants the DCCC to stop pushing Crow and let the Democratic voters of the district decide who their nominee should be. "This primary," Levi told us this morning, "should be about ideas, public service and what's best for the people of Colorado-- not the preferences of unaccountable political operatives in Washington. Too often, the DCCC gets behind candidates that are simply the most likely to funnel cash into the coffers of the DCCC. They're great at raising money, but not at winning hearts and minds." Another candidate who has extensive experience with the DCCC from the inside, practically wrote a whole post on the topic but asked that I skip the name part. "When I'm elected I'm perfectly happy to go on the record in terms of the DCCC but for now if we could not associate my name with any of..."
What the DCCC is doing is a disservice to us finding the best candidates for each Congressional District in Orange County. They clearly have picked their candidate in the 48th district and while he looks great on paper and he may end up being a good candidate, it doesn't do anyone good to push out all the other candidates before we actually know whether he's the real deal or whether he's going to completely fall on face. We've seen lots of people who seem like they are great candidates on paper who have failed miserably. Running for office is hard and no matter the resume its hard to predict who is going to be good at it, especially when none of them have run before. If you are the DCCC you should be trying to find as many good candidates as possible, make sure they all have the tools to succeed, and let them fight it out amongst themselves to see who is actually the best candidate. And you shouldn't just be looking for rich people just for the sole reason that they are rich and that they have lots of rich friends who can help them raise money. Who knows for instance if they actually represent the party's ideals? This obsession with rich people and the donor class is at the very root of are party's problems. It's like no wonder as a party we don't have the ability actually talk to working people. It's also a terrible idea to push people away from a district like 48, where they actually might be the best candidate, to places they don't actually live. In the 39th congressional district in particular the DCCC seems to have a complete lack of understanding in terms of what a bad idea it is to run someone not from that district. If they had paid any attention to the Sukhee Kang/Josh Newman race they would know what a bad idea it is. If the candidates who live in 48 and who are running in 39 are as good as people think they are, let them run in the district that they actually live in. Look at what happened with Ossoff in Georgia; whatever his reasons in terms of not living in the district and no matter how good they were, he gave Republicans a free attack line to use against him and I don't know if that's why he lost but it certainly didn't help. There are candidates who are potentially announcing soon in 45 who actually live in 48 and preferred to run there and were told not to. How does that help anyone run against Mimi Walters, who herself doesn't live in 45 but instead lives and is registered to vote at her $8 million dollar home in Laguna Beach in the 48th district? The real problem is they do not seem to understand that Orange County is not a monolithic place and each of these communities are incredibly unique and separate from one another. It's not the game of musical chairs they think it is. One of the things I noticed when I was running is that no one seems to have learned any lessons from our past failures. Since 2010 whatever we've been doing as Democrats hasn't worked and there all kinds of failures across the country that demonstrate that. In California we continue to fail cycle after cycle to unseat vulnerable Democrats in territory that should be very favorable to us. The fact that Steve Knight, David Valadao, and Jeff Denham are still members of Congress is a demonstration of that. And yet when I asked people who are part of the party's political apparatus what we had done wrong in those seats or in other places around the country and how I could avoid making the same mistakes, no one seemed to have any idea or have any other advice other than "raise a ton of money and hope the national environment is in your favor." That seems extremely problematic to me that no one seems to have any other ideas. I very much tried to reach out and find out who in the Democratic Party was being the most innovative when it came to campaign strategy and what are the things that I could be doing differently to make sure that I would actually win, and no one had anything to offer. The only advice anyone has is always just to raise as much money as humanely possible. I'm not complaining about that because you can't win without money but just because you have it doesn't mean that you are going to win. More fundamentally we just completed an election where Donald Trump is now the President of the United States and nobody seems to have any idea as what we should be doing differently when it comes to campaigns. And the thing is it has nothing to do with who is in charge of the DCCC. You can keep changing the staff and keep changing the person in charge and things aren't going to change. Because the way you rise in a place like DC is by learning to be like the people in charge and developing the skills that they have. That's how we as a party have trained an entire class of political operatives and consultants. They are where they are and have risen in politics because they learned how to be like their predecessors and mentors. And when you put them in a position of authority, they are never going to do anything differently. Because they've never learned any other skill-set and doing it the way they know has gotten them where they are. And they also know by continuing to do it that way, even if they lose races, that's the way to avoid blame (as everyone will just blame the political environment instead). The other thing I've learned is that when you talk to actual members and ask them about their experiences with the DCCC when they first ran, none of them have anything good to say about it. There is something wrong whenever even the members themselves have nothing good to say about the institution and when they give you advice along the lines of "don't let the DCCC push you around."
Bob Poe has been a major Democratic donor from Florida who was once chairman of the Florida Democratic Party and got a taste of what the DCCC is all about when he ran for Congress last cycle and was successfully opposed by a Pelosi New Dem pick, Val Demings, who predictably, has turned out to be one of the worst Democratic freshmen in Congress. It was hard to get Poe to tell his story but he did share a few words he thought would be helpful for DWT readers to understand. "From the day Democrats became the minority in the House of Representatives in 2010 until today, I have received literally thousands of emails from the DCCC asking, begging and pleading for contributions to defeat Republicans and regain the majority. Countless donors large and small have donated millions in pursuit of that noble effort. But, what most donors don't know is the dirty little secret that the DCCC spends a significant amount of of their scarce resources not defeating Republicans but in defeating Democrats. Each cycle, the DCCC involves itself in Democratic primaries-- even in races that are safely Democratic regardless of who wins the primary. This practice is dishonest and it needs to stop." Doctor David Gill is running in an Illinois district the DCCC keeps losing. He explained to use this morning that "Perhaps no Congressional district in America better reflects the deep schism within the Democratic party than IL-13. As we saw during last year's Presidential primaries, there is a deep divide between the corporatist Democrats and the Berniecrats. I defeated the DCCC's hand-picked candidate in the 2012 primary in IL-13, and I went on to lose the general election that year by just three-tenths of one percent. I was handicapped by the presence of a liberal Independent on the ballot that year, a man who expressed all of the same views as me, arguing in support of campaign finance reform, single-payer healthcare, gay marriage, a woman's right to make her own reproductive health choices, and aggressive action against climate change. That liberal Independent received a little more than seven percent of the vote, and Republican Rodney Davis went off to Washington as an accidental Congressman.
"The progressive positions that I support actually won in this district by approximately seven points in 2012. However, the DCCC insisted that my progressive stances had cost me the election, and they chose to run a candidate with much more 'moderate' views in 2014. The result: the 'moderate' Democrat lost by 50-60 times what I had lost by two years earlier. "And did the DCCC learn anything from the 2014 debacle? Hardly-- rather than supporting my current campaign, they have once again recruited a more 'moderate' Democrat, a woman who has not expressed any public support for issues such as single-payer, a $15 per hour minimum wage, or tuition-free public universities. One can only theorize about the DCCC's motivation in spurning a physician who outperformed President Obama in this district, but one certainly has to wonder if the DCCC's primary goal is to win seats for Democrats. Are they more interested in having lukewarm 'moderate' candidates that they can control, but who subsequently lose decisively, or do they truly want to attain majority status in the U.S. House?"
UPDATE: Lou Vince Would Have Beaten Knight In CA-25 The DCCC pushed a progressive police officer and local elected official, Lou Vince, out of the CA-25 race last cycle to make room for some rich guy-- a Beverly Hills attorney, Knight never stopped emphasizing, from far off Orange County-- and that ended catastrophically. While Hillary was decisively beating Trump in the district, Caforio sat around waiting for her coattails to sweep Knight away... something that didn't happen. Caforio says he wants to try again though polls show he would lose again with almost exactly the same numbers. This morning Lou Vince, who isn't running again, told us that "The DCCC is the reason that we have lost so many races in the last few cycles. They fail to learn any lessons from their losses and that's the primary reason we lost in CA-25 in 2016. Rather than focus on candidates that understand issues and connect with the voters, they'd rather have candidates that function as ATMs and use D.C. talking points like robots. Their meddling needs to stop and they need to stop importing carpetbaggers to lose in winnable districts. They need to stop inserting their vanilla centrist candidates claiming to be progressives."
The DCCC Thinks What Orange County Needs In Congress Is Another Multimillionaire Who Opposes Single Payer-- Meet Hans Keirstead
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Still, a better candidate than the lottery winner
A couple months back, a Democratic Party operative called me and told me he couldn't wait to introduce me to the "dream candidate" the DCCC had recruited to run in Orange County against Dana Rohrabacher. Hans Keirstead is a super rich-- a DCCC requirement-- stem cell scientist who looks GREAT... at least on paper. I've tried to meet him, but he's managed to avoid meeting or talking. I haven't seen him in action either but I do know the DCCC has been working to clear the field for him. They've persuaded candidates from the district to run in CA-39 (against Ed Royce) and CA-45 (against Mimi Walters) and dropped their early support of "ex"-Republican Harley Rouder in favor of Keirstead, who is sounding very... centrist for a 2018 Democrat. Cathleen Decker introduced him to L.A. Times readers a few weeks ago, when he officially tossed his hate into the ring. He's 50, from Laguna Beach and an internationally reknowned stem cell scientist and very successful entrepreneur. Rohrabacher, a lockstep Trump ally, is about to turn 70 and is widely considered to be batshitcrazy and to have passed his expiration date. The DCCC has never challenged him before and he's had an easy reelection every two years. Last year, Trump narrowly lost the district to Hillary, 47.9% to 46,2% after Romney had beaten Obama handily there, 54.7% to 43.0%. This is a district that Hillary didn't win as much as Trump lost. The DCCC strategy for 2018 is two-fold-- run dull, rich, inoffensive centrist candidates in districts Trump lost and pray for a BIG anti-Trump wave.
Nationally and in California, Democrats say they have been swamped by candidates interested in running for office to oppose Trump and Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Keirstead said that is one of his motivations. “I’ve come to realize more acutely than ever before the deficits in Congress and how my profile can actually benefit Congress,” he said. “I’d like to do what I’m doing but on a larger stage-- and I think Congress provides that, provides a forum for doing the greater good.” Keirstead was a pioneer in stem cell research, first in his native Canada and, since 2000, in Southern California. He helped lead UC Irvine’s stem cell research program and, in his only political endeavor, served as an advisor to a successful 2004 state measure, Proposition 71, that sought to steer $3 billion into medical research. He also has started and sold several medical research companies that have invented therapies for ovarian, skin and brain cancer, as well as spinal cord injuries, rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis. Keirstead has made millions of dollars off of his business endeavors but said he will not use his own money for his campaign. Although his background gives him a network of allies to help raise money, Keirstead is likely to face criticism for leaping into politics mid-ladder, without the relationship-building that usually precedes a first run. He became a citizen in 2008, he said. County voting records show he cast ballots in general elections that year and in 2010, 2012 and 2016. The records indicate that he did not cast any ballots in the 2014 midterm elections, and he has not voted in primary elections. Asked about the missing votes, Keirstead said he had “other commitments and responsibilities” but stressed that the result of last fall’s elections show “how important it is to participate in our democracy.” Campaign finance records show he has not donated to federal or state candidates. In an interview, Keirstead suggested he is still studying policy positions. He said that he would prefer to improve the Obamacare insurance program rather than adopt a universal healthcare plan favored by some liberal Democrats. “I think Obamacare put in place a very large system that is fantastic in some measures and very flawed in others,” he said. “There’s a lot we can do with the existing system rather than cripple it first as the Trump administration is doing in order to justify a replacement.” On trade, another issue that has divided Democrats, he declined to take a position on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump and some Democrats favor dumping. He also would not say whether he favored Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders last year. “I just don’t really like the labels,” he said. “I’m trying to run as authentic Hans… I am personally tired of partisan politics where the labels are driving the decision making. I think we should be more results driven.” But he was happy to criticize Rohrabacher for his advocacy of friendlier relations with Russia and for voting for the House Republican healthcare plan. And he also defended, with a laugh, his unorthodox path to politics. “I can tell you without a doubt my cancer treatment, my spinal cord injury treatment, would never have been invented had I followed a step-by-step straight path in academia and business, for sure,” he said. “Doing things differently has been responsible for my success. And it’s actually encouraged me to take on bigger initiatives like running for Congress.”
Yeah... good on paper. And... better than the lottery winner, who lives in the district but is running in an unrelated district over an hour away. The DCCC is finally running candidates in Orange County... and they're already giving voters a bad picture of what the Democratic Party is all about... but how could they not? At least Cisneros will be able to vote for Hans!
As you know, both the DCCC and the NRCC-- if anything, the DCCC is even worse than the Republicans on this-- look for rich candidates who don't have to worry about the financial repercussions of not working for 12-18 months during an election cycle. That might help explain why the majority of congressional seats are now held by members of the multimillionaire class-- often people with very different priorities and perspectives than those held by their middle and working class constituents. Union members and just plain regular folks are given short shrift by the congressional recruitment committees, these days-- part of what's gone wrong in the country. Usually, grassroots candidates can't afford to just take off from work for a year or so to campaign full time. This year's model DCCC recruit is Gil Cisneros (who lives on millionaire row in Newport Coast in Dana's Rohrabacher's district but is running to represent a more middle class district-- CA-39-- further inland and currently represented by right-wing Republican Ed Royce). Cisneros basically has one thing going for him: he won the lottery-- BIG-- and knows how to grease the right palms. He's currently buying endorsements from corrupt elected officials-- watch who endorses him. The DCCC is selling him the nomination and giving up on defeating Royce, tragic because it is the Orange County district where Trump did worst last year. But Cisneros certainly doesn't have to worry about working... his $266 million lottery win guarantees that. The history of the DCCC pushing values-rich progressives out of primaries to "clear the field" for just-plain-rich candidates-- often conservatives or even "ex"-Republicans-- has been an operative action item at the DCCC since Rahm Emanuel took over the committee in 2005. It's helped destroy the DCCC as a trusted or even an effective organization and it's helped destroy the Democratic Party brand. It continues, unabated, today. And not just in the case of the lottery winner from Newport Coast. The DCCC has never backed Paul Clements' bid against hereditary plutocrat Fred Upton. Clements is "just" a professor, not a favorite profession among the members of the DCCC recruiting committee. This morning he told us that "For decades the economy has been tilting towards the 1%, and Congress is bought. We need campaign finance reform, then Medicare for All, free public university for working families, and a $1 trillion infrastructure program that puts Americans to work. We need to recover the soul of the nation and the Democratic Party-- for government that actually serves the people."
Randy Bryce, the Wisconsin iron worker and union activist running for the seat Paul Ryan holds, has become something of a spokesperson for working class leaders. He was very frank about the situation he faces in running for office in a highly competitive race. "Three weeks ago I was just a hacked off ironworker building America," he told us yesterday right after he went to Mark Pocan's "Where's Paul Ryan" town hall meeting in Racine. "Today I’m running for Congress against the ranking Republican in the House. I’m not exactly sure when I will be able to get back onto a construction site, but, it will probably be in the near future. I need hours to keep my insurance current. (After we get single payer it won’t be an issue for future candidates.) It is definitely going to be a sacrifice, not just financially, but with the amount of time I can spend with my son. Luckily our team is making sure that we schedule time together. Most of the members of Congress are millionaires and multi-millionaires. It’s easy for someone with that kind of financial means to do something like this. It’s not so easy for someone in my work boots. I’m doing this not just for my son’s future, but, for all of our children. It’s difficult for sure, but, it’s something that I feel compelled to do. It’s about 'doing the right thing.' In addition to making sure everyone has health care, I’m also looking forward to running as a working person in order to get other working people to join me. Who better to make decisions on our behalf than one of us? If your district needs good representation, please consider stepping up. We need more fighters. It’s not easy, but, nothing worthwhile ever really is easy. Let’s roll up them sleeves-- we have a lot of work to do!"
You remember Tim Canova, the selfless progressive who ran against Wasserman Schultz in South Florida last year-- and almost beat her! He's running again this cycle and told us that when he ran last time he was "teaching full time as a law professor, followed by an unpaid leave of absence. This entailed a huge personal sacrifice in terms of both time and money. Between full-time teaching and full-time campaigning, my time was severely limited and there was little time for personal needs or time with family or friends. The result was also a lot of sleep deprivation over a prolonged period of time. In addition, prior to becoming a candidate, I was saving up to buy a house. But instead of buying a home, I found myself spending from my personal savings, first about $15,000 to launch the campaign and then more of my savings to help pay my basic living expenses while on unpaid leave from my teaching job. In hindsight, I should have repaid the $15,000 as a loan to the campaign while we were raising nearly $3.8 million in small donations, but I never did. I was not really thinking about my own finances at a time when so many of us were putting such a supreme effort into the campaign. It will be much the same this time around. Already, I again put more of my personal savings into the start of this campaign. And I will again be teaching full time from the fall of 2017 through the spring of 2018, followed again by an unpaid leave of absence."
Tom Guild is a dedicated Berniecrat running for an Oklahoma seat the DCCC doesn't even realize is vulnerable. The DCCC stopped thinking about winning in Oklahoma many years ago. In a way, Tom is lucky to not have them interfering with his campaign! This morning he told us that "it's unseemly that many working people can’t afford to run for public office, because they can’t support themselves and their families and also campaign for the 12-18 months required to be successful. I feel fortunate that I can rely on my savings to free up big chunks of time to knock doors, raise money, travel, participate in parades, and speak to groups throughout my district. Our average contribution is $25. It takes a lot of small and medium sized donations to compete with candidates who are financed by big corporations, wealthy individuals, the political ruling class, and PAC contributions. An enormous amount of time is needed to raise the money required to finance a congressional campaign. We need to seriously explore public financing of congressional campaigns to level the playing field and give hard working Americans a chance to represent our country in Washington. It is a difficult choice to choose between supporting yourself and the family you love and love for America and the desire to serve our country to pay it forward for all of the blessings our country bestows on us."
Hospital emergency room physician David Gill isn't a DCCC favorite either; they always recruit well-connected conservatives to run-- and they always flop badly. This year they intend to run some family friend of Durbin's Betsy Dirksen Londrigan, a professional fund-raiser. "I believe," he told us today, "that the primary reason the DCCC impedes my election to Congress is my position on issues-- they do not care for my passionate support of single-payer health care, a $15/hour minimum wage, tuition-free public universities, and the cessation of most of our military activities around the globe. However, your point is also true: the DCCC has made it very clear that they would prefer that I stop working while I campaign for Congress. Their stance on this is completely incompatible with my life, and I think that it represents bad politics as well. My father died when he was 37 years old, so I did not grow up as a man of independent means. I started working when I was 13 years old, and I worked my way through college and medical school, and I continue to work hard as an emergency department physician and the father of six children. And I believe that voters appreciate my working background- I think that my life story is one of the reasons I lost in IL-13 in 2012 by only three-tenths of one point, while subsequent Democrats have lost the seat by nearly 20 points. I am fortunate that my work in the emergency department is shift work, and that I can make my own schedule, and cut back on the number of shifts that I work depending on the needs of my campaign. But I cannot afford to stop working altogether, and I would not choose to do so even if I could- my work allows me to interact with patients of all backgrounds, and I have no doubt that being in contact with 'real life' in this way also makes me a better candidate than I might otherwise be."
Katie Hill is running against a right-wing crackpot and rubber stamp in a district that takes in the northernmost part of L.A. County and the Simi Valley section of Ventura County. Her story, except for the details, is a familiar one: "As someone coming from a middle class background, I do not have the luxury of taking 12 to 18 months off from work to campaign and fundraise full time. I have to keep my full-time job as the Executive Director of a large nonprofit, which, fortunately, is incredibly flexible in terms of schedule, etc. That means, as a campaign, we have to be really creative and nimble. My finance director literally drives with me everywhere so we can do fundraising call time in the car on the commute to and from work or between meetings. Campaign events and meetings happen at odd hours whenever we can fit them in, so my whole team has to be willing to operate like that. Knowing we have a simple shortage of time, we just have to be more innovative and effective and work even harder than people running full time. Thankfully, I always worked while going to school (two jobs in high school, and full time for my undergraduate and master's degrees) so I'm used to burning the candle at both ends, but I'm not going to pretend it's easy. "It is an unfortunate reality that money is so pervasive in politics that candidates from wealthy backgrounds have an enormous advantage. I feel like coming from a middle or working class background is really prohibitive to running for office, both in terms of being able to fundraise from your personal network (who just don't have the same giving capacity) as well as having to continue to work while you run. This creates an unfair system that greatly under-represents the people that government was designed to serve. I am lucky to be in a position that I can run, given my background, and I hope to be a voice for all of those who can't."
In her uphill battle for the North Carolina seat held by hateful GOP bigot Virginia Foxx, school teacher Jenny Marshall knew the day would come where a serious, underfunded grassroots campaign was going to mean she couldn't continue working. This weekend, she sent her supporters a message: "This week I resigned my job as a teacher to focus on this campaign full time." She knew she had to do it but she described it as "a bittersweet moment, leaving a great school and career in teaching that was as rewarding as it was challenging. I became a teacher to help those kids who fell through the cracks because I wanted to advocate for them, their education, and their future. So, it shouldn't be a shock to learn that I teach from a justice oriented perspective and believe when there are injustices you must stand up and fight back. You take it to the school board, to the city council, to the legislature, and to the streets if need be." She went on to explain what went into her decision:
In 2011, while I was living in Indiana, the GOP decided to attack public education, something we are far too familiar with here in North Carolina, and, more specifically, the teachers' union. My fellow educators and I stood up to their assault and several of us created spaces where we could actively push back against their agenda and build solidarity. It was then that I started a Facebook page that grew to over 9,000 people and focused on policy and lobbying for public education. It became a go-to page for people who wanted their voice heard and also empowered people to take action while creating a cohesive team amongst workers who continued to come together and collectively fight for a better future. We worked with labor unions and civic groups to create rallies, town halls, letter writing campaigns, and whatever was needed to effect change. We ended up thwarting some of the horrible things they were trying to pass with our grassroots efforts and by bringing working class people together to fight for what was in their interest. Then, the very next year, they attacked organized labor turning Indiana into a right to work state. You bet I was there in the statehouse standing in solidarity with many others against this anti-union legislation which sought to divide working people and their families. We must be willing to stand up for each other in times of prosperity and need, especially when we witness grave injustices. We are all brothers and sisters in this fight against corporate greed and wealthy elitism, and in order to win we will need all of us. Labor used to have a heavy influence in the Democratic Party and because of this, the party represented working people. Remember when we had the largest and most thriving middle class in the world? However, over the decades big business and the wealthiest of our country, who don't represent the interests of working people, have drown out our voices and we now have one of the smallest middle classes and largest income inequality gaps in the developed world. We need people who know what it means to stand strong for labor, build solidarity, effect change and bring working families together. That is why I resigned to run for Congress. I resigned to stand up for justice and represent the working people and the most vulnerable of our communities, not the greedy interests of the 1%.
