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Art Torres (head of CA's Democratic Party) scheduled a special Endorsement Caucus to take place in Los Angeles yesterday. We needed 60% of the delegate votes present to be able to officially endorse a Democratic gubanatorial candidate on Part 2 of the ballot. Unfortunately, they hadn't yet counted the ballots by the time I left, but I would be surprised if Bustamonte didn't win hands down.
Some observations:
- Democrats are fired up like I've NEVER seen them before. All over the state we've been registering people to vote, fliering, tabling, walking precincts, utilizing phone trees, etc., with every available volunteer. When this thing first started, only 25% polled said they were against the recall. As of Friday's L.A. Times polls, we're up to 47%.
- For the first time in weeks, I have hope that we might just pull this off. All this recall has done is piss off the Democrats and when Democrats get pissed, Democrats mobilize. I do not believe the Republicans are so motivated and I'm guessing that the same will be true on Oct. 7. There are many Republicans who are dismayed at this recall, and though they aren't speaking out, I believe in the privacy of the voting booth a significant portion will either not vote on Part 1 or vote "no."
- One of the State Senators from Texas -- Sherman? Shephard? (Texans, help me out here) spoke to the General Session about the situation in Texas. He also talked about how this all started with the Republicans trying to impeach Clinton, the debacle in Florida, the re-redistricting in Texas and Colorado and now this recall. People were on their feet! Art Torres got up right after that and said, "This trend of Republicans taking over by means of dirty tricks stops in California!" That one brought the house down.
- While the speakers were speaking to the crowd, all the house lights were on. While Art Torres was speaking, all of a sudden, the lights dimmed slowly and he started with, "Now I'd like to introduce someone who was a state Senator, our former Lt. Governor . . . " and we knew. Gray was in the house. Followed by Bustamonte. Now, we all know that these two despise each other but the message of the day was Democratic unity. Needless to say, it brought the house down again.
- Presidential Primary candidates. Locally, the biggest candidate support I see is Dean and Kucinich. None of the others even have regular meetings or anything else to raise support for their candidates. I looked around yesterday at the STATE convention and saw the same thing. T-shirts/buttons for Dean and Kucinch and not ONE for any of the other candidates. We "Deanies" were everywhere, of course -- the place was crawling with us, but to the Kucinich supporters, I want to say that if Dennis stays in through California, I think you're gonig to be pleasantly surprised at how well he does here.
There's more to report but this thing is already getting too long.
NO on Recall
YES on Bustamonte
NO on 53
NO on 54
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