Slate: If Weiss Wins…Seat More Likely to Flip to GOP

Slate Magazine is out Friday morning with an article that wonders what the hell happened to EMILYs List.

And that’s a great question.

The top part of the story focuses on the race for Congress in CA47.  The premise of the piece is why EMILYs list is involved in election campaigns where their help to Democratic women candidates actually helps Republicans.

From the story:

One might think, then, that one of the country’s largest pro-choice political organizations, EMILY’s List, would be in lockstep with the Democratic Party in its campaign to win back control of the House and maintain the Senate, in service of “restoring Roe.”

But so far, that hasn’t been happening. In the early days of the 2024 cycle, EMILY’s List has waded into races in ways that threaten to help Republicans rather than Democrats. It has teamed up with a Republican-funded organization and backed candidates with conservative voting histories or who risk tipping races for conservatives.

Take California’s 47^th District. It’s Orange County: a true swing district. Pro-choice Democrat Katie Porter flipped it from Republican control in 2018 and has held it ever since, in part because she’s a prodigious fundraiser. But it hasn’t been easy. In 2022, despite a fundraising advantage of roughly $20 million, she beat out Republican Scott Baugh by only 3.5 points. (Baugh got a late $8 million boost from outside GOP groups.)

…

So it makes sense, too, that super PACs that are being funded by overwhelmingly Republican donors would be attracted to the race. The most prominent is called United Democracy Project PAC; it is one of the PACs affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. So far, the group has been funded overwhelmingly by billionaires and multimillionaires who are prominent backers of Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Nikki Haley, and it has only spent in Democratic primaries to weaken Democrats or move the Democratic Party to the right.

Here’s where it gets weird, though. Women Vote PAC, EMILY’s List’s super PAC, has also spent substantially in the race and is also boosting (Joanna) Weiss, to the disadvantage of (Dave) Min. Weiss is a weaker candidate than Min, to put it charitably. She has never held elected office. She doesn’t live in the district. Her financial disclosures show basically zero income over the past handful of years. Weiss is pro-choice, which is good, but, again, having never held elected office, she has a much shorter track record on pro-choice issues than Min, who sports a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood and who co-authored the state’s constitutional amendment that codified abortion and contraception access in 2022. It is the only race Women Vote PAC has spent in so far this year, to the tune of $813,000. EMILY’s List announced it would spent at least $1 million on the race.

…

A spokesperson for EMILY’s List declined to answer any questions about whether there was internal policy around accepting money that had been funneled from Republican megadonors with close ties to anti-choice politicians. The group also declined to comment on whether they had given UDP permission to use their logo and likeness in campaign materials. (It’s common for political groups to restrict the usage of their own logos and material.) They also declined to answer questions about whether there was coordination between the two super PACs.  (editor’s note: an email to EMILYs List from TheLiberalOC to ask why the group hasn’t endorsed or supported Kim Nguyen Penaloza, a pro-choice woman of color endorsed by DPOC and CDP, any help in her CA-45 campaign against Michelle Steel when unanswered.)

…

In a broad, pulled-back sense, it’s a little confusing that Republican megadonors would give money to Democrats in these races. But the specific gambit makes perfect sense if you look closely. Even if Min, who is endorsed by the California Democratic Party, finishes in the top two in California’s primary next week—the state holds “jungle primaries,” in which the top two vote-getters head to a runoff, regardless of party affiliation—he could be so wounded by the millions of dollars in attack ads that he’ll be far more vulnerable against the Republican, Baugh.

On the other hand, if Weiss is able to beat out Min, the cost of dragging her across the finish line will be much harder for Democrats, given her minimal name recognition and track record. Either way, the seat becomes more likely to flip to Republican control. What’s more confusing is how a pro-choice Democratic group would land on, effectively, the same strategy.

EMILYs List seens to have gotten better about not showing coordination between the Weiss campaign and their support, as documented in the Daily Beast story exposing Weiss’s connection to her husband’s legal work on behalf of the Catholic Church in sex abuses cases in Orange County.  The referral from the Weiss campaign to EMILYs List on that Daily Beast story showed coordinated between the campaign and the PAC which is illegal and worthy of an FPPC investigation.

The article concludes that, as an organization, EMILYs List is in financial trouble; from the story: In any event, teaming up with anti-choice forces seems like a poor solution to a pro-choice group’s financial shortfalls—especially when abortion and women’s reproductive rights is likely the No. 1 issue this election cycle will revolve around.

Meanwhile, Friday’s edition of the Orange County Register remains on an anti-Dave Min kick and has three anti-Min editorials over the last week.

Opinion editor Sal Rodriguez again references Min’s May 2023 DUI in the opinion piece and wrote this extraordinary sentence:  “This editorial board would like to remind voyers, particularly Democratic voters, that Dave Min will say and do anything to get elected.”

I really hate to break it to Sal, but most Democratic voters in Orange County don’t read the Register — even for its excellent local news and sports coverage — largely because the Editorial Board consists of holdovers from the Register’s Liberterian days and their constant cheerleading of conservative Republican candidates.  And, sadly, I’ll add, the Register’s readership compared to the population of Orange County is down too (so is the LA Times).  Sal’s words have little impact on Democrats, period.

Rodriguez’s criticism of Min for the DUI is ironic as he’s allowed Orange Juice Blog editor Vern Nelson to contribute two pieces — one criticizing CA-40 candidate Joe Kerr and another criticizing Min while promoting Weiss, despite of Nelson’s five DUIs (not DUI’s as Vern wrote in his author’s note).  Nelson, who craves attention, doesn’t seem to realize he’s been played in Ridriguez’s effort to bolster Rep. Young Kim and Rep. Michelle Steel.

Weiss retweeted a line from Rodriguez’s editorial, seemingly unaware of things this editor said, as a failed stand-up comic in 2012 before joining the Register’s editorial board…things Rodriguez has never apologized for and that senior management of the Southern California News Group has not addressed (I know you got my emails fellas).  It is high time Sal apologize for things he said in 2012 or let us all know he still shares those beliefs.

For the Weiss campaign and Weiss supporters not interested in reading the linked story, here’s more about the guy whose work you’re retweeting to get elected:

According to the accounts of students present at the performance, Rodriguez made jokes about diversity, gender pay equality, and Reed’s campus discussions about rape and sexual assault. He said that the audience “sit and watch as I trash talked them,” as he put it via email after the event. He called the audience out for this, calling them “faggoty pussies.” Rodriguez quotes himself from a transcript of a video he says he has of the performance: “I don’t know what it is about this fucking school, but we have fucking signs everywhere just talking about ‘diversity’ and then we have signs saying ‘don’t rape people.’ It’s just fucking everywhere—‘diversity is fantastic and don’t rape people here.’ ‘You have to not rape someone to have a good time.’ On the topic of pay disparity, he quotes himself as saying, “I support equal pay for equal work. And women as a group do not perform equal work.”

The paper’s reporter, Alex Blum, writes that The Quest viewed a recording of the performance which corroborated what Rodriguez said and “demonstrates the extent to which he antagonized the crowd.”

Back to the paper’s account:
He referred to one person, whose racial background was not clear from the video, as a “sand nigger.” When another spectator was talking in the front row, he criticized them, calling talking at shows “the negro way.”

He also gave the audience a good deal of provocation.

“You should be fucking outraged, and you’re fucking sitting here like a bunch of little bitches, and then after the show you fucking bitch to Sean (Howard, a host at the show; unclear if Mr. Howard was a student or not) about it,” he said, as he criticized the crowd for a passive reaction to his antagonization.

Later, he was quiet for a long stretch, then suddenly shouted, “You fucking just sit there like a bunch of bitches, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What would you do?” asked a spectator.

“I wouldn’t come here,” he replied.
…..
One female attendee shouted back at Rodriguez. He responded directly, as attendees recall, calling her a “loud-mouthed cunt.”
The audience member then took the stage and grabbed the microphone, telling Rodriguez off for the offensive nature of his comedy.

According to the video, she said, “Sit the fuck down. Is this what you were waiting for? Is this what you were waiting for? Do you want to hear ‘fuck you your jokes aren’t funny because I was raped here?’ Do you want to hear that fuck you women aren’t in math and science fields because of fucked up male mentorship? Sit the fuck down.” Witnesses, including the girl who took the stage, also upheld the overall accuracy, if not the word-for-word correctness, of this version
…
The audience member who took the stage says, in a statement that she requested only be reproduced in full: “This was not offensive comedy. This was hate speech. His words were blatantly misogynistic, racist, and homophobic. These were not jokes—there was never a punchline or a hint of irony. He did not use slurs to engage in a conceptual discussion. He targeted and caused harm to specific groups of people. Please recognize his actions for what they were.”

…..

In watching how this primary unfolds, it’s clear EMILYs List has lost its way.  Many of us are waiting for Tuesday to be over so we can go back to speaking to one another again.

And a point of reference on this primary day, readers.  My phone blows up with people wanting a story or sharing a detail on a candidate, public official or influencer that’s often damning.  My first question is usually: got any documentation you can send?  Followed by “is there anything else who can confirm what you are telling me?” And followed by “will you go on the record?”  That’s when stuff falls apart.

I am happy to get a scoop, and I will keep confidences providing I can get more than one source.  But don’t think I’m going to write something that isn’t holding up.  Because what I usually do after all this is reach out to the person who is your target to let them know what the rumor is without running a story.  I’m not going to run a story I know is false.