Editorials

Today was a lovely Saturday in California Assembly District 15, and its lovely residents were out in full force in Emeryville. The occasion was the election of delegates to the state Democratic Party convention, and the cheerful and handsome voters were on display as they waited in line to get their ballots.

This might seem like an odd way to choose delegates, sort of an endurance test, since one estimate was that almost 1700 district voters, registered Dems all, showed up to stand in line. But the atmosphere was more like a small-p party than a Party meeting, with participants greeting each other enthusiastically, even those who were pretty sure they were endorsing different slates. It seemed like a good percentage of everyone I’ve ever known around here showed up, and even some notables like Josh Kornbluh that I don’t know but have seen around.

There were just two slates for 26 slots, divided somewhat peculiarly into half self-identified women and half not-women. When these rules were set up, not that long ago, this may have seemed fair, but with fluid gender identities all the rage it doesn’t seem quite fair anymore, does it?

The overall good humor was undoubtedly influenced by the good news from DC. A woman who was furloughed from her security guard job got it right in a TV interview. Even though she was having trouble making the rent, she was sure that Speaker Pelosi was doing the right thing:

“Miss Nancy won’t let him have that wall!” she said, and she was right.

Miss Nancy gave that bad boy the timeout he needed—a triumph for grannies everywhere, a fair number of whom were in that line in Emeryville with big smiles on their faces as they discussed what happened on Friday.

The winning slate, in the end, was the one that could have claimed Shirley Chisholm’s old slogan, Unbossed and Unbought: the Progressive Labor Slate. Their counterparts in the 18th AD , which holds its election on Sunday, call themselves the Unbossed Slate.

In AD 15, the other slate, with truth in packaging, called themselves the Union of Progressive Leaders. This was the one endorsed by the Electeds, Sen. Nancy Skinner and Asm. Buffy Wicks. They appeared to be successors to the 2016 Hillary Clinton primary campaign.

I myself did vote for Hillary in June of 2016--that got me some unwelcome phone solicitations for this vote, but I’ve moved on. They offered me free breakfast with Buffy at 9 a.m. (are you kidding?), a ride to the meeting and a chance to register to vote if I hadn't managed to do that by the last election day. The sober identical teeshirts worn by this slate’s staff (there were a lot of them) hinted at plenty of spending money, not necessarily a plus in this area.

People handing out slate cards for the other crowd wore a miscellany of old Bernie and Our Revolution tee shirts and other assorted colorful clothing, presumably signifying a more anarchistic temperament. A crowd pleaser was Alfred Twu, self-identified on the not-woman side, who nonetheless chooses Little-House-on-the-Prairie dresses and sun bonnets for daily wear.

He won, as did almost all of his slate, both female and non-female, as well as Wendy Bloom, their candidate for the Executive Committee. Only Oakland Councilmember Dan Kalb, who ran a credible race again Buffy Wicks in June but then joined her slate, was chosen from the Leaders queue.

All in all, bottom-up proved more popular than top-down: The grass roots have spoken, and the Leaders had better be listening. 

AD 15 Executive Board : Wendy Bloom 

Women : 

Wendy Bloom 

Bobbi Lopez 

Mabel Lam 

Kate Harrison 

Ada Recinos 

Courtney Welch 

Andrea Mullarkey 

Men : 

Xavier Johnson 

Alfred Twu 

Keane Chukwuneta 

Soli Alpert 

Sam Davis 

Devin Murphy 

Dan Kalb from the Union of Progressive Leaders also won.