As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Charlie Brown Concedes In CA-04
After a long fight to count every vote, Charlie Brown has acknowledged that Tom McClintock will be the next Congressman representing CA-04. Here's part of his email to supporters:
Thanks to the extraordinary work of our local elections officials, I am pleased to report that the high standards of fairness, accuracy, and transparency have been met. And with the counts and recounts across district four complete, and more than 370,000 votes tallied, the outcome of this election is no longer in question. Unfortunately, we've come up less than one half of one percent---just under 1,800 votes---short of victory. So a short time ago, I called Senator Tom McClintock to congratulate him on a hard fought victory, and to wish him well in Congress.
To you, I can only offer my deepest gratitude-for your generosity of time and resources, and your unwavering energy and encouragement. Together, we have transformed the 4 th District, and lifted this campaign higher and farther than anyone thought possible.
I am proud of the campaign we ran.
Charlie fought a very good fight, actually becoming a point person for veteran's issues around the country and leading by example with his Promises Kept Challenge, donating 5% of his campaign contributions to organizations serving veterans and their families. And he showed through two cycles that the supposedly hopeless 4th District is more than winnable to the right candidate.
Still, he came up just short. But I don't think he has anything to be ashamed of.
This closes the book on elections in California. While the final numbers and vote totals will be released Dec. 13, we know that Democrats picked up a net 3 seats in the Assembly, no seats in the Senate, and no seats in the Congress. That's the performance despite a 24-point victory at the top of the ticket, the biggest in California since 1936.
We'll have much to discuss about this in the weeks to come, looking back to what happened and looking forward to prospects in the years ahead. For now, a sincere thanks to Charlie Brown, who made us proud.
Huge news in the continued counting of Charlie Brown's race against Tom McClintock. The latest round of counting has Brown within 329 votes as the provisionals, which tend to favor Democrats, get counted in the larger counties in the district.
Charlie Brown (Dem) 170,168 49.9% Tom McClintock (Rep) 170,497 50.1%
There are still tens of thousands of votes left to count, and there's a virtual assurance of at least a partial recount. Tom McClintock has been sending his list these smug reports of the day's counting, telling them how everything's looking great. I haven't seen an update from him in a couple days. Probably because this is shaping up as a replay of the 2002 State Controller race, when the late provisionals put Steve Westly over the top in his race against... Tom McClintock.
Extended races like this cost money to maintain staff and pay lawyers. You can help Charlie out at the Calitics ActBlue page.
"We're not claiming victory, but we just think it's mathematically impossible for (Brown) to win," said Bill George, spokesman for McClintock. George said the thousands of Placer County votes tallied Friday stretched McClintock's lead from barely 300 votes to 1,793, with only about 4,500 more votes to count in the nine-county district.
Brown spokesman Todd Stenhouse said Brown would not concede, noting that thousands more votes remain to be counted, most of which are provisional ballots that "have been breaking very, very strongly for Charlie."
"We remain committed to the same goals that we've been committed to all along and that is that every vote is counted in this historic election," Stenhouse said.
Earlier, I mentioned that the CA-04 race is not over. This bit of news reinforces that fact:
Truckee Town Council is one race that hangs in the balance.
“Four years ago I got 3,700 votes, and Josh [Susman] got 3,300, and this year so far we both have about 2,200,” said current Mayor and candidate Barbara Green. “Something is not quite right.”
She said she figures about 1,000 to 2,000 votes are still unaccounted for in Truckee.
The missing votes could have repercussions as far reaching as the tightly-contested 4th Congressional District race between Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown, Green said.
The spokeswoman for a local ballot measure makes this sound more like a mystery of missing ballots rather than votes that are simply uncounted:
Proponents of the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District Measure U hoped the outstanding ballots may make the difference.
“Clearly there’s been a major administrative error. We are hopefully those outstanding ballots will push Measure U over the top,” said Alison Elder, Measure U chair.
Administrative error? What does that mean, exactly.
This could be especially important because Brown won Nevada County, the county in question, by a substantial margin (57-43). If there are potentially 2,000 votes there, that would make up a lot of that difference if the margin holds.
...by the way, Bill Hedrick in CA-44 might be getting into recount territory, incredibly. It's down to a spread of just 2.8% between Hedrick and Rep. Ken Calvert, a difference of only 4,600 votes. It's the closest Congressional race outside of CA-04. I am sorry I didn't pay enough attention to it. Go Bill!
• CA-04: Tom McClintock is bringing out the big guns to help his cash-strapped campaign - Ron Paul is all in!
Paul, the libertarian-Republican congressman from Texas who raised more than $34 million for his presidential race, sent out an e-mail last week urging his massive donor base to contribute to McClintock.
"Tom McClintock is one of the most promising warriors in the fight against big government we have seen in a long time, and the special interests and big bankers know it. ... You have stood with me as....
...I campaigned for the Presidency to return our federal government to its proper role. Will you help me bring a reliable ally to Congress?"
This brings up some interesting questions. Does Tom McClintock think we should withdraw from Iraq and dozens of other military bases around the world? Does he believe in abolishing the Federal Reserve? The coinage of free silver?
• CA-45: New voter registration statistics have not been released by the Secretary of State's office, but I think they will show good news for Democrats across the state. One statistic that is measurable is the early voting number, and in CA-45, it's good news for Julie Bornstein.
Democrats have significantly narrowed the early voting gap in the 45th Congressional District, an encouraging sign for challenger Julie Bornstein in her battle to unseat Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (R-Palm Springs), according to Bornstein campaign manager Walter Ludwig.
In both 2004 and 2006, registered Republicans accounted for about 54 percent of early voters, compared with just 34 percent for Democrats. Mack, now a four-term incumbent, cruised to re-election both years by more than 20 points.
This year, early voting is much more evenly split. The latest numbers from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters show that registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by just five percent among early voters.
It's like the entire Republican machine all collapsed at once. They used to be MASTERS at getting absentee votes out. This year, there's either no such effort, or it's being matched by Democrats. CA-45 is under the radar, but these numbers suggest that it shouldn't be.
• CA-46: At the Great Orange Satan, Devilstower has a great piece that could start a new meme about Debbie Cook - the anti-Palin.
Suppose there was a candidate who was as bright and as capable as Sarah Palin is confused and incompetent.
Someone who had a record of working with environmental groups, and who had a real understanding of the threat posed by our dependence on fossil fuels. Someone with a degree in earth science and the long experience to make the claim of being a genuine energy expert.
Someone who not only knew science, but also had a law degree, and was a graduate of the leadership program at the Kennedy School of Government. Someone who has held positions of honor in state and national commissions. Someone who was well respected for both her intellect and her passion.
Suppose there was a candidate who had been mayor of, not a tiny town, but a medium-sized city. And suppose she took that position as a Democrat in the midst of a heavily Republican district.
Suppose there was someone who was everything that Sarah Palin is not.
• AD-78: Bill Cavala, who worked the last close race in this district, took a peek at some new registration numbers which show a real advantage for Marty Block:
This year the new registration ‘close’ figures show the Democrats with 101, 131 registrants, an increase of about 4100 from the last Presidential year. DTS registrations are 49,855, an increase of about 5800 from 2004. Most remarkably, however, Republican registration has fallen by almost 8000 – from 82,615 four years ago to 74,700 today.
This means the net change is Dems up 4100 and Reps down 8000 or 12,100 in favor of the Democrat over 2004.
Forget the increase in DTS registrations – which vote more Democratic than Republican in San Diego. Starting out down 12,000 in a seat where they won by 2000 with an incumbent – it’s open this year – puts the Republican candidate squarely behind the 8 ball.
Just one of the many Assembly races where this is so.
CA-04: Charlie Cook Finally Wakes Up And Moves This To A Toss-Up
Charlie Cook, the favored Congressional tipster for insiders, is notoriously conservative in his selections. And as such, he's slow to recognize races that, based on outdated fundamentals, simply "can't" be competitive. It's embarrassing that it's taken him this long to move CA-04 to a toss-up. Here's his precis:
CA-04 OPEN (Doolittle) Lean Republican to Toss Up All GOP state Sen. Tom McClintock needed to do to put this district away was to run ads noting Democratic nominee Charlie Brown’s attendance at anti-war rallies. The only problem? McClintock ran out of money too soon and has been inexplicably “dark” on broadcast television in the final phase of the campaign, allowing Brown and the DCCC to remain in strong contention by portraying McClintock as a carpetbagger and self-serving career politician.
Republicans in Washington fret that McClintock has run a second rate campaign and that even with an extensive statewide fundraising network, he has failed to put together a competent media strategy. The NRCC, too broke to come to McClintock’s rescue, is also off the air in the expensive Sacramento market. Some Republicans suggest that in the end, their biggest advantage in this district may be the presence of Proposition 8, a measure to eliminate same-sex marriage, on the California ballot. This race should be a slam dunk for the GOP, but right now it is a toss up.
First of all, there's no way that misleading anti-war rally attack would have derailed the Brown campaign. Most of the country is against the war. But putting that aside, Cook shares my astonishment that Mr. Fiscal Conservative McClintock managed to run out of money weeks before the race was over. That is some epic mismanagement.
Cook is wrong about another thing, the NRCC is trying to ride to the rescue, up with a new ad trying to paint Brown as a "liberal yes man." I just don't think this is the year to throw around the "L" word like it's some kind of boogeyman. Anyway, don't they know that these days, you're supposed to call the Democrat a socialist or a Marxist? Looking at the ad, it looks like the NRCC and McClintock went Dutch on it.
The point is that the GOP hasn't totally given up on this race, and while I'm confident in Brown's abilities he could definitely use some reinforcements in the final week. You can give at the Calitics ActBlue page.
The biggest newspaper in the region, the Sacramento Bee, makes the case for Charlie Brown and a new direction in the district, particularly on the area of putting pragmatism above ideology. Now, I don't totally agree with all the conclusions of the editorial, but the last bit is unquestionably true:
Brown understands that the that the mortgage crisis, the collapse of the financial system, the credit crunch and the recession are real. He would have supported the rescue plan because doing nothing was worse than doing something, though he believes Congress has done a poor job of selling the package. And the final package assured taxpayers get any profits, required congressional oversight, banned golden parachutes.
This is telling. McClintock sticks to ideology; Brown pragmatically puts the nation first.
The nation and the 4th District need to find ways out of partisan and ideological gridlock. Elect Charlie Brown to Congress.
Now, if the final package wasn't such a dog with fleas that the feds have basically scrapped it, and if the banks weren't using it to collect free money instead of facilitating lending, this would be a stronger argument. Whatever; the Bee's endorsements have been profoundly odd, and have seemed to value bipartisan seriousness over everything. But I think there's a difference between rejecting partisanship and abandoning core principles. I think that Charlie Brown will govern the way he has campaigned, by working through problems and using his best judgment based on his values and principles. Tom McClintock is incapable of adapting to changing information whatsoever.
What he will do is try to play dirty to win the election, including sending nasty robocalls throughout the district because they're cheap for his cash-strapped campaign. The problem is that they haven't done a good job of checking their call lists. The Brown campaign, for example, got robocalled.
UPDATE: The latest poll shows Brown expanding his slim but measurable lead.
Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 10/20-22. Likely voters. MoE 5% (9/23-25 results)
McClintock (R) 42 (41) Brown (D) 48 (46)
Among early voters (13 percent of respondents)
McClintock (R) 38 Brown (D) 56
Brown takes independents 51-34. McClintock's fav/unfav is at 44/42. Brown is at 49/29. And McClintock is out of the cash he'd need to push up Brown's unfavorables.
This is very good news. Let's get this seat. Stay for Change.
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.
The 4th District had a debate as well last night, the fifth and final of the campaign, and it was spirited.
Every scathing remark and harsh charge that's gone back and forth in the congressional race between Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown got one more airing Tuesday night.
Speaking at a forum sponsored by the South Nevada County Chamber of Commerce south of Grass Valley, McClintock was painted as a do-nothing career politician and Brown as a tax-loving big-government advocate.
And there was also some talk about issues, mixed in with the shots, though sometimes each answer was equal parts both.
It was the usual nonsense: McClintock wants to drill here and drill now. McClintock wants no taxes and no government. McClintock wants to privatize Social Security (yes, even now). McClintock thinks Keebler elves can build the roads and bridges and a thimble-full of oil can power a Lexus. He's a magical thinker. But I have to say that this was my favorite part, and not just because McClintock doesn't know the meaning of the word "liquidity."
McClintock also roundly criticized the recently passed Wall Street bailout package, saying the better route was to put liquidity into the market.
Brown countered that he supported the plan because something needed to be done, then made reference to recent Federal Election Commission reports that showed McClintock's campaign in debt.
"You can't even run your own campaign on a balanced budget, so I don't trust you to run our nation's budget," Brown said.
Brown also hit McClintock over spending the past two years in Sacramento without getting one piece of legislation passed.
Brown took aim at McClintock's record as a state legislator, making reference to a recent Sacramento Bee story that reported McClintock had a perfect record of getting no legislation passed in the last two years.
"This is about actual results, and not talking about what you want to do unless you propose something else you can get passed," Brown said.
The debate is not going to have a major viewing audience. But the airwaves will, and the DCCC has just dropped a long-awaited ad in the district. It's good.
That's quite a lot for 30 seconds, but they pretty much cover California's Alan Keyes and make him out to be the punchline that he is.
The question is whether or not McClintock has 10 cents to respond to this.
Politico picks up the story of Tom McClintock's fundraising woes, and the fact that he was in the red as of October 1. I didn't know this:
But according to his campaign finance reports, he heads into the home stretch without much campaign cash left. McClintock spent more money than he raised, ending September with just $94,000 in his campaign account.
He is not currently airing airing any television ads, and hasn’t been for the last two weeks.
If he's off the air right now, it's going to be next to impossible for him to get back on. The NRCC doesn't have a whole lot of money to play with, especially considering all the incumbents they have to defend. And the GOTV efforts, radio, phone calls, mailers, etc., cost plenty of money. If McClintock's living from hand to mouth right now, he's not going to get back on TV. And needless to say, Charlie Brown has plenty of money to blanket TV in the final two weeks. It's incredible.
And what's amazing is that this is how McClintock handled the primary as well. He overspent early and wound up running on fumes the last couple weeks. It wasn't a big deal against Doug Ose, but against a formidable opponent like Brown it'll matter. The supposed fiscal conservative can't even manage his own campaign stash.
Perennial candidate Tom McClintock is a beloved figure on the far right. We just didn't know how far.
It turns out that in 2003, when McClintock was running for his eleventy-teenth political office in the California governor recall election, he was endorsed by none other than the KKK.
Dateline: September 27, 2003
Ku Klux Klan Announces support for Tom McClintock
The Imperial Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (IKA) have announced their full support for Tom McClintock’s bid for the governorship of California. Their support is announced in what they term “the lesser of all evil candidates.”
When interviewed, Mr. Chris Johnson (Grand Dragon or State Director of the IKA’s California chapter) had this to say regarding the announcement, “While Mr. McClintock is not the perfect candidate for California Governor, we have more in common with his ideology than any of the other candidates. We are in congruence with his stand on illegal aliens infecting our land and his courage in standing up to the invasion.” Mr. Johnson went on to say that, “Mr. McClintock echoes our anti-abortion stand, and our opposition to oppressive taxation.”
I guess the McClintock campaign can spin this by saying that at least the KKK called him evil, even if he was the lesser of all the rest?
Here's the thing: organizations can choose to endorse anybody they want, and the candidates have no control over that. But McClintock never said a peep five years ago when he got this endorsement. And there's a Chris Johnson on McClintock's donor list from that 2003 gubernatorial race. Chris Johnson is obviously a common name, and the donation is $100, so take it with a grain of salt. But certainly, McClintock needs to answer the question of why he never rejected the endorsement and why they never sought out and returned money that would even have the appearance of coming from the Klan.
More to the point, McClintock is just the kind of guy to demonize an opponent's associations. In fact, when running for governor in 2003, McClintock compared then-Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante's association with the Hispanic student group MEChA to, you guessed it, the KKK.
State Sen. Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican rival, recently likened the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, also known as MEChA, to the Ku Klux Klan.
"It's like saying, 'Oh, I was a moderate member of the Klan,'" McClintock said last month on the San Diego radio station KOGO. "It's incumbent on Cruz Bustamante to clearly and completely renounce ...
The idea that the KKK finds ideological kinship with McClintock is pretty much a no-brainer. His demonization of illegal immigrants as the cause of so much of the nation's economic woes plays to the baser instincts of the racist right. He's running a campaign against Charlie Brown that has recently seized on Brown's appearance at an anti-war rally before the invasion of Iraq as somehow un-American. It's really not too much of a logical leap here.
• CA-04: The most important debate evah is tonight! No, not that Biden-Palin thing, it's Calitics Match candidate Charlie Brown and Tom McClintock in Oroville. Meanwhile, the air war has begun in earnest. Brown is up with a 60-second ad featuring a local family as a third-party endorser, explaining their struggles to stay ahead in this economy and how Brown is the right choice. I think it'll play well (Brown has an American Jobs Plan which includes investments in infrastructure and green jobs, which is key to the needed reindustrialization of society). On the other hand, Tom McClintock has decided to use Grandpa Fred.
"The financial crisis our nation faces is complicated, and I don't think anybody's got all the answers," Thompson, a well-known actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee, says in the commercial. "But I'll tell you one thing. I'll feel a lot more confident with Tom McClintock working on it, rather than some amateur."
Shorter Grandpa Fred: "All this book-learnin' and financializin' is hard to figger. Pick the guy who's never voted Yes on a budget in his entire career."
• CA-11: If you want to know why Dean Andal isn't getting any traction in his race against Rep. Jerry McNerney, this quote says it all:
Elected in 2006, McNerney is in a better position for reelection than many expected. But he sits in a district that gave President Bush 54 percent of the vote in 2004, a sure sign that the freshman Democrat ought to be looking over his shoulder.
His Republican opponent, former state Assemblyman Dean Andal, may not be in a position to capitalize, though. The Lodi News-Sentinel reported that an Andal spokesman took the curious position that “it would be inappropriate of Andal to comment on the bailout bill, because he is not in office.”
Yes, it would be terrible to actually give your viewpoints on national issues during a political campaign.
• CA-46: You know that Calitics Match candidate Debbie Cook is gaining traction in her race against nutjob Dana Rohrabacher by this - Rohrabacher has gone negative. He's sent an attack mailer that takes a Cook comment about gas prices out of context and really goes to great lengths to greenwash himself. He mentions his sponsorship of a bill to completely eliminate environmental review for solar projects, which is irresponsible but which he is trying to cynically use as proof of his green energy bona fides. It also calls Cook an extremist liberal who opposes drilling.
What's hysterical is that Rohrabacher sent the mailer to everyone in the district but Democrats, meaning that Greens got it. And I'm told by the Cook campaign that they received numerous calls from Green Party members saying that they were voting for Debbie BECAUSE of the mailer!
According to a September 25, 2008, Pasadena Weekly article by Carl Kozlowski, Rohrabacher believes that the Los Angeles Police Department has for 40 years hidden the fact that Sirhan Sirhan, the lone man convicted of shooting Kennedy, worked as part of a "real conspiracy" of Arabs [...]
In early 2007--39 years after the killing and right around the time that he blamed global warming on dinosaur flatulence, Rohrabacher decided to solve his murder mystery for "the Kennedy family."
Anyone familiar with Rohrabacher knows this story is now headed for unadulterated, wacky bliss.
At some point, Sirhan sent Summer Reese, one of his lawyers, a letter telling her that "a Diana was coming to see him."
Reese told Kozlowski, "Sirhan didn't know it was the congressman because his visitor was presented as a woman."
Rohrabacher. Undercover. In drag. Using the name Diana?
Perhaps this sheds light on why ex-Congressman Bob Dornan (R-Garden Grove) liked to call Rohrabacher "a fruitcake."
I actually know Carl, maybe I'll track him down and interview him about this.
• AD-26: I've noticed a lot of Republicans afraid to debate this year. Here's another example.
Stretching from Turlock to Stocton, the 26th Assembly District is fairly even in voter registration and is a target on both party’s lists. So why would one candidate take a pass on a critical opportunity to face his opponent and make his case to voters? That is the question being asked by Democratic candidate John Eisenhut who was at a League of Women Voters debate in Modesto Friday night. His Republican opponent, Bill Berryhill, had a “scheduling conflict.”
In a conversation with Eisenhut the night after the debate he said that Berryhill didn’t want to debate him. This in spite of Berryhill being quoted by the Modesto Bee saying,
“People deserve some dialogue and to know where we both stand.”
• AD-30: Fran Florez runs against Sacramento in this solid new ad. Is she also running against her own son, State Sen. Dean Florez?
(You guys are awesome. Thanks so much for getting us to our goal. But there's still more work to be done before midnight; we need to get $500 raised for each candidate. Right now 4 of our 5 candidates need a little more. Visit our ActBlue page and donate!)
Calitics Match candidate Charlie Brown is facing California's Alan Keyes, perennial candidate Tom McClintock, in the most hotly contested Congressional race in the state. And I think the pressure is getting to McClintock.
He put together a website called "Vets for Tom" which has a page with a list of resources for veterans. There is substantial evidence that McClintock's team plagiarized the resource list from Charlie Brown's website.
Campaign manager Todd Stenhouse said that not only did a list of resources on the site exactly match what was on Brown's site, but one link that was broken on Brown's site had the same problem on McClintock's site.
When visitors clicked on the "AmVets" link on McClintock's site, Stenhouse said, the broken address took visitor to a site with an address from Charlie Brown's site, in what Stenhouse called "a smoking gun."
"Everything he's learned about veterans and the military, he's apparently learned from Charlie Brown," Stenhouse said, referring to Brown's criticism of McClintock, a state senator, for voting against legislation related to veterans. McClintock established the veterans' site late last week.
There's really not much more to say on that. Some people lead and others follow.
Meanwhile, Brown and McClintock are strating to meet in forums and debates. Last week Brown called into a Sacramento radio show where McClintock was appearing, and last night they discussed the financial industry bailout. As expected, McClintock favors the exact same failed solutions which brought us to this crisis in the first place, like suspending the capital gains tax. Brown's position is more nuanced, supporting enforceable standards on executive compensation and returning proceeds from selling assets to taxpayers, while concerned about the consequences of doing nothing (which is McClintock's specialty).
The larger point is that McClintock is an enthusiastic supporter of the failed policies of the past, while Brown would reliably represent the future and lead on key issues.
CA Campaign Update: CA-04, CA-11, LA Board of Supes
I'm going to try and do these once a day. No promises!
• CA-04: In partial response to the kerfuffle from yesterday's deceitful attack ad, Charlie Brown released two radio spots and a TV ad today. His wife Jan Brown narrates the TV spot, which foregrounds Charlie and his son's military service. (Sorry, not embeddable)
The radio spots are both solid attacks on Venturian Candidate Tom McClintock. Two men, two paths contrasts Brown's service and leadership with McClintock's life in politics, and his record on veterans (including donating 5% of his campaign funds) with McClintock's (voting against veteran's funding). Vote is a humorous spot discussing how McClintock can't vote for himself because he won't move into the district. There's also a lot on McClintock's per diem expenses from the State Senate. "L.A. Tom" is the frame they're going with, and they ask, "if he won't vote for himself, why should we?"
• CA-11: State Senator Ellen Corbett and Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi sent a letter to women in Jerry McNerney's district urging them to reject right-wing extremist Dean Andal. His record on women's issues is really retrograde.
To the Women of Congressional District 11:
If you are anything like us, you want a representative in Washington that not only reflects your values, but who also respects you.
Dean Andal just doesn’t qualify. In fact, Dean Andal’s record on women’s issues shows just how out of touch and extreme his views are.
In 1994, as a member of the State Assembly, Dean Andal opposed a common sense law that would have allowed women to wear pants in the workplace instead of being forced to wear skirts and dresses.
Andal also voted against requiring health insurance plans to cover cervical cancer screenings. He even voted against making sure that information about sexual harassment be included in mandatory workplace anti-discrimination posters.
Yet the most egregious affront to women he offered in his short term in the Assembly was his vote to restrict the definition of rape to exclude attacks where an incapacitated woman cannot resist.
And what’s worse, Andal’s was the only vote in the Assembly against expanding the definition. The only one.
Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, all women should be proud of the progress we have made. That's why it's so important that we don't send someone like Dean Andal to Congress. Someone with a record like Andal’s can be counted on to turn back the clock on all we have achieved.
• LA Board of Supes: There's a runoff in this seat between Councilman Bernard Parks and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas. While Ridley-Thomas is a solid progressive who understands the fundamental dysfunction of state government and will fight for progressive values on the powerful Board of Supes, Bernard Parks has hired Republican fixer Steve Kinney to help him win the race. Parks, who has a business-friendly record on the City Council, is receiving help from BizFed, a PAC notorious for pushing the same agenda. The wingnuts at the Lincoln Club have reportedly offered him support as well. At least the choice is now clear to voters - one candidate on the side of the corporate vultures, the other on the side of the people.
• Misc. I should note that Chris Bowers' House race forecast is up, and among California races, he lists CA-04 as a tossup, CA-11 as Lean D, and CA-26 & CA-50 as Likely R. I think he's selling a couple races short, but that's a pretty good conservative estimate.
Things are happening very quickly in the most hotly contested campaigns in California. Here's an update:
• CA-04: Watching himself falling behind in the race to replace John Doolittle, perennial candidate Tom McClintock decided to borrow one of his predeccesor's smear campaigns and release an ad claiming that Charlie Brown dishonored servicemen by appearing at an anti-war rally.
The idea that wearing a camouflage jacket constitutes being "in uniform" is ridiculous, and so is the idea that a retired military officer has no free speech rights. But the idea is to smear Charlie as some kind of radical leftist and anti-military, despite Brown's long record of supporting veterans and McClintock's longer record voting against them.
The ensuing press conference put on by the McClintock campaign was a wild affair.
SACRAMENTO - A press conference on congressional candidate Charlie Brown's actions in 2005 at the home of an anti-war display nearly descended into conflict itself, with disruptions before, during and after the event and a near-appearance by police officers [...]
But before the event even began, a handful of Brown supporters - accompanied by Brown's campaign manager, Todd Stenhouse - were asked to leave so that they wouldn't cause a disruption.
One man loudly protested that as a military veteran and the father of an active-duty U.S. soldier, he felt he could stay. "This is not Russia," he said.
McClintock campaign consultant John Feliz and Stenhouse eventually got the man to agree to leave, but not before security at the Hyatt hotel where the press conference took place made calls to Sacramento police to remove the man [...]
But a third man who was with the veterans pointed out that Brown was within his First Amendment right to do so, prompting Feliz to ask him to leave as well, while also saying Brown should re-enlist and face a court martial for his actions.
The man, who gave his name as Bret Sherlock, said afterward that he attended because he was tired of non-veterans like McClintock smearing veterans like Brown.
"Did he do anything illegal?" Sherlock said of Brown, adding that if anyone should be able to protest the war, it should be Brown, as both a veteran and a father of a soldier who has served four tours of duty in Iraq.
McClintock campaign spokesman Bill George said the video came from a "concerned citizen." Neither McClintock nor Brown appeared at the press conference.
After the press conference concluded, Stenhouse tried to give McClintock's campaign a pledge to join a Brown program that donates 5 percent of Brown's campaign contributions to nonprofit community groups that work with charities.
Feliz angrily took it and threw it down without looking at it.
They don't want to talk about issues. So McClintock tries to smear a decorated veteran to win an election. Typical.
• CA-11: We've talked before about Dean Andal's embarrassing fall from Congressional contender to also-ran, but it's just getting worse and worse. The questions over Andal's role in a botched construction project at a local community college have continued, and he's also been caught lying about his claim that he's raised more money than any Congressional challenger in the country. Now his mailers are hitting mailboxes throughout the district, and they've been revealed as lies.
What it says: "Instead of taking action to fix America's energy crisis, ruling Democrats shut down Congress this month (August) for a five-week vacation — with Democratic Congressman Jerry McNerney casting the deciding vote to adjourn."
Is it true? No. The vote was 213-212 in favor of adjournment. Under Andal's argument, all 213 members of Congress who voted in favor of the annual summer break were the "deciding vote."
Besides, party leaders don't let freshmen decide anything.
It's almost sad how bad Andal is doing. The NRCC isn't even spending in the district.
• CA-50: The latest registration numbers for the district are in, and while Republicans continue to hold an 11-point lead, the trend is in Democrats' favor. Republicans are also perilously close to the 40% registration line, under which it becomes harder for them to win, as more independent voters lean Democratic. I don't know if Paris Hilton ads and chicken suits will get it done for Nick Leibham, whose campaign is clearly just trying to get in the headlines. But there are lines of attack on Bilbray, particularly over his single-minded focus on immigration and not the pocketbook issues that affect people's lives, though Bilbray is enough of a nut to say that the two are functionally equivalent.
• CA-26: There's another smear campaign going on in this race, where David Dreier and the NRCC are trying to hold onto this seat by dredging up old news about Russ Warner and old tax liens and business license payments. These are incidents from as far back as 1992, and Warner's business license has since been reinstated. It's a pretty negative mailer considering that Dreier sounds so confident about victory. Warner is now out with his own mailer highlighting Dreier's many ties to special interests (like the $200,000 he's received from oil and gas companies). The fact that Dreier and Bush agree 94% of the time makes an appearance as well. The fact that this race is getting so nasty so early suggests that Dreier has seen some polling that has him worried.
• AD-80: Manuel Perez has snagged the endorsement of the Sierra Club. They also have an ad up on the air, which is notable for an Assembly candidate.
• CA-04: I love this video from the Charlie Brown campaign. They traveled 412 miles down to Thousand Oaks to talk to constituents of California's Alan Keyes, State Senator and professional office-chaser Tom McClintock. It's really funny and drives the point home that McClintock is a do-nothing at best and a dangerous radical at worst:
And get this, McClintock is now running on the state budget, the Republican version of which has a 19% approval rating. That's like putting Nixon, Bush and Cheney in your campaign ad.
• CA-26, CA-45: Not one but two! Both Russ Warner AND Julie Bornstein have been added to the DCCC "Races To Watch" list. This is a prelude to being listed as Red To Blue candidates. If the D-Trip comes through with some money, maybe threatened incumbents like Dreier will have to stop mouthing off about other GOP races and start paying attention to their own.
• CA-46: When John Fund tries to target a Dem challenger, you know something's going wrong. Fund is sounding the alarm on Debbie Cook, as Dana Rohrabacher tries to greenwash himself with a scheme to build solar-power plants on federal land without environmental impact studies. Fund says that Cook called this "an extreme position," but he chopped the quote:
Democratic challenger and Mayor of Huntington Beach Debbie Cook agrees that the process of approving solar power plants is sluggish and needs to be sped up, but not at the expense of the environment.
"This is just another extreme position by Dana Rohrabacher. What we need to do is come up with a balanced approach that streamlines these projects, because they're critically important to our energy future, but at the same time recognizes the impacts to the environment," Cook said.
Rohrabacher's doing the equivalent of saying he'll grow jobs by hiring 10,000 federally funded serial killers, and then wondering why everyone's worried about the mass death ("You wanted jobs, didn't you?"). There's a sensible way to free up the bottlenecks and a rash one. Rohrabacher chose door #2.
• CA-42: The internal poll results released by Ed Chau are intriguing (showing him up 44-38 after a mix of positive and negative information released on the candidates), but I don't think candidates who have minimal bank accounts should do polls stating the numbers after a mix of information if they don't have the money to get that information out. But if Gary Miller truly has a 28% re-elect number as the poll states, he could be in trouble.
CA-04: Kevin Ring Spells Trouble For Doolittle, Republicans
Even though John Doolittle is not on the ballot this year, his presence in a district that he dominated for years is still important for Republican branding. Much like in Ohio, where the Tom Noe Coingate scandal spelled doom for all Republican statewide officers in 2006, the stench of scandal around Doolittle has the potential to severely tarnish the Republican brand in CA-04. And if yesterday's indictment of former Doolittle aide Kevin Ring is as advertised, which it appears to be, the brand isn't just tarnished, it's out in the dumpster:
The indictment adds additional information to Doolittle's already thick record with Abramoff. According to the indictment, Ring expensed at least one suite for a sports event, eight concert tickets (including tickets for Dixie Chicks and Faith Hill), and five meals totaling more than $2000 for Doolittle. For Doolittle's staff and his legislative director in particular, Ring bought 29 sports tickets, four concert tickets, nine meals, and one gift from Macy's.
But Ring and Abramoff were well accommodated in return. As the indictment describes, Doolittle proved himself "a good soldier" by chairing a hearing on the Puerto Rico statehood issue for an Abramoff client and held up his opposition to an anti-gambling bill among other favors.
And Doolittle's staff was just as helpful. Doolittle's communications director helped Ring out with tax legislation to "earn [his] Sigs Sushi ;)," and his legislative director was so "tenacious on the appropriations front" that he earned an esteemed compliment from Ring in an email: "You the man."
Doolittle is referred to (as "Representative 5") in the indictment over 100 times. If he's actually indicted before the election, that will be a boost for Charlie Brown, as the culture of corruption which helped him to a near-upset in 2006 would come back into play. And with carpetbagger Tom McClintock trying to lie his way to victory (subs. req.), his claim to the ethical high road isn't all that firm, either.
Before the June primary, Charlie Brown released an internal poll showing him up two points on Tom McClintock. Three months later, the race has not fundamentally changed:
With less than two months to go before the November election, Retired USAF Lt. Col. Charlie Brown has released recent polling showing him leading Southern California politician Tom McClintock 43-41, and widening his lead to nearly double digits when voters were presented with the positive attributes of each candidate.
The survey of 500 likely General Election voters was conducted by the Benensen Strategy Group from August 21st-24th, with a margin of error of +/- 4.38%.
Beyond Brown’s advantage on an initial ballot and following positive contrasts of each candidate, the poll reveals that Brown enjoys a higher net favorability rating than McClintock---despite the fact that McClintock is a better known career politician who has run for Statewide office four times. Brown, who is a career military officer, has also built a 29 point advantage among Independents while capturing nearly one in five Republican voters.
This lead is obviously within the margin of error, and because the district is so Republican, even that 29-point lead among independents brings us to a tie. But the fundamentals for Brown are pretty strong. The right track-wrong track in the district is 23-67. And after the policy positions are added in, Brown's lead balloons to eight points, 50-42.
This is going to be about having the money to get the message out and inform the electorate, and having the ground troops to get out the vote. Turnout will be the major driver of who wins this race. But those who wrote off Charlie Brown when John Doolittle dropped out were very mistaken.
UPDATE: It probably won't help the Republicans that Doolittle associate Kevin Ring was just indicted on corruption charges.
Since he doesn't have any ideas of his own, and he can barely locate California's 4th District on a map, Tom McClintock has decided to pick up on the "Drill Now" movement coming from the deepest bastions of economic royalist and faux populist conservatism. His first ad of the 2008 election is a radio spot which shakes his finger at Congress for ignoring all that delicious oil under everyone's house that must be delivered immediately to Exxon.
"Liberals like Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Brown want to continue supporting federal laws that prevents us from tapping America's vast oil resources. That's how we got into this mess - and why gasoline prices are now breaking our family budgets," McClintock says at the beginning of the one-minute spot.
"America has nearly a trillion barrels of recoverable oil-more than three times that of Saudi Arabia-that Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Brown won't even let us touch. In fact, more than 94 percent of our territory remains off-limits because of this foolish prohibition. If we want to change this policy, we've got to change this Congress," McClintock says.
94%! For instance, that park by your house doesn't have ONE oil derrick in it. And who knows what's under the floorboards in your den? 94%, sucka MC's!
"Meanwhile, the vast oil fields off the coast of Florida that American law prevents Americans from developing are now being drained by the Chinese government drilling in Cuban waters," McClintock wrote in a column for the Auburn Journal, pointed out to us by the campaign of his Dem opponent Charlie Brown.
"And still Nancy Pelosi and her supporters in Congress continue to block the development of these vast American oil reserves."
Don't you idiots see it? The Chinese are stealing our purity of essence and draining our precious bodily fluids!
None of this is true, by the way. Even the Prince of Darkness Dick Cheney, who's in Southern California today in case you were wondering why you heard that death rattle this morning, had to acknowledge that the Cina-Cuba drilling myth was a lie.
But without lies, where would McClintock be? (um, running for the Board of Equalization?)
He's running for two offices at the same time. Tom McClintock is actively raising money for a 2010 Board of Equalization campaign in the event that he loses the Congressional race against Charlie Brown. The proof is right here. From the press release from the Brown campaign:
Since the beginning of the year--and even after he announced his exploratory committee for Congress-- Tom McClintock spent over $50,000 for his potential 2010 campaign for California State Board of Equalization and raised over $32,000 during this time period. These figures include 3 contributions to his 2010 statewide campaign fund on the same day he announced his congressional bid for CA-04, and thousands more in the months that followed---including a contribution from tobacco giant Reynolds American.
Reminiscent of Congressman John Doolittle, Senator McClintock also made a $15,000 donation marked “charity” to his own political organization---“Tom McClintock’s Citizens for the California Republic .”
In addition, Senator McClintock employed the same finance director – Igor Birman – to solicit contributions for both his federal and state committees. Mr. Birman was paid to solicit funds for the non-federal committee through March 5, 2008 and began receiving payments from the federal committee on Feb. 6, 2008.
Using state campaign funds for a federal campaign is illegal.
I think McClintock has to admit that he has a problem. The man is addicted to running for office, so much so that he can't stop one campaign before he starts another. Even Alan Keyes has enough sense to run one race at a time.
Charlie Brown's statement:
“I decided to run for Congress to do what the career politicians have repeatedly failed to do—bring people together to solve problems in our district and across our country. I have no ambition for higher office because I believe there is no greater honor than to serve the nation I dedicated my life to defending, and to represent the community where I have lived, worked and raised my family these past 17 years.
It’s time for State Senator McClintock to level with the people in our community. What office are you running for? Will you give back all the money you’ve raised for your statewide bid since February 1, 2008 – including the money you took from the tobacco companies?”
Aside from being illegal, how could voters in the 4th District expect that the guy who's already looking for his next office has any interest in or concern for their lives and their challenges? McClintock is just trying to cash a paycheck. He has one political job, and is running for two or maybe three more.
This is the defining narrative of this whole campaign - leader vs. opportunist.
This is the value of facing an opponent who had to battle through a contested primary.
Charlie Brown just released his second-quarter fundraising statistics, and he had his best quarter to date, raising $357,000 for the quarter, with over $670,000 cash on hand. Notably, $260,000 of that total was in the last 6 weeks of the quarter, which suggests that the fundraising prowess is increasing as Brown solidifies his donor base and shows his strength as a candidate. He has over 12,500 individual donors now.
Best of all, 5% of that total, nearly $18,000, will now go to the "Promises Kept Charity Challenge" for veterans care facilities.
McClintock's fundraising in his 2010 statewide accounts is pretty good (over $200,000), but because of the tough primary, he basically depleted his entire Congressional account. McClintock is at a 6:1 fundraising disadvantage. Brown ought to take advantage right now and start defining his opponent.
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