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Finally, the speculation of who’s running for what office is ending — and it’s time for the horrifying reality to sink in.
Here’s a link to a long PDF of the schedule for events preceding and following this year’s primary election for federal and state executive and legislative offices (and for judicial offices).
The most pressing thing to know about that schedule is that February 13 through March 9 is when candidates can go to the Orange County Registrar of Voters Office and lock in their decision to run for a particular office. (If an incumbent doesn’t run for reelection to their office, the filing period is extended by five days.) Once a filing is made, it is locked in: the candidate cannot switch to any other race for the primary election (although there are some boards for which they may still be able to run simultaneously) and if they make it to the runoff — even if they’ve been swamped 99% to 1% in the primary, they won’t be able to run for local offices either. In other words, it’s a serious and consequential decision — which is one reason why many people wait until late in the filing period to file.
This year, though, with “Congress fever” having swept over the land and the Democratic Party (probably accompanied by the Republicans) scrambling to winnow down the field of candidates for each given race so they don’t split the vote enough to prevent any of them from making the runoff, the dynamic is likely to be different. Parties will likely be pushing anyone who hasn’t entered one of the crowded races from doing so. The only way one is liable to being pushed not to run is if one has already filed. So it seems likely that everyone will rush to get their applications in right away — who has filed is reported every evening — so that others rather than oneself are subject to such pressure.
This will likely lead to what I’m delicately calling “the clustercrash” — the result of a multiway game of chicken. For those of you know don’t know that game –perhaps from movies such as Rebel Without a Cause, an image from which is above — it’s when two enormously stupid drivers drive their cars directly towards one another at high speed. If one of them swerves out of the way while the other doesn’t, the person who swerves loses and becomes the “chicken.” If neither swerves, both lose — and it’s more than just their pride and swagger.
Everyone wants everyone else to avoid the impending crash — so a crash becomes almost inevitable.
The game of chicken quickly became a leading topic in the area of academic study known as “game theory” — which is applies to everything from animal behavior to theories of nuclear deterrence. In a “jungle primary” system like ours, if two strong Republicans run against six strong Democrats in a given district — even a Democratic-leaning district — the likelihood becomes high that no Democrat will get a larger share of the vote than the second-best Republican. Thus, the contestants on one side of the aisle crash into one another and blow up — if enough of them can’t be convinced to swerve into another race.
A strong party can make this pile-up less likely. Local Republicans have a fairly strong party, capable of doling out punishment to those who transgress against the party’s wishes. Local Democrats don’t — largely because the party generally doesn’t do much for its candidates, and partly because it has squandered its influence in the past.
The most striking recent example of the latter was when DPOC Chair Henry Vandermeir tried to push Josh Newman out of the SD-29 race against the party insiders’ favorite, carpetbagger Sukhee Kang. That went poorly and many candidates cite it as a reason why they won’t give in to even legitimate pressure. There was no reason not to let Newman run in 2016 — an R vs. R primary was never a serious threat — other than that the party establishment wanted their candidate to take the seat. This year, there’s a very good reason to want no more than two Democratic candidates running in any race (or maybe three if Republicans have already filed that many) — but we’re seeing what happens when a party squanders its credibility with candidates and offers no strong fair measurable evidence (such as truly independent polls, focus groups, or a series of conventions) that could be used to convince weaker candidates to drop out.
I’ve been pushing for the Democratic party to do this literally since our first public meeting of the election cycle in January 2017. It hasn’t happened — and I’ve been told privately not to worry about it, even though publicly the fear is acknowledged. Well, I’m still worrying about it.
What’s happening now is that candidates run their own polls which somehow all show their guy or gal doing very well compared to other candidates — that’s one way that pollsters stay in business — leading every candidate to believe in their own evidence that should scare everyone else out of the race. But they can’t all be right — in fact, it’s doubtful that even one of them is.
As I’ve said at various meetings: if you think that conducting polls and focus groups is expensive, see how expensive not getting a Democrat into the runoff in one (or more) of the most strongly targeted seats in the nation. OC will be a laughingstock if and when that happens — and just blaming the candidates for the problem is something convincing only to party insiders themselves. Parties are supposed to LEAD, and that means having the ability to be what’s called a FAIR BROKER, an actor who will find and convey only the truth, with favoritism towards no one. With the anti-leftist bias of the local Democratic Party — this year most evident in trying to hijack the amazing success of Doug Applegate in CA-49 in the 2016 cycle for the glory of business-oriented moderate party insider Mike Levin — there’s no pretense of fairness. And that’s why we’ve had no way to avoid a cluster-crash starting on Tuesday.
I don’t intend to be especially critical here of the current DPOC Chair, Fran Sdao, who for all of our sometimes conflicts I’ve acknowledged as the best of the three Chairs under which I’ve served in OC. It took a long time for the Democratic Party to build up a reputation of not being a fair broker — and it will take a long time to dismantle it, even if we ever are willing to take the necessary steps.
For my part, as I weigh candidate’s positives and negatives, I’m giving a big negative mark towards any candidate who files the first day — maybe even the first two days. That’s just screaming out “I don’t care if we all crash and burn!” — and if that’s what someone is going to do, they shouldn’t expect to be treated nicely.
If you “bring hell” upon your party by freezing it out of the general election, you should expect to roast in it for a long while.
Decades ago, I enjoyed viewing “Brazil”, Terry Gilliam’s (of Monty Python) darkly comedic view of the future. I now wonder, if it could have been shown for a “Lunch Hour Movie” at the Pentagon, where, devoid of senses of humor, they saw it as a blueprint ? Naaaa!
*We loved Brazil…..especially the Robert De’Niro character…..the plumber…..and of course Jonathan Price’s mom and her Botox expansion. Superb and a must see for any that have not seen what bureaucratic Systems can do any society. The reality is that society is changing and The Trumpster is grasping that last gasp of a sad sack society….thinking that “I have mine…….who cares what you have?”
*We also loved Natalie Wood. Chris Walken will eventually come out with the truth…
In the meantime……..we miss Natalie……and her many years talent that was lost because of alcoholism, domestic abuse and manic depression and of course too many pharmaceutical drugs….too easily obtained.
Anyone know a “George Tosda,” “Julia West,” or “Sidney Myers” in or around OC? They have some things in common:
(1) they are probably all the same person
(2) email to them bounces
(3) they engage in vicious anonymous attacks
(4) and they won’t see the light of day here until and unless I decide to do another “trash dump” so you can see what our detractors complain about our not publishing, despite that it already exists on some of the less reputable websites around.
It’s “Sydney.” It’s also the person who calls themselves “OC Dem” on the alt-right sites Liberal OC and HB Sledgehammer.
We agree these are all from the same author, then? Well, I sure wish that they’d answer their fake email!
Isn’t it “David Vasquez” rather than “OC Dem,” though, who keeps yowling that that he keeps writing us under his own name without getting published? (Really, it’s just the same old shite that one can see on Liberal OC, if one is in to that sort of thing.) Then again, maybe DV and OCD also are one and the same.
It’s a sad commentary on politics in OC that this is considered “the way to win” when one has an apparently hopeless argument to win — and hardly anyone complains about it. I suppose that we get the political discourse that we deserve.
Chumley’s surely going to get an article, if he already hasn’t done so, arguing that my nicknaming him after a cartoon character he resembles (though the resemblance was more between that character’s partner and the *good* Lib OC founder, Prevatt) and my calling for rules of order to be enforced at DPOC meetings are easily the equivalent (if not worse!) of falsely accusing people of the anal rape of children — the sort of accusation in which his buddies now traffic.
I don’t know, or the same little gang of sick assholes.
They must really be suffering right now, with the Liberal OC down 10, 11 days now. I mean there’s other places they can spew their poison but not so freely.
Don’t touch the pink toad.
There have been many recent (valid) complaints about shrinking Public Comment times by Government bodies in the County, Here’s what happens in West Virginia – why we should protest time reduction, not just accept it !-
Since this ugly comment is aimed entirely at me, rather than Vern, Donna, my brothers-in-law, Victor, Ryan, Zenger, Cynthia, or any of the other usual customary targets of the hit squad associated with The Liberal OC — which is back up, by the way — I think that I am entitled to share the ugly with all of you. The author had no reason to expect that it would see the light of day here — as opposed to at the now-back-up Chez Chumley, where it typifies what they’ve printed for years — so its intended target is simply my state of mind. In other words, it’s “bullying.” I’m going to invite DPOC to condemn this sort of behavior, which is tied to support for candidates and causes beginning with Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido (former Chair Frank Barbaro’s business former-and-possibly-current business partner) and opposition to all challenges to him and his buddies being the only Latino Democratic game in town. Here goes:
Let’s take this bonbon apart:
I’m not sure what the reference to “Wednesday” is — I thought at first that it might be to the school shooting in Florida, but that was today (Thursday). “Crazy Greg” is a term used by Chumley favorite “OC Dem” and appears to reference my clinical depression, which is nicely and currently controlled with medication, thanks, the major cost of which is that I can’t take Robitussin or any other single dose non-drowsy allergy formula (which has truly sucked during the past week.)
… [thanks Greg, Vern doesn’t need defending]…
I neither own, nor tote, a gun — and I never have. I’m not opposed to others doing so within the bounds of the law, so long as it remains so. I’m not a threat to commit violence against others, in any event. Depression turns one inward, but the same wonderful family that inclines me against outward directed violence also inclines me against inward direct violence. And yes, medication has helped me control the latter.
I actually think that it’s cruel and wrong for the author — presuming that Chumley did not approve of this writing — to drag Chumley into his attack on me. It’s nasty to rile up his children that way. (It also puts me at risk, but at least *that* part is presumably intentional.) Dan needn’t “beware”: I have no inclination towards violence against him and, as I’ve said before, I thank the powers-that-be for the low caliber of my enemies. While I find the commentary that he tolerates (and, my guess is, cooperates in the production of, though he’d never admit it) on his site to be disgusting and an admission of inability to win arguments on the merits, it’s apparently what he thinks he needs to do to win a political fight that in some way serves his purposes — and given the cards that he has to play, it’s not surprising that he’d resort to boosting defamation.
I’ve now seen this happen to me, Victor, Vern, Julio Perez, and a few others. It doesn’t happen towards members of the “moderate” (or libertarian-ish) “Business Democrat” community often enough to speak of, if at all; I *sign* whatever criticisms I have to make of Pulido, Daly, Solorio, Brandman, Melahat, Vendermeir, Barbaro, et al. — and they’re grounded in *real* acts on their part, not on fever dreams. When I’ve confronted my fellow Democrats about their lack of criticism of these practices, they’ve generally and implausibly said that they’re not familiar with them and have no inclination to go read them. I’ll send this comment around to them, to the extent I’m allowed, and see what they think.
If this were happening to someone else, and I knew about it, I’d write a piece condemning it so long as I had their permission. I’m not — and least not *always* — going to show less courtesy to myself.
You forgot Paul Lucas and (for some damn reason) “Mirevette” and “Yesina.”
And as far as I can tell, FibOC is still on life support. You can see it again but it’s been mute and lame for two weeks today.
OH! Also the shooting WAS yesterday.
Yeah. I think I may have stated composing that comment before midnight and then come back to it in the morning. That or lost track of the time — it’s been a frenzied week here.
You’re right about those three. Gee, what do we all have in common?