Republican-lite Dave Min and his mentorDo you know how many candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination to run in Orange County against Trump rubber-stamp Mimi Walters, who doesn't even live in her own district? Even if you think you know, you don't, since there are 2 or 3 more (including Brian Forde and Rachel Payne) than the already 5 declared candidates, getting ready to jump in. So far there are 3 progressives-- Katie Porter, Kia Hamadanchy and perennial candidate Ron Varsteh-- and a couple of standard centrist Dems. CA-45 is an inland Orange County district that goes from Anaheim Hills, Villa Park and Tustin in the north, through Irvine and Lake Forest to Laguna Woods, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita in the south. Mimi has refused to move out of her $8 million mansion in Laguna Beach in Dana Rohrabacher's district. The weather is much better there and, apparently, she has little interest in experiencing first hand what her constituents experience in their everyday lives. The DCCC has never contested CA-45 before but because Trump lost to Hillary there last year-- 49.8% to 44.4%-- its a big priority. Imagine if they run another non-resident like Rachel Payne or Eric Rywalski!Since we've talked a lot about Katie Porter and Kia Hamdanchy, a few people have asked me about the Chuck Schumer guy in the race, Dave Min. He was Schumer's chief banking counsel when Eric Lipton wrote the classic NY Times piece on Schumer and his disgraceful relationship with Wall Street, A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits at the very end of 2008, right when Schumer's bankster buddies were tanking the economy and bringing on the Great Recession. That was when Chuck was frantically working with Senate Republicans to deregulate everything he could for Wall Street. So either Min agreed and worked on everything Chuck was doing at this time, or he didn’t and lost every internal argument, not a good sign for his effectiveness. So he was either an incompetent staffer or he helped push through policy that weakened regulations and helped lead to the financial crisis. Whatever he says about what he might or might not do now in Washington if he wins the race, we already have a pretty clear demonstration of it.Min is a centrist, perhaps something like Schumer, maybe not as bad... maybe worse. Hard to tell. He's been telling everyone he is the "moderate" in the race, which generally means he looks forward to taking his place in the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. At the climate march he refused to say he was progressive while on camera was on because a tracker was there. He's said that one must be a "moderate" to win CA-45 and that’s his vision for the future of this country and the Democratic Party. You know he's a DCCC boy because he really stays away from talking about issues, just like they tell their candidates to. But it means that OC voters don’t know where he stands on a the specifics of key policy items. Is he for single payer, for example? He won't say.Worse yet, everyone in and around the campaign tells me he's a real asshole personally who never has anything nice to say about anyone else, especially Katie Porter. Maybe he's identified her as his top opponent or maybe he just hates women but he trashes her every chance he can get-- in the district and in DC. People in the district are starting to notice his little smear campaign-- and they don’t like it. He can't seem to help himself and his attacks are going to eventually backfire against him. Yesterday his well-connected p.r. guy, Achim Bergmann, got him into the NY Times. When he talks to Republicans he calls himself "a fiscally responsible Democrat," usually short-hand for New Dem, Blue Dog and/or Republican-lite.
In some places, like many districts in California, the Republican voter advantage has shrunk in recent years; in the district that includes Anaheim, where Representative Mimi Walters, a Republican, is seeking re-election, that edge has dropped from 43 percent in 2014 to just shy of 40 percent now.“If Republicans are telling you they are on offense this cycle, they are delusional,” said Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They had to spend $25 million to hold on to Kansas, Georgia, Montana and South Carolina. If they have to spend even a fraction of that money to defend their incumbents, they won’t be able to go on offense.”...“There are a lot of people in this district who don’t like Trump but don’t like the national Democratic Party either,” said Mr. Min, who is one of a handful of Democrats hoping to unseat Ms. Walters, who is in her second term here and is closely aligned with Mr. Trump on contentious issues like health care....“I am telling people I am not a Hillary person,” said Mr. Min, who has his eyes fixed carefully on nonaffiliated and Republican voters-- Asians and parents in particular-- who voted for Mrs. Clinton last year.
Not a Hillary person... OK, but he's really not a Bernie person. So what is he? From what I'm seeing, he's just an nasty opportunist looking for a career in Congress with no fixed set agenda other than a vague and easily corruptible centrism-- the worst thing we find among House Democrats.