CA-31: Becerra To Join Cabinet After All?

I'm not really much for forcible identity politics, but some Latino leaders are making noises that a Hispanic ought to replace Bill Richardson (who withdrew his nomination) as the Secretary of Commerce, making the argument that the Latino population must maintain its representation in the Administration. I'd prefer the best man or woman for the job, but this is a case where there already is a Hispanic who Obama considered for a separate cabinet appointment who may be able to be persuaded into accepting this one. That would be Xavier Becerra.

An Obama transition team source said a veteran California congressman, Xavier Becerra, has emerged as the leading congressional candidate to replace Richardson, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico, as President-elect Barack Obama's choice for a job that will include overseeing the 2010 U.S. Census.

“Even though he turned down the trade representative slot, Becerra is not only Hispanic, but he has the skill, talent and experience to do the Commerce job,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak for the president-elect.

“Xavier's name has gone to the top of the list of potential replacements in part because he is a member of the House leadership, he is well liked, he has very good credentials, and, of course, he was an early Obama backer,” the source said.

It's all speculative at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if this happened. Becerra wanted a bigger role in the Administration than trade representative, and certainly the Commerce Department would give him a better opportunity to shape White House policy.

Obviously this would create another special election in an adjoining district to incoming Labor Secretary Hilda Solis' CA-32. Los Angeles County from Hollywood to points east would be ground zero for political wrangling this spring.

UPDATE: Becerra's spokeswoman says he's not interested.

Xavier Becerra is not considering an appointment to become Secretary of Commerce and will remain in the House, his spokeswoman told Politico.

"The Congressman has already expressed that he is staying in Congress and looks forward to working with the Obama Administration from his position as House Democratic Vice Chair," said Fabiola Rodriguez.

CA-31: Becerra Out, Garcetti In?

Xavier Becerra, a Congressman from Hollywood, is at the least being strongly considered for the post of US Trade Representative and may have already accepted the job. Becerra is in the House leadership as Vice President of the Democratic caucus, and while he voted for NAFTA he has since regretted doing so, and he led the fight against CAFTA and other trade agreements which he felt did not have the proper safeguards, or labor and environmental standards. And channeling my inner David Sirota, the fact that pro-business conservatives are worried about the direction Becerra will take US trade policy confirms that he would be an excellent choice:

And now Business Week reports on some rumblings of opposition from the pro-business and free-trade camp:

Philip Levy, who's now with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told the mag that the choice is "troubling," arguing that "to oppose Nafta is in many ways to lash out symbolically against trade." A business lobbyist added to the mag that he and his colleagues are "pretty concerned."

Well, I'm sold.

If Obama brushes off the concerns of the American Enterprise Institute (and really, everyone should) and Becerra gets the job, a very safe Democratic seat in the heart of Los Angeles would be up for grabs. Considering the density of the city it's actually a pretty large district (with lots of it in rapidly gentrifying Hollywood), and has a good deal of Latino voters. However, this would be up for grabs in a special election, and the universe of special election voters is probably a smaller Hispanic universe than on a normal Election Day, so I wouldn't say that only a Latino candidate could win here. In fact, LA City Council President Eric Garcetti represents a good portion of the district on the council.

Garcetti would be a progressive leader in the Congress and a major upgrade. Becerra is a member of the Progressive Caucus and generally solid on the issues, but he's not particularly outspoken, and as part of the leadership team, wouldn't stray too much from the party line. On the other hand, Garcetti is a smart, committed young leader, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a graduate of the London School of Economics who has led on so many progressive issues in the city it's hard to even count them all. It would be great to have someone in the Congress with the background of dealing with key urban issues from graffiti to housing to development, while at the same time having led on important national initiatives like clean money, the war in Iraq (the LA City Council was among the first to pass a resolution opposing it) and renewable energy. Garcetti jumped aboard the Barack Obama campaign from almost the very beginning as a California chairperson, so he would be able to tap that network of organizers pretty easily. He would make a fantastic member of Congress, among the best in the nation in my view. Rep. Becerra would get to set trade policy, and Los Angeles would experience no dropoff in leadership. Everybody wins!

Spin Alley

You might as well call it "The Lying Lounge," but I just spent a little bit of time there. It's quite surreal, all this attention paid to people who are saying the most obvious statements imaginable ("My candidate did well!"). But I sought out some of our California legislators, and tried to ask them about some of the issues outside of the debate that we talk about a lot.

• Rep. Hilda Solis: It was great to see Rep. Solis here! I wasn't aware that she was a Clinton supporter (previously she had supported Bill Richardson), and I had to look up at her sign (every "spinner" has a sign) to recognize that after she started talking to me. She said that Hillary had a good chance to explain her proposals in a lot of detail tonight, including on health care and "green jobs." I mention that she was barely given a chance to mention green jobs, and asked her what she thought about the fact that every CNN debate has been sponsored by the coal industry. "I think that's not right," she said. She went on to mention some environmental justice legislation she's co-sponsored with Sen. Clinton, and I asked her to come to Calitics and tell us about it.

• Speaker Fabian Nuñez: I didn't want to hijack the interview, but I really wanted to hear his views in the aftermath of the health care reform failure in the State Senate. Fortunately, someone beat me to it, and wound the conversation around to that. After saying that Sen. Clinton "understands the complexities of the health care crisis," he was asked about the lessons of what took place in Sacramento this week. "That was a question of our fiscal crisis. The State Senate felt we couldn't afford it, and I respect their perspective. But at the federal level, there's a way to do it in a much more flexible way and get it paid for. For all the reasons we couldn't accomplish it at the state level, you can at the federal level." I wasn't able to add the question of what concrete proposals we could get through this year. But I respect that answer, maybe because it's what I've been saying for a long, long time.

• Rep. Xavier Becerra: The Hollywood Democrat is an Obama supporter, and he talked about how to get his message out to Latino voters. He talked about how his life is an embodiment of the immigrant experience and how he has worked with those communities. I asked him about the DTS voter issue, and how to get them educated that they have to opt in to get a Democratic primary ballot, and he basically said "Yeah, we have to do that." Wasn't much of an answer there. I think this is an under-the-radar issue in this primary.

• Secretary of State Debra Bowen: On E minus-5, she seemed calm. Bowen, in her role as elections cop, is maintaining a position of neutrality in the primary. "It'll be harder in the general election," she said. I asked her, in the aftermath of John Edwards dropping out of the race, should California look into Instant Runoff Voting so that people who voted early aren't disenfranchised by having their candidate drop out. She said that's something that the parties should look into ("The Green Party would probably do it immediately"), and that it would take a good deal of voter education, too. There are studies about voters in San Francisco who didn't understand IRV and ended up having their vote eventually not count because they only filled out one choice.

Well, I made the best of it and tried to get the least lies possible.

Tom Hayden For Obama

Actually, for the movement he has inspired. From an email:

I have been devastated by too many tragedies and betrayals over the past 40 years to ever again deposit so much hope in any single individual, no matter how charismatic or brilliant. But today I see across the generational divide the spirit, excitement, energy and creativity of a new generation bidding to displace the old ways. Obama's moment is their moment, and I pray that they succeed without the sufferings and betrayals my generation went through. There really is no comparison between the Obama generation and those who would come to power with Hillary Clinton, and I suspect she knows it. The people she would take into her administration may have been reformers and idealists in their youth, but they seem to seek now a return to their establishment positions of power. They are the sorts of people young Hillary Clinton herself would have scorned at Wellesley. If history is any guide, the new "best and brightest" of the Obama generation will unleash a new cycle of activism, reform and fresh thinking before they follow pragmatism to its dead end.

Many ordinary Americans will take a transformative step down the long road to the Rainbow Covenant if Obama wins. For at least a brief moment, people around the world -- from the shantytowns to the sweatshops, even to the restless rich of the Sixties generation -- will look up from the treadmills of their shrunken lives to the possibilities of what life still might be. Environmental justice and global economic hope would dawn as possibilities.

I've been saying for a while now that what will create this "change" that everyone's been bandying about is we the people. The coalition that Obama represents does offer an opportunity to build such a movement. It's certainly fragile, and may fracture once the Republicans prove resistant to a rhetoric of "post-partisanship" and working together. But it's our best hope.

UPDATE: Xavier Becerra also came out for Obama this weekend, which could combine with Ted Kennedy's endorsement to provide a lot of support in the Latino community. And if you add in this dramatic blockage of a CTA endorsement for Hillary Clinton, you have to say that the tide in California may be changing.