Wouldn't have missed it for the world! But for those who did, here's how it went down at the DCCC...
I've never seen such a packed chamber for a DCCC meeting -Alice was definitely in da house. If there's one thing they know how to do, it's pack a room. And they brought little sticky signs for people to wear with Scott Weiner's name written in a design reminiscent of the Oscar Meyer logo. Like one speaker said, if the organizational ability to pack a room decided elections, Weiner would have won in a landslide. By the applause meter, I estimate that Peskin had maybe 25% of the crowd in his corner. However in the end it was Peskin who carried the day. Because as good as Alice is at packing rooms, this election was decided before tonight -through some behind the scenes maneuvering, and ultimately at the ballot box before that, where Daly's Hope Slate and its westside counterpart secured fully 3/4 of the elected seats. The actual vote was just 18-16 in Peskin's favor, because electeds skew the results and not all the Hope members voted for him.
Tons of people got up to speak (fortunately limited to 30 seconds a piece) -mostly for Weiner because of the crowd. Mostly it was civil, though several speakers made disparaging remarks about Chris Daly, but that's par for the course. The co-chair of Alice did go off on the whole Hope slate, and said that the voters didn't "give a fuck" about who got elected chair, and that we should elect Weiner basically because he's all that and then some... and he's gay. Or something like that. She got a long time for her rant because she's a club chair.
The members mostly kept it civil, usually beginning with praise for the guy they weren't voting for. Some highlights/surprises:
Feinstein, Pelosi, and Speier went with the mod. Is anyone really surprised? Is Feinstein even a Democrat?
Leno went for Weiner. Of course. Thank you SFBG. Don't say we didn't tell ya so.
Migden stayed true and went with Peskin, as did Ammiano, and surprisingly, Betty Yee.
Leland Yee was a good vote tonight -Peskin. The guy gets a bad rap, but at the end of the day, he usually goes the right way.
Fiona was the one mod who broke from the pack and voted for Peskin. There were gasps and cries of disappointment from the A-gay set and the Plan C crowd, along with sneers about a quid pro quo. However, it should be noted that Peskin has long cultived a relationship with her. He and Daly were the only progs who endorsed her for Assembly over Janet Reilly, and they reaped the rewards tonight. On top of that, Fiona sent Susan Leal as her proxy, whom the Newsom machine recently kicked to the curb. And she reminded everyone of that when she cast her vote. Apparently all the folks at Alice who loved her so much and did their club-packing thing for her in 2003, totally abandoned her when she started raising (slight) peeps against PG&E at the PUC. They were quiet as mice when Newsom kicked her to the curb, and Peskin stood up for her. It was a slam-dunk speech directly nailing the young, good-looking, self-righteouos, priveledged A-gays who had the audacity to try to spin this as a queer civil rights issue.
Weiner managed to peel off Connie O'Connor, Arlo "Hale" Smith, and Melanie Nutter, who all ran with the westside progressive slate -but who aren't particularly progressive.
Jane Morrison was the one true progressive who broke from the pack and voted Weiner. She committed to Weiner way early, and refused to go back on her word. I respect her for that, but she never should have made that committment.
The rest pretty much went party line. It was the first test of strength for progressives on the new DCCC, and they passed. We lost Jane Morrison, but gained Fiona on this vote. So we can pretty much count on a majority of solid progressive votes. We've never had that before. For mods to prevail in future votes, they have to keep every member in line, and then add all of the following: O'Connor, Smith, Nutter, and Betty Yee. Difficult enough, and even that only gets them a tie.
OTOH, it's close. If a member resigns, the chair appoints the replacement. That normally gets offered to the person who got the next highest number of votes -Emily Drennen (progressive) on the west side, and Bill Barnes (generally progressive) on the east side. But had Scott Weiner retained the chair, he could appoint a mod if he chose, and this has happened in the past few years, where the next highest vote-getter was indeed passed over. A couple of resignations could flip the balance to the mods, possibly change the Democratic Party's official endorsement of progressive supervisorial candidates, and hence flip the board of supes. It's absolutely possible -Jake McGoldrick got just a bare majority of the DCCC against Lilian Sing, and then went on to win a close election, with the help of the Democratic Party, instead of having the Democratic Party help Lilian Sing. One vote on the DCCC, and Lilian Sing would now be in her 4th year in office, rubber-stamping all of Newsom's crap, and denying the progressives a majority or supermajority on dozens of issues that have come before the BOS. And Eric Mar would have been fighting an uphill climb to unseat her, instead of running as a front-runner for that seat. And our prospects for keeping the board majority would have been bleak this year.
That, folks, is why it's important who the chair is.
I've never seen such a packed chamber for a DCCC meeting -Alice was definitely in da house. If there's one thing they know how to do, it's pack a room. And they brought little sticky signs for people to wear with Scott Weiner's name written in a design reminiscent of the Oscar Meyer logo. Like one speaker said, if the organizational ability to pack a room decided elections, Weiner would have won in a landslide. By the applause meter, I estimate that Peskin had maybe 25% of the crowd in his corner. However in the end it was Peskin who carried the day. Because as good as Alice is at packing rooms, this election was decided before tonight -through some behind the scenes maneuvering, and ultimately at the ballot box before that, where Daly's Hope Slate and its westside counterpart secured fully 3/4 of the elected seats. The actual vote was just 18-16 in Peskin's favor, because electeds skew the results and not all the Hope members voted for him.
Tons of people got up to speak (fortunately limited to 30 seconds a piece) -mostly for Weiner because of the crowd. Mostly it was civil, though several speakers made disparaging remarks about Chris Daly, but that's par for the course. The co-chair of Alice did go off on the whole Hope slate, and said that the voters didn't "give a fuck" about who got elected chair, and that we should elect Weiner basically because he's all that and then some... and he's gay. Or something like that. She got a long time for her rant because she's a club chair.
The members mostly kept it civil, usually beginning with praise for the guy they weren't voting for. Some highlights/surprises:
Feinstein, Pelosi, and Speier went with the mod. Is anyone really surprised? Is Feinstein even a Democrat?
Leno went for Weiner. Of course. Thank you SFBG. Don't say we didn't tell ya so.
Migden stayed true and went with Peskin, as did Ammiano, and surprisingly, Betty Yee.
Leland Yee was a good vote tonight -Peskin. The guy gets a bad rap, but at the end of the day, he usually goes the right way.
Fiona was the one mod who broke from the pack and voted for Peskin. There were gasps and cries of disappointment from the A-gay set and the Plan C crowd, along with sneers about a quid pro quo. However, it should be noted that Peskin has long cultived a relationship with her. He and Daly were the only progs who endorsed her for Assembly over Janet Reilly, and they reaped the rewards tonight. On top of that, Fiona sent Susan Leal as her proxy, whom the Newsom machine recently kicked to the curb. And she reminded everyone of that when she cast her vote. Apparently all the folks at Alice who loved her so much and did their club-packing thing for her in 2003, totally abandoned her when she started raising (slight) peeps against PG&E at the PUC. They were quiet as mice when Newsom kicked her to the curb, and Peskin stood up for her. It was a slam-dunk speech directly nailing the young, good-looking, self-righteouos, priveledged A-gays who had the audacity to try to spin this as a queer civil rights issue.
Weiner managed to peel off Connie O'Connor, Arlo "Hale" Smith, and Melanie Nutter, who all ran with the westside progressive slate -but who aren't particularly progressive.
Jane Morrison was the one true progressive who broke from the pack and voted Weiner. She committed to Weiner way early, and refused to go back on her word. I respect her for that, but she never should have made that committment.
The rest pretty much went party line. It was the first test of strength for progressives on the new DCCC, and they passed. We lost Jane Morrison, but gained Fiona on this vote. So we can pretty much count on a majority of solid progressive votes. We've never had that before. For mods to prevail in future votes, they have to keep every member in line, and then add all of the following: O'Connor, Smith, Nutter, and Betty Yee. Difficult enough, and even that only gets them a tie.
OTOH, it's close. If a member resigns, the chair appoints the replacement. That normally gets offered to the person who got the next highest number of votes -Emily Drennen (progressive) on the west side, and Bill Barnes (generally progressive) on the east side. But had Scott Weiner retained the chair, he could appoint a mod if he chose, and this has happened in the past few years, where the next highest vote-getter was indeed passed over. A couple of resignations could flip the balance to the mods, possibly change the Democratic Party's official endorsement of progressive supervisorial candidates, and hence flip the board of supes. It's absolutely possible -Jake McGoldrick got just a bare majority of the DCCC against Lilian Sing, and then went on to win a close election, with the help of the Democratic Party, instead of having the Democratic Party help Lilian Sing. One vote on the DCCC, and Lilian Sing would now be in her 4th year in office, rubber-stamping all of Newsom's crap, and denying the progressives a majority or supermajority on dozens of issues that have come before the BOS. And Eric Mar would have been fighting an uphill climb to unseat her, instead of running as a front-runner for that seat. And our prospects for keeping the board majority would have been bleak this year.
That, folks, is why it's important who the chair is.
