How Many More Legislatures Will The Democrats Wrest From GOP Control Because Of Trump's Toxicity?

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the DLCC will spend $50 million to flip 7 legislatures: Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa. DLCC president, Jessica Post: "We have a generational opportunity to flip state legislatures from red to blue. We’ve seen this gridlock in Washington, that hopefully will not continue, but if it does... we want progress. We’ve got to see it happen in the states."

Since Trump wormed his way into the White House, the Democrats have picked up over 400 seats in state legislatures, winning control of chambers in Virginia (both chambers), Maine, New York, Connecticut, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Washington.

The reason this year is so important is because in 2021 state legislatures will drawn new district lines-- for their own districts and in 31 states, for congressional districts. The 2022 midterms will be fought in the new districts.

There are 21 states with Republican control of both houses of the legislature and of the governor's mansion. Democrats have a reasonable chance to flip one house in 2 of the states, Arizona and Iowa and is aiming for the Texas Housewhich seems nearly impossible. The states in red are hopelessly controlled by the GOP:

• Alabama
• Arizona (House includes 31 Republicans and 29 Democrats)
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana
• Iowa (House includes 53 Republicans and 47 Dems)
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Nebraska
• North Dakota
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• West Virginia
• Wyoming

Meanwhile the Democrats have this trifecta status in just 15 states and I've marked the states which are solid enough blue so that the GOP has no shot to break it:

• California
• Colorado (Senate has 19 Dems and 16 Republicans)
• Connecticut
• Delaware (Senate has 12 Dems and 9 Republicans)
• Hawaii
• Illinois
• Maine
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• Oregon
• Rhode Island
• Virginia (Senate has 21 Dems and 19 Republicans)
• Washington

That leaves 14 with split control and opportunities for flips from red to blue and from blue to red:

• Alaska (House is controlled by the Democrats in a narrow coalition)
• Kansas (Democratic governor with massive GOP legislative control)
• Kentucky (Democratic governor with massive GOP legislative control)
• Louisiana (Democratic governor with massive GOP legislative control)
• Maryland (Republican governor with massive Democratic legislative control)
• Massachusetts (Republican governor with massive Democratic legislative control)
• Michigan (Democratic governor with Republican legislative control, although the lower house could be vulnerable-- 58-52)
• Minnesota (Democratic governor and House, weak GOP control of Senate-- 35-32)
• Montana (Democratic governor with massive GOP legislative control)
• New Hampshire (Republican governor with Democratic legislative control, although GOP could take back 14-10 Senate)
• North Carolina (Democratic governor with Republican legislative control)
• Pennsylvania (Democratic governor with Republican legislative control, although Dems could, in a huge wave year, win either or both houses)
• Vermont (Republican governor with massive Democratic legislative control)
• Wisconsin (Democratic governor with mixed Republican legislative control; GOP grip on the Assembly is solid but Dems could win back the 19-14 Senate)

Blue America has just begun endorsing 2020 candidates in state legislative races, primarily to guarantee that progressives win seats instead of Republican-lite neoliberals. The thermometer on the right will show you who we have endorsed so far-- and give you the opportunity to contribute to any candidate you may want to help give a boost. Chris Larson is actually running for Milwaukee County Executive so he would be giving up his state Senate seat if he wins. Do you remember Jovanka Beckles? She was one of Blue America's endorsed state legislative candidates last cycle, when she was opposed for an open seat by a corporate Dem who, basically, bought the election. Today Jovanka is still a member of the Richmond City Council and a member of the Matriarch Advisory Board. In a note to her supporters a few hours ago, she described herself as "a longtime activist who was fed up with the system and ran for office to create direct change. I work for the county as a children’s mental health specialist and I see first hand the challenges families face. In working to increase quality of life for families I work with, I realized that there was something lacking-- and what was lacking was people-focused policies. So, I decided to run for office to make a difference by creating the kinds of policies that would help my family and community."

My campaign was a grassroots effort with very little money but with a true movement. What I didn’t anticipate was how hard it really is to run for higher office-- while working full time. Unlike my opponent who was independently wealthy, it was very difficult for my campaign to take off since I had to keep my job to support my family.

When I joined the Matriarch movement, I thought this was a great idea because as working women-- particularly women of color-- we need the boost and support, and the sisterhood that we are building here is doing just that. It’s exciting to hear: “Finally there’s an organization that’s really there to help us as working women-- and as grassroots candidates.”

What better voices to represent us than the working women-- nurses and teachers and mental health specialists like myself-- who are in the trenches every single day?

Remember where Pramila Jayapal was before Congress-- the Washington state legislature. Ilhan Omar was in the Minnesota state legislature. Rashida Tlaib had served in the Michigan state legislature. Ted Lieu had distinguished himself and learned his chops in the California Assembly and then the California state Senate. That's one reason why supporting state legislative candidates is so important and so worth doing. We need more people in office like Jovanka Beckles-- and fewer like Buffy Wicks.

A Republican Could Never Win In The Oakland-Berkeley-Richmond District, So They Recruited And Financed A Corporate Democrat, Self-Styled Buffy The Bernie Slayer

23% of registered voters in California's 15th Assembly district declined to state a party preference. 66% are Democrats. 6% are Republicans. Most of the district is Berkeley, Richmond and Oakland, along with smaller communities like Albany, Emeryville, Piedmont, El Cerrito, Hercules, Pinole, San Pablo, El Sobrante and Kensington. Trump managed to pull 7% of the vote there. The demographic make-up is a great mix:

• White- 39.4%
• Latino- 21.7%
• Asian- 19.9%
• Black- 16.3%

This year the primary for the open seat (incumbent Tony Thurmond is a candidate for State Superintendent of Schools) included 11 Democrats and a Republican. The Republican came in 6th with 5.9% of the vote, eliminating him from the general election and guaranteeing that it would be a Democrat vs Democrat race. That top two from the primary are a corporate big money Clinton type, Buffy Wicks, and grassroots progressive Berniecrat Jovanka Beckles.

Blue America concentrates on congressional races, but every year we look for exceptional men and women running for state legislative seats, candidates we think are potential superstars of the future. This cycle there are just 14-- and one of them is Jovanka Beckles. A few days ago Lee Fang and Leighton Woodhouse published a piece in The Intercept about the race: A Billionaire-Backed Democrat Is Facing Off Against A Democratic Socialist In Berkeley. And It's Getting Rough. "The battles within the Democratic Party," they wrote, "have played out in high-profile races this year, largely featuring well-heeled establishment figures with years of elected experience challenged by left-wing outsiders running with the support of a national grassroots movement. Amidst this fight, there has been a strenuous effort from party centrists to drain the question of any ideological content."

They explained that "Jovanka Beckles, the candidate endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and Sen. Bernie Sanders who has the governing experience and the support of leading local elected officials" is up against "Buffy Wicks, who has never held office before [and] is running as a business-backed Democratic operative pushing to disrupt a seat long-held by the progressive left. In the June primary, backed by a groundswell of money, largely from tech executives and Washington, D.C. politicos, Wicks took the most votes." At a recent forum audience members peppered Wicks-- formerly a a senior advisor to Rahm Emanuel’s campaign for Chicago mayor-- with questions about "why she isn’t working towards single payer health care and why she opposes the contentious Proposition 10 ballot measure to enable more rent control in California. For several educators in the crowd, they wanted to know how she could square her recent public criticism of charter schools with the fact that pro-charter groups were spending big money [hundreds of thousands of dollars] on her behalf." She ran Hillary Clinton's California primary campaign and her office featured a notorious "Buffy the Bernie Slayer" poster.

Beckles has served since 2011 on the Richmond city council, fighting a larger than life battle against the oil giant Chevron, which owns the 117-year-old refinery that has long cast its shadow over local politics.

The campaign has piqued national interest as wealthy donors have inundated the election with independent expenditures casting Beckles as an angry extremist unwilling to support a practical solution to the housing crisis.

The race is another sign of the economic and cultural changes that have utterly transformed the Bay Area in recent years as a result of the long technology boom-- changes that are uprooting the traditional, radical political culture of the region, pitting a longstanding leftist power base against an ascendent brand of technocratic, corporate-friendly Democrats.

...The extent to which influential Democrats [led by corrupt slime ball Gavin Newsom] and corporate donors have rallied around Wicks is an indication of how much the election has become a bellwether in the ongoing battle to define the heart and soul of the party.

“If a democratic socialist can knock off an establishment Democrat, you’ll have a slew of Berniecrats challenging mainstream candidates,” warned former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, now a highly paid consultant, in his regular column for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Those establishment Democrats and their allies have closed ranks around Wicks to a degree almost unheard of in a local race like the one in Assembly District 15.

For a relatively small California legislative seat being fought over by two Democrats, huge amounts of money are being spent, largely to elect Wicks. Independent expenditure groups have spent $1,191,389 on pro-Wicks efforts this year and another $244,160 in negative messages against Beckles. On the other side, a labor union-backed independent expenditure group has spent $391,831 in support of Beckles and $7,412 in opposition to Wicks.

In terms of direct donations, the contrast is similarly stark. Beckles has raised $386,887, which pales in comparison to the $1.3 million raised by Wicks.

The East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America launched a research-driven website highlighting the donors to Wicks and her attendant IEs, noting that many of the donors include right-wing billionaires and consultants for special interests. William Oberdorf, a major Republican donor, has given $150,000 to one group backing Wicks. Ron Conway, an early investor in Twitter and other name-brand tech companies, who has used his wealth to help moderate Democrats defeat a slate of progressives in San Francisco, has also given to Wicks.

The fundraising advantage has given Wicks an ability to hire a professional campaign operation, with modern polling, advertising, and an innovative get-out-the-vote operation that utilizes texting to encourage supporters to remind their friends and colleagues to go to the polls. The Berkeley Democratic Club, one of the local groups endorsing Wicks, received $6,000 from her campaign last week to send its endorsement slate mailer to city residents.

...Govern for California, one of the groups backing Wicks, is financed in part by one of the heirs of the Walmart fortune, an irony that somewhat blunts her campaign story of once doing battle with the retail giant.

One of the other groups, formed last month, is the “Coalition for East Bay Health Care Access, Affordable Housing and Quality Public Schools, supporting Buffy Wicks for Assembly 2018.” The group is principally funded by the two powerful healthcare lobby groups, the California Medical Association and the California Dental Association; as well as by EdVoice, a charter school PAC.

Chevron, the longtime nemesis of the district’s environmental and economic justice movements and of Jovanka Beckles in particular, also appears to favor Buffy Wicks. Local lobbyist Eric Zell, who has worked for years to influence local government on behalf of Chevron, recently sent an email to his contact list urging them to vote for her. In a sign of how malleable the term “progressive” has become in the Bay Area’s current political culture, the word was used in the email six times. “In the East Bay, we are united behind a progressive agenda,” the email from the oil lobbyist proclaims.

But it is the lawyers that registered and administer the Wicks IE that may raise eyebrows even more than its donors.

The group is run by attorneys from Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, a notoriously right-wing law firm that serves lobbyists and the Republican Party. The firm provided consulting work for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, as well as many of the most conservative California Republicans, including Darrell Issa and Dana Rohrabacher.

Ashlee Titus, the partner whose name appears on the IE’s filing, is a board member of the California chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association and the president of the Sacramento Federalist Society. Her name appears on an October 3 letter advocating the swift confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. (Titus did not respond to a request for comment.)

...In opinion columns and in social media, supporters of the Wicks campaign have portrayed Beckles as an unstable radical, someone who can’t be trusted to effectively represent the district... Campaign fliers have swamped the mailboxes of district residents, claiming that Beckles has missed votes on the city council, played video games on her phone during council votes, and ignored the housing crisis... In one recent mailer, Beckles is quoted stating that, “We don’t suffer from a housing shortage crisis.” But the quote is cropped, leaving out her following statement, “We are suffering from a housing affordability crisis.”

...The barrage of attacks is nothing new for Beckles. She has fought for years as part of a grassroots effort called the Richmond Progressive Alliance to reshape the political reality in her community, which has long been dominated by politicians loyal to the interests of Chevron.

Since 2003, the RPA, as it is known, has worked to push back against Chevron influence in Richmond. They have fought Chevron’s efforts to skirt local taxes, called attention to flaring from the refinery, and demanded greater fines for the routine pollution that has sickened local residents.

That activism has sparked years of increasingly bitter political fights. In 2014 alone, the oil giant poured more than $2.9 million into an account used to smear RPA supporters, including Beckles, a shocking sum to influence a working class municipal race. A campaign consultant was hired to launch a blog mocking Beckles, falsely accusing her of dining excessively on city taxpayer money and not showing up to meetings. Chevron even hired a public relations expert to launch an entire news publication, the Richmond Standard, complete with bona fide coverage of local events, as a portal to advance political attacks on RPA politicians including Beckles.

Incredibly, the RPA has largely prevailed, despite some setbacks. The coalition, including Beckles, has won reforms in city policing and a $15 minimum wage, among other policy changes. Chevron-backed candidates have repeatedly lost close elections to RPA’s slate. Many of the RPA-backed ideas were eventually defeated, such as a radical proposal to use eminent domain to save homes from foreclosure and an effort to combat obesity through a soda tax.

The current legislative race has recast many of the old charges hurled at RPA candidates like Beckles: Too out of touch, too extreme. In past years, the establishment Democratic Party in Richmond used the wider network of party figures to tip the scales, with California Treasurer Phil Angelides and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), among others, working to help the Chevron-backed moderates campaign against the insurgent RPA.

The same strategy appears clear in the current race for Assembly District 15. Wicks has touted an impressive list of supporters. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), [corporate whore] Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom; and even Obama himself have endorsed Wicks. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has personally donated to her campaign, and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) attended her launch party (Wicks’ husband is a former Giffords aide).

...In many ways, the race also reflects the fast moving shift of national-level Democratic operatives who have beaten the path from the campaign trail, to the Beltway, to the booming Bay Area after serving in the Obama administration.

Wicks’s fellow travelers include, most famously, Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe, who took a lobbying job with Uber in San Francisco in 2014 and is now at the for-profit foundation of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. It also includes former assistant press secretary and National Security Spokesman Tommy Vietor, who moved to San Francisco to speech write for startup CEOs; former Obama Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, who joined GoFundMe; and former White House advisor Tom Reynolds, who was hired by Facebook, among many others. Plouffe, Vietor, Pfeiffer, and Reynolds are all Wicks donors.

“The generation of Obama staffers, their ideology was always kind of loosely defined in these non-ideological, aspirational ideals,” said Shant Mesrobian, who worked on the Obama campaign’s digital team in 2008 and who lives in San Francisco.

“When you define your politics so broadly about ‘doing big things,’ non-ideologically like that, it’s easy to see why you can make this transition to Silicon Valley, the Mecca of ‘doing big things.’ When you don’t define your politics by specific things like fighting inequality, corruption, things you can be held accountable to, at the end of the day you can justify anything.”

But supporters of Beckles hope to make voters aware that the vast amounts of money represent a wider power struggle in politics.

“The fact that Buffy Wicks is getting so much money from groups such as Govern For California’s IE, which represents the charter industry, this is all like new corporate money that’s coming in that attempts to change the face of the Bay Area, driving out people of color, working class people,” said Keith Brown, from the Oakland Education Association. “This wave is creating communities such as what we see in Oakland and Richmond between the haves and the have-nots.”

Monday's endorsement of Jovanka by Bernie and the rally he and Congresswoman Barbara Lee held with Jovanka, helped. "While in Berkeley," he wrote, "I had the chance to meet with Jovanka Beckles, and I was impressed by her commitment to progressive values. In the state Assembly, she will fight for Medicare for all, a living wage for all California workers, environmental justice and criminal justice reform. I'm proud to support Jovanka Beckles in the 15th Assembly district." The following day the SIEU released a new tracking poll by EMC Research showing Jovanka ahead by 4 points-- 42% to 38%. The poll shows that Beckles is leading among women voters 47-35%, with independent voters 46-33% and with voters of color 49-36%.

The East Bay-- Progressive Jovanka Beckles vs Establishment Phony Buffy Wicks

In May we profiled two candidates in California's 15th Assembly District, which includes parts of Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland, Albany, Emeryville, Piedmont, El Cerrito, Pinole, El Sobrante, Hercules and Kensington. The demographics: 39.40% White, 27.1% Latino, 19.9% Asian and 16.31% Black. Only 6% of the registered voters are Republicans-- which means that if a conservative is serious about running for office there, they run as a Democrat-- the way Buffy Wicks is doing.

The two finalists from the primary are Jovanka Beckles, the working-class community organizer, queer Afro-Latina immigrant, and unabashed democratic socialist; and Buffy Wicks, the former CAP fellow, Hillary Clinton campaign operative and low-level Obama staffer. While Wicks cruised to the first spot in the top-two primary with over 30% of the vote, the second-place spot was decided by the thinnest of margins, with Beckles claiming victory over opponent Dan Kalb by just over 700 votes.

Now that the competitors for the November general election have been decided, the choice facing the voters of the 15th district couldn't be clearer.

Wicks' platform is carefully crafted to appeal to Bay Area progressives and #resistance voters. (An unreconstructed Blue Dog type Democrat wouldn't fare well in this district, no matter how many photos they took standing next to Barack Obama.) But when it comes down to details, it's clear that Wicks ran well to the center during the primary, a stance that continues in her platform today.

The first plank on her website is aimed at the housing crisis, and it's a stark reminder that Wicks stood alone during the primary in her opposition to the repeal of Costa-Hawkins, the statewide ban on local rent control ordinances that's long been the bane of renters and community housing organizers across the state. Proposition 10, a voter-initiated repeal of Costa-Hawkins, is on the ballot in November, and Beckles is campaigning heavily for its passage. Confusingly, Wicks is taking no position on the measure, despite claiming elsewhere that she opposes Costa-Hawkins repeal: "we'll see what the voters decide in November" was her only comment, when pressed repeatedly by a KQED reporter.

On healthcare, Wicks seems to understand that the Democratic base treats support for single-payer health care as a litmus test, so her platform doesn't reject the idea outright. But from the language she uses, it's clear that her support for the idea is tepid at best:


California is taking an important and necessary look at universal healthcare and creating a single-payer system. Making that happen will mean making some difficult choices in our budget and tax policies. I believe California can and should be committed to providing single-payer health care for its residents. I am ready to be bold, tackle tough spending questions, and keep California moving towards a stable single-payer health care system-- while immediately moving to protect vulnerable Californians from the Trump administration's plans to take critical medical coverage from millions.

"Difficult choices," "tough spending questions," an "important and necessary look": these are not the words of a candidate who believes that free, universal healthcare is one of the greatest moral callings of our time. Who can read this passage and seriously believe that Wicks won't reject any single-payer bill that comes up for debate on the grounds of "fiscal responsibility?" In contrast, full-throated support for SB 562, California's most recent version of a single-payer bill, is a central plank of Beckles' healthcare platform.

With Wicks' campaign benefitting from over $400,000 in independent expenditures from pro-charter PAC "Govern for California" during the primary alone, it's especially instructive to see how the two candidates differ on education policy. In her platform, Beckles advocates for a statewide moratorium on building new charter schools, and identifies them as a culprit in undermining public school quality and worsening working conditions for teachers. Wicks, unsurprisingly, only calls for more "transparency and accountability" for charters, while insisting that they "can serve a need in our community." As for post-secondary education, Beckles proposes universal tuition-free education for all of California's public school systems-- from community college to the CSUs to the UCs-- while the most Wicks can muster is making college "debt-free for low-to-middle income students."

On labor issues, the difference between Beckles and Wicks is particularly glaring. Beckles supports a broad suite of pro-worker policies, from a $20-an-hour minimum wage, to expanded protections for workplace organizing, to an end to mandatory arbitration and non-disclosure agreements, to reducing the full-time workweek to 36 hours. Wicks, meanwhile, has no section for labor rights on her platform at all.

On the right you see the Blue America 2018 legislative candidates' thermometer. Please consider chipping in what you can to help make sure that Jovanka Beckles beats Buffy Wicks in November. The California legislature is full of conservative Democrats gumming top the works and preventing progress on proposal after proposal. The last thing California needs is another one like that in the state Assembly-- exactly what Buffy Wicks has always been and, despite her desperate attempt at camouflage, still is.

New Anti-Berner Model Test In California’s 15th Assembly District Election

The Democratic establishment’s “failures” against Republicans, and great success at marginalizing Progressives, both result from the same rich incentives. To help you laugh through your tears at this corrupt game of top-down class warfare, watch the video above and enjoy the music video, which we encourage you to share (and to adapt freely, per its Creative Commons statement).

One local California race could create a new template-- very good or very bad-- for elections nationwide, featuring:

• a new and depressing type of establishment candidate (Buffy Wicks),
• a new and exciting type of local Progressive candidate (Jovanka Beckles),
• a sadly familiar example of turf wars between local moderate-progressives, and
• a glaring example of how the Democratic establishment’s version of ‘identity politics’ excludes minority candidates who refuse to be bought.

1- Establishment Donors’ Counter-Attack into Heartland of Grassroots Progressivism

The California State Assembly recently tried to bury state #Medicare4all without a vote, in a typical result of the excessive influence of Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Carbon, Big Security and other killers of policies, people and planets. As Bernie-inspired candidates challenge local establishments nationwide, the state and national Democratic establishment is counter-attacking in the Bluest big state’s Bluest Assembly District-- California’s 15th centered in Berkeley.

This district’s June 6 primary election has everything:

• national/state money vs local grassroots;
• Hillary’s vs Bernie’s supporters;
• neo-liberals dropping their mask of identity politics; and
• turf wars between different communities’ Moderate-Progressive local establishments.

The national and state Democratic establishments have richly funded the candidacy of a veteran national fundraiser, who has zero track record of office-holding or local residence, and who is the least Progressive candidate in a large field.

Clicking the image directly below will allow you to listen to a music video mocking this candidate’s professional money trails and fails.



Buffy Wicks is the only candidate in the AD15 race who opposed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Presidential primary. While largely tailoring her platform to the district, she remains visibly the furthest ‘Right’ on charter schools (whose promoters are among her donors) and tenants’ rights. Buffy, who describes herself as a “community organizer,” headed Hillary’s California 2016 primary campaign, after heading a pro-Hillary Super PAC, after playing significant roles in Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns’ fundraising, and heading the Obama Administration’s Office of Public Engagement-- during the notorious post-election demobilization of grassroots participation in Obama For America.

Buffy’s many prominent endorsers include California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who (in between campaigning alongside Hillary) presided over the 2016 Presidential primary, including incorrect instructions to voters and poll workers, and alleged ballot-tampering, which suppressed votes for Bernie.

How Buffy raises and spends big bucks:

Massive fundraising by Buffy includes donations from mega-donor and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker (whose brother spent $70 million to secure this year’s Democratic nomination for Governor of Illinois), and from senior personnel in the offices of Rahm Emanuel and Cory Booker. It was leaked, and then acknowledged, that Buffy poll-tested the resonance not only of her own potential positions, but also attack lines against four other candidates. Buffy has access to virtually unlimited funds in order to carpet-bomb the district with expensively tailored positive and negative messaging.

Damage Control by Progressives?

An important goal for Progressives should be keeping Buffy out of November’s second round (general) election, by driving her down to third place or lower in the June 5 first round (‘jungle’) primary. The larger turnout of general elections will enable Buffy’s high spending, buzzwords and celebrity endorsements to reach more people than is possible by other candidates’ face-to-face contacts. Relegating Buffy to third place would be a nationally influential rebuff of the national money machine’s over-reaching. But a strong turnout of well-informed Progressives in this district can accomplish even more.

2- Nation’s Most Successful Grassroots Progressivism Alongside Local Turf Battles

Jovanka Beckles is the AD15 candidate whose election would bring to state government, and to national visibility, a uniquely successful local Progressive political model. Jovanka is a working-class veteran of the nation’s most Progressive city council, which has built the nation’s best record of winning elections and implementing successful Progressive policies, in the face of massive oppo-spending by global villain Chevron Corporation, in Chevron’s long-dominated ‘company town’ of Richmond California. This under-reported story is recounted in the 2017 book Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City, and the 2018 book Winning Richmond: How a Progressive Alliance Won City Hall. During an eight-year track record as a city councilor advancing a broad Progressive agenda against Chevron’s environmental, safety and tax abuses, Jovanka has stood up gracefully but firmly to very crude gay-bashing, as culturally conservative Richmond’s first out gay politician. Jovanka is endorsed by Our Revolution (local and national), by the Working Families Party, by Blue America and by numerous local unions (and statewide SEIU-CA), Greens, Democratic Socialists, and other Progressive organizations. More details are at her campaign website here.

How Blue (& Green) is California’s AD 15?

Assembly District 15 is uniquely fertile territory for an ‘immoderate’ and unapologetic Progressive like Jovanka. Most of the district is in the U.S. Congressional District of Barbara Lee, who cast the sole vote against the post-9/11 over-broad Authorization for Use of Military Force, and who has been re-elected many times with more than 80% of votes. The district stretches from the North of Oakland (birthplace of the Black Panther Party), and its wealthy enclave Piedmont, through the ‘People’s Republic of Berkeley’, to several smaller and poorer towns.

Turf Wars Weaken Local Progressive Establishments:

Jovanka’s (and Buffy’s) first round prospects are improved by the likely division of first round votes between the candidates of three different local communities’ Moderate-Progressive local establishments.

• North Oakland: The Oakland establishment is mainly supporting Oakland City councilmember Dan Kalb.
• Berkeley: The Berkeley establishment, which held this seat for 38 years, is mainly supporting Berkeley School Board director Judy Appel.
• West Contra Costa County: In 2014 the Berkeley establishment’s long winning streak was finally ended by Tony Thurmond of Contra Costa County. Tony, who is giving up the seat to run for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction, has endorsed Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto, a first-term El Cerrito City Councilmember, and a nurse who also obtained the endorsement of the California Nurses Association. Tony apparently recruited Rochelle into the contest, and certainly shepherded her endorsement by the California Legislative Black Caucus (and maxxed-out donations by some of its members). Presumably Tony would like to keep the seat from being regained by the Berkeley establishment, and was also happy to prevent the boat-rocking Jovanka from being the first round’s only candidate from West Contra Costa County-- and only Black Woman.

3- Jovanka’s Four-fer Rips Off Establishment’s Mask of Identity Politics

Policy commitments and credibility are the most important thing about all candidates, but there is education and entertainment value in this contest’s testing – and revealing the hollowness-- of the national Democratic establishment’s lectures on the need to support minority candidates. Jovanka’s identity is a ‘four-fer’-- count’em: Black, Woman, Gay-married (and a mother and grandmother), and immigrant (as a child from Panama). The following table compares identities of the top 7 out of 12 declared candidates, in this field of (self-described) Progressives.

Could it be any clearer? The establishment vets candidates for fit with the corrupt money system-- a vetting which can achieve new extremes of predictability by retooling, into candidates, that system’s operatives, like Buffy. Contrary to its dishonest rhetoric, for every level and faction in the establishment, the highest priority is to exclude grassroots-mobilizing minority candidates, like Jovanka.

Establishment rhetoric about the importance of candidates’ “experience” is also dishonest. Every other candidate in the above table has more experience in public office, more local dues paid, and more knowledge of the district, than the establishment’s pick Buffy, who has zero. In contrast, the longest legislative experience in the field is Jovanka’s eight years on the Richmond City Council.

This race is testing a new local election model: retooling a fundraising operative into a fake Progressive candidate (aided by a track record free of previous positions on policy), to carpet bomb a Progressive and highly educated district with a carpetbag full of money and celebrity endorsements. If this succeeds, it will be repeated everywhere because, if they can fake it here, they can fake it anywhere.