Interesting responses. Perhaps this is a vagary of San Diego County local party politics in that a lot of the agitators against Newsom come from the “progressive”/young dems group of active players. Which means this is a perfect post to take a side trip to my other projects I’ve been doing this year, which are tangentially related.
Disclaimer first: I will do my best to report only the facts of this case, but I cannot be 100% my biases will not come into play.
First, some background. CA Young Democrats (CYD) is a state-level organization that charters clubs around the state. Up until this year, there were three chapters in SD County: One on the UCSD Campus, San Diego Young Dems, and Escondido Young Dems. Also of note, the state chair of CYD is also the chair of the SD County Dem Party. CYD tends to the far left, with the unbridled passion and little moderation of youth. Not surprising.
In 2018, when enthusiasm was high and we came very close to flipping the 50th, Ammar’s field director asked some of the young supervolunteers from El Cajon, Santee, and Lakeside to help found an East County Young Dems chapter. No one stepped forward and the idea died on the vine. EC is a different place than downtown SD or La Jolla or even Escondido now, which is trending blue. EC is still very red, and anyone who represents EC must take that into account.
Along comes 2021, and now a lot of these young dems hate Ammar. They hate him with the passion of young activists. They are angry that he owns guns and spoke to Republican voters, Trump voters, with respect. They think he was not progressive enough. Whether or not that is true, the bottom line is, they hate him now.
I am not a stan, I worked for the guy, but yes, he made some mistakes. I don’t think his mistakes relate to how progressive he is or isn’t, though. Ammar acknowledges those mistakes, and has turned down some other opportunities in order to take time for himself to reflect on them. So have we. Poor messaging, poor digital outreach, spending time and money on the wrong things, we did it all.
Anyway.
In late November, some of the interns from the campaign decided they wanted to form an East County chapter of the young dems, and they got to work. In order to charter with CYD, they have to conform to strict structure and bylaws rules, like most Democratic Clubs do. They formed an interim executive board, and asked a few of the people they knew to be on an Advisory Committee, myself included. Because the Ammar campaign was their first foray into politics, the people on this advisory committee were people they knew from the Ammar campaign.
Because they needed to fill an interim e-board, the kids asked some of the other kids they met interning on the campaign to help out. Some of these kids do not live in East County (away at college, live in SD or San Marcos, etc). They always intended to help start the club then step aside for elections in April, since none of the actual east county residents that we had asked before seemed interested in helping.
Unfortunately, the founders (note: the president of the new ECYD club is a young Black man…this matters later) let a snake into their midst. Unknown to them, the girl they recruited to be interim treasurer was recruited by these Ammar haters to foment strife…and she’s really good at it. We didn’t see it until it was much too late. From the very first meetng, she started agitating against these interim board members and advisory cmte members who didn’t live in east county, saying she felt “gaslighted” by the draft bylaws that didn’t require people to reside in certain zip codes to be members of the club.
There were tears. She wants representation, and as a young woman of color, she felt bullied and gaslighted by the fact that limitations on membership weren’t i the bylaws. She was angry that they didn’t reach out to an east county activist group to be guest speakers at a meeting (where they already had a congressperson scheduled to speak). I don’t know how many of these feelings were real, or were “suggested” by the leaders of the other young dems clubs.
This came to a head in a meeting they had to pass the bylaws. This was open to the general membership, and the agitators came out in force, enough to bully our young Black president using parliamentary procedure to the point that proceedings ground to a halt. It was shameful, and the people doing it all claim to be young progressives who “feel that east county clubs should only allow east county people” (even though many of the agitators are from north county or the city). They used all the current progressive buzzwords and issues to try to make their point.
None of those are actually the point. The real point, directly from the mouth of the leader of Escondido young dems, is that they didn’t want ECYD to be an “Ammar club”.
In hindsight, we should have seen this coming. I wish the kids had asked one of the progressive superstars to advise, as well. The current young dem leadership of the other clubs saw this and took it as an opportunity to undermine Ammar again, even though he’s not running for anything. Ammar was not on this advisory committee, but myself, his field director, and his intern director were.
These kids, who only wanted to start a young dems club in their area, have become enmired in a proxy fight between the two wings of the dem party here: a very vocal group of very “progressive” Ammar haters and the rest of the party, who just want this club to get off the ground.
Back to Newsom: these Ammar-haters are the same people I see constantly posting and talking about signing the recall petitions. So maybe it’s a local thing, but it’s what I see.
I am also now the interim Vice President of a new East County chapter of the Veteran’s Democratic Club. This is going much more smoothly because veterans like structure and would never allow that bullshit to go down at their meetings. LOL.
