The fight is on. Thanks to the attempt to get a vote on single payer in the Assembly, the Progressive now have identified the none Socialist Democrats in the Assembly and those running for the Assembly. Now they are able to target their candidates or find candidates to run against the “moderates”.
“As delegates gather virtually this coming weekend for the annual state party convention, nearly all of the sitting legislators who are running again will be endorsed on a consent calendar, while Shergill is encouraging progressives to withhold their donations and volunteer time from the party and focus their organizing energy on outside groups. He has also invited the director of the newly established Working Families Party to address the caucus on Saturday night.
This cold help the GOP. With the Democrats fighting among themselves, we might be able to get moderate Democrats to support us—if we use the division.
Progressives struggle for influence among California Democrats
BY ALEXEI KOSEFF, CalMatters, 3/1/22
IN SUMMARY
Progressive activists have found themselves on the losing end of recent California Democratic Party fights over single-payer health care, endorsements and donations from fossil fuel companies. Tensions are high as the party gathers for its annual convention March 4-6.
The message was clear and, more importantly, it was loud: Progressive activists would work to block the California Democratic Party’s endorsement for any lawmaker who did not support a single-payer health care bill facing a crucial legislative deadline at the end of January.
Their threat did not persuade wavering legislators to get on board, however, and the bill was shelved without a vote. Two weeks later, the chairperson of the party’s progressive caucus announced that activists had dropped their campaign to pull endorsements from uncooperative incumbents, blaming Democratic officials for obstructing them.
“The party uses every advantage it has under the bylaws to ensure there is no democracy in the Democratic Party,” Amar Shergill, the progressive caucus chairperson, told CalMatters.
Inspired by the unabashedly leftist presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016, a wave of political outsiders once seemed poised to remake the California Democratic Party. But the momentum of their movement, which coincided with heightened liberal energy in resistance to then-President Donald Trump, appears to have crested.
Sanders supporters organized early on to elect new delegates to the state party, giving the progessive wing more influence to push for policy positions and endorsements for candidates who could challenge establishment stalwarts including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein from the left.
Yet in the five years since, they’ve struggled to achieve their biggest and most consequential goals, including twice failing to elevate one of their own to lead the California Democratic Party. Earlier this month, party officials adopted new restrictions on campaign contributions that fell short of progressive demands to stop taking money entirely from fossil fuel companies, law enforcement unions and health insurers.
As delegates gather virtually this coming weekend for the annual state party convention, nearly all of the sitting legislators who are running again will be endorsed on a consent calendar, while Shergill is encouraging progressives to withhold their donations and volunteer time from the party and focus their organizing energy on outside groups. He has also invited the director of the newly established Working Families Party to address the caucus on Saturday night.
The dissension reflects how the eternal ideological tension within California’s dominant political party has intensified and curdled in recent years. As newly empowered activists, many of them fresh to organized politics, escalated their tactics to demand change, so did party leaders pushing back to maintain a status quo that has largely worked to elect Democrats in the state for decades.
Though the influence of the progressive wing has not entirely waned — several political consultants declined to discuss the dynamic on the record with CalMatters for fear of angering delegates they need to woo to endorse campaigns they are working on — a lack of victories to back up their more aggressive political style has sent a signal to some Democrats to simply ignore them.
Tenoch Flores, a former communications director for the party from 2009 to 2015 who now works as a consultant for progressive causes, said there is more acrimony and hurt feelings over these fights than in the past. He attributed it to the frustration of a movement that has brought increased attention to its causes but has not grown in scope or influence to match, a dynamic that he said it would be important for its leaders to manage.
“One of the beliefs is that if you have impassioned speeches and you scream truth to power, you can have policy change overnight,” Flores said. “They’re not able to make good on any of their threats.”
Despite numerous interview requests, the California Democratic Party did not make Chairperson Rusty Hicks available for this story.
