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By Alexei Koseff<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n CalMatters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The message was clear and, more importantly, it was loud: Progressive activists would work to block the California Democratic Party\u2019s endorsement for any lawmaker who did not support a single-payer health care bill facing a crucial legislative deadline at the end of January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their threat did not persuade wavering legislators<\/a> to get on board, however, and the bill was shelved without a vote. Two weeks later, the chairperson of the party\u2019s progressive caucus announced<\/a> that activists had dropped their campaign to pull endorsements<\/a> from uncooperative incumbents, blaming Democratic officials for obstructing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe party uses every advantage it has under the bylaws to ensure there is no democracy in the Democratic Party,\u201d Amar Shergill, the progressive caucus chairperson, told CalMatters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a> including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein from the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet in the five years since, they\u2019ve struggled to achieve their biggest and most consequential goals, including twice failing to elevate one of their own<\/a> to lead the California Democratic Party. Earlier this month, party officials adopted new restrictions on campaign contributions that fell short of progressive demands<\/a> to stop taking money entirely from fossil fuel companies, law enforcement unions and health insurers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As delegates gather virtually this coming weekend<\/a> for the annual state party convention, nearly all of the sitting legislators who are running again will be endorsed on a consent calendar<\/a>, 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<\/a> the director of the newly established Working Families Party<\/a> to address the caucus on Saturday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dissension reflects how the eternal ideological tension within California\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though the influence of the progressive wing has not entirely waned \u2014 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 \u2014 a lack of victories to back up their more aggressive political style has sent a signal to some Democrats to simply ignore them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 Democratic officials to manage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the beliefs is that if you have impassioned speeches and you scream truth to power, you can have policy change overnight,\u201d Flores said. \u201cThey\u2019re not able to make good on any of their threats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite numerous interview requests, the California Democratic Party did not make Chairperson Rusty Hicks available for this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not the first time the California Democratic Party has been through these battles, which are also playing out in the national party and inother states. In neighboring Nevada, top Democratic politicians and their allies established a rival campaign apparatus<\/a> after the state party elected a left-wing chairperson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Karen Bernal, a former chairperson of the California party\u2019s progressive caucus for three terms from 2009 to 2013 and 2017 to 2019, said there\u2019s a fundamental conflict over the function of the party between rank-and-file members, who join for ideological affinity, and politicians, for whom it is a conduit for money and other campaign resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s always been a struggle between the grassroots and the legislative leadership,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The party experienced a similar wave of insurgent progressive activism after Howard Dean\u2019s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2004, Bernal said, then the energy dwindled during the Obama years when identity politics neutralized the philosophical divide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the backlash from party officials is more \u201ciron-fisted\u201d this time around, she said. She pointed to elaborate campaigns to elected favored slates of delegates after progressives unexpectedly swept races in 2017 and rule changes when activists have found ways to challenge the power structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After progressives called a meeting of the party\u2019s executive board to pursue the ban on donations from groups they consider in conflict with the California Democratic Party platform, the rules committee proposed an amendment to the bylaws that raises the threshold for requesting a special meeting, including by doubling the number of signatures required. It was adopted in late February<\/a>, during the same weekend when officials approved a scaled-back proposal that gives the party more flexibility on when to reject contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Activists allege that their effort to challenge lawmakers who did not support the single-payer legislation faltered because the party misinterpreted its own bylaws that establish a process for disputing endorsements and shut them down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Combined, Bernal said, all of these measures demonstrate an establishment desperate to hold on to the status quo \u2014 and how far it will go to silence dissent from progressives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTheir influence is being smashed from the top,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been corralled and contained. But does it mean that their fight is not resonant? No, it does not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While this fight is unlikely to resonate outside of a narrow sliver of voters invested in party politics, several strategists said it presented an unnecessary distraction for Democrats in an election year where polls suggest they are facing growing political headwinds<\/a> and could ultimately undermine progressives\u2019 position in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew Acosta, a political consultant who frequently works with moderate Democrats in swing districts, said the single-payer activists had overplayed their hand with the threat to pull endorsements. With voter malaise over pocketbook issues such as inflation front and center, he said it was the wrong year to take on a legislative fight that would require massive tax increases. (Supporters of a single-payer health care system argue that Californians would ultimately pay less than they do now for insurance premiums.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n While politicians do respond to party dynamics, Acosta said, they must be cognizant first of their constituents.As Democrats try to defend legislative supermajorities that allow them to raise taxes and qualify ballot measures without Republican votes, they did not want to provide their opponents with an easy campaign attack that they are out of touch with pressing economic concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople are feeling it, man,\u201d Acosta said, \u201cIt\u2019s just hard to tell people they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The outsized response by single-payer advocates to the bill\u2019s failure last month \u2014 including warnings that they might back a challenger to Assemblymember Ash Kalra, the San Jose Democrat who carried the measure, because he did not bring it up for a vote \u2014 also turned off many in Sacramento.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flores, the former party spokesman, called it a moment of \u201cself-marginalization\u201d for the progressive movement and a message for the dozens of new legislators who will arrive at the Capitol by next year after an unusually high number of resignations and retirements<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIs that really what they\u2019re going to want to deal with?\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of what\u2019s displayed is not how you build a winning legislative coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shergill, the progressive caucus chairperson who frequently<\/a> criticizes<\/a> Hicks on<\/a> social media<\/a>, rejected the notion that its tactics had weakened the position of the party\u2019s left wing. He said he would continue to advocate for progressives to build their own organizations that could operate freely outside of the California Democratic Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen we\u2019re successful, great. When we\u2019re not, it reinforces this message that the party cannot be trusted with your time and effort,\u201d he said. \u201cFor progressives, there\u2019s never a scenario where we lose, because either we win the issue or we\u2019re teaching our members lessons about how to win the next fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018It\u2019s always been a struggle between the grassroots and legislative leadership\u2019 By Alexei Koseff \u2022 March 1, 2022 – Updated March 2, 2022 (SFExaminer.com) By Alexei Koseff CalMatters The message was clear and, more importantly, it was loud: Progressive activists would work to block the California Democratic Party\u2019s endorsement for… Continue reading Internal division over party\u2019s direction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Where do progressives go next?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n