As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."
Monday, November 17, 2008
CA-03: Lungren's Going For It
The rumors are true. Dan Lungren is going to mount a leadership challenge to John Boehner, with a vote expected this week.
Brilliant. It's fitting that the Republicans could pick as a leader a guy who couldn't get 50% in his own district. Bill Durston, already slated to run in 2010, could become a very important figure for the next two years.
California Rep. Dan Lungren is considering a challenge to House Minority Leader John Boehner for his leadership position.
Several House conservatives have courted Lungren in the past two days, seeking change in leadership after demoralizing losses in Tuesday's election and two years of tussling with Boehner over earmarks, spending and most recently the $700 billion financial rescue package.
I know that Republicans are deeply in denial and all, but Dan Lungren? He didn't break 50% in his Congressional election on Tuesday, winning by only 13,700 votes, and if anything, the district is trending away from him. The registration advantage is a thin 2.2%, and after two years of more organizing that's likely to be even. And Bill Durston is going to run for a third time in 2010.
Republicans in Democratic-trending districts often win by making few waves in Washington and running away from party ID. There is absolutely no chance that a House Minority Leader could do that. He'd be well-known to the district and the nation. Whether successful or not, every Democrat and Democratic-leaning independent would know where Dan Lungren stands on the issues. There wouldn't be any low-information voters left. And national groups would be encouraged to knock off the Republican leader in the House. Remember that Durston got pretty much no meaningful help from any progressive organization in 2008 and still managed a close 5-point loss, improving his position by 13 points from one election to the next.
Please, oh please, Republican caucus, do this. Let's see Dan Lungren have two years in the spotlight before we knock him out.
CA Campaign Update: CA-03, CA-04, CA-46, Assembly & Senate
Here's some tidbits from the campaign trail with 12 days out:
• CA-03: Bill Durston and Dan Lungren debated last night, and it was a predictable affair, says Randy Bayne:
Nothing new, no fireworks, no knockout punch, no excitement of any kind was reported by either MyMotherLode.com or the Stockton Record. Just what we already know — Durston wants us out of Iraq, doesn’t like No Child Left Behind, and thinks the bailout is the wrong solution. Lungren supports the occupation, favors No Child Left Behind, and voted for the bailout.
If you’re looking for change from eight years of down the toilet policy, and you don’t want to continue flushing our future down the crapper – vote for Bill Durston.
If the registration stats cited by anecdotal reports are at all accurate, we're going to be very close to registration parity in this seat by Election Day. Lungren may be acting positive in public, but inside the campaign they must be terrified. They probably didn't expect Durston to run a credible campaign.
"Lincoln asked, 'If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one,'" McClintock said in a statement. "And calling a homosexual partnership a marriage doesn’t make it one."
I'm pretty sure that means nothing at all, but California's Alan Keyes has had to distance himself from the comment. Meanwhile his much bigger problem is lacking the funds to run a proper campaign. He's now taken to relying on cheap robocalls, and Charlie Brown has immediately called on him to stop. Dirty trick robocalls that appeared to be coming from the Brown campaign were a major factor in John Doolittle's narrow re-election in 2006.
• CA-46: I didn't get a chance to post Debbie Cook's amazing closing statement at Tuesday's debate. Here it is.
The OC Register has a story on this race today. These "Challenger hopes to upset incumbent" stories have a familiar feel to them - the pose of surprise that the race is competitive, the quote from the shallow CW fountain like Allen Hoffenblum explaining why the incumbent is probably still safe, and the overall sense of shock, which would be natural if you weren't paying attention for the last 18 months, like, um, us.
• Assembly & Senate: Art Torres and Ron Nehring had a debate yesterday, and I think Torres needed to be prepped a little better. He claimed that Democrats could grab a 2/3 majority in the legislature but then couldn't come up with a simple list of what seats are in play. He should be reading more Calitics. Nehring replied with a lot of bunk and a little truth.
None of that adds up to 54 and 27, of course, and Nehring said Torres' boast "just doesn't pencil out."
He noted that Democratic efforts to oust Sen. Jeff Denham via recall failed miserably this year and the party ended up with no opponent to challenge Sen. Abel Maldonado in Santa Maria, a district believed to be winnable by a Democrat.
On the Assembly side, Nehring said, Republicans "have a great shot at holding on to" the 15th and "have a number of strategic advantages in the 78th (because) the Democrats have nominated the most liberal candidate (Marty Block) they possibly could."
In the 80th, the Democratic candidate (Manuel Perez) "is getting hammered on ... social issues which are important to many people in the Latino community," Nehring said.
"I don't know how can you be serious about trying to have a two-thirds vote in the Legislature," Nehring told Torres, "when you blow so many of these opportunities."
I'll go bottom to top on this. Manuel Perez is going to CRUSH Gary Jeandron, and if anyone's being hammered, it's the Republicans. The IE money is pretty one-sided in the state. Between that and the registration gains, it'll take more than just spin to dig your party out of its self-created hole, Mr. Nehring.
However, on one point I will agree with you. The Denham recall and Maldonado disaster have indeed stopped the potential forward momentum in the Senate. Of course, Torres couldn't say the plain truth - that Don Perata is among the worst leaders in recent Democratic Party history, and has completely set back the state in major ways by his blunders. He is an embarrassment.
CA-03: Durston Finally Taken Seriously In Washington
I have been watching the race in CA-03 for well over a year now. I've told my contacts in DC about Bill Durston and tried to get local progressives interested. The math was undeniable - if there was any seat primed to break through, it was this one. The demographic shifts mirrored CA-11, and Dan Lungren was arguably a less powerful incumbent than Richard Pombo, with less resources to draw from. Durston's first race against Lungren, in 2006, yielded the exact same result as McNerney's effort in 2004 (around 60-40), and since then the registration gap has tightened significantly (it's under 3 points and by election day it'll be closer to even).
After a long year of banging this drum, finally, Bill Durston is earning some respect. Today he appears on the DCCC's Red To Blue Emerging Races page. This isn't quite enough to put Durston over the top, but it is a recognition that the seat is competitive.
You ought to support Dr. Durston at the Emerging Races page or the Calitics ActBlue page. He's a better Democrat who will fight to responsibly end the occupation of Iraq and provide quality affordable health care for all. He has a great team of grassroots supporters up there and I hope this makes them realize that their efforts are being recognized and rewarded.
...this comes at a time when the Lungren campaign is actually touting polls with small sample sizes showing the incumbent under 50%. This one is going to be close if Durston can get his message out in the final three weeks.
General: I suspended the monthly ratings because it was ridiculously time-consuming and better to get the information out more timely, but in case you're wondering, here is my impression of the top targets in California for the Congressional races as we stand with 22 days out.
1) CA-04: Lean Dem. Charlie Brown has been ahead in multiple polls and actually has a ground game, unlike Tom McClintock. 2) CA-03: Tilt Repub. Bill Durston's poll showing the race as a dead heat raised a lot of eyebrows. Unfortunately people discovered this race too late, but by Election Day I'll bet that the registration numbers are virtually tied and there will not be an immediate call. The smart money for progressives wanting to impact a race should go to Dr. Durston against Dan Lungren. 3) CA-46: Tilt Repub. Debbie Cook is replicating the Loretta Sanchez strategy of ground mobilization that she used to defeat B-1 Bob Dornan. We'll see if she can pull it off against Crazy Dana Rohrabacher. 4) CA-26: Tilt Repub. Russ Warner has been doing a decent enough job and there's a bit of outside support, but David Dreier has a wall of money. 5) CA-45: Lean Repub. This race has also been under the radar, but the district is either #1 or #2 in the COUNTRY for foreclosures, and affordable housing expert Julie Bornstein can stand to benefit from movement toward Democratic solutions on the economy in her race against Mary Bono Mack. 6) CA-50: Lean Repub. This is the permanent tease district in California, and despite Nick Leibham's efforts to shake up the race, I'm not seeing Brian Bilbray taken down right now, especially because he's likely to whip up populist support in his base with his vote against the bailout. 7) CA-52: Likely Repub. It was always going to be an uphill battle for Mike Lumpkin in his race against Duncan Hunter's son running for Duncan Hunter's old seat. I'd like to see better signs here, but I'm coming up empty.
I rate everything else as Safe Republican at the moment. I'll do a legislative targeting in the next campaign update. Now, to the news:
• CA-03: Faced with a tie race, Dan Lungren's campaign has decided that the smart thing to do is name calling.
A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren's (R-Gold River) congressional campaign said Bill Durston was mischaracterizing Lungren's absence from a candidate forum last weekend.
On top of that, he referred to Durston, a Democrat from Gold River, as a "knucklehead."
They actually don't believe Durston's viable. Hilariously, Lungren gave out a bunch of tickets to a Bonnie Raitt concert in the district, and during the show Raitt endorsed Durston and urged people to vote.
This would be such a delicious upset, and the contours of it remind me exactly of Carol Shea-Porter's improbable victory in New Hampshire in 2006.
• CA-04: The competitors actually showed up at a 4th District debate last week, and Charlie Brown got off a great line:
In the heavily Republican district, where he narrowly lost to Doolittle two years ago, Brown faced an audience question over whether he would "stand up to Nancy Pelosi" and her "liberal positions." [...]
While Brown said he disagreed with the Democratic house speaker from San Francisco on rights of gun owners, McClintock went after him.
"This issue of marching in lockstep with her on every major issue in the campaign speaks to the fact that she has targeted your congressional district as one of those seats they want to cement a permanent Democratic majority," McClintock said. "And I think they're counting on your vote, Charlie."
Brown, a district resident in Roseville, answered back with a poke at McClintock for running in a district 400 miles north of his Senate seat in Thousand Oaks.
"Tom, if you want to run against Nancy Pelosi (in San Francisco)," Brown said, "that district is actually closer than this one to your home."
• CA-45: Julie Bornstein, on the other hand, debated an empty chair recently in Rancho Mirage. Mary Bono Mack has refused any effort to get her to debate Bornstein. Perhaps she's busy with her husband in Florida.
Bornstein came prepared. When she was given the opportunity to address the absentee incumbent in her closing remarks, Bornstein came out firing.
"This is a job interview," she said, asking Bono Mack, "How is it that you feel that you do not need to meet with your constituents?"
"There is no sense of entitlement here," Bornstein told voters, "that somehow your vote is already predetermined, that you owe it to a party or a person. One of the first lessons I learned when I became a working person is that you have to show up. You have to be here. And my question to my opponent is, where are you?"
They tracked Bono Mack down at a party during the forum. Bornstein, who this weekend welcomed Barbara Boxer in for a fundraiser, parried a Republican attempt to protest that event in much the same way, by saying that she "welcomed debate." Often these debate-baiting tactics aren't that successful, but I don't think this is a good year to be an absentee incumbent.
• CA-11: Another duo got together for a little chat this weekend, Dean Andal and Jerry McNerney. There's some interesting stuff in there - Andal apparently thinks it's "immoral" to support a safe and responsible withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But what's more interesting is that Andal finally, two weeks after the bailout, came up with an opinion on it. He was opposed, in case you were wondering. Talk about political cowardice, waiting that long to express an opinion.
I have to say that I kind of like it. The "asteroids" thing is kind of tacked on, but the rest of it is sufficiently hard-hitting and affixes Dana Rohrabacher to the problems created by 8 long years of Republican failure. The Cook campaign has Jim Dean from DFA coming into the district for a fundraising breakfast and precinct walk this Sunday. More information here.
CA Campaign Update: CA-03, CA-04, CA-11, CA-41, CA-45, SD-19,
And away we, er, go.
• CA-03: Bill Durston, who is showing lots of strength in his race against Dan Lungren, has earned the support of the Alliance of Retired Americans, a 3.5 million-member group of retirees. Clearly this came on the heels of Durston's strong support for a not-for-profit health care system:
Dr. Durston has also been a strong proponent of universal health care. “It’s always been my philosophy that access to necessary medical care is a basic human right, not a privilege based on one’s ability to pay. We’re the only western industrialized country in the world that doesn’t have some form of universal health care, yet we pay twice as much per capita as the other countries for medical care.”
Durston is starting to get some major attention after that last poll. Expect him to attack Lungren on his vote for the bailout over the next 27 days.
• CA-04: Lots going on here. After vowing to shut down his account for 2010 statewide races, professional politician Tom McClintock just couldn't close the door.
But four weeks before the Nov. 4 election, McClintock's account remains open and active, as the Thousand Oaks lawmaker has doled out thousands of dollars to fellow Republicans in the last week.
McClintock made $3,600 donations, the maximum allowed under state law, to a trio of Republican candidates for the Legislature: Senate candidates Tony Strickland and Greg Aghazarian and Assembly hopeful Jack Sieglock.
His Democratic opponent, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charlie Brown, made hay of McClintock's multiple accounts over the summer, calling him a career politician in search of a job.
"What office are you running for?" Brown said in a July statement.
I just find it interesting that Republicans are that worried about Jack Sieglock. Go Alyson Huber! Of course, the other half of this is that McClintock is a huge hypocrite, but you knew that.
In other news, Charlie Brown has a new ad out comparing professional politician McClintock to his record of service. Truth Fights Back, John Kerry's group, is getting Charlie's back over that ridiculous anti-military smear of McClintock's. Brown also signed the Children’s Defense Council’s Pledge to ensure affordable health care for every child and every pregnant woman. I very much liked this strong take in the press release:
“Tom McClintock gets free healthcare, a free car, free gas, and tax free per diems he’s not entitled to, yet has voted to restrict the ability of Californians to see a doctor of their choice and fought against helping our most vulnerable citizens access meaningful healthcare coverage,” said Retired USAF Lt. Col. Charlie Brown “His record of inaction has not only helped drive up the cost of healthcare for every Californian, it’s illustrative of a career politician hypocrite who would rather serve himself, than solve problems.”
Earlier this year, McClintock authored SB 1669, which would have made it easier for health insurance companies to deny the health claims of Californians on the basis of pre-existing condition. In fact, SB 1669 would have extended the period that insurers could look back in your medical history from 12 months to 10 years.
“Tom McClintock’s idea of healthcare reform is writing a law that says if you have a medical problem, you can’t get healthcare coverage,” Brown said. “This misguided bill could have literally cost millions of Californians who have battled and overcome ailments ranging from diabetes, to mild cardiac conditions or cancer their lives. It was so misguided, it never came up for a floor vote and not a single healthcare organization or institution signed on to support it.
Also, Mcjoan at the Great Orange Satan had a good piece based on some of her time in the district recently. This is big:
The campaign has seven offices across the nine counties in the huge district, one of the most beautiful in the country, spanning the Sierras. With four regional field directors, seven organizers and 25 paid canvassers, the campaign has knocked on more than 120,000 doors and made over 300,000 phone calls. Hundreds of new Democrats have been registered. This is the kind of retail politics that allows Democrats to win in Republican districts, in fact it's about the only way to run successfully in a tough district. McClintock, by contrast, has basically no field operation.
That ground game is going to win it for Charlie.
• CA-11: Continuing his quest to be the most overhyped Republican challenger this cycle, Dean Andal continues to dodge the question of whether or not he supported the Paulson bailout plan. He literally has no idea how to handle it, preferring to hide behind the idea that it would be inappropriate to comment because he's not in office. Yeah, uh, that's kind of the point. You say how you would be different from the current office-holder as a means to get the job. What a loser.
Prince criticized Lewis' use of earmarks, the pet projects that lawmakers attach to spending bills, in some cases without a vote.
"Jerry Lewis is totally void of morality when it comes to earmarks," he said, pointing to Lewis' ties to Bill Lowery, a longtime friend and lobbyist. "When I'm congressman, the mayor of Beaumont and the mayor of Apple Valley can pick up the phone and call me for help. They don't have to call a lobbyist who happens to be my best friend."
One thing that Prince would be better advised to focus on is that his district has one of the highest rates of foreclosures in the entire country. The highest? CA-45, where Mary Bono-Mack is facing affordable housing expert Julie Bornstein. If there was ever a reason to create a single-issue candidacy, this is it, and for Bornstein, who has an easier time of it with a less partisan electorate, that could be a real opening in the final month.
• SD-19: Calitics Match candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson is attacking Tony Strickland for greenwashing his environmental credentials in a very, shall we say, familiar way:
Of course, I'm happy to have provided the template for calling out Strickland on this nonsense. There are in addition lots of IE attacks in this race as it nears the home stretch.
An internal poll shows Bill Durston in a statistical dead heat with Dan Lungren. From the email to supporters:
We've just received great news from a poll of 500 likely voters conducted by the respected polling firm, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, and Associates. Dr. Bill Durston is in a statistical dead heat with Dan Lungren in California's 3rd Congressional District!
When voters were asked who they would vote for if they were to vote today, 33% chose Lungren, 30%, chose Bill, 7% chose another candidate, and 30% were undecided. With a margin of error of 4%, the differences between Bill and Lungren were not statistically significant.
After hearing a positive profile about both Lungren and Bill, the tallies were even closer - 39% for Lungren and 38% for Bill. After hearing about some of Lungren's many shortcomings, including his Hawaii vacation paid for by special interests, his allegiance to the Bush-Cheney administration, and his fondness for taking money from Big Oil, voters chose Bill over Lungren by a margin of 43% to 34%, a difference which *is* highly statistically significant.
This shouldn't surprise anybody. CA-03 is the seat with the smallest registration gap between the parties that's currently held by a Republican, and by November I'll be willing to bet that gap will be almost erased. Durston won't have all the money to get out the "balanced" information about him and his opponent, but he will be competitive.
This could be a good time for outside groups to jump in. CA-03 is one of those under-the-radar seats nationwide that is very, very winnable, and a late push could easily put Durston over the top. Furthermore, he's a solid progressive Democrat who supports single-payer. At least one group is helping out. Bill Durston is one of the over 100 Progressive Patriots who are benefiting from Russ Feingold's efforts. Russ Warner (CA-26) was added to the Progressive Patriots "Expand the Map" program today, and Charlie Brown and Jerry McNerney are members as well.
• I thought I'd have time to put together a monthly roundup for May, but it never came together, and the primary is going to change those analyses a bit, so I'll put something out after the primaries.
• I have to correct an error. On Saturday I wrote that Marta Jorgensen had dropped out of the race in CA-24. She had, but she recently got back into the race and is focusing on turning out new voters in Northern Santa Barbara County around Lompoc. This is a crucial effort to activate Hispanic voters who traditionally have not turned out, and I both salute Ms. Jorgensen for her efforts and apologize for the error. Hopefully she can visit Calitics and fill us in on that effort up in Lompoc.
• Doug Ose has loaned his campaign another $600,000 in the waning days before the GOP primary against Tom McClintock in CA-04. This primary now exceeds $4 million dollars, and it's hard to spend that much in that district. McClintock pulled out of a debate earlier this week, and there was the Pete Wilson savaging as well. Reading the tea leaves, I don't think Ose would make that extra investment if he wasn't close to nailing this down, but I could be wrong.
“Lungren’s behavior is disgusting. He claims to be a leader in ethics reform, then he turns around and subverts House ethics rules. This is just one of many examples of Lungren’s hypocrisy [...] The people of the 3rd Congressional District deserve better representation than a career politician like Dan Lungren who sells out to special interests. I’ve been caring for the people of our district for over 25 years as an emergency physician. I believe we have an emergency in our government. I’m running for Congress to help restore government of, by, and for the people.”
I like it. Durston is trying to put up a big number in the June 3 primary, despite running unopposed, to show his strength in this challenge.
• And it's not primary-related, but I think we have the first ever Calitics mention in the LA Times in this story about Laura Richardson. Hey guys, you could have used my name, it's right above the title....
• CA-03: Bill Durston may be unopposed in the June 3 primary, but he's running very hard and trying to pick up as many decline-to-state voters as possible. He's actually running a GOTV operation. The gambit here is to prove to donors and the political establishment that CA-03 is competitive. I also think it makes sense just as practice for the general and for name recognition.
• CA-04: The Club for Growth, whose record this year in primaries is actually a little mixed, has released an ad attacking Doug Ose in his race against Tom McClintock. There's plenty of outside money on both sides in this one.
• CA-42: Communications Workers of America, Southern California Council has endorsed Ron Shepston. It's somewhat notable considering that Ed Chau got the Cal Labor Fed endorsement.
Anything else you're hearing, please put it in the comments. This is an open-source elections thread.
Lots of California Republicans Can't Raise Any Money
I noticed this before Swing State Project codified it, but there were some stunning numbers in the Q1 Congressional fundraising reports that augur well for Democratic upsets in November.
We know that Charlie Brown is raising tons of money and has close to $600,000 cash on hand, and his challengers are spending all their money in a bruising primary race (Doug Ose has a million dollars in debts on his books). We know that three California challengers raised six figures in the first quarter (Brown, Russ Warner and Nick Leibham) and have been consistently doing so. What's notable is the lack of fundraising prowess among key Republicans.
Dean Andal is supposed to be one of the top GOP challengers in the whole country. Yet he could only manage $90,000 in the first quarter, which considering how much effort the GOP is putting into his race is embarrassing.
More interesting to me are the incumbents. David Dreier raised $136,000, not all that much more than Russ Warner's $110,000. Dan Lungren raised around $100,000, not much more than Bill Durston's $75,000 (very respectable for his grassroots campaign). And then there are two in Orange County that are shocking. Dana Rohrabacher was OUTRAISED by Debbie Cook in CA-46: $47,000 to $39,000. And Cook didn't get a full quarter in because she didn't announce until late January. (On a similar note, Julie Bornstein was able to raise $29,000 in just a few weeks after her announcement). And in CA-42, Gary Miller was outraised by Ed Chau, a carpetbagger from Montebello, and if you add in Ron Shepston's total Miller was significantly outraised by his challengers.
That's quite incredible. Miller and Rohrabacher might be dismissing the effort against them, and they still have plenty of cash on hand. But as a symbol of support in the district, clearly Democrats have the momentum all over the state. We're going to be very competitive this cycle, and if one of these districts hits, the cash-poor NRCC and the pathetic fundraising prowess of these Republicans isn't going to save them.
Meet The Candidates: Charlie Brown and Russ Warner
As far as an overall take on the convention I would pretty much associate myself with Robert's remarks. Ultimately these events are more important for the time-honored political practice of networking, of meeting and gathering impressions on colleagues and candidates for the future, not in a formal speech setting but one-on-one. While these endorsement fights and resolutions and platforms get the attention of the activists and insiders, and as well you can pretty fairly judge the activist/establishment gaps in the party in this fashion (the activists got virtually everything they wanted in this convention, particularly with respect to the platform), ultimately it's about people. And at Calitics we were determined to bring that experience right to you by collecting audio and/or video of some of our most promising Congressional candidates.
First up are Charlie Brown and Russ Warner, but before that I wanted to sketch out some of the other candidates I met over the weekend:
1) Bill Durston (CA-03): We have an audio interview with Dr. Durston, an emergency room physician and a Vietnam combat vet. Unfortunately the audio might be a little heavy on the background noise, so let me offer this. While I've heard from some that Durston may be preaching too much to the choir and not going after Dan Lungren supporters, I feel he certainly would be credible if he chose to do that. Durston is pretty progressive, and his views on health care (he supports single payer and does so from experience) and Iraq (he opposed it from the beginning and speaks powerfully on the morality of war) are compelling. As I've been noting, CA-03 is a changing district, with more Democrats than any Republican-held seat in the state, and hopefully more to come before November, so this is an opportunity to offer a real contrast to Dan Lungren and roll the dice. Durston is running on Iraq, health care and the environment (Lungren has a worse environmental record than even Richard Pombo by some measures) and we'll see if he can gather support.
2) Debbie Cook (CA-46): Audio and video of our interview to come. Cook, running against certified loon Dana Rohrabacher in a district mostly in Orange County and part of Long Beach, is running on the environment, but not as an advocate against global warming necessarily. She is on the board of directors of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO-USA), and really is passionate about moving to a post-carbon future and radically reinventing our energy infrastructure. When I asked about carbon taxes or cap and trade systems, she really looked beyond that debate about greenhouse gas emissions and toward a debate about sustainable living. This is about land use, about smart growth, about living closer together, adopting mass transit, eating locally grown foods, reorganizing society to deal with the prospects of a world without as much oil. It's an interesting message for a Congressional campaign, especially when going up against someone who speculates that global warming may have been caused by dinosaur flatulence. But Cook also supports the Repsonsible Plan to End the War in Iraq and understands the post-carbon fight as a national security and an economic issue as well.
3) Russ Warner (CA-26): We have full video of this. I've seen Russ speak on a number of occasions, and let me say that I'm very impressed with his maturation as a candidate. He's more than ready to stand on a stage with David Dreier and go toe-to-toe with him. And there's a new passion to his message, including his belief that the Bush Administration is waging an effort to "destroy this county from the inside out," that is uncompromising. Warner will make Iraq a front-and-center issue in his campaign, along with health care and the economy (his answer on the housing crisis and the financial mess was pretty good). This is a race we'll all be talking about soon.
4) Charlie Brown (CA-04): WE'll have full video of this, but for the moment we have a couple bits and pieces. Listen to this part, when I ask how he'll deal with the expected "anti-government" message from the Republican he'll have to face in November, and you'll see exactly why those military veterans support Brown and rebuke those career politicians who claim to want to represent them.
There's another four-minute clip here.
Overall I think we have an excellent crop of candidates. I was only able to talk briefly with some of them but I'll be following up in the weeks to come. Ultimately the fight for progressive change must not end at a convention but be wrested away at the ballot box. These are some of the leaders trying to do just that.
• I truly think that the governor's mansion is Jerry Brown's if he wants it. I always aprreciate a guy who's been marginalized and demonized by the right for so long, and just keeps going, shoving it right back in their faces. Brown's speech at the convention, delivered without a teleprompter, was great for red meat but also reflected an agile mind that has been right about so many issues for so long. I like a guy who takes "Governor Moonbeam" as a compliment. I really think that if he wants to be Governor again the seat is his. Outside of President I don't believe he's ever lost a political race. (Plus I still remember that Joe Trippi ran his campaign against Bill Clinton in 1992.)
• I don't have a connection to the Leno-Migden fight outside of what I read on Calitics and what I hear from my friends on the site. But I have to say that, looking at it from the outside, this is the biggest waste of resources I've ever seen in my life. What would happen if these hundreds of volunteers walked precincts in the district, instead of providing "visibility" while fighting for an endorsement in a high-information area that won't ultimately matter much? The battle is swamping the entire convention, and it's clearly become a giant pissing contest between the Assembly and the Senate, with each side taking up for their colleague. As you've read here, Migden is nuts, and I have pretty strong opinions about who should serve, and in particular the principle of the unbalanced endorsement process, where an incumbent needs a lower threshold to get the party endorsement than a challenger. That's ridiculous, and in fact Joye Swan of the Progressive Caucus is leading an effort for a bylaw change to address just that. But this is a waste.
• Relevant to that, I think Bill Clinton has NO IDEA what he's about to step into on Sunday. The Leno-Migden thing is sucking up most of the oxygen out of this convention. Clinton and San Francisco DA Kamala Harris are speaking for Hillary and Barack Obama tomorrow, but there's going to be less focus on that than he'd expect.
• We are doing several interviews with Congressional and legislative candidates. So far we had a good chat with Bill Durston, a candidate in the rapidly purpling area of CA-03. We have interviews with Charlie Brown (CA-04), Hannah-Beth Jackson (SD-19) and Russ Warner (CA-26) later on. We will be posting the audio as we get it in. We also had a nice chat between bloggers and Mayor Gavin Newsom. His effort to sue for restoration of Medi-Cal reimbursements is a very strong stand.
Republican voter registration in California is on the decline, but nowhere is the effect more pronounced than in the Sacramento region's 3rd Congressional District.
Incumbent Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Gold River, now has the slimmest registration edge of any Republican-held congressional district in the state.
According to district registration figures updated before the Feb. 5 primary election by the secretary of state's office, the Republican advantage over Democratic registration has slipped below five percentage points, 41.6 percent to 36.9 percent. Before the 2006 general election, the GOP margin was almost 6.6 points.
This was made pretty clear when the percentage of Democratic turnout in the February 5 primary was 53.1%, also the largest of any Republican-held district in the state. There's something definitely happening in this district, most of which is located in Sacramento County. The demographics are shifting and Democrats have been very aggressive in registering new voters. Debra Bowen's focus on increasing registration led to thousands of new voters placed onto the rolls before the primary, and the residual effect of that is more Democrats. They of course need to be turned out. But it's clear that Lungren is paying attention to this development. After Bill Durston launched an effort to highlight Lungren's terrible environmental record (he has a 5% rating from the League of Conservation Voters), Lungren took a walk on the most recent environmental vote in the House - a vote to eliminate subsidies for oil companies and re-route those tax breaks to renewable energy companies. Lungren obviously feels some vulnerabilities on this, and he need look no further than at Richard Pombo. The LCV listed him as one of their "Dirty Dozen" in 2006, and that year, not only did Pombo end up losing, but 9 of the 13 "Dirty Dozen" (I guess it was a baker's dozen) lost as well.
If Bill Durston could secure some outside resources like that, this could be the sleeper Congressional race of 2008 in California. Keep an eye on this one.
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