California Democratic Party Needs to Focus on Unifying, Not Early Endorsements--Especially in Crucial Assembly District 80

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Dale Wissman

As first time delegates at the recent California Democratic Convention in San Jose, my wife Linda and I were two of the eleven delegates who banded together to ensure that the Party made no endorsement in the 80th Assembly primary race. There were some very good reasons why eleven scrappy delegates, the majority of whom were first timers, found it necessary to stand together (no matter which candidate they supported) to ensure that the Party made no endorsement in the AD80 race. Those reasons had everything to do with good old-fashioned democracy and fairness.

To understand the brouhaha, it helps to compare it to the current Democratic presidential race. Imagine the mess if the Democratic Party attempted to endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as the Party’s presidential candidate BEFORE any voters had a chance to cast primary ballots in their state. Do you think some people would see it as unfair if Barack was endorsed over Hillary (or vice-versa) without a primary vote? You bet. Do you think it would create conflict? Absolutely. Yet, that is exactly the scenario that played out in San Jose at the state Democratic Party Convention in the 80th Assembly. Under those circumstances, it’s easy to see why recent events in San Jose elicited such strong reactions from both the sides of the endorsement/no endorsement issue.

Here are some details. The Democratic Party’s endorsement of a candidate in the 80th for the primary election in June is, to say the least, complicated. First, a “pre-endorsement conference” is held where the vast majority of the 70 or so delegate votes come from Democratic clubs. Each club receives one delegate vote for every 20 members. Then, if no endorsement is reached, or if the endorsement is contested, about two dozen Party delegates (no club votes) make the decision at the state Democratic Convention. The vast majority of the votes for Greg Pettis at the March Pre-Endorsement Conference came from a few Democratic clubs in the Westside of the Coachella Valley. Some of those clubs share the same members. For example, the Stonewall Democrats share many members with the Palm Springs Democratic Club. Both those clubs share members with the Democrats of the Desert. That means, for the purpose of delegate votes, the clubs as a whole can get double or even triple credit for the same people. For some of the delegates, that didn’t seem fair.

Another red flag came from the fact that all of the clubs with significant delegates at the pre-endorsement conference are located in the westside of the 80th Assembly District. That is problematic, if only because most of the actual Democratic voters are in La Quinta, Indio, Coachella, Blythe, and Imperial County. Because there are fewer, and in some cases, no Democratic Clubs in these areas, there was significant amounts of disenfranchisement in communities outside of the western Coachella Valley when it came to the endorsement process.

This major disconnect in the Party, due to a lack of club development outside of the Western Coachella Valley, mirrors a bigger problem. Democrats in the Coachella Valley have ignored Imperial County in past AD80 races at their own peril. While better-organized Riverside County has faithfully voted to its democratic registration in each of the past three elections, Imperial County Democrats have not. Essentially, Imperial County voters have been “King Makers” by voting as much as 25 points off the Democratic registration numbers for the Republican candidate, Bonnie Garcia, who has won three successive victories against three very different Democratic challengers…all thanks in great part to more socially conservative Imperial County Democrats who simply are not plugged into the strong Democratic organizations in Riverside County. The fact that Imperial County, and the Eastern Coachella Valley was being ignored once again, this time in the Democratic Party’s own internal endorsement process, was a third red flag for some delegates.