The purpose here is to report what’s happening in the California’s 49th Congressional District, a strategic seat to flip. A lot has changed this week.
First, let’s enjoy the moment and celebrate that Congressman Darrell Issa, the cruel, cold Republican Representative for Ca49 has decided to not seek re-election this year been hounded by crowds of Resisters and has thrown in the towel. In 12 long months Issa will be gone.
Yeah!!! And that was after the crowd had dispersed at the end of the rally. Dancing with joy and cheers went on from that flash rally at Issa's office through an evening celebration/reassessment action council meeting. The euphoria was organic, a well deserved champagne popping ending to 50 weeks of rallies at Issa’s Vista office and at an Encinitas intersection. He had no choice but to #ExpectUs and Issa’s nasty face showed his increasing disdain, disgust, flight, the roof….
Issa could have just listened to the crowd on the street instead of literally running away. Many times. Just the day before, over 200 protesters showed up on Tuesday morning in the rain with their signs, and ironically the theme was to celebrate Issa’s looming hoped-for retirement. The rally leaders showed up with a retirement cake and a $10 gold watch since he’s going and deserves the traditional send off. No one knew that in less than 24h Issa would in fact be a lame duck. Hand-fulls of a fresh, new retirement cake fed the jubilant crown on Wednesday!
Energized from a job well done by so many neighbors, it’s time to get ponder what has now changed and get back to work in what will now be a different set of challenges to Flip the 49th and win back Congress.
Without the cruel, cold, friend-of-45 Issa who voted for Trumpcare, chaired a politically fueled House Judiciary Committee obsessed with relentlessly attacking Democrats with unsubstantiated & politically motivated witch hunts, and voted consistently against our large immigrant population, now the fight has shifted to what Democrats are all about.
What Makes Up Ca49
Apparently there has been a growing progressive grassroots movement for a decade in the historically solidly red County of San Diego, which includes the border towns, the city of San Diego, rural, semi rural and suburban Eastern County cities, and the North County including Camp Pendleton, the large Marine base. In the 2008 and 2016 elections activists & volunteers across the County turned it blue.
The redistricted 49th CD encompasses North County from La Jolla in San Diego County to Dana Point in Orange County, which runs right through Camp Pendleton.
There are 709,509 Ca49 residents
- 61.8% white
- 25.5% Hispanic
- 6.5% Asian
- 2.7% Black
- 2.7% “Mixed” races
- There are around 20,000 Native Americans from 4 local tribal groups across the entire County.
There are cities which are 85% to 97% white in wealthy Southern Orange County and the district’s Southern coastal cities. My city of Vista, where Darrell Issa, the richest man in the House resides, is 56% Hispanic & 44% white. Across the 49th, 80% of the citizens are US born, many with Mexican heritage, and 47% of the residents are Mexican born, 18% households are Spanish speaking. 10% of the students in the Vista school district are homeless. Inequality is evident everywhere.
Immigration is a major issue here. The frightening presence of aggressive Border Patrol and ICE agents is palpable. They set up traps on local roads in the morning drives to schools. To amplify the fears of our neighbors, and despite that California has just become a Sanctuary State — meaning local LE are required to limit its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement — we have a Sheriff department widely seen as actively anti-immigrant.
There solid community & political organizations in the Ca49, some of which have made a coalition to resist the Trump agenda and win back the district for Democrats. These organizations have overlapping members, a deep bench of talented, dedicated organizers, a growing rapid response capability, a reliable, deep set of activists trained and busy on the issues or campaigns most important to them, and a crowd of activists who will show up in numbers from 300 to 800 depending on the call to action, rain or shine. LE estimated up to 10,000 attended the 2017 Women’s March in North County San Diego. Clear results, measured in size, success of organizing, registrations, number of neighbors met so far, and training, are good. Super good. As people fan out again soon, as in the 2016 primaries, join this or that candidate, there is one mission — to FlipThe49th — which requires exactly the unity felt while dancing in celebration, hugging all.
Thus far cohesive, coalition building is growing in this beautiful, fertile, and diverse Southern California region. While moving from primary activism in 2015-16 into GE GOTV, to Nov 8 2016, the Resistance has been a phenomenon of a flourishing, nourishing, skills building , community sprouting. The crowd that rallies week after week for a year now has become a community. In a CD facing the daily burdens of poverty, racism, and militarism, I’m reminded of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s concept of a “beloved community” as a source of sustenance. Being grounded, and grounded in a community, which is grounded to a common moral agenda, is exhilarating, and contagious. The genesis, yes, but more the sustainability of this coalition is vital looking at the calendar between now and the June 5, 2018 Primary and then November 6, 2018.
The clear goal of resisting 45’s "agenda" in a community of both diversity and solidarity propels all of our issues out of the hands of Issa and entrenched conservative Republicans. One day very soon we’ll be listened to in Washington DC and represented in Congress.
So many of our residents are unable to participate due to their jobs, their personal circumstances, and/or their immigration related status. Serious risks faced every day just going out of the house to work, school, and shopping makes showing up impossible for many Hispanic residents. And the children. Fearful children trembling in their beds at night & at school that their mom or grandmother can be pulled off by ICE and disappear. Ca49 activists intentionally hold space for each and every one. It’s more than merely a sprint to the next election. We’re here for the full marathon and beyond, ensuring that our most vulnerable neighbors won't have to go into the fires alone.
Volunteers are readied & supported by a core group who coordinate across organizations across the district. They support actions & activism, others support the activists’ sustainability. Efforts to find and include more activist groups is ongoing and seen as vital to success.
Over 60k Marines are based in Camp Pendleton which is a key part of Ca49 politics and arguably plays a role in militarization in general and in local LE. A few facts and demographics:
- Comprised of 124,000 coastal acres
- 9000 sq mi
- 42,000 active duty personnel
- 23,500 reserve personnel
- 3:1 males:females
- Median age of 21
- Roughly 1000 families with children live on the base
- Thousands of Marines and their families reside off base.
Strugglin, under-served families on the base rely on a food bank the whole community contributes to.
More than 77,000 retired military personnel reside within a 50-mile radius of Camp Pendleton.
While there’s 2.7% African American in the cities, there’s 9% on the Marine base.
As one of our Senators here in California said:
We all deserve and demand a real Congressional representative who can live up to our high standards!
Flipping the Congressional seat from Republicans was so close in 2016 we could smell success. Democrat Colonel Doug Applegate came within 1621 votes to unseat Issa. Now, without Issa, we have a harder election to win against so-called moderate Republicans, a somewhat more palatable slate of candidates already. One, Rocky Chavez, a Republican rep here in State Assembly District 76, has name recognition and I’ve heard he has a reputation as someone who actually takes calls from Democrats and listens.
One more relative factoid is California’s Top-Two primary structure. All candidates in all parties run in one primary and the top two vote getters run off in the election, regardless of which party or parties. If one party has a slate of 4 it can receive the combined highest vote count yet dilute the counts allowing a slate of 2 in the other party to be the top-two. Currently there are 4 candidates in each party. The first to eliminate candidates before the actual primary will have an advantage. While it’s possible to have 2 Democrats win and advance to the GE, that’s not likely.
Following are intentionally brief intros to the candidates, a little more on the Republicans to give context to the new challenges. Use the links, and the many opportunities here in Ca49 to meet and greet each of the candidates, and really listen to them to see who best represents the voters’ values. There’s la spread of labor support across the Democrats and other endorsements percolating up that can better be assessed later in the campaigns.
Democrats
Doug Applegate, @ApplegateCA49
Doug is a retired Marine Colonel who served as an infantryman from the end of the Vietnam War through the war in Iraq and later became a trial lawyer. Doug ran against Issa in 2016 and came within 1621 votes to beating Issa! Doug grew up in a working class family, lives in Orange County, and considers himself a liberal.
Sara Jacobs, @SaraJacobsCA
28 year old Sara Jacobs is the youngest candidate. She’s a former State Department employee under President Barack Obama. Jacobs grew up in Del Mar, now resides in Encinitas and is the granddaughter of philanthropist Irwin Jacobs, an MIT electrical engineer, then computer science professor at UCSD, then co-founder of Qualcomm.
Paul Kerr, @KerrForCongress
Another retired military veteran, served in the Vietnam era Navy, Kerr is a San Diego real estate investor.
Mike Levin, @MikeLevinCA
A poly-sci Stanford grad, Orange County environmental attorney and former executive director of the Democratic Party of Orange County, Levin said he committed to running when 45 was elected president. Mike lives in San Juan Capistrano with his wife and two kids and considers himself a progressive.
Republicans
Rocky Chavez
Rocky J. Chavez is a Republican member of the California State Assembly, representing District 76. He was first elected to the chamber in 2012.
Chavez is a 2018 Republican candidate seeking election to the U.S. House to represent the 49th Congressional District of California.[1]
Chavez briefly ran for election to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Boxer in 2016. He dropped out of the race on February 8, 2016.[2][3]
Described as a moderate Republican, the retired Marine Colonel Chavez is rated low by the Sierra Club & high by the NRA. He voted No on a AB569 that Prohibits Firing Employees for Obtaining Abortion that was passed by the Legislature (i.e., he voted for allowing the firing of employees for their reproductive choice) but vetoed by Governor Brown due to its redundancy with existing California labor laws. According to A Force for Progress 2016 LABOR’S LEGISLATIVE SCORECARD Chavez has a lifetime rating of only 17% voting for labor.
We can beat this guy. I can easily describe to my neighbors why I believe he doesn’t represent my values.
One more relevant factoid is that Chavez recently entered into the California Senate race for DiFi's and then stepped out. He's prematurely stepped out of a race before so...
Diane Harkey
The chair of the state Board of Equalization and former Assemblywoman, Harkey has the backing of Issa and Rep. Mimi Walters. Also Harkey is backed by the conservative site San Diego Rostra. She was a conservative Republican in the California State Assembly District 73 and several other local offices in her Southern Orange County area.
Legislative scorecard
Capitol Weekly, California's major weekly periodical covering the state legislature, publishes an annual legislative scorecard to pin down the political or ideological leanings of every member of the legislature based on how they voted on an assortment of bills in the most recent legislative session. The 2009 scores were based on votes on 19 bills, but did not include how legislators voted on the Proposition 1A (2009). On the scorecard, "100" is a perfect liberal score and "0" is a perfect conservative score.[4][5]
On the 2009 Capitol Weekly legislative scorecard, Harkey ranked as a 3.[6]
Joshua Schoonover
San Marcos patent attorney. That’s all I got on Schoonover.
Jordan Mills
The Peace And Freedom Party. Nuff said.
In Closing
If the rot our elective politics has become represents a bottoming out, then this midterm election is the way out. Our aspiration of being a principled Democracy that recognizes the crimes of colonizing the West, welcomes immigrants, educates all, and makes opportunities for all is starkly juxtaposed with our reality, the rotten reality of racism, sexism, xenophobia, police chases including here in Ca49 that end with an unarmed man of color dead, shot in the back. Families are being rent apart, children being made orphans. 2018 can change this all-American clusterfuck into a catapult forward by resisting divisions within Democrats to make a transformed, unified, overwhelming fight that doesn’t merely remove the rot but buries this racism & bigotry & hate of which it’s made.
In the words of local rally leader, Ellen Montanari
“while we are thrilled Darrell Issa won't be running in our district, it will be difficult to campaign against a "moderate" Republican. Everyone’s help becomes even more super important.”
As activists fan out into various groups registering, canvassing, collecting data, joining up with their favored Democratic candidate, the coalition rallies will continue and the action council is unified that there will be no endorsement until after the primaries when we’re all together again to support the winner to Flip The 49th and Congress.
