I'm happy today to support Sara R's quilt fund-raiser for Democrat Jerry Brown to provide his campaign for the California governorship a bit more cash to counter Republican Meg Whitman's mega-barrage, already estimated at $120 million. Every ActBlue contribution to Brown's campaign of at least $10 will enter you in a drawing for this hand-stitched quilt signed by scores of participants at the 2007 NetrootsNation conference in Chicago.
Someday, perhaps California will set a precedent for others by daring to experiment with a fresh approach to state government, establishing, say, a parliamentary republic. Or adopt some other fundamental structural change that breaks sharply from the conventional wisdom about the preferred architecture of state governments. But while we're waiting for what will certainly not happen anytime soon, we have an immediate election for governor at hand whose outcome matters a great deal.
It's the contest between Jerry Brown, the progressive attorney general who already served as governor three decades ago, and Meg Whitman, the corporate executive who has poured tens of millions into a campaign designed to bid her way into office on a platform dedicated to eviscerating California's publicly funded social services. It's the Grover Norquist formula brought down to the state level.
As shown by the ever-changing story she tells of her vile treatment of a former employee whom she knew was undocumented for at least six of the nine years she employed her, Whitman has taken the it's-OK-if-you-are-Republican approach with which we are all too familiar. Not only did she treat that employee shabbily after benefiting from her being in the United States, Whitman is also dead set against providing a road to citizenship for other people whose unauthorized presence here is entangled in a history of interaction between Mexico and the United States that began well before California was even a state. As Robert Cruikshank has written at Calitics:
The [Republican] party has become not only virulently anti-immigrant, but anti-Latino. They see themselves as a white people's party, defending the state against "Mexifornia."
As Brown said in a debate with Whitman at Cal State Fresno Saturday:
"Let's be sympathetic and let's really empathize with the millions of people who are in the shadows and you want to keep them in the shadows and now you're trying to evade responsibility," he said. "Don't run for governor if you can't stand up on your own two feet and say, 'Hey I made a mistake, I'm sorry, let's go on from here.' You have blamed her, blamed me, blamed the left, blamed the unions but you don't take accountability. …
"You don't just bring in semi-serfs and say do our dirty work and then we're finished with you, like an orange — you just throw them away, that's after you've squeezed them."
Arrow. Zing. Bullseye.
Like other right-wing candidates, Whitman wants to run California as a business, which, given her past, she probably wishes could be achieved by auctioning state parks, roads, office buildings and perhaps entire counties to the highest bidder. Short-term gain, long-term disaster.
Fortunately, there are obstacles to her going that far. But her plans to ax 40,000 public employees on her first day in office, give tax breaks to the rich, and undermine California's potential as a clean-energy innovator are bad enough.
Brown, on the other hand, favors AB32's clean-air/clear-energy future, stands up for education, seeks to make California taxes fair, supports renovating the state's crumbling social and physical infrastructure, including more attention to mass transit, and seeks to protect public workers that the recession has put at risk. He has proved as attorney general that, as governor, he would be no friend of Proposition 8.
Which makes a Jerry Brown victory next month essential. It would be nice if Brown could run his campaign on just a shoestring and shoe leather. But it doesn't work like that. As former California Assembly Speaker Jesse "Big Daddy" Unruh once said when Jerry's father, Edmund "Pat" Brown, was governor, "Money is the mother's milk of politics." Certainly, the Whitman campaign has played it that way. So every nickel to Jerry Brown's campaign counts.
Throughout October, every day will bring an opportunity to enter a drawing to benefit Jerry Brown’s campaign for Governor of California. Every donation of $10 or more to the fundraiser’s Act Blue page will count for a chance – one chance per person per day. You don't need to spend money to enter, however. If you are not donating, you can enter and have an equal chance of winning by writing an essay of 50 words or less on “Why I want Jerry Brown to be California’s next Governor.” Send your essay with a subject line, "Jerry Brown Essay," to communityquilts (at) yahoo (dot) com. If we find your essay topical, it will count for a chance. As with donations, one essay per person per day will count as a chance. Only one form of entry is allowed for a person on a given day.
At the end of the fundraiser period, Sara R will assign a ticket number to each chance and ask a neighborhood child to pull just one ticket. The drawing will be the first week in November.
And, for today only, if you contribute $10 you also get a chance at drawing for a lunch with...me. If you win that drawing, I'll buy you lunch at NN11 in Minneapolis, or in Los Angeles if you happen to be in town. At a real restaurant, not Denny's. But you must contribute (or enter your essay) today for this drawing, which Sara R will hold at a time of her choice.
Please contribute if you can, and show your passion and support for California's once and future Governor: Jerry Brown.
If you want to know more about the quilt, click here to view Sara R's original diary in this series.