This is the second of a planned 4 pieces on the recent mid-terms elections

I decided on the day after the Trump election in 2016 that it was all hands on deck for the mid-term in 2018. In some ways this election was our “Spain” a chance to deal blows to advancing right-wing authoritarianism before it consolidated its power. Just as the generation of the 30’s left their comforts, and risked death to fight Franco, we had to do some dramatic things to brake Trump. I told my friends in the Bay Area that it was time to stop hand wringing, hair splitting and latte sipping and get out and flip the House. Many responded. A high school friend of mine came all the way from Australia to work on the 10^th in Modesto (which we flipped). This was the kind of exemplary sacrifice needed in this historical moment. I decided to spend September 10 to November 7 in Orange County (OC) working as a volunteer in the California Congressional 39^th.

When I arrived for volunteer duty in Orange County, California two months ahead of the Congressional mid-term election, the candidate Gil Cisneros (D) asked me why I had come down 400 miles from San Francisco to join his effort. I told him that it was a choice between District 2 in Northern Maine or his Orange County race. Gil said he was sure that the lobster in Maine was better, but he assured me that the fish tacos in the OC were unbeatable. I choose the OC because it was an easy 25 mile commute from my mother-in-law’s house in El Monte and also because I knew that my comrade and co-author Rand Wilson would cover the Maine 2^nd district from Somerville, MA.

Both races, the California 39^th and the Maine 2^nd have finally been decided. On Sunday, November 18 Young Kim finally conceded to Gil in the 39^th. This came after a long process of counting late mail ballots and provisional ballots. Young conceded even though a few days earlier she had attended a new member orientation in Washington, DC and had her picture taken with the freshman incoming class. What hubris in the face of clear evidence that she would eventually lose!

In Maine Bruce Poliquin, the incumbent, had a plurality of votes on election day, but not a majority and therefore under Maine law the election went to Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) meaning that the 2^nd and 3^rd choices of voters for the two minor candidates would be counted. Jared Golden the Democrat won under RCV although Poliquin attempted unsuccessfully to get a judge to stop the ranked choice system and award him the election. The Maine Republican seat was the last red island in a sea of Congressional blue in New England. The 39^th is one of four Orange County seats that were Republican held but in districts that Hilary won in 2016. All four of those seats have been flipped and the OC will be represented by six Democrats in the House.

Cisneros was a newbie to politics and to the District. His principal claim to fame prior to running a very disciplined and solid campaign was that he and his wife Jacki won the California lottery about ten years ago to the tune of $266 million. They set up an educational foundation to fund scholarships for Latino youth to go to college. Gil is a Navy veteran and was a Frito Lay manager before winning the lottery. In his first run for office he bested a field of 8 Democrats in the primary and entered the mid-term running against Young Kim, a Korean American raised and schooled in the district who was a long time aide to the 20 year incumbent, Ed Royce who stepped down. She also had served a term as a California Assemblywoman and was deeply embedded in the Asian Pacific community and particularly the Korean evangelical church.

When I arrived on the scene in early September, I found a very professional ground game, in fact the best political ground game I have ever worked with. Of course there was no lack of resources given the candidate’s personal wealth and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (D Triple C in campaign parlance) money coming in for a crucial race that could have potentially decided control of the House. I found immediate heroes and I told them so. One was Phil Janowicz, a Cal State Fullerton Chemistry professor who was one of the 8 Democratic candidates in the primary. He dropped out of the primary to make sure that a Democrat qualified for the final. There was a real danger that in California’s open primary system Democrats would split all the votes and leave the final field to two Republicans. Janowicz was a profile in courage and I will never forget him.

Then I met countless volunteers, many older white women from the district who were dedicated to flipping the seat. They had suffered for years under Republican rule and physical intimidation. They couldn’t put out Democratic lawn signs fearing retribution. Karen Lawson, another hero, was a stalwart activist from Yorba Linda, the birthplace of Richard Nixon. She told me the City Council had invited Sheriff Joe Arpaio to come to town to be honored for his “heroic” persecution of Latino immigrants in Maricopa County, Arizona. For these women, long time OC residents, the Cisneros campaign was a liberating vehicle and they poured their hearts into it.

My mother in law, Ramona Perez also played an important role in feeding and supporting the ground troops. On three occasions she made lasagna sized trays of cookies, oatmeal and raisin extraordinaire that were eaten by hundreds of volunteers. On one volunteer Thursday evening, mariachis serenaded her with thanks and played one of her favorite tunes, “Hace Un Año”.

The campaign was very persistent and thorough. I was getting texts and calls from staffers who were sitting in another office separated from mine reminding me to participate in events that I was responsible for organizing. My wife received calls in SF from a volunteer who happened to be sitting next to me. She explained that while she couldn’t be on the doors next weekend, she had loaned her husband to the campaign. I jokingly told several male phone volunteers to “Stop calling my wife!”

One feature of the door-to-door work that I had not witnessed before is ballot collection. California law allows campaign volunteers to pick up filled out sealed ballots from voters and deliver them to the polls. I couldn’t imagine handing off my ballot to a stranger at the door, but our volunteers were quite successful in doing just that, a good ground game in California focuses on that tactic, and it often provides the winning margin.

In the end can money, outside volunteers and a very well oiled machine counter indigenous base, organization and name recognition?

Our campaign was headquartered in the City of Brea California with a population of 50,000. The town was supposedly founded by a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The town also achieved a certain amount of fame in 1924 when Babe Ruth at the behest of his friend and fellow Hall of Famer, Walter Johnson (an OC native), appeared at a benefit barnstorming baseball game in the Brea Bowl, a natural canyon with a baseball field. I had a connection to Brea because my wife’s ex husband was once the City manager there so he turned us on to Rusty Kennedy and Anita Varela, local volunteers who were fabulous. They worked the doors and hosted a volunteer at their home.

Now to the difficult questions of demographics and base. The district population is basically a third Latino, a third Caucasian and a third Asian Pacific. As is the case in many California districts the Latino community punches way below their percent of the population when it comes to Election Day. In California while Latinos account for 39% of the population and whites 38%, the Caucasian vote is still 61% statewide. In the 39^th in the previous election of 2016 only about 15% of the vote was Latino despite the population being more than double that as a percent of the whole. Cisneros triumphed easily in the part of the district that was in LA County, which was more heavily Latino. The campaign relied on extensive paid staff, upwards of 50 canvassers and phone bankers, largely Latino young people from local colleges and of great talent and discipline. Then there were the volunteers. It was inspiring to see volunteers from all over California including many from my home city of San Francisco. Tom Yankowski and Trinidad Madrigal rolled in from SF’s Noe Valley, over the hill from our house in the Sunset district. They brought inspiring energy and round the clock commitment. There were the usual Congressional staffers released from duty in DC and using their vacation time to work the campaign.

On the last Sunday before the election I did check-in for the volunteers. I counted 408 volunteers registering out of our field dispatch hall in Buena Park, California. Of those 408, only 108 had area codes from the OC. Our volunteer corps were heavily from outside the District. I wonder if the same was true for Kim given her deep and long standing ties and visibility in the District? In the end can money, outside volunteers and a very well oiled machine counter indigenous base, organization and name recognition? Election results say that it did! One would hope going forward that we can combine both. That will be the challenge for the left in keeping Congress people true to the professed ideals that got them elected and moving moderates to embrace winning issues like “Medicare for All”, as hopefully Gil Cisneros will.

I am sure many of these same dynamics played out in D-2 in northern Maine and across the country. This mid-term was as my friend Lou Siegel said “a parliamentary election” After the dust settled on the primaries we were working for Democrats who were not always pure on the issues in order to capture a majority in the House as a brake on Trump.

This was a united front effort. It is odd when Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, two Democrats from SF show up at a rally in the OC and charm the crowd with their speechifying. We in SF know them up close and have a more critical measured opinion of their stands.

I was reminded of this dynamic when I returned to SF this week and immediately walked a picket line with Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in front of the Palace Hotel, owned by the Marriot, a billion dollar international corporation. We of course all celebrated the fact that J.B. Pritzker an heir to the Hyatt fortune, won the governorship of Illinois taking it away from a right-wing Republican named Bruce Rauner who pushed the toxic anti-union Janus challenge that prevailed in the Supreme Court in June. This is the same Pritzker family that owns a giant hotel chain, which has also clashed with the HERE.

For this election it was important to adopt a laser like focus on winning the Congressional mid-terms.

The period ahead will require us to be nimble preserving the united front on one level against Trump, but clashing with our “friends and allies” in other contexts and all the while advancing a posture and program that supports communities of color and working people and their organizations. This contradiction immediately came to the fore after the mid terms when a fight developed over whether Pelosi should be re-elected Speaker. Many friends argued that in opposing Pelosi we were validating right-wing talk radio, and that she is a shrewd and tactful political leader. That she is, but she has already disappointed in her conciliatory remarks towards a toxic President who played the race card to try and keep the House and the Senate by attacking the Central American caravan and immigrants in general. She also parrots Republican talking points on “Medicare for All” in questioning how we are going to pay for it rather than embracing the principle and fighting for it and taxing the rich to pay for it. For me she is the embodiment of what is wrong with the Democrats, timid corporate liberalism. Whether a viable alternative to Pelosi emerges or not we will have a tumultuous period ahead of us in which we will find ourselves often allied in one arena with political forces who we contend with in others. For this election it was important to adopt a laser like focus on winning the Congressional mid-terms. As a veteran organizer I have learned that we are most effective when we focus our message and our task. Many “Faux” strategists offer us: “But we must remember in the long run, …” In this moment to win it was important to focus laser like on the single task. With winning comes a brake on Trump and new momentum and possibilities for the left.

Looking ahead, I hope everyone is getting ready for 2020 when we will fight like hell for a progressive Presidential nominee in the primaries, but whatever the result we will deploy to take the White House for a (D). I already have my plane reservations for Cincinnati, Ohio. Come join me.

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