Evan Low (CA) & Eileen Filler-Corn (VA) Are Bad Democrats
When Blue America begins the vetting process on a candidate requesting an endorsement, the easiest ones to deal with are the ones who have been serving as state legislators. Pramila Jayapal (WA), Ted Lieu (CA), Jamie Raskin (MD), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ), Summer Lee (PA), Ilhan Omar (MN) were outstanding leaders in their respective state legislatures with very easy records to check out. And the opposite is equally true. Current California congressional candidates Rudy Salas and Adam Gray were the two single worst, most reactionary and corrupt members of the California legislature, so easy to reject, as were Jared Moskowitz (FL), DonDavis (NC), Ritchie Torres (NY), Henry Cuellar (TX), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Tim Kennedy (NY)…
The other day I got a rah rah genocide e-mail from an AIPAC shill, Eileen Filler-Corn, running for the open seat in northern Virginia, VA-10. There’s no one great running in the district, even though it’s a pretty safe blue seat (D+6, where Biden by by 18.1 points). There are a dozen Democratic candidates but Filler-Corn, having been the establishment minority leader of the House of Delegates, is one of the front-runners. If sheets into Congress she will immediately become part of the problem, never, never, never part of any solution.
Left Rising hasn’t found a candidate to back in that raise either, but today they launched a negative campaign against Filler-Corn. Mailers and a YouTube ad make it clear that she’s a “‘bad Democrat’ whose former role as managing director of an influential lobbying firm in Virginia put her in the pocket of ‘Big Tobacco,’ ‘Big Pharma’ and ‘Big Oil.’… Connor Farrell, who founded Left Rising, has also filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against Filler-Corn that questioned a $110,000 donation her political action committee made in February to a pro-Israel political action committee a day before that group announced that she is among the 95 Democrats it has endorsed for Congress. ‘We don’t think she can be trusted to do what a majority of Democratic voters support,’ said Farrell, who said he is not acting on behalf of any of the other 11 candidates in the race.”
AIPAC and DMFI are spending immense sums to get their puppet candidate into Congress— far more than the bribe she gave them to endorse her. Her campaign manager, Reed Elam launched a viciously anti-Semitic attack against Left Rising in response to their ad campaign, insisting, falsely, that the ads “lean on a Jewish stereotype of someone seeking to manipulate the system for monetary gain. ‘These false attacks against the first woman and Jewish person to be Speaker of the House are plainly sexist and rely on vile antisemitic tropes,’ Elman said.” Filler-Corn’s campaign, aside from making clear she will prioritize the Likud extremists over the needs of Virginia families, seems to be we need a woman in this seat and I’m better than the other women running. Yeah… so horrible. I wish there was someone better to recommend.
So how do you know if a legislator running for Congress is any good? Find a trusted organization that rates them in your state. For California, for example, we usually lean on the Courage Campaign. This week, though the ACLU sent out their own legislative scorecard “designed to let you know where your state legislators stand on some of our most significant civil rights and civil liberties issues, ranging from criminal justice to voting rights. None of the Republicans are any good; all have frighteningly low scores. Among the Democrats there are excellent legislators (above 90) and some that are pretty awful. In the Assembly, for example, 31 Democrats have perfect scores (100%). Among this year’s crop of shitty California Democrats running for Congress, we have Evan Low, who tries passing himself off as a progressive even though his voting record proves otherwise. His ACLU score is a dismal 82. His Courage Campaign career score is 8 and he’s rated “F.”
The other Democrat in the open seat general election for a deep blue district (D+26), sam Liccardo, is as bad. One of the ways Low has been exposed as a fake progressive has to do with his very conservative record on housing, as bad as it comes for tenants. California is in the middle of a fight over rent control now. Low, of course, is on the wrong side of the issue, completely in the pocket of the California Apartment Association, supporting their anti-rent control mania. They’ve given him a lot of money to lead their efforts in Sacramento. So he’s the worst possible kind of person to elect to Congress-- regardless of identity politics. Corporate real estate has financed his career and he always sides with them against people who need help from government.
This week, the L.A.Times noted that Bernie has weighed in on the rent control ballot measure. “Landlords,” he said, “should not be allowed to raise rents to whatever they want, whenever they want.”
The housing ballot measure comes from a coalition of housing advocates led by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The measure will ask voters to repeal a major restriction on rent control, in effect allowing more cities and counties across the state to cap rents on more types of homes.
In 2018 and 2020, the same groups backed efforts to pass similar ballot measures. In both instances, nearly all the funding for the initiative came from the Los Angeles nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which put about $60 million into the losing efforts. Both efforts to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act lost by nearly 20 percentage points in 2018 and 2020 after $100-million-plus campaigns in which landlord groups outspent supporters of the initiative by more than 2 to 1.
“Like Bernie, we don’t give up on a cause like justice for renters which is why we are sponsoring this initiative for the third time,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein said.
“What distinguishes Bernie from so many other elected officials is his absolute independence from the special interests that dominate our politics in California and make it impossible to pass any meaningful renters’ rights relief in Sacramento,” he said.
One of the biggest opponents of the last two efforts was the California Apartment Assn., which is gearing up to oppose this latest proposition as well. The Los Angeles nonprofit has long been aligned with Sanders and his wife, Jane— who both have done events for the group and backed other ballot measures the group has organized related to drug pricing.
The foundation has been criticized in recent years for substandard conditions in a collection of downtown adjacent apartments it has bought. A Times investigation last fall found that many of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s more than 1,300 residents live in squalid conditions, with dozens under the threat of eviction.
This is a really, really good ads that Left Rising put together for northern Virginia primary voters:
It's at the point when you really know who to NOT vote for -- when they have a 'D' or 'R' next to their name. Should be that way anyhoo.
vote for corrupt pussies... or pure evil? not me.
'“Landlords,” he said, “should not be allowed to raise rents to whatever they want, whenever they want.”' I'm conflicted on whether the best way to handle a shortfall in the market place is with regulation or with competition. I'll admit that the history of public housing in America hasn't been the greatest, but I think we have learned a few lessons since then. And it's not like regulation is always effective, well enforced, without unintended consequences and always survives the erosion of lobbyists. I have some sympathy for business people who rail against all the expensive regulations they have to endure, but a lot more sympathy for Americans who can't afford housing.