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Orange County

Republicans' Anti-GOTV Tactics

A Republican Congressional candidate in Orange County is being asked to withdraw his challenge to Democrat incumbent Loretta Sanchez after his campaign was linked to illegal intimidation letters sent this week to newly registered Latino voters. The letters were written in Spanish and claim that it is a crime for immigrants to vote in federal elections, punishable by jail time or deportation.

Democrats and Republicans alike have rightfully condemmed this deplorable tactic, and Tan Nguyen, the candidate in question who has a history of racist and anti-immigrant campaign mail, is being asked to drop out of the election. Nguyen is holding a press conference today to address the outcry. Also holding a press conference is the Our Children Our Vote Coalition, an emerging Vietnamese-Latino progressive coalition that PowerPAC is supporting this election cycle.

Leaders of the coalition said they were saddened and disturbed by the allegations, and said they underscore the importance of the Coalition's work to bring the Latino and Vietnamese communities together. The Coalition is supporting two Democratic candidates, one a Latina woman and the other a Vietnamese man, for Westminster School Board this November.

The Coalition is coordinating a press conference this Friday at 9 am, to bring Vietnamese, other Asian and Latino leaders together to condemn this hate mail and its mean-spirited attempt at scaring immigrants from exercising their right to vote. The press conference is also an opportunity to let the public know that there are community-based efforts, such as the Coalition, that have been working hard to build bridges between our communities.

Sanchez was clearly heading to victory anyway, but the real tragedy could be in California Senate District 32, which overlaps with where the mailer was sent, and where Democrat Lou Correa is locked in a tight battle with Republican Lynn Daucher.

The Orange County Registrar of Voters has been asked to send a follow-up letter to all voters who received the racist mailer correcting the errors.

Economics in San Bernardino

Phil Angelides was campaigning in San Bernardino Thursday, talking with voters about his recently unveiled economic plan. The L.A. Times has a nice piece on a campaign stop in Redlands:

With about 12 weeks before election day, Angelides, the state treasurer, launched a new tax plan Wednesday that offers goodies for the middle class. He wants to roll back college fees, expand tax credits for families, cut taxes for small businesses and offer property tax and rent relief for the poor.

He is using the plan to paint himself as a common man, while characterizing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as being out of touch. On Thursday, he called the governor "clueless" and "from another planet," and told folksy stories about his own middle-class parents.

"This looks just like the place I grew up," Angelides, a millionaire, said as he walked up the steep driveway of a modest hillside home owned by two teachers in San Bernardino.

Angelides also sees the tax plan as a way to focus his campaign on working-class issues. Facing about three dozen people at the San Bernardino house, Angelides said Schwarzenegger has been "grinding down the middle class" and questioned whether the governor had any connection to working people because he "lives behind gates."

California seeking 'relief' from mainstream media bias

The Chronicle covered the San Bernardino anti-immigration measure, although the story reads more like a loving profile of one of the measure's proponents, City Councilman Chas Kelley.

It's curious that the Mayor, or the other three council members who oppose the measure didn't get any ink, let alone glowing treatment as a local town hero. But worse than that is the reporter's bizarre acceptance of Kelley's opinion that, for example, people speaking a language other than English in a supermarket is a "problem" that the city must address.

But he soon was confronted with more troubling issues, like rising crime, a decaying downtown, and greater use of Spanish in shops and stores where Kelley was used to hearing his native tongue.

"All these things add up to a frustration level," he says.

After wrestling with the issue, and his conscience, he concluded that in a world that sometimes feels like it is spinning out of control, eliminating illegal immigrants would be one way of slowing things down. He has not wavered in that view.

Note to Kelley: even if you do "eliminate" illegal immigrants, your community's problems will not be solved. Problems in communities like those in San Bernardino -- extreme amounts of poverty, joblessness, poor urban planning that has caused environmental and commuting nightmares -- are not caused by one group of people. They are deep problems that can only be solved by the diverse community coming together and coming up with real solutions.

One would hope that an elected leader of the city would feel more empowered to solve the city's problems. Instead, he is choosing to lash out and scapegoat an entire class of people, who he is identifying in racist terms by invoking things like "Mexican flags" to describe them.

But in California's mainstream media, this mentality does not cause any critical thinking. It results in a charming profile. Unbelievable.

Democratic showdown in Orange County

The Orange County register has a profile of the race for the Democratic nomination in Senate District 34, pitting Assemblymember Tom Umberg against former Assemblymember and current County Supervisor Lou Correa. Interesting is the view from county Democratic leaders that they prefer Umberg because they don't want to lose Correa's hard-fought seat on the Republican-dominated County Board of Supervisors:

Lou Correa might seem like a sure fit for central Orange County's 34th state Senate District. He grew up there, he's part of its large Latino community, and constituents have elected him to the Assembly and the county Board of Supervisors.

But many in the Democratic establishment, including labor leaders, are backing his opponent, Tom Umberg, in the June 6 primary. Umberg is now an assemblyman in the working-class district and rents a condo there, but spends substantial time at his homes in Villa Park and Sacramento.

One reason Correa isn't more broadly supported by Democratic leaders is, ironically, his election success. He made a lot of Democrats happy when, after being termed out of the Assembly in 2004, he won a county supervisor's seat. No Democrat had held that post since the mid-1980s.

"We worked very hard to get Lou Correa elected to that seat. I don't want lose it," said Frank Barbaro, chairman of the county Democratic Party and an Umberg backer.

SD 34 is a key battleground in California for the fall, as Sen. Joe Dunn is termed out and running for Controller (with, by the way, one of the coolest political websites ever. Dunn wrested the seat away from the Republicans in 1998, and it is a district that is almost equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. PowerPAC is watching this one closely.

Anti-immigrant measure goes to ballot

The San Bernardino City Council today rejected an anti-immigrant measure put forth by the radical racist group Save Our State, putting the measure before voters in the coming months, likely in a special election.

More than 200 people gathered at City Hall to give input on the measure, which qualified for the ballot with only 2,200 signatures. The majority of those who turned out for the meeting were opposed to the measure, and community members said those who were in support were largely from outside of San Bernardino.

As the first wave of media coverage indicates, this promises to be one nasty, ugly battle:

David Nelson of San Bernardino spoke in favor of the measure.

"I am an American. I speak English ... therefore if you wish to become a part of this society learn English. The one great right of this society is the right to leave."

San Bernardino is a microcosm of what is happening nationwide around immigration. The immediacy of this ballot measure, which will most likely be decided in a special election between now and November, will bring all the conflict front and center, and force this community, the state and the country, to deal with some intensely difficult issues.

It is now time for every leader in this state, including those running for Governor, to speak out strongly against this measure. Immigration reform is complicated, sure. But this measure is not about immigration reform. It is about racism and xenophobia, and to not get involved in this fight is to compromise basic human dignity. No matter how bad things get, I refuse to accept that we live in a country that would deny working people rental housing, or criminalize people who are only trying to feed their families.

I hope our state's leaders can find the political courage to say the same.

Immigration battle in San Bernardino underway

The San Bernardino City Council right now is debating an initiative proposal that would deny rental housing to undocumented immigrants, as well as ban city-supported day labor hiring centers. If the City Council rejects the proposal tonight, which it is expected to do, the measure will automatically go on the ballot for voters.

PowerPAC.org, which has been providing data tools, resources and support to grass-roots organizations in San Bernardino for the last year, is in contact with community members who are gathering en masse to oppose this draconian measure. Hundreds of people have come to City Hall this afternoon to speak against the proposal, and have had to enter in shifts because the room only holds 100 people!

This local battle has both state and national implications, and PowerPAC.org will be working closely with the community to continue to fight this measure at the ballot box. Stay tuned to Blog for Justice for updates!

Going where the fight is

At PowerPAC's political briefing Wednesday, we unveiled the results of our research project that surveyed and studied California's political landscape in order to identify the most strategic areas to target for mobilization of voters of color.

It's a big state, and there is much work to be done. A key mission of PowerPAC in general is to fill in the gaps that exist in the political landscape -- for example, most of the voter mobilization done in the state is non-partisan, so ours will have a partisan focus. The same is true when it comes to targeting our efforts. PowerPAC has spent the last year building alliances, bringing together allied groups and providing resources to the grass-roots in San Bernardino, one of California's "red" counties, and a place the Republicans consider their base.

This year, we will undertake a similar approach in Orange County -- a place famous for its conservative leanings. Yet both San Bernardino and Orange County, when you look at them in a deeper way, provide clear opportunities for progressive organizing, particularly in fast-growing communities of color. And because these places have not had the level of organizing that has occured in more Democratic strongholds like Los Angeles or San Francisco, progressive victories can be won by relatively small margins.

Thankfully, this approach is starting to catch on in Howard Dean's Democratic Party.

These areas are clearly where battle lines are being drawn, as evidenced by the attempt in the city of San Bernardino by anti-immigrant activists to pass a local ordinance that would deny immigrants basic rights like rental housing. If we're not there, how will we fight?

Anti-immigrant attacks in Inland Empire

The San Bernardino City Council will be forced to vote on a draconian proposal to ban hiring centers for undocumented workers and prevent them from renting apartments in the city, which is 71% people of color.

The overtly racist group "Save Our State" is responsible for circulating a petition and invoking a rarely used provision of San Bernardino's City Charter that requires the council to take action on the proposal within 10 days. If it's rejected, the measure will go automatically on a citywide ballot for a vote.

San Bernardino is one of the areas targeted by PowerPAC in our Vote to Power program, because of the large numbers of eligible but not voting people of color. This dangerous proposal, which if passed would likely embolden this group to take it to other vulnerable cities, is exactly why building local electoral power for social justice in these areas is a critically important strategy in California right now. Rick Avila, a Latino candidate for Mayor of San Bernardino last year, summed it up perfectly:

"The minorities are the majorities in San Bernardino, but they don't vote like it," said Rick Avila, a contractor and the lone Latino candidate in a recent mayoral race in which he finished fourth of five.