ADEM Results, Flawed Though They Be, Are Out

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‘Tin soldiers and Rusty’s coming…” — the results may be BS, but they’re out!

First you should read this post about how the CDP screwed up the voting by changing the rules mid-election so that, contrary to previous practice, there would be no separate vote for the DSCC (CDP’s governing board) Executive Board — meaning that if you wanted a particular person to win you had to vote against the other good people who were also running for that position, because the person with the most votes in the ADAM would be chosen as the E-Board representative and you didn’t want your candidate to lose.

Then you should read this post about how the CDP massively mangled the distribution and collection of the ballots.  (There’s more to be added to that, but we’ll skip the details for now.)  Here are my initial recommendations and here are Vern’s. (I’m not taking time right now to refresh my memory about them right now, so I may fiddle with my comments here later.)

None of this will matter, of course.  After some weird oscillation in reporting of the tallies, probably due to cut-and-paste errors in spreadsheets, the results are in.  I haven’t reviewed them before beginning this. I’ll post the top ten vote-leaders among Female and Not-Female (all based upon self-identification) in district number order now — the top six in each become delegates, the seventh becomes an alternate, but I’ll post the top ten or so you can see the closest and most notable misses as well — and will post my thoughts as I go.

AD-55 (P. Chen)

Executive Board: Jim Gallagher (OSIF)

Female:

This isn’t a bad lineup at all — I’m particularly happy to see Shah and Baig, happy to see Mann and Friedman, and not unhappy about the rest — but those four people listed among those who lost were strong (and left-reformist) candidates.  Naturally, they were left off of what was obviously a slate.

Not Female:

Fritchle and Smith (reformist lefties) didn’t make it onto a slate; Fahmy (a left-basher), didn’t either.  I’m especially glad to see Rawlings, happy to see Hayakawa (whom I don’t think I know) and Gallagher (who is far more centrist than I am, but quite deserving of representing the district, and I don’t recall the other winners enough for an opinion.

Note that Hayakawa and three women — Shah, Baig, and Abou-Taleb — outpolled Gallagher, but did not indicate their desire to be on the Executive Board, which is why Gallagher won.

AD-57 (Adjacent to, not part of, OC)

I’m including AD-57 because parts of it are probably the most likely to be folded into with the northernmost OC Assembly district in redistricting, if Diamond Bar, Rowland Heights, etc. get lumped in with the rest of Los Angeles County and/or Yorba Linda gets joined to the other hilly areas to its south. (Plus, I just love the results!)

Executive Board: Henry Huerta (OSIF)

Female:

Not Female:

Close elections here, with better turnouts than AD-55.  (No AD-55 candidate won enough votes to have won in AD-57!)  Terrazas has been especially involved in north OC politics, and Henry Huerta is simply one of the best reformist leaders in the DSCC.

OK, back to OC per se!

AD-65 (Quirk-Silva)

Executive Board: Bobbi-Lee Smart

Female:

Not Female:

I’m happy to see Bobbi-Lee Smart on E-Board! (She finished fifth, but the four people above her didn’t apply for it.)  In fact, while I might have preferred an adjustment or two, the female winners look quite good — especially the top four.

The results for non-females are more disappointing: some good choices there, but I’m sorry to see Castaneda and Rodriguez excluded.  (Aaruni Thakur stood down, as I recall — hence his 183 fewer votes than his wife’s.)  As for Mesbah Islam — this is just your reminder that he’s the one who actually wrote the post about Ho Chi Minh that Jeff Letourneau simply shared to get people’s reactions to it, which is falsely attributed to Jeff by people including Chumley.

AD-68 (Choi)

Females:

Good to see Naz and Ashleigh up there, disappointing to see the Republican pawn Quezada there.  Really disappointing to see Lynn, Galindo, Abbott-Wicker, and Herzog not make it.  (Bratton was promoted by Chumley for reasons I still don’t get.)  This result goes onto Rep. Katie Porter’s tab — she was a main sponsor of the “Orange to Blue” slate, which I think swept the non-female slate and swept the female seats with the exception of Baldwin beating Galindo, which seems like it may have been considered OK anyway — and when she doesn’t get the leftist support that she thinks she’d entitled to, this will explain why.  Her main goal has been to avoid people who might defy her.

Not female:

Lee’s winning was all but inevitable, and his E-Board position, almost as likely, so I take solace that at least he’s self-aware and understands the need for broader party unity, whatever his own positions.  It’s good to see Perle and Kang there; I don’t recall my feelings about the rest, except that I know that Mohan is a direct employee of Ada Briceno’s — but an ambitious young politico ain’t going to turn that down, so fine.

I was glad to see Henninger (too klepto-friendly) and Huang (too goofy) excluded, but the shutout of David Sonneborn, now from all Democratic positions, startles me.  He’s been the party’s top guy on legislation for decades, and while he and I have often been on the outs I would think that there would still be a place for him.  (Maybe Rusty will appoint him.)

Katie: this is why the party’s left, which has its eyes on what you do, will oppose you for positions like the Senate seat.  You’ve shown repeatedly that you are a divider.

AD-69 (Daly)

Female:

Not female:

It’s sad to see Yenni lose out to people with far less of a track record.  It’s also sad to see to see Gloria get the E-Board spot when three other women got more votes — but I suspect that if any of them had been running for E-Board they might not have even beaten Yenni.

Regarding the not-females, the results are disastrous.  I owe Vern an apology for my thinking that Martin Lopez had extricated himself from the worst of the Labor Fed associations — but apparently he has not.  (That, or the Fed just made a huge mistake.)   You could literally count up seven from the bottom (skipping either Gonzalez or Gavino, either of whom were ok, and I hope Gavino has learned something about where he stands — i.e., over 100 votes below L-AP — and have an excellent slate, but the well-organized trades got a bunch of unknowns elected while excluding some excellent activists.  They have essentially told the left to piss off — and, sure enough, that will continue to be what happens in elections like the next State Senate race.

AD-69 now appears to be under complete control of the Building Trades, who in turn control the OC Labor Federation — note that Grim Gloria’s total almost matches those of Martin Lopez and LuisAndresVendido Perez, whose totals probably give us a good sense of how many voters the unions turned out — and much of the “credit” for that belongs to Rep. Lou Correa, Assemblyman Tom Daly, voraciously ambitious DPOC Chair Ada Briceño, and their longtime colleagues.  (Hi, Loretta!  Hi John H.!)

AD-72 (J. Nguyen)

Female:

Not Female:

Results in AD-72 were about as good as AD-69’s were bad — which is probably attributable to the DPOC not giving much of a shit about AD-72 so long as they can keep out “communists.”

For the females, OJB endorsed La, Clayton-Tarvin, Tromp, Nguyen, and Tiffany (and we were OK with Mai Khanh Tran) — and they finished in almost that exact order.  (Maria Ortiz finished fourth behind Tromp, which is fine.)  So we’re quite happy there — and particularly with La’s election to the E-Board.

For the non-females, OJ’s sole five picks got the five highest vote totals, so we’re happy —  and while Bijan Mohseni Calderón was Mike Carroll’s (and thus Farrah Khan’s) catspaw to try to split the Democratic vote and keep Diedre Nguyen out of the runoff with Janet Nguyen, he also edged out Tri Ta by one vote, so we can put up with him — and we congratulate Farrah on his win.  Having Lathus, Searles, and Einstein in the DSCC will be especially wonderful.  (Sorry for the kiss of death, guys, but you’re good people!)

AD-73 (Laurie Davies)

Females:

Non-Females:

Some bright spots — Richard Hurt on E-Board! — but overall not a great haul in AD-73.  Then again, it is AD-73 — and it will end up simply hurting Rep. Mike Levin, which is not good planning.

Among women, we liked Oddo — I hope we were right! — as well as Farokhnia, May, Tuohey, and Ridley, all of whom lost.  (That’s why I wonder how good Oddo is!) Several women finished below Ridley (including Lenore).

Among non-women, we liked Hurt, Khosravi, and Chaturvedi (who finished below Bacon), as well as Bacon, Eckert, Brooks, Fenning (with misgivings), and Meade (so long as he didn’t beat Hurt for E-Board.)  Among the people elected were Fran Sdao’s love object Chris Duncan, which is a shame, but it’s good that he was so far behind Hurt!  Bad — but could’ve been much worse!

AD-74 (Petrie-Norris)

(Many more are below Najib.)  Our picks were Mohr for E-Board, and Oatman, Jodat, de la Ceuz — and Johnson-Norris, who — even though she is more centrist than we are, is a really good person who has been treated horribly by Irvine’s Democratic powers-that-be.  So while we’re sorry not to see Mohr (especially) and Oatman included — and former Rep. Rouda is kissing off the left by rejecting good activists to place undistinguished loyalist supporters of his in their place — it’s hard not to be happy for Johnson-Norris (and we’re happy that Jodat slipped in as an alternate.)

We favored Abazajian, Salgado, Varasteh, Stephens, and Inada.  (And many others finished below Johnson.)  Honestly, if one of Dean Inada’s representatives — whom, unless he has moved within the past few years, I believe to be Rep. Porter, Sen. Min, and Asmb. Petrie-Norris — doesn’t give him one of their appointments, it will be to their lasting shame.  Inada is a hero for the services he has performed for Democrats, and he deserves a spot in the DSCC.

Pending some revisions, that’s all we have to say!