Andrew Romanoff: "I signed the Fossil Fuel Money Pledge-- rejecting contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industry. Our campaign doesn't take any PAC money at all."No one liked Cheri Bustos' decision to blackball all consultants and vendors who work candidates running against incumbents. It has been a disaster for the DCCC which no longer has an executive director and saw it's entire executive level staffers either quit or be fired. The DCCC isn't in turmoil since it doesn't actually exist other than as a money vacuum. And Bustos herself has been forced to go to see a professional therapist to help her with her racism problems. Everyone I know has been repulsed by this whole episode. And then there's one asshole in Washington who looked at it and said... hold my beer.It should be breaking widely in the media today that Chuck Schumer and his DSCC puppet Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) at the DSCC have decided to go a step further than Bustos did. They are blackballing consultants and vendors who work for candidates other than candidates they back. Let's take Colorado for example. While Schumer's candidate, John Frackenlooper, was pretending to be a presidential candidate-- and who had an average preference score of 0.3% and was booed by Democratic audiences for his conservative policy stances-- there was a Senate race in full swing. There are close to 20 candidates running serious campaigns, including top tier candidates like former Ambassador Dan Baer, ex-state Senator Mike Johnston, ex-House Majority Leader Alice Madden, ex-House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, state Senator Angela Williams, who had hired staffers. Now Schumer and Cortez Masto are trying to force them-- on pain of blacklisting-- to quit the campaigns that some have been working on for months-- after Frackenlooper admitted he would make a shitty senator and pledged to not run.This is insane. One political operative who I know pretty well, went nuts on the phone today and told me that he had "received calls over the last few days from campaign managers who are running races (now) against the DSCC's preferred candidate. To say they are livid would be a gross understatement. One manager used the term 'disgusting creature' to describe Schumer just two hours ago. Another called the staff at the DSCC 'Nazi youth' after he received a call from one of them demanding he quit the race. I have a feeling these anecdotes will get even fiercer over the coming days." These are the kinds of shenanigans one would expect from the fascist party, not from the Democratic Party. Schumer and Cortez Masto should both be removed from their leadership positions before anyone gives a nickel more to the DSCC or to Hickenlooper who was boasting yesterday that money is flooding into his campaign from the exact sources that real Democrats prefer to not accept money from.The 74% who want to see progressive legislation pass are going to be mighty disappointed if Schumer helps Frankenlooper worm his way into the SenateErnest Luning, writing for ColoradoPolitics.com, reported that on Monday 6 women running-- Angela Williams, Diana Bray, Lorena Garcia, Alice Madden, Stephany Rose Spaulding and Michelle Ferrigno Warren-- wrote a "strongly-worded letter" to Schumer and Cortez Masto telling them that their endorsement of Hickenlooper in the primary was "premature" and should be rescinded. "Washington insiders should watch the race develop and hear from all of the candidates before getting involved. To be clear, this race is not a coronation of any candidate. We hope the DSCC will give strong consideration to rescinding its endorsement, and allow Coloradans to decide the outcome of this primary campaign... What is more troubling is Hickenlooper’s rhetoric throughout his failed Presidential bid he derisively referred to progressives as 'socialist' and paternally lectured us on how our progressive values will 're-elect Donald Trump.' Let us not forget that it was progressives who fought for the rights of women and communities of color in the 1960s and 1970s that we still enjoy today. Governor Hickenlooper’s statements have offended and angered many of the voters in Colorado. Just like Senator Gardner, Governor Hickenlooper is utterly disrespectful and tone deaf to the contributions of activists and communities that make Colorado a leader on progressive values."Conservative Democrats who oppose progressive values and polices-- like Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet and Time Kaine-- have also endorsed Frackenlooper.Reporting for the Denver Post, Justin Wingerter wrote that Scumer's moronic decision has "sparked an intense email discussion among state Democratic Party officers over the weekend, with allusions to Nazism, criticisms of Hickenlooper and calls for formal opposition. The emails offer a window into an intraparty conflict that is sure to spill out in public for weeks and months to come as Democrats debate who should be their nominee to take on Republican Sen. Cory Gardner.
“Hickenlooper has made it clear that he neither understands nor cares about the true problems in our country,” wrote Dana Torpey-Newman, chair of the Douglas County Democratic Party, “and I object to being told that I, as a party chair, am unable to take sides in a primary, but the DSCC… is able to put a thumb on the scale and force out our candidates who actually comprehend the deeper roots of the societal problems we face.”...“It is getting to the point that people feel, why bother showing up, as decisions have already been made by the higher-ups?” wrote Paula Ozzello, chair of the Las Animas County Democratic Party in southern Colorado. She called the DSCC’s endorsement of Hickenlooper a “slap in the face” to other candidates, some of whom are “damn good.”...Democratic Party officials in Clear Creek and Custer counties defended the DSCC. Elliot Jackson, who is listed as a second vice chair in the Custer County Democratic Party, said she has zero patience for intraparty warfare. Democrats should focus on beating Gardner in 2020, she said.“The absolute ONLY thing I admire about Republicans is their unwavering devotion to doing whatever is necessary to gain power,” Jackson wrote. “They can’t govern worth a damn, because they don’t care about that, but they are masterly at getting into power. Part of that strategy is rallying behind their candidates, and convincing the public that the enemy is Democrats."Jackson advised her fellow Democrats to study Nazi Germany, saying she was “haunted by the image of German communists and socialists at each other’s throats in the concentration camps, as they were waiting to be put to death by the Nazis they couldn’t be bothered to stick together to oppose.”Peter Monson, secretary of the Clear Creek County Democrats, agreed with Jackson, saying he also had no interest in intraparty squabbles.“So the DSCC came out in support of Hick. So what?” Monson wrote. “Maybe I am naive, but I don’t think that will have much sway among primary voters and caucus-goers one way or another. Voters are the ones who will decide, and my only hope is that they pick candidates for president and Senate with the best chance of winning in the general election. That is, or should be, our overriding priority for 2020."Monson confirmed Monday that he sent the email. Several others in the chain declined to comment.Much of the emailed discussion centered on how the Colorado Democratic Party should respond to the DSCC’s endorsement. Vinson, the party’s executive director, said the state party will remain neutral in the primary election, which is a Colorado Democratic Party policy. But others wanted a strong statement from the state party denouncing the DSCC endorsement.“We should not submit this to the media but should send it to all of the national party leaders, in my opinion,” Torpey-Newman, of Douglas County, wrote. “Merely saying that the people of Colorado will decide is not enough, in my opinion. They must be told explicitly why this is unacceptable and what the potential consequences of doing so are."Susan Newcomer, chair of the Grand County Democratic Party, agreed. So did Sheena Kadi, a vice chair in the Adams County Democratic Party, who is also deputy director of One Colorado. Kadi said Hickenlooper had made Colorado proud but party apparatuses should not endorse."I have received dozens of calls, texts, emails, and asks from fellow Democrats wondering why the DSCC is ‘interfering/meddling/obstructing’ in our primary process,” Kadi wrote. She worried the endorsement would convince Democratic voters the race had already been decided and stifle engagement in the election. “And if they don’t show up, unaffiliated voters won’t be persuaded and will not turn out to vote, and we will have another six years of Senator Cory Gardner.”Jackson, the Custer County party official, said she wouldn’t mind telling national Democratic groups to hold off on endorsing until 2020, but any statement must avoid “trashing another Democrat.”Morgan Carroll, chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, briefly inserted herself into the email discussion to say the party’s response to the DSCC “needs to be that the people of Colorado will decide who their nominee will be.” As of Tuesday morning, no public response to the DSCC endorsement had been issued by the state party."The Colorado Democratic Party has a strict policy of neutrality in primaries and we will not change that policy,” Carroll said in a statement to The Post. “There’s a lot of grassroots energy to defeat Cory Gardner, which is why so many excellent candidates have stepped up to run. At the end of the day, the people of Colorado will be the ones to decide who will run against the most vulnerable Republican senator in the country, and it will be the people of Colorado who lead us to another blue wave in 2020."
Heather Brewer, the campaign manager for Maggie Toulouse Oliver's U.S. Senate campaign, told me early this morning that "While we haven't had any direct efforts (yet) to threaten our consultants or otherwise put the squeeze on us, I believe it is only a matter of time. We are ready to fight back against any DSCC attempts to bully their way to victory." Pelosi immediately endorsed Luján, who, of course, lists no policy on his lame cut-out DCCC website. She slammed the DSCC and the DCCC for "this disgusting un-democratic and un-Democratic practice... Washington insiders don't get to decide who becomes the next U.S. Senator from New Mexico, the voters do. Washington is broken and desperate attempts to circumvent the democratic process to consolidate power with the D.C. elite aren't going to fix it. Only with new leaders, like Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who are beholden only to those they represent, can we begin to repair the damage and implement much-needed progressive policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All."Help Colorado progressives defeat Frackenlooper-- and New Mewxico progressives defeat Ben Ray Luján-- by contributing to Andrew Romanoff's campaign and Maggie Oliver's campaign at the 2020 Senate thermometer above. Schumer has demanded that the big "progressive affiliated organizations and the in-the-pocket unions (like the firefighters, who are practically part of the Democratic Party establishment and always go for the worst candidates, be in Biden or Luján) and other institutional Democratic sources of campaign contributions, immediately stop giving contributions to Andrew Romanoff, Maggie Oliver and any of the other candidates other than the handpicked Frackenlooper and Ben Ray Luján.