A model for pushing back on anti-tax "Democrats" nationwide
by David Atkins
There has been an interesting dynamic in a local state senate election in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, which should serve as a model for how to deal with conservative anti-tax Democrats nationwide.
Hannah-Beth Jackson served in the California Assembly as a proud progressive. Eventually she was termed out by term limits, and ran for State Senate in 2008, where she lost by less than 1,000 to the virulently conservative Republican Tony Strickland, who ran a nasty anti-tax campaign against her.
After redistricting made the State Senate seat more favorable to Democrats this year, Hannah-Beth decided to take another run at the seat (Tony Strickland is jumping over to try a run at Congress in CA26 after veteran Republican Elton Gallegly's retirement.)
Firefighter and conservative Democrat Jason Hodge won a seat on Oxnard's Harbor Commission in 2010 and has been looking for a race to run in to further his political ambitions, and decided to run against Hannah-Beth in SD19 as well. His optimism in the race is fueled by California's new top-two primary system, in which the two candidates receiving the most votes in June now advance to November, regardless of party affiliation. That has led to centrist candidates running direct appeals to decline-to-state unaffiliated voters, in an attempt to marginalize the two parties.
Hodge received several local labor endorsements in spite of Hannah-Beth Jackson's strongly pro-labor record. This was partly due to his being a firefighter, partly due to the longtime conservative leanings of many local labor leaders, and partly due to petty patronage network issues. Hannah-Beth, by contrast, won the California Democratic Party endorsement with massive support from local progressive delegates, despite a hard-fought attempt by some local labor leaders to game the Democratic endorsement process on Hodge's behalf against the progressive grassroots.
Now the Hodge campaign has been distributing walking literature with the message that he's "the Democrat who doesn't think you need higher taxes."
But an interesting thing has happened since then: rather than buckling under and getting scared of an anti-tax "Democrat" with local labor support, there's been a major pushback instead by Democrats, labor and progressive groups:
19th Senate District candidate Jason Hodge began his campaign against fellow Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson with an impressive early showing among organized labor, racking up both campaign contributions and endorsements -- including that of the Tri Counties Central Labor Council.
But that may be changing, thanks in large part to a piece of campaign literature that Hodge has been leaving on district doorknobs. It proclaims Hodge to be "The Democrat Who Doesn't Think You Need Higher Taxes..."
But in the context of the 2012 campaign, Hodge's slogan rankles organized labor, which is rallying behind one or more initiatives that could be headed to the November ballot that will ask California voters to increase taxes to provide additional revenue to boost school spending.
The SEIU reported this week that a "town hall" process involving members in the districts resulted in an endorsement of Jackson. And sources tell me there are efforts afoot to deny Hodge the California Labor Federation federation endorsement when the statewide group meets this spring to consider whether to ratify the local labor caucus' decision to back Hodge.
Hopefully this sort of pushback will become a model for fighting back against conservative anti-tax Democrats nationwide, even when local labor leaders and powerful politicians support them (Hodge has been endorsed by CA Speaker of the Assembly John Perez, partly because of Hodge's marriage to termed-out assemblymember Fiona Ma.)
This is also why it's important for progressives to get involved in institutional Democratic politics if they can stomach it. Before more progressives started getting involved in Ventura and Santa Barbara County Democratic politics about 6 years ago, a candidate like Hodge might well have advanced with much more local institutional support, and without the sort of resistance that Hodge has encountered. But with greater progressive strength locally and a governor in Jerry Brown who isn't afraid to advance the notion of fairer taxation on the top 1%, the direction of political pressure is finally moving leftward rather than rightward.
And that's a good thing.
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