First off, there won't be any results from the CA-10 race until 10:00 p.m. As reported by Lisa Vorderbrueggen, the registrars in the district have been ordered by Gov. Schwarzenegger to hold the results until CA-10 first responders who are serving away from home on the fire lines in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Mariposa Counties have had an opportunity to vote. Since they have until 10:00 to cast their votes, the running tallies will not be posted until then.
Of course, the regular polls close at 8:00, and the registrars will immediately commence with counting votes just as if there were no hold. So look for the first results, when they come at 10:00, to be fairly complete. Tonight there will be no hitting "refresh" for updates, no cheering if the numbers shift a little bit. Instead, just look for pretty much one big information dump.
Thank goodness this election is almost over. The anonymous videographer known as midwestpinch1 is back with what we can only hope is the last video in the race.
KPIX Channel 5 has released a final SurveyUSA poll on the race in CA-10. Taken 8/26-8/28, the survey shows very little movement from the previous SUSA findings. John Garamendi is still in front, with 25%; Mark DeSaulnier is at 16%; and Joan Buchanan is at 12%. Among Democrats, only Anthony Woods increased his numbers significantly, moving from 5% to 9%. For comparison, you can check the results of the 8/11-8/12 polling here.
SUSA surveyed 555 likely voters, with a MoE of +/-4.2%. My favorite part, though, was their disclaimer:
Because turnout in a stand-alone special primary election is difficult to predict, and because voters may vote for any candidate, regardless of their own party affiliation, it is possible that candidates will not finish in the order shown here.
If you're in the district and you watch cable, you may have noticed that John Garamendi has tweaked his TV spots in recent days. His "On Healthcare" commercial has been modified -- gone are the opening and closing "yee-haw" segments where he canters up on horseback. In their place are family scenes with his wife and grandchildren. You've got to give the guy credit -- it only took him five months of running and a LOT of mockery before he realized that the rugged rancher image was totally laughable in CA-10.
Now he's out with his closer for GOTV weekend, a recitation of his endorsements from the conservative editorial boards of the local papers. You can catch the new opening here.
And I have a question. If you're endorsed by a news conglomerate, is it just a little dishonest to quote from the same endorsement but cite the different mastheads under which it was published, thereby implying a wider base of endorsers? Just wondering...
As has been pointed out frequently over recent years, CA-10 has become a Democratic stronghold, with a registration advantage of D+18 and a Cook PVI of D+11. So what do those numbers mean in the context of the current special Congressional election? Well, they mean that it is a fact -- you can take it to the bank -- that our next member of Congress will be a Democrat.
So if you run a nutty right-wing PAC, what do you do with that lemon besides just suck on it? Well, here's how Move America Forward (MAF), "part of a pro-war lobby... headed by California Republican activists, talk show hosts and staff members of the public relations firm Russo Marsh & Rogers, which has strong ties to the Republican Party," is attempting to make lemonade.
Only in the case of MAF Freedom PAC, the strategy looks more like this:
Force a November run-off
?
Victory!!!
I'll let them explain the plan:
Conservatives looking to take back California's 10th Congressional district from liberals are gaining strength, thanks to voter anger at President Obama's agenda to socialize medicine and hurt veterans' healthcare, among other issues. But most important are the men who are challenging the front-runner, liberal California's Lt. Gov. John Garamendi.
Republicans David Harmer and Chris Bunch, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, can force the six liberals who are running in the 10th District to face a runoff in November -- but they need our help now to force a run-off election and victory. We can stop the Obama Agenda by taking back this congressional seat, which sits across the Bay Area from Nancy Pelosi's own district.
"This is a district that can swing," political consultant Ray McNally said. "There's a lot of uncertainty and voter angst out in the country, and Democrats are losing ground."
Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, there's a second CA-10 fact that you can take to the bank: no candidate in the September 1 election will reach the 50%+1 threshold necessary to avoid a November run-off. There are quite simply too many strong candidates for any one of them to reach that level.
And that's the beauty of the MAF Freedom PAC scam. They know they're helpless to influence the ultimate outcome of this race; yet they also sense an opportunity for self-promotion and enrichment.
DONATE NOW TO STOP THE LIBERALS IN CALIF.
Now is the time to strike. The nonpartisan SurveyUSA firm shows Garamendi with support of only 26 percent of respondents. His next closest Democrat contender has 15 percent. The only way Obama's candidate can win is with 50 percent of the vote plus one. If we SPLIT THE VOTE by flooding the polls with votes for any candidate other than the liberal leader, John Garamendi, (regardless of whether they are for Harmer or Bunch) and Garamendi gets even 49.999% of the vote, WE FORCE A RUNOFF where it will be a clear choice.
We can keep Garamendi from going automatically to Washington and force him to square off in a battle against a conservative who CAN win and show the rest of the country that Obama's radical agenda is running out of support!
WE CAN STOP THE LIBERAL AGENDA by getting involved now, just a week before the Special Election. If we do not act now, we will allow the left-wingers to continue their march toward Obama's radical agenda of socialism and the destruction of the American way.
Naturally, the email contains a money ask, although you may have noticed that MAF doesn't say how the funds raised from this letter will be used to achieve so-called victory in CA-10. Yet by setting the bar for this "victory" so ridiculously low, they've guaranteed that they'll be able to return to their list next week trumpeting their success. I can see it now...
YOU DID IT! Thanks to your donations, conservatives were able to stop Obama's liberal agenda and FORCE A RUNOFF in November where WE CAN WIN!
The mystery videographer known as midwestpinch1 is at it again, this time with a video about John Garamendi's support for the mistreatment of farm animals.
As a side note, I recently got a phone call from the Garamendi campaign. When I questioned the caller about Garamendi's stance on the humane treatment of farm animals, he made no apologies and, instead, defended Garamendi's position on Prop. 2 by citing a UC Davis study which claimed that allowing animals to move freely in their cages would raise the cost of eggs to and cause egg farmers to go out of business.
So apparently Garamendi and his campaign have decided that they're good with being at odds with over 65% of the voters in CA-10.
KTVU Political Editor Randy Shandobil reported on the CA-10 race on last night's Channel 2 News...
It's kind of amazing to see the impunity with which Garamendi offers up a lie that can be (and is) easily debunked by a good reporter, and then responds, "So what's the point?"
The Bay Area News Group (Contra Costa Times, Tri-Valley Herald, etc.) yesterday endorsed John Garamendi in the CA-10 race (although it's not online). Of course, Garamendi wasted no time in sending out an email crowing about the endorsement. What's interesting about the email, however, is what Garamendi omitted.
Here's Garamendi's email, with his excerpt from the endorsement:
Garamendi is our choice for the 10th Congressional District
THE DEPARTURE of Ellen Tauscher as representative of the 10th Congressional District to serve in the Obama administration has left a void that will be a challenge to fill.
The diverse district, which runs from Fairfield through much of Contra Costa County and into southern Alameda County, has become increasingly Democratic.
It is heavily favored to elect a Democrat to replace Tauscher, especially without a Republican officeholder seeking the seat.
Among the five Democrats running are three state officeholders: Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan.
Of the three, only Garamendi has experience working in Washington, D.C., as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior in the Clinton administration. Garamendi also has broad experience in state government with two years in the Assembly and 14 years in the state Senate. He twice was elected as California Insurance Commissioner, where he helped make significant consumer reforms.
Of all 14 candidates, we believe Garamendi has the right combination of experience, knowledge of key issues and dedication to serving the public interest that make him the best choice to fill Tauscher's seat.
With eight years' experience as insurance commissioner, Garamendi has valuable knowledge needed to make informed decisions about health care reform. As a rancher and with service in the federal Department of Interior, he has credibility with agricultural interests and environmentalists, which puts him in a favorable position to work on critical water issues that affect the Delta.
Garamendi lives on the edge of the 10th Congressional District, but has considerable knowledge about the area, expertise on issues affecting the region, and is not beholden to special interests.
Tauscher's replacement will be going to Congress at a critical time, with major issues confronting the nation, including economic recovery, health care, energy, the war in Afghanistan and reform of financial institutions. The 10th Congressional District needs someone with broad experience and dedication to the public interest. We believe John Garamendi best meets those criteria.
And here's the part of the endorsement that the Garamendi campaign probably didn't want its Democratic supporters to see:
We have serious questions about [DeSaulnier's] commitment to the public interest independent of acceding to the wishes of organized labor, particularly public employee unions.
Many of the financial problems that afflict Contra Costa County today stem directly from decisions DeSaulnier championed while he was supervisor. Most notably, in 2002, at a time when the county faced a $31.5 million shortfall, was already laying off workers and was already experiencing increased public employee pension costs, DeSaulnier supported unsustainable pension increases that hiked benefits for public safety workers by as much as 50 percent.
The plan allowed public safety workers to retire at age 50 with a pension worth 3 percent of their salary for each year served.
Such excessive public employee union benefits have strained some local jurisdictions to the brink of bankruptcy. Indeed, bankruptcy, which would allow the rewriting of unaffordable employee contracts, might be the only way out for some jurisdictions. But Democratic legislators, DeSaulnier and Buchanan among them, have backed an effort to remove the use of local government bankruptcy. They are pushing Assembly Bill 155, which would require state approval of such bankruptcies, severely diminishing local control of fiscal policy.
Now, the Bay Area News Groups is owned by MediaNews Group, whose founder and owner is one William Dean Singleton. It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that Singleton is rabidly anti-union -- witness the editorial screed that his flagship paper, the Denver Post, published on Page One, above the fold, when Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed an executive order allowing collective bargaining for Colorado's state employees. So it's hardly shocking that Singleton's hatred for public employee unions would be reflected in BANG's endorsements.
Here's the problem that I see. Making no bones about their anti-union prejudice, BANG's editorial board has "serious questions about [DeSaulnier's] commitment to the public interest independent of acceding to the wishes of organized labor, particularly public employee unions" but in the same breath claims that "We believe Garamendi has the right combination of experience, knowledge of key issues and dedication to serving the public interest."
So BANG has set up a political equation where public employee unions are the antithesis of the public interest. According to their logic, because DeSaulnier supports those unions, he is disregarding the public interest. But if you apply that equation to BANG's comments about John Garamendi, then logically, his dedication to serving the public interest must necessitate that he has repudiated the public employee unions.
And that raises the question of exactly what was said by Garamendi in his interview with the BANG editorial board. How did he convince an editorial board that he was dedicated to serving the public interest when that same editorial board clearly believes that public employee unions are damaging to the public interest? Could it have been that part about him not living in the district, so he's not "beholden to special interests"? Because that sure sounds like some ugly code to me.
Today is the deadline for candidates to file their FEC Pre-Special Report, which in this race will cover the period from July 1 through August 12. At the moment, Joan Buchanan is the only candidate whose report is up. And the bombshell is that she lent her campaign another $250,000 back in mid-July. So it turns out that she was already at $500,000 before she made a loan of another $250,000 last Friday. Buchanan's fundraising has continued to be anemic, with a mere $30,000 for the six-week period (and a grand total of $94,000). But with her own money added in, she's easily at the head of the pack money-wise.
On the debit side of the ledger, Buchanan spent nearly $400,000 in the last six weeks ($531,000 total), almost all of it on salaries for her field operation. So she's in the final two-week stretch with an army of paid canvassers and plenty of operating capital. And if you're wondering what has possessed her to invest so much of her own money into her campaign, I can tell you that she's spent a fair amount of money on polling. So she must be seeing something that's encouraging her to keep spending.
UPDATE:Garamendi's report is up. He raised $217,000 in the period for a campaign total of $517,000.
Expenditures for the period were $341,000 ($381,000 total). Garamendi reports CoH of $133,000, less debt of $82,000, effectively leaving him with about $50,000. He's also raised another $45,000 since the Pre-Special reporting period, according to his 48-Hour reports. Garamendi's campaign had spent $50,000 on TV as of 8/12.
Expenditures were $206,000 ($278,000 total). The campaign reported $108,000 CoH and $128,000 debt, including a $15,000 loan from the candidate. So DeSaulnier is limping into the final stretch with virtually no money. That's what happens when you do things like pay Ellen Tauscher's fundraisers nearly $40,000.
Will Harper over at SF Weekly went on a pretty funny rant today about the sort of pathetic attempt by the SF Bay Guardian to exert its "influence" in the CA-10 race via its endorsement of John Garamendi:
The Bay Guardian loves to complain about a certain Chronicle columnist from Walnut Creek criticizing San Francisco policies. The Guardian essentially contends that suburbanites cannot be expected to understand the complexities of life in a teeming urban metropolis. Don't you get it, Suburb Boy? Being mugged by a homeless crackhead in the Tenderloin or shot by an East Bay club-goer in North Beach is what makes this a world-class city!
This isn't anything new for the Guardian; the paper has been butting into East Bay politics for decades even though its editors often have no clue about bridge-and-tunnel life. Three years ago, for instance, the Guardian recommended that Andy Katz be re-elected to the EBMUD board and that Courtney Ruby replace Roland Smith as "county auditor." The problems with those endorsements: Katz had never been on the EBMUD board so he couldn't be re-elected and Ruby was running to be Oakland's city auditor.
What's now new is the advanced level of hypocrisy. The Guardian has been ranting ad nauseam lately about the illegitimacy of out-of-towners' opinions about the city. So how is the Guardian weighing in on a suburban race any different? Yeah, we're sure the "suburban twits" were waiting for the editors of San Francisco's radical alt-weekly to tell them how to vote.
What's especially funny about the Bay Guardian's endorsement and indicative of how little relevance it has in CA-10 is the fact that two of the three front-runners (Joan Buchanan and Mark DeSaulnier) didn't even bother to show up for an interview with the SFBG's editorial board.
So when the SFBG says "Garamendi has a forceful presence, progressive values, long relationships with key power brokers and knowledgeable advocates, and an unmatched history of intensive work on the most pernicious problems that Congress is now wrestling with, including health care reform and resource issues," what they really mean is, "He's the only one who would talk to us."
Not to be outdone by the other candidates in CA-10, John Garamendi also released a new ad today. And although his first ad, "Proven," is what's still airing on local cable, John Garamendi's campaign is now promoting this third commercial entitled "On Health Care."
I guess the galloping-up-on-the-horse thing is working so well for "rancher" John Garamendi that he decided to devote both the beginning and the ending of his ad to the horse footage. Yee-haw! The rest of the commercial consists of Garamendi offering the following earnest, if incoherent, message:
Voiceover: Lt. Governor and Congressional candidate John Garamendi on health care.
Garamendi: We know that the more we spend, the more uninsured we have. We know that we're not getting the efficiency or the effectiveness that we must have to have the health care that all of us need so our families can thrive, so that our children can get educated, and so that this environment that I grew up in will be here for the next generation.
I'm John Garamendi and I approved this message. And I'll fight for quality health care.
What an epic non sequitur. You know, I support health care reform as much as the next progressive, but even I think it has its limitations. Maybe I just have a stunted imagination, but I fail to see how improving health care will educate our children or protect the environment. But I guess that's why John Garamendi's running for Congress -- because he's got the big vision. Health care Garamendi-style: it will teach the kids and save the trees. But can it rope a cow?
And just two weeks away from Election Day, Joan Buchanan is finally on the air with a commercial. She's got to be crossing her fingers and hoping for a food fight between DeSaulnier and Garamendi.
Well, we're into the FEC's 48-hour reporting cycle now. The Pre-Special reports should be up soon, and we'll be able to see how much money the candidates have been raising and spending (and how they've been spending it).
But in the meantime, the first of the 48-Hour reports is up. (The candidates are required to report all contributions over $1,000 every 48 hours.) The big news from over the weekend is that Joan Buchanan loaned another $250,000 to her campaign, bringing her total to date to $500,000.
And just in case you're wondering if her loan triggered the Millionaire's Amendment, the answer is no. In the past, it would have (the trigger amount in House races was $350,000). But last year's SCOTUS decision in Davis v. FECgutted the provisions of McCain-Feingold (PDF) that would have raised the donation limits for the other candidates once Buchanan crossed the threshold.
Do these sound like epithets you've heard applied to John Garamendi in the race for CA-10?
"He's just a career politician looking for his next job."
"Ten political campaigns, 26 years in the Capitol."
"He has run for Assembly, Senate, State Controller, Governor, and Lt. Governor. Now he's running for Congress"
"He's a carpetbagger."
"He doesn't understand the issues and the people of the district."
Well, while they may certainly be applicable to Garamendi, those are actually all charges that were leveled against Tom McClintock in last year's CA-04 Congressional race against Charlie Brown. In fact, those are charges that were mostly made by Charlie Brown himself. That's why I was totally gob-smacked by Charlie Brown's endorsement of John Garamendi last Monday.
But it's not just the hypocrisy.
You'd think that a guy like Brown, who spent three years running an almost single-issue campaign based on veterans and their treatment, might have been inclined to toss his endorsement to the sole Democratic veteran in the race, Anthony Woods, who served two tours of duty in Iraq. But Brown has given Woods the cold shoulder. I don't know... maybe there's some weird military rivalry thing -- Air Force Academy vs. West Point. Or maybe Charlie Brown hit his head recently and is suffering from amnesia. Go figure.
Some of you may remember the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act on which Californians voted last November. Proposition 2 specifically banned three methods of housing livestock that are widely considered to be inhumane and unhealthy: veal crates, gestation crates for pigs, and battery cages for chickens. In essence, Prop. 2 said that henceforth, farm animals must be kept in a manner that allows them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.
The residents of CA-10 voted overwhelmingly (65.6% - 34.4%) to do away with these barbarous animal cages. But one of the people who now wants to represent us in Congress stood tall in opposition to Proposition 2. That would be "rancher" John Garamendi.
Here's a brief rundown of the three types of cages that John Garamendi thinks should be used in California.
Veal Crates
Veal calves are taken from their mothers immediately after birth and spend the entirety of their short 14-week life "confined in veal crates, usually measuring 2-feet-wide, [where they] cannot turn around, stretch their limbs, or even lie down comfortably."
Gestation Crates for Pigs
A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a 7 ft by 2 ft metal enclosure used in intensive pig farming, in which a female breeding pig (sow) may be confined during pregnancy, and in effect for most of her adult life. [...]
[E]ach pregnancy last[s] four months, with an average of 2.5 litters every year. Sows, which can weigh 600 lbs, spend most of their three or four years of adult life in crates, giving birth to between five and eight litters. As the sows grow larger, they no longer fit in the crates, and must sleep on their chests, unable to turn, until they are slaughtered.
Battery Cages for Chickens
Animal welfare scientists have been critical of battery cages because they do not provide hens with sufficient space to stand, walk, flap their wings, perch, or make a nest.
Let me repeat that. Last November, Prop. 2 was approved by voters in CA-10 by a margin of 197,258 to 103,294 or 65.6% - 34.4%. John Garamendi opposed it. Yet he thinks we should send him to Washington, DC to represent us. Are you confused yet?
John Garamendi's first commercial in the CA-10 Congressional race, "Proven," is already airing on cable news outlets in CA-10.
Garamendi's second commercial, "Leader" is apparently a coming attraction.
You know, Carhartts and cow ponies might resonate in Garamendi's home district of CA-03, but in the highly suburban CA-10... I don't know; it just comes across as so John Kerry.
Well, there's new polling data in the CA-10 race that's been released by the John Garamendi campaign. Predictably, Garamendi's polling shows him with a double-digit lead (just barely). Here's the quick summary:
Candidate
Initial
After Positive Bio
John Garamendi
31%
36%
Mark DeSaulnier
21%
22%
Joan Buchanan
17%
20%
Anthony Woods
9%
9%
David Harmer (R)
5%
7%
Adriel Hampton
1%
0%
Undecided
17%
8%
Phone survey of 400 likely voters, Democratic and DTS , conducted 8/2-8/4, MoE 4.9%
The Garamendi campaign hasn't made the crosstabs public, so this poll raises almost as many questions as it answers. But I just can't shake this feeling of déjà vu when I look at these numbers. They make me think of another recent primary race: the Virginia governor's race last June. Of course, I could be totally wrong about this, but the similarities are striking.
You've got the late entry with big name recognition, lots of fundraising ability, and an endorsement from former President Bill Clinton in his back pocket -- that would be Terry McAuliffe. Then you've got the guy who started off as the presumed front-runner (before McAuliffe jumped in), Brian Moran. And you've got Creigh Deeds, who was bringing up the rear, running as a moderate. Three weeks out from election day, a DailyKos/Research 2000 tracking poll showed the following results:
May 18-20, 2009
Terry McAuliffe
36%
Brian Moran
22%
Creigh Deeds
13%
Undecided
29%
But a mere three weeks later, after Moran launched a series of negative attacks on McAuliffe which ended up bloodying both McAuliffe and Moran, Deeds swept to victory.
June 9, 2009 Election Results
Creigh Deeds
49.76%
Terry McAuliffe
26.43%
Brian Moran
23.79%
All of which is a kind of fancy way of saying, "Who knows?"
For the DeSaulnier campaign's response, flip it...
Well, it looks like somebody with some video chops has followed through on the Progressive Sundae post from way back in April about the Congressional district in which John Garamendi really lives (that would be CA-03).
So why does this matter? I'll just quote from last April's post:
[T]here is a larger and more disturbing question than the mere fact that Garamendi is, at least technically, a carpetbagger. The residents of CA-10 have spent the last 12 years being lied to by Ellen Tauscher. She has pretty consistently told people whatever is convenient for her at the moment, with little regard for the truth. It is one of the things that has turned many of the Democrats in her district against her.
So how does it bode for a candidate, in his freaken announcement of his candidacy, to start bending and twisting the truth? Take another look:
[W]hile he and his wife of 43 years own property and have roots in the 10th District, they are not residents within its borders.
"My front yard is in the district, our bedroom is not."
There's a word for those kind of roots. They're called suckers. Which is, apparently, what Garamendi thinks the voters of CA-10 are.
