Warning: extremely partisan rantery ahead. Dem partisanship, though, and only lending a bit of support to apparently the only candidate we’ve got going in the 31st District. Dangit. Sorry, not gonna ‘give a fair shake’ to Aguilar’s opponent for the 31st Congressional seat…
Here’s a local story for the Redlands and Inland Empire Kossacks: I’ve been noticing these ugly little political yard-signs that say “Defeat Dishonest AguiLIAR”… Yeah, well something stank to high heaven there—those kinds of signs usually reek of bullshit from the Tea Party side of the outhouse. I decided to investigate, since as a new area-resident, I was unfamiliar with Congressman Aguilar.
It seems Congressman (D) Aguilar defeated (R) Paul Chabot by a tight margin in the last election for District 31 (San Bernardino, Redlands, Loma Linda, Rancho Cucamonga, Grand Terrace and Rialto) after having to weather his traditionally-ugly attack tactics.
Aguilar has a so-far good track record (at least according to his Wiki page. ;-p), from what I’ve been able to find in a short interrogation of Google, and has been in one political-office or another for the last 15 years. No scandals, no accusations of shady dealings (except from one main source—see the Crooks and Liars link below) and has consistently fought for immigration-rights and reform, better environmental protections for the Santa Ana River (on which he collaborated with (R) Paul Cook← good on him), and grace-periods for college students to give them more time to pay back their student loans.
He’s campaigned for LBGQT rights (though he did vote no on the bill that would have granted Transgender folk the right to use the restroom of their gender—but, that bill had some other stuff that I suspect Aguilar would have disagreed with and so was stuck in the familiar quagmire of bill riders. Sheesh), better gun-control to make it more difficult for terrorists to acquire weapons, has fought for fair wages for women and POC and funding for homeless vets. I could go on, but you get the idea.
He was mayor of San Bernardino Redlands (oops, sorry, readers) in 2010 and again in 2014 and was praised for his work in that post, the San Berdoo police Chief and Sheriff both endorse him, while the San Berdoo Police Officers Association (not the Union—the Unions seem to support Aguilar, actually) supports Chabot.
Why is that last not a surprise? A Republican-run and funded group supporting the Tea-Party lite candidate? And, it turns out, the Chabot campaign team is possibly responsible for those "AguiLIAR" signs. I have yet to find Aguilar’s campaign doing anything similar—I’ll look, but I don’t expect to find much.
Chabot bills himself as a fiscal conservative, smaller government, anti-terrorism, for veterans yada, yada, yada, feed-the-fear candidate, the usual song and dance that means jack-squat but sounds great to 1%ers and Confederate-flag waving lackwits. Sadly, he also supports the Rump, apparently. That doesn’t surprise me, either, considering that his tactics in attacking Aguilar seem to be channelling the Rump’s skeezy habit of insulting opponents, ranting fact-less nonsense (like accusing Aguilar’s campaign team of stealing or defacing his signs) and generally acting like a child. If Chabot really does support the Rump, then I wonder about his character, or at least his intelligence.
Seriously, Chabot? Stupid thing to do when you supposedly refuse to tell taxpayers where $50k in donations came from… Lemme hazard a guess—one of the crazier-than-a-shithouse-rat 1%-backed supporters of your candidacy?
Check out who endorses Chabot—All I need to know.
Aaaaand, drum-roll please--who supports Aguilar. Not a bad list, actually.
Conservative Review gives Aguilar a “Liberty”-rating of an F (17%) LOLOL
Frankly, I think this could be seen as a positive for Aguilar, though the Crooks and Liars blog seems to dislike him, calling him a Republican shill, among other things, then carping about his donors—which is fair—but, other than giving him the max ($5200) and then giving the same amount to some Tea Party or rabid conservative individual (like, WTF?), I’m not certain if this is actually damning very much. It was just a weird series of donations. What has Aguilar done other than to accept donations from crazy people? Do those donations mean that Aguilar is similar enough to the other people they donated to that they thought giving him money was a good idea? I honestly have no clue. Need to do more digging, I guess.
Reading further into the C&L article, things don’t looks so rosy for Aguilar. Is he corrupt, or are they playing the guilt by association game like I was doing with Chabot’s list of supporters? If so, how is my failing in that regard any better than the C&L page? Hmmm, yeah, I might want to work on that… ;-)
If there is a better person in the Dems who is running for the same seat, please tell me, ‘cuz it looks like Congressman Aguilar is pretty much it. Whatever flaws he might have, I hope he’s a better choice than Chabot, who just seems, well, um… mean and full of shit. ;-)
The race was tight the last election (51.4%), and it may well be tight again this year, as this District has a very Republican and Conservative base, from what I’ve so far observed. When redistricting did some rearranging in 2010, it improved demographics for Dems, but the Tea Party/Independent/fringe are popular around here, with Donnelly, Imus, Chabot and their ilk on the ticket in previous years (though I dunno if Donnelly is running this year—haven’t seen any political signs for him. Neither is Imus—Yay!).
So, this is a call-out to San Bernardino Dems and Kossacks! Support your down-ticket Democratic candidates! Keep the Rump-supporters out of the House! Pull support from the Dems that don’t do their jobs! If Aguilar isn’t your choice, support another Dem who you think is a better replacement and see about having them move up to the Congressional spot in a later election! Note that the top two candidates—one from each party—will be the final options in the election, and I think it’s Aguilar against Chabot, so any other Dems you vote in will have to be for other spots. Not that I’m telling anyone how to vote—I can’t, yet—not a citizen. Yep, I’m one of those immigrants (and a bit on the brown side, too) that Repugs are always ginning up the fears about.
Anyone who would like to learn more about, donate to, or volunteer for Congressman Aguilar, click here. And here. If not, no worries, we can work to find a better candidate. :-)
Cheers!
EDIT: Changed some portions because I explained things badly. Also added a bit more info, ‘cuz it looks like Aguilar is definitely-disliked in some quarters of the Dem side, whether justified, or not, it’s something to look into, if for no other reason than we can probably do better. Fixed some other bits… like grammar… spelling… assertions. Derp.