The New GOP Playbook: Undermining Progressives From California, Virginia And Even Austin

The Democratic Establishment Isn't Taking The Threat Seriously Enough

A week from tomorrow Democrats in north Austin will be deciding who will represent their deep blue district on the city council… although these days, even in the deepest blue districts, GOP billionaires think they should decide and spread around immense amounts of money to recruit and support Republican-lite “Democraps” for every office that could impact them. They got scared when Bernie-grade progressive Mike Siegel came in a very strong first in the 6-man first round last month, more than double his closest competitor, one of those Republican-lite Democraps, Gary Bledsoe:

• Mike Siegel- 13,644 (39.8%)

• Gary Bledsoe- 6,607 (19.3%)

• Pierre Huy Nguyễn- 5,084 (14.8%)

• Adam Powell- 3,822 (11.2%)

• Todd Shaw- 2,964 (8.7%)

• Edwin Bautista- 2,132 (6.2%)

Voters seeing all the anti-Siegel ads flooding the district have no idea who’s behind them and where all the money for them is coming from. They're just hearing a loud and constant drumbeat of lies and anti-Siegel propaganda.

If you want to chip in to Mike’s campaign— basically to his field operation and get-out-the-vote efforts— you can do that here. It could make all the difference in denying the billionaire class another win.

Then a few weeks after that, January 7 will mark the first two special elections since Trump won the presidency: two Loudon County, Virginia races that should be a cinch for the two Democrats, our old friend Kannan Srinivasan (who is running for replace Suhas Subramanyam, who won a congressional seat, leaving his state Senate seat open) and JJ Singh (running to replace Srinivasan in the House of Delegates).

Superficially, the importance of these two races— which is pretty much how the NY Times covered them— is about how they will determine whether not the Democrats maintain their one-vote margin (and control) in each chamber of the Virginia legislature. But that isn’t really what the election is about since the House district has a PVI of D+31 and the Senate district has a PVI of D+29. Loudoun County in northern Virginia is nice and blue these days— especially these parts of Loudoun County. Unless there’s a monster catastrophe, Singh will be going to the House and Srinivasan will be going to the state Senate— and Gov. Youngkin will have to continue dealing with Democratic majorities during his final year in office.

So what’s the fuss? This morning, Fergie Reid of 90For90 told me that “A good Democratic voter turnout on Jan. 7th, will signal a high level of Democratic enthusiasm and attention. As well, it will signal a willingness and desire to push back on the coming Trump administration’s worst impulses.” In other words, are Democrats ready to be strong and united against Trump… or all they too drained and exhausted to keep fighting back? Reid Epstein noted that the races will be looked at as “barometers of partisan enthusiasm in the Trump 2.0 era… Eight years ago, his surprise victory prompted a wave of Democratic energy, unleashing geysers of fund-raising and a zeal to vote that led the party to special-election victories even in deeply Republican districts.”

He wrote, without much credibility that “party officials worry that a drop in enthusiasm could allow Republicans to snatch away key seats. Republicans have nominated Tumay Harding for the State Senate and Ram Venkatachalam for the State House. Each has emphasized school issues and a desire to end Democratic control of the legislative chambers. Special elections tend to be low-turnout affairs that attract only the most motivated voters, a reality expected to be even more acute in the Jan. 7 elections, which will include early voting throughout the December and New Year’s holidays… The stakes for Virginia are high: Democrats are vying to advance state constitutional amendments on abortion rights, same-sex marriage and the restoration of voting rights for convicted felons.”

Singh is campaigning on a platform of lowering highway tolls and tuition at Virginia’s public universities. He also backs standard Democratic priorities like the party’s proposed constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights into Virginia law and measures aimed at curbing gun violence.

In a recent interview, Singh— who ran a six-day campaign for the Democratic nomination for the House seat— said he found voters in his district confused by the sheer number of elections and stunned by the continuing Trump transition.

“People are cycling through the various steps to get to acceptance. I think there’s anger, I think there’s sadness, I think some people are numb,” Singh said. “There’s some level of acceptance that Trump is going to be our president. And we want folks in Washington to do good things. But if they can’t, well, then we’ve got to solve it in Richmond.”

Virginia Republicans have made competing in Loudoun County a centerpiece of their electoral strategy. This year, Trump shaved eight percentage points off his 25-point margin of defeat in the county in 2020. When Gov. Glenn Youngkin won his 2021 election, he lost the county by 11 points.

John Whitbeck, a conservative political operative from Loudoun County and former chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, said that GOP officials had not yet determined whether to invest significant resources in their candidates, who were selected at party conventions last month. 

During the special elections, Whitbeck said, the candidates are not likely to spend much time speaking to the concerns of swing voters who may have bounced between voting for Democrats and Republicans in recent contests. Instead, he said, the focus will be purely on the party bases.

“You don’t have time to communicate with crossover voters,” Whitbeck said. “If suddenly the Republican candidate is very close or even wins, you could say that this portends to building enthusiasm on the Republican side.”

It pays to not take anything for granted. Last month, 3 Democratic state legislative districts in California flipped red. One, AD-36, a Latino-majority district with a 14-point Democratic voters registration advantage, is in the Imperial and Coachella valleys, where the new assemblyman is Republican Jeff Gonzalez. It was an open seat and he beat Democrat Joey Acuña, president of the Coachella Valley Unified School District board, by 3.6% of the vote. One of Gonzalez’s backers was Tony Gallegos, a former chair of the Imperial County Democratic Central Committee. ‘We didn’t change,’ he told the L.A. Times. ‘We just supported the better candidate.’”

Assemblywoman Leticia Castillo, a Mexican American Republican who flipped a Democratic district in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, said her focus on “taking back” schools and the economy resonated with voters.

“I found a lot of people would talk about stuff that the Democrats were trying to push on them that they should care for,” Castillo said, referencing topics such as abortion and the new state law banning schools from enacting policies that require teachers to notify parents about changes to a student’s gender identity, including asking to be called by a different name or pronoun.

Voters, she said, made it clear that they “have other issues going on that are more important.”

Gonzalez focused his campaign on the Achilles’ heel of California Democrats: the state’s high cost of living.

In one Instagram video posted in October, Gonzalez stood in front of a gas station in the little desert town of Needles, where a gallon of regular gas cost $5.89. A few miles east, across the Arizona border, a gallon cost $2.95.

“There is no reason why Californians should have to cross state lines in order to make life more affordable,” he said. “Sacramento needs a change.”

…Imperial County was one of [ten] counties in California to flip from blue to red in this year’s presidential race. Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 463 votes, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win the county since 1988, when voters chose George H.W. Bush.

It is a dramatic shift. In 2020, Imperial County supported Biden by 24.4% of the vote— a roughly 25-point swing with voters choosing Trump this year by 0.8%.

Earlier this year in the county, moderate Democrats in Calexico, an almost entirely Latino border city, led a successful recall campaign against two young, progressive members of the City Council, including its first out transgender member, Raúl Ureña, who accused opponents of transphobia.

Recall leaders— who prominently backed Gonzalez’s campaign— said the recall was not about gender but, rather, about the two ousted councilmembers being out-of-touch and too far-left. The councilmembers, they said, dismissed downtown merchants’ concerns about crime, public drug use and rampant homeless encampments to focus instead on projects like installing charging stations for electric vehicles that most people in town cannot afford.

Kay Pricola, a 77-year-old Republican from Brawley who helped with Gonzalez’s campaign, said she was not surprised by the county’s rightward shift because people are fed up with state Democrats who, she said, have not done enough to bring down costs.

“There’s no financial constraints on the Democratic Party,” Pricola said. “Tax, tax, tax. Everything for everybody, and you don’t have to work for it... We’re driving the financially responsible people out of California. Those that are tied to the land, who can’t leave, are going to have a bigger burden, bigger burden, until the point they break. And their children are going to leave.”

Still, given the district’s Democratic tilt, she urged Gonzalez to focus on local issues, telling him: “If you come across as a Trumper, you’re going to turn them off.”

Gallegos, 79, said California Democrats became arrogant, not paying enough attention to the struggling Imperial Valley because it had always voted blue.

“All they want is taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes— and I’m a Democrat,” he said. “And they’re always asking for money for this and money for that. That’s fine. But what are we going to get out of it? We don’t see it. Look at all the money they put into homelessness, and people are still in the streets.”

For anyone who wants to keep track, the 10 California counties Trump just flipped red are Butte (19% Latino), Fresno (44% Latino), Imperial (80% Latino), Inyo (23% Latino), Lake (23% Latino), Merced (62% Latino), Riverside (% 50 Latino), San Bernardino (54% Latino), San Joaquin (42% Latino) and Stanislaus (48% Latino). Statewide, Latinos make up 39% of the population. Riverside has the 4th biggest population in the state; San Bernardino has the 5th and Fresno has the 10th.