Sky's Adventures Behind the CA Dem Party Curtain - Hey, we made New Yorker Mag!

[skydiver8]

ETA: Convention Day 1 Posts Start here
Convention Day 2 posts start here
Convention Day 3 posts start here
Convention day 4 posts start here

Not that Gavin Newsom is a wizard or anything (or even the party chair), it just seemed like a good thread title.

ANYWAY…

Your friendly neighborhood currently-unemployed politics junkie/organizer somehow went and got herself appointed as a delegate to the State Party! More about this process later, but for now, you’re invited to share what is bound to be a wild, weird, and inevitably frustrating journey with me.

I took a poll, and you all voted overwhelmingly in favor of this project, so if you hate it, too bad, it’s your own damned fault.

LOL Democrats - How do you do, fellow kids?

So, I have been appointed as a delegate to the CA democratic party, representing the current 50th Congressional district. Should I start a blog about my coming two years as a cog in the political machine? poll

My new home (click if you dare):

What this blog is: My unfiltered thoughts about the inner workings of the party, the process, and anything noteworthy I happen to see or be involved in. Also might end up me working out my confusion or frustrations in semi-real time. All my thoughts laid bare! You might also see complaints or kudos about CA dems/voters/electeds.

What this blog is NOT: an invitation for you all to re-re-re-re-re-litigate the 2016 or 2020 presidential primaries. GTFO with that bullshit. I may mention the 2020 races that affected our state, but usually as cautionary tales.

Feel free to AMA, and I’ll try to answer them in the context of the posts.

Coming very soon: background on what the fuck this all means, the process, and how I got involved.

[skydiver8]

So the first thing you have to know, that I am quickly learning, is that this is a giant, complex bureaucracy that is probably just as confusing to me as it might be to you. So first, some acronyms.

CDP: California Democratic Party, used interchangeably with CADEM.
ADEM: Assembly District Election Meeting. Also used as shorthand for delegates who were elected this way and represent their state assembly district.
DNC: Delegates to the state party that are also representatives to the national party. Elected at the convention in odd years by the CDP leadership
DSCC: Democratic State Central Committee. Basically, all the delegates. More on this below.
SIF: Self-Identified Female
OSIF: Other then Self-Identified Female

The bottom line is: All of what I’m about to describe serves one purpose, and that is to figure out who gets to go to the State Democratic Convention and drink champagne with big donors. No, just kidding. Sort of.

The State Convention meets to set the platform, network with other people who have been doing this for 45723 years, meet with donors, join things like the rural caucus or the LGBT caucus, and in election years, endorse candidates. So the party sets up complicated ways to find delegates, who are supposed to represent democrats in their districts/areas, to go to the convention and help do those things.

So how do you get to be a delegate? Turns out there are bunch of ways.

1. Be a Democratic elected official in a state or national race, or if you didn’t win, be the highest vote-getting Dem in one of those races.
2. Be appointed by one of the people described in #1. I think they are allowed one SIF and one OSIF appointee each.
3. Be elected to your county party committee. For example, here is San Diego County’s Dem Central Committee. All these people are delegates to the state convention. https://sdcdp.ngpvanhost.com/central-committee
4. Elected through their Assembly District (ADEMs). ADEM elections are a whole separate post…whew.
5. Other random things like CA Young Dems chair, other chartered club chairs (Dem Veterans Club, etc).

So yeah, it’s a big tent.

This would be too small to hold the convention in, btw.

tl;dr: Delegates are supposed to represent the Democrats in their area/district at the convention.

That’s a lot, so I’ll stop there for now.

Final note: The Convention is virtual this year, and it’s the last weekend in April. Yikes.

Yes, I suck at photoshop. I wish I didn’t so I could help the Dems’ terrible lack of vision when it comes to digital strategy, but alas, some things are just not meant to be.

[skydiver8]

This is gonna be a firehose at first, because I’m catching up on the past month.

So how did I get here?

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime (Official Video)

So yeah, back in March of 2019, I started a facebook group…not understanding that it would turn into a county-wide grassroots organization that would go onto become the official arm of a presidential campaign in San Diego. Yikes, I was a noob. I didn’t know anyone in the party. I didn’t know any activists. I just wanted a place to put news about my candidate that no one was talking about.

Obligatory “how it started” post. Our first event was a beach cleanup that got some attention.

After the primary, everything was on hold. No one was hiring, no one was campaigning the same way, no one knew what the fuck they were doing basically. I knew I wanted to try to get a job on a local campaign, but everything was paused. I started volunteering for Ammar Campa-Najjar, who I already knew from 2018, and who knew me from my work with the Pete campaign. When they finally got funding, they hired me for real. That’s when I kinda started to get to know a few local party people, but I was in no way an insider.

After the campaign ended, Ammar called me and asked me to run to be an ADEM delegate, along with a few other folks that worked on or interned with his campaign. I accepted, not really understanding what it meant. Basically, each assembly district gets to elect 14 delegates, 7 SIF, and 7 OSIF. I ran, and I came in 8th by 17 votes. The people who won were all part of a slate, put together by the county party, who used county party money to sweep the elections.

After I lost, Ammar then decided to appoint me as a delegate to the party to represent the 50th district (as it is now. Redistricting is coming, and who knows what the fuck will happen then)

Obligatory “how it’s going” post. My inbox has gone from being full of emails asking for money for candidates, to being full of emails asking for my endorsement. Me! My endorsement! LOL! This is incredibly surreal.

Anyway, I think that’s all the pertinent background. My thoughts (oh boy do I already have thoughts!) to come.

[Melkerson]

Is there anything that you do in this position or any information that you come across that you are not allowed to disclose to anyone else? I’m not talking about things you choose not to disclose. I’m talking about stuff where you are explicitly forbidden to reveal by law, NDA, etc.

[skydiver8]

I have not had to sign anything to that effect.

I think any voter information is probably covered by some law somewhere, but I’m definitely not gonna go around sharing that anyway.

[Melkerson]

@skydiver8

I think any voter information is probably covered

How is this voter info even obtained if it is not publicly available?

[skydiver8]

Hmm, you’re right, it actually is “publicly available.” I put that in quotes because the secretary of state charges campaigns and organizations for access to them, even though they are technically public info. This is common practice (in most states), and weird to me, but it probably comes down to the handling of the massive database and access through ngpVAN or other voter database management programs.

As a campaign organizer, I had access to the data for the 50th (in the general, everyone registered). In the primary, Pete’s campaign got access to all registered CA dems and NPPs. As a party delegate, i doubt I’ll need any of this info, though I still have snapshots of demographics from the race in the 50th.

You can probably request access through your county registrar or the secretary of state, but no one actually does this as far as I know.

[j8i3h289dn3x7]

This is really cool.

[j8i3h289dn3x7]

Many states have laws on the books that it is unlawful to use voter info for anything not related to voting. Ie: Ok to get the list and use it to send out targeted political mailings. Not ok to get the list and use it to send out spam.

[skydiver8]

All that being said, everything I’ve posted is publicly available on the CADEM site, other than my opinions, which are always publicly available

Also, any convention “inner workings” are open to all. You can buy an observer pass for $100 and that’s open to anyone.

[jmakin]

How do you feel about recalling newsom?

[Melkerson]

@skydiver8

Also, any convention “inner workings” are open to all. You can buy an observer pass for $100 and that’s open to anyone.

Have you encountered MAGA dipshits getting observer passes so they can go in and be disruptive assholes?

[NotBruceZ]

I guess you’re comfortable sharing your name. (Not that it was hard to figure out before.)

[skydiver8]

I’ll let you know! The only other convention I’ve been to was the 2019 state endorsing convention in long beach, which i think they only do for presidential primary years. That was in person, and I went as a volunteer, so I didn’t need to pay. However, that didn’t get me into any caucus meetings, where all the candidates were hunting for votes/endorsements.

The only disruptions in those were, sadly, by DSA people shouting down and interrupting candidates. I’m sorry to say it, but it happened, especially in the Young Dems meetings.

But making the trip to Long Beach and actually going inside was probably too much effort for MAGAts. There weren’t even any sign wavers outside.

Now…I’ll get back to you on this after the convention in April…because it’s on Zoom, that may well happen. We’ll see.

[skydiver8]

@jmakin

How do you feel about recalling newsom?

It’s fucking stupid, and it’s probably going to consume a ton of time and money that the party should be spending on other things.

[skydiver8]

Yeah, I gave up any semblance of privacy when I got involved with political organizing. People need to know how to find you and who you are, it’s just part of the game.

Note that this is different than activism, where I think you can keep it closer to the vest.

Politics vs. activism is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’ll get into that more in a while.

[CanadaMatt3004]

I assume the party is standing behind him?

[jmakin]

So why not just throw him under the bus and get the next guy in line? It’s gonna happen one way or another. In my opinion the guy couldnt have handled this any worse if he tried. Both sides of the aisle are pissed.

[skydiver8]

The only next guys in line right now are Republicans. So yeah, the party is standing behind him.

No, only far lefties who fall for right-wing propaganda are “pissed”. You know who’s really pissed? Me. I’m pissed. Because people in our party are happily signing recall petitions with no care or concern about what it actually means. Many of them young enough to not remember what a shitshow 2003 was.

I understand crazy right wingers blaming him for everything, but when people in our own fucking party gleefully call for this without having some kind of backup plan…that’s infuriating.

I am no Newsom stan, but he’s what we have, and sure, vote for the recall if you want Kevin “I love to fuck over the homeless in San Diego” Faulconer as governor.

[NotBruceZ]

Would the party change its stance if Newsom had Andrew Cuomo-level sexual misconduct allegations and refused to resign? Or would they still stand behind him because there’s no other option?