I attended the
Equality California statewide
candidates forum on Sunday April 25th which was a rare opportunity to see all 6 Democratic candidates running to be the next Attorney General of California.
From left to right, the candidates in the picture are Assemblymember
Ted Lieu,
Facebook Chief Privacy Officer
Chris Kelly, San Francisco District Attorney
Kamala Harris, former Los Angeles City Attorney
Rocky Delgadillo, Assemblymember
Pedro Nava and Assemblymember
Alberto Torrico. The likely Republican opponent in November is Los Angeles County District Attorney
Steve Cooley.
I have seen a number of the Attorney General candidates in small group settings in my capacity as Steering Committee member of the Stonewall Democratic Club and elected delegate of the California Democratic Party.
Previously, I had been impressed with Pedro Nava. He has been endorsed by the smartest politician in California politics, LA County Democratic Chair
Eric Bauman and he generally is a very effusive and energetic speaker. Unfortunately, he has very little money, although he does have Parke Skelton as his political consultant.
At the forum, it was the first time I was seeing Assembly Majority Leader
Alberto Torrico in action, and he said some very impressive things about education ("should be a civil right") and rehabilitation that made me want to take another look at him. Torrico has nice ideas but doesn't seem to be ready for the scale of a statewide race. Yet.
Ted Lieu is probably the strongest supporter of the LGBT community and hardest worker of the group (the male Judy Chu!) which has won him many LGBT Democratic club endorsements, even in such a hotly contested field. He points out that he can repeat the Ted Chiang statewide win of 2006 for State Controller, but I just don't think one can equate a State Controller race with a State Attorney General race. I do agree that the Southern California candidates have an advantage. Those are Delgadillo, Torrico and Lieu. Lieu is the only Asian in the race, and they vote in excess of their proportion in the population, which statewide is nearly 12% (statewide the Black population is close to 6%).
It's true that Nava, Delgadillo and Torrico all have Spanish surnames in a state which is hurtling towards majority-minority status, but the electorate, even the Democratic primary electorate is still majority white. Delgadillo ran for and lost this race to Jerry Brown, and instead of giving him a leg up in this race, the odor of food past it's purchase date lingers around his campaign.
However, I think this is trumped by Kamala Harris being the only woman in the race. I think the fact that she is a prosecutor (even if she is from the liberal enclave of San Francisco) will allow her to distinguish her from the crowd of guys she is running against. She's a pretty electrifying speaker and has the most "star power" of the group. She's also raised the most money (except for the self-financing Chris Kelly, who has essentially "pulled a Whitman" and written himself two $2 million checks).
On the issues, I would be happy with any of the candidates as the next Attorney General, but by electing Kamala Harris California would be really signaling we have truly entered the Obama era of politics, by electing the first African-American statewide official since Mervyn Dymally for Lieutenant Governor a generation ago when Jerry Brown was his running mate in 1974.
