California Democratic Party Chairman Calling On Some Of Their Candidates For Governor To Drop Out Is For Show

This was clearly for show, and not a serious effort to winnow the Democratic field.

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Rusty Hicks, the Chairman of the California Democratic Party, is not a dumb guy. In fact, quite the opposite. You do not get a law degree from Loyola, spend years running one of the largest union shops in the country, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and then become head of the political party that controls all the levers of government in California, without being a smart cookie.

Leaving one to wonder how to understand his very public plea earlier this week for candidates for Governor who “…do not have a viable path to the general election…” to drop out. Austensibility to avoid a top-two general election between two Republicans. I have already talked about two Republicans making the top two won’t happen, and even which Republican they will lift and which one they will push down (“they” in this case is the broader coalition on the left — including the labor unions to which Hicks obviously has close ties, given that he was a union boss himself, literally.)

This is the actual letter produced by the CA Democratic Party.

Efforts to get candidates to drop out are not done through a public letter. At least not meaningful ones. Those kinds of efforts would happen behind closed doors, with influencers making phone calls. What calls would matter to a candidate? Union bosses. Heads of liberal interest groups. VIPs like a Newsom, an Obama, a Harris - I suppose. Major donors? We can just imagine the strategery there.

No, a public statement like this sounds to me like constituent management. Hicks, at the end of the day, is the head of a state central committee with thousands of members. He knows from his union days that job one is keeping your members happy. I have no doubt that a copy of this “open letter” found its way into the inboxes of all of those delegates who, according to media accounts of their recent convention, are very worried about having nine significant candidates all running, with no clear frontrunner, and the potential of getting shut out in the November election. This doesn’t mean there aren’t efforts going on behind the scenes. But what we saw was window dressing.

Of course, probably the most significant hurdle to getting any or many of these candidates who aren’t showing much statewide support on recent statewide public opinion surveys is that all of them have been spending their time raising money. In many cases, millions and millions of dollars. But do you know what they have not been doing? Spending all of the money they have raised. Because you typically raise the money and then wait until much closer to when voters will receive their ballots before you spend it. All of these candidates know that, in a state as large as California, these early numbers are largely based on earned media and ballot designations. (I guess it’s worth mentioning that billionaire Tom Steyer is an exception, having spent tens of millions already, and there have been seven figures of SuperPAC money spent on behalf of Matt Mahan.)

So to ask people who want to be Governor so bad that they have made this endeavor the center of their lives, and asked everyone they know and then some to invest in their candidacy, to drop out before spending it… Well, it’s naive.

Hicks and other Democratic coalition leaders should either go recruit Kamala Harris, who I think would easily dominate the lackluster field, or just focus on their plans to spend a lot more money picking one Republican to elevate and one to diminish. I guess we can call it the Steve Garvey plan.

The practical matter here is that the absence of a high-profile candidate who can “clear the field,” as it were, is because the incumbent Governor, Gavin Newsom, has left a complete dumpster fire for the person who comes into the office after him. What serious Democrat wants this job? I guess all eleven candidates (if you include the two Republicans) can all truthfully tell voters in the fall: vote for me—it literally can’t get any worse. Now that’s some campaign slogan!

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