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SACRAMENTO, Calif. For a generation of ambitious Democrats, its an almost intoxicating prize: the opportunity to serve as governor of the largest state in the nation and, along with it, become President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpTop Dem: Trump's falsehoods will hurt relations with Congress Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates Mexican official: We could leave NAFTA if there are no clear benefits MOREs No. 1 foil.

But even as some of the states best-known politicians begin campaigning for the right to replace term-limited Gov. Jerry Brown (D), they are coming to grips with a new California primary system where the top two vote getters will advance to the general election, regardless of party.

This is uncharted territory in the governors race, said Garry South, a longtime Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. With the top two, you dont have to finish first. You can finish second, and youre still off to the races.

Already, three prominent Democrats Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Treasurer John Chiang and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are vying for those top two slots. The field is likely to grow: Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and state Senate President Kevin de Len are considering bids, and current Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is running for reelection in March, has not ruled out a run.

The few public polls that have been conducted show Newsom in the drivers seat. A Field Poll conducted in November showed Newsom taking 23 percent; no other Democrat topped double figures. Two Republicans who have not entered the race, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, came in with 16 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

Not always a good place to start, Newsom said of being the front-runner. Thats nice, but not something to hang your hat on.

Conventional, if counterintuitive, wisdom in California holds that a Democrat with a political base in the San Francisco Bay Area holds an edge over a Democrat from the more populous Los Angeles area. Bay Area voters turn out at higher percentages and vote more reliably Democratic than Angeleno voters.

But in an unconventional race, the leading contenders are spending their early days wooing voters outside their natural constituencies. Newsom took 84 trips to Southern California in 2016, while Villaraigosa has already spent more than a month campaigning in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire, some of the last Republican bastions in the state.

Historically, neither Democrats or Republicans spend a whole lot of time in the Central Valley or the Inland Empire, Villaraigosa said in an interview. Long before the November election, in the parts of the state where I had an opportunity to visit, it was clear that people are struggling and looking for jobs, concerned about the future. They feel like the economy isnt working for them.

Newsom, too, said it was incumbent on him to reach beyond his existing base: The race will be won or lost on my ability our ability to successfully broaden our appeal in the southern part of the state.

The leading candidates are carving out early niches for themselves.

Newsom, who backed same-sex marriage long before it was popular even among Democrats, and who supported a ballot measure to legalize marijuana for recreational uses, is positioning himself as the liberal favorite. The California Nurses Association, which backed Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersDems unveil infrastructure plan, reach out to Trump Sanders: Trump ignored millions by moving forward with pipelines The Hill's 12:30 Report MORE (I-Vt.) in the Democratic presidential primary, is behind him.

I do think that the Bernie base will go with Gavin, said RoseAnn DeMoro, head of the Nurses Association.

Villaraigosa, a former union organizer himself, is casting himself as the experienced government executive who gets things done for blue-collar constituents. He is also the only Hispanic candidate in the race so far, a key factor in a state where minorities make up a majority of registered voters.

That community is growing, and growing quickly, said Eric Jaye, Villaraigosas chief strategist.

Chiang has less of a geographic base, though as state treasurer, he has tried to appear as the progressive but fiscally prudent heir to Browns legacy. Chiang is being bolstered by the increasingly influential community of Asian-American politicians and donors in the state.

Almost a year and a half before the primary, plenty of wildcards remain. Garcetti has not ruled out a run; in Washington last week, the Los Angeles mayor told The Hill he is only focused on his reelection bid this March.

Steyer, who spent $87 million on behalf of Democratic candidates in 2016, has yet to make up his mind. Self-funding candidates often fare poorly in California politics the most recent example is Meg Whitman, who lost the governorship after spending $144 million of her own money in 2010 but Steyer has gone out of his way to introduce himself to voters, both through his environmental activism and by backing a ballot measure to raise taxes on cigarettes in 2016.

Somebody who gets identified as being a total self-funder with very limited political experience, or none, looks opportunistic. That model has been universally a disaster, said Bill Carrick, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. Tom has really worked very hard to make sure people understand he didnt wake up one morning and decide to run for public office.

But in an interview, Steyer sounded less certain of his own future than he had been before Novembers elections, when Donald Trump won the White House.

I said Im going to wait untilNov. 8with the full expectation that the decision [to run for governor] would be made under President-elect Clinton, Steyer told The Hill. The world did not play out onNov. 8the way I expected it to, and I want to make sure whatever I do is well considered and responds to the reality of whats going on.

The final wild card is the weak California Republican Party. If the party is able to line up behind one candidate, that contender has a strong chance of making the runoff. If the field is divided among several candidates, as it was during the 2016 race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara BoxerBarbara BoxerTop Obama adviser signs with Hollywood talent agency: report Democrats vie for chance to take on Trump as California governor Feinstein to hold campaign fundraisers, a hint she'll run again MORE (D), an all-Democratic runoff becomes more plausible.

Faulconer, the popular mayor of San Diego, is the only Republican who startles Democrats, several party strategists said. (The last Republican governor to win a regularly scheduled election, Pete Wilson, was also the mayor of San Diego.) Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, a prominent Trump backer, is also said to be considering a bid, though few in California believe he will run.

Though Californias next governor will take office in 2019, he or she is almost certain to become an immediate force on the national landscape. Brown and California Democratic leaders have already set themselves up as bulwarks against Trumps administration, and the next governor is likely to be seen as a potential presidential candidate.

This will be the most followed race in 2018, particularly with the election of Donald Trump, Villaraigosa predicted. People are going to be a lot more interested in the governors race in California, in no small part because California has charted a dramatically different path. Much of what President Obama tried to do and wanted to do, weve been doing.

The California governor will always play an outsized role, Newsom said. Thats our history. And its not just in our rearview mirror. I think its in our windshield.

Despite that outsized role, the next governor faces historical headwinds if he or she opts for a national run: The Democratic Party has never nominated a candidate from a state farther west than Texas. Even Brown, the seemingly undisputed king of California politics, failed to win his partys nomination on three separate occasions.

See the original post:
Democrats vie for chance to take on Trump as California governor - The Hill

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Progressives could learn a thing or two from conservative activists who put targets on the backs of GOP lawmakers.

So many of today's top Republican lawmakers like Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Kentucky), and Marco Rubio (Fla.) were relative outsiders who won election in 2010 after toppling better-known and better-funded establishment Republicans (three-term Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, respectively). Even when this strategy failed (think Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware), it was a critical early Obama era effort on behalf of conservative donors and activists. They sought not only to displace Democrats from office, but also many moderate and establishment Republicans, too. And in the years since, some of the most conservative Republicans in the House and Senate have repeatedly faced either well-funded or well-supported primary challengers who are even more right-wing than they are. This is an important reason why the national GOP has skidded so far to the right in recent years.

On the other side, however, moderate Democrats have rarely faced the same challenges from their left flank. In more conservative states, the excuse is usually that moderates like Mark Pryor (Arkansas) or Mary Landrieu (Louisiana) are the best the Democrats could possibly do, given the circumstances. In liberal states, like New Jersey which has one senator who opposed the Iran deal and another who sat on the board of directors for the Alliance for School Choice with Betsy DeVos the excuse is often a lawmaker's close proximity to an industry that requires "pro-business" policies.

Enough is enough.

If Democrats want to regain national power, they must stop cynically and brazenly triangulating. They can no longer just quietly lament their centrist leaders. Progressives must fight back. They have to take on moderate, establishment-backed Democrats in primaries even, in some cases, incumbents who don't embody the core ideals of a progressive movement positioning itself to be a real alternative to the GOP.

The Democratic Party has long been averse to intra-party conflict. But you needn't look farther than the 2016 presidential race to see how hungry so many Democratic voters are for progressive alternatives.

Well before the primary officially kicked off, Hillary Clinton all but cleared the field, with only former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley given any sort of a chance. What happened instead is that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist who has railed against the two-party system for his entire career, took a longshot bid all the way to the last primary, garnering around 43 percent of all votes cast, winning 23 contests, and putting up a surprisingly strong fight in pretty much every region of the country apart from the South.

With President Trump and the Republicans now in unified control over the federal government, it's all the more important to provide real choices in what the opposition to Trump should look like. In open primaries for who gets to face Republicans, leftist activists should be organizing right now to decide who the progressive candidate will be, as establishment Democrats looking to take on Republicans in winnable seats are assuredly already making calls and lining up endorsements.

If Trump's first days in office are any indication, his presidency promises to be a historic disaster for the working class, which means that if Democrats mobilize, they'll have a tremendous opportunity in 2018. Pretty much any House, Senate, or governor's seat they could possibly dream of having a chance at may well be fair game. But incredibly, some Democrats don't see it that way; as Rachel Cohen wrote for the American Prospect, Democrats in Maryland are shying away from taking on Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of a very Democratic state who's up for re-election in 2018. Why? "He's moderate and just too well-liked," Cohen was told.

It's long past time for Democrats to shed this sense of defeatism toward races against Hogan and others, like Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R), just because the GOP incumbent is popular now. A lot can change in two years, especially when the face of the Republican Party is someone as volatile as President Trump.

But while Republican-controlled seats should unquestionably be the focus, it's also true that no Democrat no senator, no member of Congress, no governor, and no state legislator should be able to take their own renomination in 2018 for granted if they cosign any part of the right's agenda to privatize everything, install the extremely wealthy in the halls of government, and roll back decades worth of social progress.

A good first litmus test for this? Votes on the confirmation of Trump's Cabinet nominees. Progressives should be prepared to fight, with full force, everyone who is willing to hand over the federal government to people like DeVos, Labor nominee Andy Pudzer, Treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin, and attorney general pick Jeff Sessions.

There is a real need for fresh blood in the Democratic Party; not just in districts that could be flipped from Republican hands, but in safe seats occupied by Democrats who came to prominence through aligning themselves with the Third Way. After all, this is the faction of the party that ultimately negotiated the public option out of the Affordable Care Act, which arguably contributed to the law's pending doom.

Trump is president. And so the clock is already ticking for 2018. Progressives have to start organizing now for better options at the ballot box, and ultimately, a better future.

Continued here:
Democrats need to start fighting with each other - The Week Magazine

Saying they fear President Trump with his finger on the nuclear trigger, two congressional Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday that would prevent the White House from launching a nuclear first strike without a declaration of war from Capitol Hill.

Sen. Edward J. Markey and Rep. Ted W. Lieu said their bill was designed to put a check on Mr. Trump, who during the presidential campaign had sent mixed signals on his thoughts about nuclear proliferation and the possibility of a U.S. first strike.

It is a frightening reality, Mr. Lieu, California Democrat, said of Mr. Trump, saying the new president showed a lack of understanding of U.S. capabilities.

U.S. law and American military policy does give the president the power to initiate a nuclear strike. Mr. Trump during the campaign said he would not strike first but immediately added he would also be prepared and cant take anything off the table.

The two Democrats first introduced their bill during the campaign season last year, but it didnt advance. Its also unlikely their new bill would clear a GOP-controlled Congress this year.

More:
Democrats propose taking Donald Trump's finger off nuclear trigger - Washington Times

Senate Democrats are formally askingSen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to have a second confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, President Trumps education nominee, arguing that they need an opportunity to further scrutinize her potential conflicts of interests and preparedness to lead the Education Department.

Education is too important an issue, and the Secretary of Education is too important a position for the country and for this Committee, to jam a nominee through without sufficient questioning and scrutiny, they wrote to Alexander in a letter Monday. This is not about politics, it should not be about partisanship it should be about doing the work we were elected by our states to do to ask questions of nominees on behalf of the people we represent.

Those signing the letter included 10 Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats. They are all members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), which is overseeing DeVoss confirmation.

[DeVos lauded as bold reformer, called unfit for the job]

Democrats complained when Alexander, chairman of the HELP committee, limited each member of the committee to one five-minute round of questioning during DeVoss first hearing, on Jan. 17. Alexander was resolute at the time, and one of his aides said Monday that he will not hold another hearing for DeVos.

Betsy DeVos has already met with each committee member in their offices, spent nearly an hour and a half longer in her Senate hearing than either of President Obamas education secretaries, and is now answering 837 written questions 1,397 including all the questions within a question that Democrats have submitted for her to answer, Alexanders aide said. Thats compared with the 81 questions 109 including all questions within a question Republicans submitted in writing to Obamas two Secretaries of Education combined.

Alexander argued at the Jan. 17 hearing that he was hewing to a committee precedent, treating DeVos as Arne Duncan and John King, Obamas two education secretaries, had been treated during their confirmation hearings. But Democrats said that no committee chairman had ever before shut down a hearing before members had a chance to ask all their questions.

Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for education secretary, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for her confirmation hearing Jan. 17. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Duncan and King were known quantities with long track records in public education, Democrats said; there simply wasnt as much to ask them. They have framed DeVos as a different nominee altogether: A Michigan billionaire who has no professional experience in public schools.

DeVos fed that narrative when she stumbled over questions about basic education policy during the Jan. 17 hearing, at one point suggesting that states should be able to decide whether to enforce a federal civil rights law meant to protect children with disabilities.

Her statement that guns should not be banned from schools because of potential grizzlies at a rural Wyoming school became instant fodder for late-night comics. Her hearing and the optics of her nomination a wealthy political donor with no experience as an educator, who wouldnt promise Senators that she would swear off trying to privatize public schools have made her an object of criticism from many outside the usual Beltway education policy circles.

[With lightning speed, Betsy DeVos became a target of late-night comics]

Democrats also want to press DeVos on potential conflicts of interest arising from her vast wealth and financial holdings. DeVos disclosed in ethics paperwork filed with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) last week that she plans to divest from 102 companies that could present potential conflicts, but she also said she would retain interests in Neurocore, a company that purports to help students with ADHD perform better in school.

She is maintaining her stake in a family trust that has a financial interest in a company connected to for-profit higher education institutions, as well as two other family trusts about which she disclosed nothing, according to the OGE forms.

DeVoss supporters including advocates for vouchers and charter schools, along with many Senate Republicans have accused Democrats of mounting a politically motivated attack.

The committee has received Betsy DeVoss paperwork from the Office of Government Ethics. She has completed the committees paperwork, answered questions for 3 hours at her confirmation hearing, met privately with the members of the committee, and she will now spend the coming days answering senators written questions for the record, a spokesperson for Alexander said last week. We know that Betsy DeVos is a passionate defender of improving opportunities for low-income children who has committed to implement the law fixing No Child Left Behind as Congress wrote it, support public schools, and work to protect all children and students from discrimination and ensure they are educated in a safe environment.

Alexander had initially scheduled a committee vote on DeVoss confirmation for Jan. 24, but decided to delay the vote a week, until Jan. 31, to give Senators an opportunity to examine the ethics paperwork. But Democrats dont just want more time they want another chance to publicly question DeVos.

[After ethics review, Senate postpones committee vote for Betsy DeVos]

We would like to ask Ms. DeVos additional questions we were prevented from asking this week given we did not know all of the financial and ethical information that has now been shared with us, as well as address additional questions that have arisen from the OGE paperwork, Democrats wrote in their letter to Alexander. In particular, we believe it is important to ask her questions around companies she will continue to own that are directly impacted by the Department of Education and this administrations education agenda. We believe the opportunity to ask such questions is consistent with the responsibilities and practices of this committee.

Democrats seek second confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos

Excerpt from:
Democrats request another hearing for DeVos, Trump's education pick, before confirmation vote - Washington Post

Alex Ellison, a senior at Bostons Emerson College, was thrilled by what she saw at the womens marches. She called her uncle, and Rep. Keith Ellison listened as the niece hed struggled to get involved in the 2016 campaign described how inspiring it was to be surrounded by women, fighting for a cause.

I was like oh, now youre interested? Ellison (D-Minn.) remembered with a laugh.

The scale of Saturdays marches, in Washington and elsewhere, surprised even the most optimistic boosters. Democrats who had tried and failed to generate enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton saw crowds conquering cities, as well as small towns shed badly lost.

But after a day of massive protest, the party, and liberals more generally, are left to wonder what comes next.

Just as Republicans once adapted to the emergence of the tea party movement, Democrats are trying to figure out what a new and much larger mobilization will mean for the fights against Trump and congressional Republicans. Saturdays marches, which featured speeches from many leading Democrats, were not explicitly Democratic events. Ellison, like all but one leading candidate to run the Democratic National Committee, spent the hours around the march at a donor meeting in Florida.

At that meeting, talk of the march and viral photos of the crowd sizes and witty signs brightened up what had been conceived as a Democrats-in-the-wilderness summit. People recognize the dangers Trump represents and theyre energized to take back our country, said David Brock, who organized the Democracy Matters event in Florida. We must channel yesterdays energy into action and I have no doubt well be successful. What the world saw yesterday was only the beginning of our resistance.

That resistance belongs to no one group. Womens March organizers created an intersectional event, its manifesto imagining a world where women are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments, but saying nothing about electoral politics.

Many Democrats agreed with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who said that Trumps election had woken a sleeping giant. In 2014 and 2016, hed watched Democrats in Maryland, then the Rust Belt, lose seemingly gift-wrapped elections as their base stayed home and the Republicans made gains. On Saturday, after he spoke to marchers, he joined them in a crowd that was too big to march through the city. The enthusiasm gap seemed to be vanishing before his eyes.

There were a lot of people saying, We wish we had this in November, Van Hollen said. We need to harness that energy in the weeks and months ahead. The Senates going to be the main battleground; we need people to sustain what we saw on Saturday and fight the battles.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who attended the march with his wife and daughter and opened his Capitol Hill office for the day, said his last experience with a protest that big was the counter-inaugural to President Richard Nixons election.

The next stop is organization, he said. We need to correct the cracks in the political structure that didnt work as well as it should have in the last election and that means organization in every town and every small place and big space in the country. I sensed a certain fervor and determination in that regard that was very heartening.

Connolly urged the anti-Trump masses to set their sights on the 2018 midterms as a chance to put a real check on the administration and test the ability of those who have a different point of view to organize and deliver.

If the past is any guide, he said, the contrast could be striking. In 2009, in the only gubernatorial races in the country, Virginia and New Jersey installed Republicans Robert F. McDonnell and Chris Christie. The year before, both states favored Barack Obama for president.

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), who hosted 1,500 at a pre-march breakfast in Silver Spring, Md., said the outpouring of support for progressive politics at the march could change the political dynamics in Congress.

The political environment is going to be much more hospitable to Republicans who break ranks with Trump rather than those who toe the party line, he said. We know that the GOP places emphasis on party discipline. It will put a number of them in a tough spot.

Raskin said that if he were head of the Democratic National Committee a job he does not want, he noted he would launch a program to put the young people who attended their first big march Saturday to work.

In terms of the Democratic Party, I think that our strategic pathway is clear, he said. We have got to go on a consultant and pollster fast for a while. And we should put that money into organizing.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who like Connolly and Raskin represents a heavily Democratic district, urged people to direct their discontent into good and noble causes, like Big Brothers Big Sisters and Meals on Wheels, and run for precinct-level offices.

If we can channel all of that action into political action and specifically precinct action, he said, Democrats could take back the GOP-controlled Virginia House as well as the U.S. House and win the governors race. Though Beyer said he wasnt predicting any outcomes, he said the steep drop-off in voter participation in a nonpresidential year presents the party with a clear challenge one that amounts to a 98,000-vote difference in his Northern Virginia district alone.

I deeply believe the world works by invitation, he said. Something to be exploited from these rallies around the country is to turn them into political activists.

Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, who marched in Washington, predicted that many of those women are calling congressional offices and will go to town halls. And all of them will vote in 2018. The energy is growing, not diluting. Every day, Trump builds the opposition.

Melissa Byrne, a candidate for DNC vice chairman, said that the larger-than-expected crowds showing up for protests will encourage even more people to become activists. But having organized for Obamas 2008 campaign and for the Occupy D.C. movement, she saw how the new activists would be tested even if the rallies grew in size.

People are going to get frustrated, because you want your wins to come quickly, she said. For people who are new to this, it takes a while to get that.

But the size of the rallies, and the speed with which they were put together, seemed like an early win to their participants. In the campaign, Trump had promised to blow up not just the Obama legacy but a long liberal consensus on issues such as immigration and consumer protection.

It doesnt feel early to me, said Leigha LaFleur, 42, an Oregon delegate for Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) who came to the march in Washington and knitted 13 pink pussyhats for friends. I think people were wanting this on November 10. And even though hes been president since Friday, hes already been doing things that affect peoples lives.

See the original post:
Democrats see hope in women's marches but wonder what comes next - Washington Post