Amid ‘Resistance,’ activists try to push California Democratic Party to the left

May 21--SACRAMENTO -- An all-star lineup of Democratic leaders on Saturday took turns throwing carefully crafted barbs at President Donald Trump at the California Democratic Convention, but the biggest-yet meeting of "The Resistance" was not as scripted, nor as unified, as many party faithful had hoped.

Tension marked the event from the start, with outgoing party Chairman John Burton on Friday night repeatedly shouting down activists in his signature profane style. On Saturday, perhaps the most explosive applause line came from a union leader who warned that activists might abandon the Democratic Party unless it moved further left.

"If we dismiss progressive values and reinforce the status quo," said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, "don't assume the activists in California and around this country are going to stay with the Democratic Party."

"Resisting" President Donald Trump and everything he stands for has been the theme of Democratic elected officials in California since before he took office. But calls for unity at this weekend's convention were drowned out by demands for universal health care and, more broadly, for a party shakeup -- the kind of populism that fueled Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' insurgent presidential campaign.

"Hey hey, ho ho, corporate Dems have got to go," protesters chanted Friday night, disrupting a speech before Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez addressed a crowd at a welcome reception.

Burton, a longtime lawmaker and San Francisco power broker, mocked the protesters, suggesting that they were politically clueless.

"That's really very controversial," Burton said. "Let's disrupt something for health-care-for-all, I mean that's really a good f--ing way to get something done. There's some people who have been fighting for that issue before you guys were born. You ought to get on with it."

On Saturday, Burton directed his profanity at the president, raising his two middle fingers in the air as about 3,000 delegates cheered.

"F-- Donald Trump," he shouted.

Animating the protests were two flashpoints: a push for single-payer, universal health care in California -- a legislative proposal from Southern California Sens. Ricardo Lara and Toni Atkins -- and the unusually contentious race to lead the party after Burton steps down.

The Sacramento Convention Center was filled with seas of bright pink T-shirts and pompoms for Kimberly Ellis, a political organizer from Richmond, declaring "Unbought. Unbossed," and dueling yellow signs and blue shirts for Eric Bauman, a longtime activist and party insider from Los Angeles who narrowly won the contest on Saturday. He becomes the state party's first openly gay chair.

After their speeches, the room cleared. The final speakers, including Tom Torlakson, the superintendent of public education, addressed a room with hundreds of empty seats.

The tensions could prove costly to Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a veteran political analyst at the University of Southern California who is attending the three-day convention.

"If the Berniecrats decide to primary incumbent Democrats with whom they disagree -- on let's say, Medicare for All -- that could have an impact," she said. "Better not to have an opponent."

Jim Brulte, chairman of the California Republican Party, issued a statement Saturday saying that Democrats are bashing Trump to avoid talking about their policies and decisions, including their recent vote to raise gas taxes and vehicle registration fees to pay for road repairs.

"Democrats own California -- and they broke it," Brulte said. "They don't want to talk about their record in California which is why they want California voters to focus solely on President Trump."

Both candidates for state party chair support single-payer health care, which would essentially eliminate health insurance companies. But Ellis' supporters, who include many Sanders backers, had argued that she would bring the party back to its roots. Her backers questioned payments that Bauman's political consulting firm took from pharmaceutical companies in the lead-up to Proposition 61, a failed statewide ballot measure that sought to cap what the state pays for prescription drugs.

"Single-payer health care is one of the things we can all agree on," Bauman said in an interview Saturday, stressing that he supports Senate Bill 562 and the bill's authors backed him for state party chair. He said he thought the rivalries stemming from the Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton primary battle were still hurting the state party.

"Every time we've had a movement election, there's an influx of new people in the party, and they feel they're on the outside," he said. "If we're smart, we bring them in, and they infuse the party with new ideas and new strength. I welcome that, because I want people to come in with new ideas."

Some delegates said the tension -- and even the disruption -- was healthy.

"I think what's at stake is the direction of the California Democratic Party," said Linda Sell, a delegate from Sunnyvale who had supported Ellis' vision of small donations and grass-roots organizing. "I think a competitive election, channeled into the Democratic establishment, puts more lifeblood into an existing structure."

In an interview Saturday with this newspaper, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said activists should be more focused on fighting the Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act -- a measure she called "TrumpCare" and "DeathCare."

"That's the most important thing we can do," Pelosi said. "We're all in sync on it. ... The Affordable Care Act contains a provision that enables states to have their own public option."

"What they're doing now is really killing people," Pelosi said of the Republican bill that narrowly passed the House earlier this month. "People come to meetings all over the country and say, 'I would be dead without the Affordable Care Act.'"

Pelosi brushed off concerns about divisions in the party. "I was chair 30 years ago; I've been coming to these meetings my whole life, really," she said. "There's always been this vitality. That's a very positive thing."

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, referenced the Democratic divide Saturday night in a fiery keynote speech that drew standing ovations when he talked about the committee's Trump-Russia investigation.

"We cannot afford division when the fate of the republic is at stake," he said. "Democrats, we must bind up our party's wounds, for only then can we save our country."

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