Just Politics

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Is this in your neck of the woods. It's a nice story.

A building upset in far-northern California.

I live in Northern California. No, not the Bay Area or the liberal North Coast, but the REAL northern California. “State of Jefferson” country. In the sprawling 1st Congressional district that makes up one-fifth of California’s land area and less than a 50th of its population. Great natural beauty, some of the best farm land anywhere, spectacular mountains and some lovely rivers. It’s the place that water for the rest of the state gets shipped from. And it’s been a solidly Republican area for a long, long time, excepting a few islands like the college town I live in.

I’ve long ago accepted that I was always going to be represented by Republicans in Congress and the state legislature. So I shrugged and focused my energy on city council races and the state and national contests that seemed winnable. Our congressman is Doug LaMalfa. Climate denier, health care cutter, one of the most conservative members of Congress anywhere. I sort of figured that would never change.

But something is happening here. Something that the numbers don’t fully reflect. Something the political experts have not yet learned to account for. A young, smart, charismatic congressional candidate who is building an army of new activists like this area has never seen before. And out-raising the entrenched incumbent. Riding a wave of volunteer energy similar to that we have seen other places this year, but with some special twists all her own.

In the aftermath of the 2016 debacle, the passion to run for office was running high, particularly among women. By the spring of 2017 we had two pretty impressive and well qualified women running for congress — Jessica Holcombe and Marty Walters. And we had new groups and formations springing up to support them. It was looking pretty good. We all knew it was an unlikely race to win, but we hoped to make a real contest of it for the first time in forever. As 2017 drew to a close, local activists were aligning behind one of the two women, making their choices, campaigning was starting to ramp up. I was having a hard time choosing between them but starting to lean towards Jessica as the stronger candidate.

Then a few days before the end of the year, I was invited to sit down with a couple other local leaders and meet yet another candidate. I was not thrilled. Many of us were still worrying about a second credible Republican coming in and shutting out Dems under California’s bizarre “top two” primary. And it was just feeling like time to narrow the field. And the time for party endorsements was getting close and most regular activists were committing to one or the other of the two existing candidates. It seemed late to be starting.

The meeting was New Years Day. Audrey Denney came with her campaign manager and another supporter. She was young. 34, I think. Attractive and personally appealing. Warm and engaging. A liberal Christian with a farm and agricultural education background. The experienced political types in the room all liked her, but all thought she was one candidate too many and getting in too late. We tried to talk her into a local or state leg. race. She was not interested and spoke of feeling “called” to run for Congress.

I left the meeting thinking she was an impressive person, but coming in too late and reaching too high.

Two days later, she announced her candidacy publicly. A facebook page went up. I watched the number of “likes” on the page explode. In about 24 hours, it passed the numbers on the pages of the people who had been campaigning for 7 or 8 months. I started to sense that something special might indeed be happening.

Later in January, we had the local women’s march. A number of local candidates were there. Audrey had a whole posse of folks with her. I knew none of them. They were young and passionate and spoke of their personal enthusiasm for Audrey.

A little later in the spring Audrey asked to spend time with me learning about labor issues. I’m a union activist and she was starting to seek union endorsements and wanted to know more about the issues. She came to the meeting having already studied up and spent more than an hour with me soaking up knowledge. I came away more impressed than ever by her hunger to learn and the speed with which she absorbed information.

To make a long story slightly less long, she ended up overwhelming the two older, more experienced Dems who had started months ahead of her, to win the Democratic side of the primary and move on to the general. She did it with tireless work and an army of mostly young volunteers.

Fortunately, our primary was almost entirely without real rancor, a testimony to the character of the candidates and Audrey’s two erstwhile rivals have warmly endorsed her — so there are no big hurdles to unifying the Democrats here.

It’s still a tough district. There is still a lot of work to be done to break the Republican stranglehold here. But, for the first time ever, I am believing it actually can be done. The numbers still look daunting. But this year, this candidate, and this district, something special really is happening. I believe we can win this.

Audrey’s campaign website is here. Check it out. And Facebook is here.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/6/19/1773605/-A-building-upset-on-far-northern-California