3/22/26: Examples of Democratic Club Members Thwarting Progressive Endorsements

I provide some examples of how one popular progressive candidate has endorsements thwarted based on the animus of just one or two anti-progressives in the Sacramento area. Attempts at thwarting are not always successful, either.

Transcript

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Hey fans and stalkers. This is Eric Haley back already with another episode of Disruptor Politics. I'm in Sacramento and I'm a former congressional candidate who suspended in September for a more prominent progressive who finally got into the race to challenge an entrenched 81-year-old billionaire incumbent Doris Matsui. Really quick, one fun thing I'm going to do today, do today, or two fun things maybe, is first go to the campaign office opening for my Vang, the lone politically courageous progressive on Sacramento's City Council, who is now challenging Doris Matsui for her seat in Congress. And I am I'm excited. I want to go see this office. And then not long after that, there is actually a fundraiser for her. That's my cat Ivy. That's what's going to happen in this live broadcast, this live recording, I mean. Um, right after there's going to be a fundraiser for my vang and for another progressive congressional candidate named Effie Phillips Daley. So you might wonder who this person is, but she is running for Congress in New York against the extra awful Republican Mike Lawler in an absolutely flippable seat that used to belong to a Democrat, but she is from Sacramento, but she's just lived in New York for years. She's from Sacramento and she is friends with the band Cake, who is from Sacramento. And they just happen to be having three sold-out shows here on this weekend. And so they're uh they're holding a fundraiser for her initially, a pre-show type deal for 30 minutes. I think they're gonna play some music, but you can buy a ticket and attend. But since I bought my ticket to this in January, my Vang has joined the the event. And now Jamal Bowman, former Congressman Jamal Bowman, just one of the one of the OG Justice Democrats, who lost his seat thanks to like the most money ever APAC has spent on a race to unseat him. Um he's flying out from New York too. So I get to meet Jamal Bowman. By the way, that cat, that is my cat Ivy. She's very chatty. She does not, she does not like capitalism either. She I got her when she was a kitten. Um she had just come into a high kill shelter, and now she's my daughter. I just want to move, I just want to talk about some more about this endorsement process with the local clubs because I thought of this situation, this very specific situation, with regard to how these local clubs can really mess with endorsements, and especially when the same people join the same clubs and have, say, like a personal vendetta against somebody. Okay. So there is a club member. I'll just say his name is Rick, like a multi-club member named Rick, who is in like 11 clubs. And this is these are two examples of what he has done with his vote recently to prevent a progressive, a very prominent, well-respected progressive in the area who barely lost her mayoral race in 2024. This is what he's done to, I don't know what kind of personal bandetta he has against her, but this is what's happened recently. First example was a few weeks ago on a Sunday, the Democratic Party of Sacramento County held several hours' worth of interviews with Sacramento County Supervisor District 1 candidates. The candidates were progressive, Dr. Flo Kofer. My city council member Eric Guerra, who is the moderate. Flo Kofer is the progressive, Eric Guerra is the moderate and endorsed by the outgoing supervisor. Both are moderate. And Eric Guerra's uh son is one of the godsons of the outgoing um uh county supervisor. There was also Deborah Ortiz, a very accomplished locally elected woman who's been in politics forever, like so many different roles in the Sacramento area, not as progressive as Flo Kofer, and another man named Tim Riley. So four candidates that we sat through interviews for on a Sunday on Zoom. I think I was cleaning or doing a puzzle while I was listening into this. Um, Flo Kofer and Deborah Ortiz, especially, were very impressive. But they were asked by a panel of people selected by, I believe, Andres, the chair of the Democratic Party of Sacramento County. So whether this was intentional or not, and maybe whether it was a good idea or not, the discussion about who to endorse was left on Zoom. So everyone could watch andor listen in to this discussion. So essentially, there are people on this little committee, this little interview panel. Um, at least one was in the meeting I went to yesterday, the retreat. Uh, very moderate, thinks uh this one woman, she thinks that uh Dr. Flo Kofer is divisive. She's progressive, you know, doesn't think she can work across the aisle because she's so progressive. Um, and then this one guy named Rick, he he's very, he's like a union guy. He's in a union, he will judge you if you have merch made that doesn't have the union bug on it. Not me personally, but you know, he's he's one of those, right? Um, because a lot of candidates when they first start out, they don't have the money to sp to pay for business cards or flyers or anything with the union bug on it, getting it made at a union shop. That's for a whole other episode, honestly. But he's one of those. And he's one that is he's in like 11 clubs, right? And so uh Andres was in there, Fabrizio Sasso, the executive director of the Sacramento uh Central Labor Council, um, he was there, and Carrie West, who's on the executive board for the Democratic Party of Sacramento County. She's the campaigns person on the board, she's new, and Ornit, who is running for um Los Rios Community College trustee position. So, what I understood is that Andres selected these people uh for this interview panel. You know, these people are from all walks, all stripes, all parts of the Democratic Party, right? Moderate to progressive, like a sliding scale. But so we got to hear their discussion. So, like I was saying, one woman, oh, this Brenda Borge, who was also in this meeting yesterday, um uh she's very moderate, supports Doris Matsui, as far as I know. She decided to um, or she she supported, I believe, Eric Guerra. But Or Neat, what I was just who I was just talking about, Or Neat, said that she really wants a woman. I think she mentioned woman of color, I I think, but she wanted a woman. So we have Deborah Ortiz and Flojon Cofer, who is an enigmatic black woman. And and that is something that has been brought up a lot of times, that there is a real lack of diversity on this, um, in this this the Sacramento County Supervisoral Board. It's very, not very diverse, I will say. It could be better, is what I should say. So, and there's only one woman on it currently. So, but what happened in the end was that Rick, this guy Rick, who's in all the clubs, whom I think has a real bias, it's a clear bias against progressive Dr. Flo Kofer, even though he purports to be progressive himself, he supports Deborah Ortiz. So at least he's not supporting the moderate in the race, Eric Guerra, right? Eric Guerra is the establishment pick. So he was supporting Deborah Ortiz. But as the discussion moved ahead, when it when it became quite apparent that Dr. Flo Kofer was going to get the endorsement recommendation, and this is just a recommendation for endorsement to the membership, the broader membership, right? This isn't an actual endorsement yet. Uh Rick Barretto, okay, it was Rick Barretto who's talking. He's he immediately wanted to say, I think we should postpone this vote. I don't remember his reasoning, but it was clear that he just didn't want Flo Kofer to get the endorsement recommendation. And uh in the end, the vote was 4-2 for Dr. Flo Kofer, which I was so happy about, so happy about. Um, and in the whole there's a whole other story that I don't know all the details of still yet today, because there is little transparency coming out of the Democratic Party of Sacramento County. But the next day at an executive board meeting that evening, that recommendation for endorsement was pulled. Because apparently two white dudes on uh the executive board were upset that they weren't selected to be a part of this interview panel and somehow successfully got it pulled. But we know that it had it been Eric Guerra, they wouldn't have cared. The entren the entrenched um establishment pick that they wouldn't have cared, but they didn't like that Dr. Flojon Kopher was getting the recommendation. So what happened later on, the result of that though, was that at a later meeting a couple weeks ago, when the voting members of this club, and I'm not a voting member, even though I pay dues, but that's that's that's another story to explain later. The door um Dr. Flo Kofer uh what happened was the vote was opened up so that voting members could vote for any of the four candidates. There was no recommendation, like yes or no, for Dr. Flow Kofer to endorse. That was the original result of this 4-2 vote that happened after this long day of interviews. But that was pulled, all of our time wasted then listening in. And so each of these voting members were able to vote for any four of the candidates instead of a yes or no for Dr. Flow Kofer. And Dr. Flow Kofer got something like 59.2 or 0.3% of the vote, and you need 60% to get the endorsement. So if that is she would have gotten the endorsement from the Democratic Party of Sacramento County as a progressive, right? But there was a lot of vote um fixing uh during that meeting as well. But so that's just one example of how somebody can thwart a vote. Throw it in a throat or a um um, how do I want to say it? Um you can tell I'm tired. Thwart an endorsement. Sorry, that's what I was trying to go for. So then um what happened, uh I think it was last week or maybe even the week before, in an environmental uh Democrats meeting for Sacramento County, this same guy, Rick, was in this meeting, and uh it looked like Dr. uh and it was with the same candidates running for Sacramento supervisor, District 1. So Dr. Flo Kopher, Eric Guerra, Deborah Ortiz, and then this Tim Riley guy. I don't know if everyone was interviewed, and when I say that, I mean basically the fourth guy, Tim Riley, because most people don't know who he is. Other ones have established um um you know street cred basically in the Sacramento area. So basically, um it looked like Dr. Flo Kopher was going to get the endorsement from the environmental democrats of Sacramento County. But when this guy, Rick, whom I'm telling I just told you about, is um he's he's in this club too, and he's voting. When he realized that Dr. Flo Kofer was about to get the endorsement, he switched his vote from Deborah Ortiz. And remember, Rick purports to be a progressive, so he said he was supporting Deborah Ortiz. He flipped it to Eric Guerra, the moderate entrenched guy, over the actual progressive in the race, because he didn't want Flo Kofer to get the endorsement. So in the end, it was a tie, so there was no endorsement. So I hope you're able to follow that. But this guy switched his vote when it looked like Dr. Flow Kofer was going to win the endorsement. He was voting for someone who wasn't going to win, who probably got the fewest uh out of the candidates that were being considered. He flipped his vote to the moderate, entrenched establishment guy so that Flo Kofer wouldn't get the endorsement, so she didn't get it. And so that's the that's the kind of BS that I'm talking about, right? And then just this past Monday, at the women democrats of Sacramento County, guess who was there but this Rick guy? So, yes, that's great that there are men in the women Democrats of Sacramento County, but I'm just trying to show you there are a couple, but this this guy is there. So he showed up, I showed up too, because there was about to be a contentious vote. Because what had happened was the women democrats of Sacramento County had their electoral committee or whatever they call it, had voted to recommend um Eric Guerra, the moderate, entrenched dude, over two women who were also in this race, Dr. Flo Cofer and Deborah Ortiz, either of which would have been much better than Eric Guerra, but they voted to endorse, they were voting, they had selected Eric Guerra to recommend to the membership and put onto the consent calendar for endorsement from the women Democrats of Sacramento County. And then uh there was another race, too, where Rick was involved, in that there is a Congressional District 3 race where Rick has this weird cult-like obsession with a candidate named Chris Bennett who has who used to be a Republican, who has no history of labor whatsoever, who just started getting involved in his community uh when he decided to run for Congress. And, you know, Rick is obsessed with this guy for some reason. But I think it's honestly because people are getting tired of his shit. Because what I've heard, because like I said, on the TMZ of Sacramento, people tell me everything. With regard to Rick, he really does purport to be progressive, but he is very anti-Palestinian. I had to sit through him telling me how he doesn't care about Palestinians or the genocide at all, and that he was so he was so forceful with his opinion once when I first met him about Gaza and the genocide, that another board member came up afterward who overheard him and said, We don't all think that way because it was so depraved what he said. Well, for all those who are part of the Chris Bennett cult, this is who your guys paling around with, this guy who keeps swarting the endorsements for Dr. Flo Kofer, whom Chris Bennett purportedly um admires, right? So Rick has had some um anti-black sentiment um accusations um lobbed against him because we just don't know understand why he's so anti-Flo Kopher if he is actually progressive, right? So maybe the the people who like Bennett, maybe they should ask him why he's not sticking up for Flo Kopher. Maybe he doesn't know, but he should know. So, anyhow, um, where was I even going with that? So we're at the Women Democrats of Sacramento County. So uh they had recommended, this club had recommended that um Heidi Hall, who's been running in that district and is definitely the most viable and better and more accomplished candidate in this race, actually progressive. They'd recommended her and Chris Bennett over Amibera, which was kind of interesting. The dual endorsement recommendation was interesting, but also that they were going against an incumbent. But Amibera is an objectively awful Democrat for so many reasons. I can go into that later. But what I was getting at was that who should be there who wanted to suck all the air out of the room, but was Rick. This guy started quoting rules from Robert's Rules of Order to help the parliamentarian, which he didn't really need help. But he was, you know, um inserting himself into the women Democrats of Sacramento County Party meeting here, um, bossing people around. And it was just kind of like, oh, Rick is here in this women's democratic club because he wants to make sure that Dr. Flo Kofer isn't able to switch the endorsements. So what happened at this meeting was um someone pulled someone made a motion to pull the certain races from the consent calendar because they wanted some discussion. So they voted to approve some of the endorsements of these Democrats who really had no challengers, or they were they were the lone, the lone Democrat going up against a Republican or the lone Democrat um in an open race, basically. But so there were a few races that were pulled. One of them was this supervisoral race that I I've reported twice now that Rick, this guy, Rick, has really interfered with the with their endorsement recommendations. And so um enough, what they decided to do was have everyone who was a voting member, that meant that they paid dues and they had attended four of the meetings for the women Democrats of Sacramento County. I did not meet that threshold, nor did Rick, thank goodness. Maybe he thought he did, but he was there because I he everyone was saying he really just did not want Flo Kofer for some reason to get that endorsement. And uh so they had the voting members in uh who were there in person vote again for this endorsement, and uh Flo Kofer actually got it. She got it over Eric Guerra. And it was pointed out that this is the women Democrats of Sacramento County, and they're recommending them to endorse the moderate establishment candidate Eric Guerra over two incredibly qualified women. So, I mean, this is definitely a club with a moderate lean, is also what I'm trying to say. Also, they all voted on that Congressional District 3 race where they recommended Heidi Hall and Chris Bennett over Amibera, and Heidi Hall got the sole endorsement. So I'm just trying to share some of I'm trying to share some of the shenanigans that go on at these club meetings. And this was all just last week. And it's I couldn't vote. I remember I was sitting there with a woman and she couldn't vote either. We were just there to support the candidates we liked, and it was like, where's the popcorn? Where is the popcorn? But you know the endorsement process in Sacramento, and I'm sure it's like this all over the country, but it really is like a shit show. It truly is a shit show. Um, there is just this really anti-progressive sentiment overall in the Sacramento area still. And, you know, if you get one or two people who really just do not like progressives, they will do that, they will, you know, skirt all the rules or, you know, um exploit the rules to try and make sure that their little personal agenda is inserted. And like I said, this guy, Rick, has successfully basically um thwarted at least one endorsement for Dr. Flo Kofer due to some personal personal animus he has against her. Her personally, or you know, I don't know, because he support he he supports this Chris Bennett guy who purports to be anti-genocide, and Dr. Flow Kofer is the same. So I don't know what is up with Rick, but I'm happy to learn that I am not the only one who has just realized that this guy is, I don't know, it's I I think that the Sacramento County Democrats really need to start reigning in some of their more problematic members. And I also think that they need to be able to rein in at some somehow membership in 11 or 12 clubs because it kind of defeats the purpose of having regional clubs as well. If anyone can just join any club no matter where they live, the undue influence, you know, speaking for um people who live in an area when they don't live in that area themselves is is interesting, right? So, but like I said, one of my favorite clubs that I've gone to is the American River Democrats, and I live near Sack State, but they're called the American River Democrats, and it's at my childhood library, and I just really enjoy going there because they have like 30 to 50 people per meeting, usually closer to 50. If you want to join a club that has a lot of um they have great organization, they do postcard writing, they do banner drops, they do um um, they're you know, we're tabling at the at the No Kings rally coming up. They're and they're just really funny. It's a good group. Anyhow, thanks for listening again, and I will be back soon with uh some more takes on Sacramento politics. Do not forget to subscribe to the show, please, please subscribe. Thank you. Have a good day.