The Status Quo, Corruption, And Crisis

When Josh Richman, the fine reporter for the Oakland Tribune, called me for comment yesterday on the breaking news that Don Perata transferred $1.5 million dollars the day after the election from an IE account intended to elect Democrats to the State Senate and wage initiative campaigns into his personal legal defense fund, my initial reaction was "I'm not surprised." My slightly longer reaction is captured in the article:

David Dayen, an elected Democratic State Central Committee member from Santa Monica, blogged angrily this summer about his party's contribution to Perata's legal defense fund, contending the money would've been better spent on legislative races. The same goes for Leadership California's money, he said Wednesday; despite a Democratic presidential candidate carrying California by the largest margin since 1936, Democrats netted only three more Assembly seats and none in the state Senate.

"Every time I asked the California Democratic Party about getting more active and involved in local elections, they said the state Senate and the Assembly control those races "... and we don't have a lot of flexibility. So Perata, at that time, and Nunez or Bass had the authority to run those elections," Dayen said. "Now we see what happens when you vest power in these closed loops — suddenly self-interest becomes more important than the good of the party."

He believes this is why Perata didn't step aside as Pro Tem earlier, as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez relinquished his post to Karen Bass in May: "Darrell Steinberg was sitting there ready to go "... and we were all like, 'What the hell is going on?'

"We speculated it had to be that he still needed the leverage to make the calls to raise money for himself."

I want to expand on that. The behavior of Don Perata can be directly tied to the continuance of a status quo that has failed and is failing California families. At no time is the way elections are run - without transparency, without accountability, without meaningful checks on the potential for corruption - questioned by the powers that be. It is enabled through a shrug of the shoulders and the words "that's the way things are." What Perata did was perfectly legal, although that is subject to change, as the state Fair Political Practices Commission votes today on making such transfers illegal. But as Michael Kinsley famously said, "The scandal isn't what's illegal; it's what's legal." The bigger scandal is that there's no desire or even interest at the top to see that change. And why not - it suits them just fine.

California has 63% majorities in both chambers of the legislature, has just seen a 61% share of the vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate - and yet this state is completely, inescapably and hopelessly beholden to right-wing interests, as a function of a backwards set of governing rules that have climbed the budget hole over $40 billion dollars, without any reasonable hope of getting out of it. It's been beyond clear for several years now that the ultimate solution will come at the ballot box, and yet the state party has entrusted the most crucial elections, the ones that could net a working 2/3 majority in the Senate, to someone more concerned with saving his political hide. And so Hannah-Beth Jackson, who came within 1,200 votes of flipping a Republican seat, reads a story like this in shock and anger. And the citizens in SD-12, promised a recall of Jeff Denham; and those in SD-15, expecting a candidate in their majority-Democratic district to take on Abel Maldonado; they are similarly angry. Money they had every right to expect would go to help them now goes to help one man.

(By the way, the alibi from the defenders of Perata on this doesn't scan at all. First of all, nobody begrudges him from raising money in his own defense - the problem lies in taking that money from an account intended for campaign work. And second, if this is a "political witch hunt," as they say, why would he need this lump sum of money 75 days from the time when a Democratic Administration with no inclination to prosecute Democrats on allegedly bogus charges is about to be installed? It's either a witch hunt about to end or a going concern. The alibi is pathetic.)

But the larger point is that the status quo, the closed systems at the top of the Democratic leadership, the lack of transparency and accountability, create the crises we see in our state, or at least disable anyone from reacting to them. And this is not likely to change. John Burton is going to be the next state CDP Chair. He's been in politics for 205 years, and he's basically muscled out the competition for the job. Does anyone think that a lifelong pol, with a long history of backroom deals, the guy who was Arnold Schwarzenegger's cigar-smoking buddy (that seems like a good profile for the opposition party chair), gives a damn about urgently needed reform? He's making sweet little noises about turning red areas blue, but there's absolutely no hope that he will provide any change from the insular, chummy, mutual backscratching society that exists in Sacramento. Grassroots activists should be furious that, in the wake of seeing countless opportunities wasted and crises lengthened, we're boldly taking off into the future with a Party Chair who was first elected in 1965.

The future of California is a mystery right now, because there is a crisis of leadership and an unwillingness to reform. At the very least, activists should look to electing Hillary Crosby as State Party Controller so that someone in the room will have a reform message that can spark a modicum of change. But until the fundamentals are altered, we will lurch from one disaster to the next.