California's Democratic Socialists

Ocasio-Cortez visit gives California's Democratic Socialists hope

But Republicans are taking aim at the 'socialist' label ahead of the midterms.

By CARLA MARINUCCI

By the time Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the stage in San Francisco Tuesday night, an adoring crowd of 500 at her sold-out fundraiser — many wearing “Democratic Socialists of America” t-shirts and buttons — were ready for the next revolution to begin.

“Are we ready to change California? Are we ready to really throw down in San Francisco?” yelled the 28-year-old political wunderkind, fresh off a New York House primary upset, to cheers from the millennial-dominated audience.

Three thousand miles away from the site of her improbable June defeat of 10-term Rep. Joe Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance is fueling hopes among members of California’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America that their time may have come.

“She’s new, she’s a fresh voice — and we’ve been lacking that,’’ said Faith Eberling, a longtime San Francisco Democrat. Some California Democrats “are scared of the ‘Democratic Socialist’” label, she said. But Ocasio-Cortez will change all that, “when the wave catches.”

Indeed, solidly blue California, which proclaims itself the heart of the anti-Trump resistance, might seem like fertile ground for socialists. But former Rep. Ron Dellums, who died this week at 82, was one of the few major public officials in the state who claimed membership in the group. Gayle McLaughlin, a DSA member and Richmond City Councilwoman, made an unsuccessful bid for Lieutenant Governor earlier this year, and the group endorsed several statewide candidates, including former Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin for governor.

There are plenty of internal Democratic divisions as democratic socialists seek clout in California. And California Republicans — who hope to repeal Governor Jerry Brown’s gas tax and protect several vulnerable House seats in the midterms — are already playing on the theme that Democrats have tacked too far to the socialist left. This week, the party leaders crowed on Twitter that California Democrats “get further out there every day. Open borders, burn prisons, “Democrat socialism” (whatever that means). Literally gone crazy.”

Sacramento-based Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio — who has represented the California State Legislature — warns that the state’s Democrats need to be cautious about embracing the “socialist” label this election year.

While democratic socialism may appeal in the Bay Area, he warns that “what plays well in San Francisco does not play well in the swing seats that Democrats need to win.’’

But activists with California's chapters of the DSA hail Ocasio-Cortez's rocket ride to political stardom. Ocasio-Cortez — a self-billed democratic socialist and political rookie who still hasn’t won her seat in Congress — had a heavy rotation of events in the state this week. She starred in two sold-out fundraisers in San Francisco on Tuesday; one an exclusive $2,500 a head event, as well as a $27-per-person event that sold out in hours after it was announced on social media. The demand was so high that organizers said they changed the venue twice to accommodate larger crowds; they announced at evening’s end that it had raised $15,000, all via donations from activist grassroots followers of under $50.

On Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez headlined a noon fundraiser at the Los Angeles Theater Center, and she’s also planned to appear at a sold-out event Friday evening at the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles for the DSA, whose L.A. chapter alone includes 1,500 members. And she’s already planning a return to California, home to more than a dozen DSA chapters, at the end of August to speak at the Left Coast Forum in Los Angeles.

Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, a DSA member said it was a hopeful sign as she looked blissfully around the crowd in the Mission theater. “People may not remember there was once a Democratic Socialist Congressman, and his name was Ron Dellums — and he was my Congressman,’’ she said of the liberal icon and former Oakland Mayor.

“The biggest thing that Alexandria has done for the movement has just been bringing socialism back into the mainstream political discourse in this country,’’ says Jack McShane, 24, an organizer for the DSA’s East Bay chapter, one of dozens in California that are taking part in Ocasio-Cortez’ California visits. “Her demands for Medicare for all, a federal job guarantee, free education from kindergarten to college really resonates with Americans across the country.”

McShane is among a crowd of East Bay Democratic Socialists who hope Ocasio-Cortez’ magic may rub off on Jovanka Beckles, the Richmond City Councilwoman who’s currently the only prominent Democratic Socialists of America candidate in California.

In one of the state’s most competitive and expensive legislative races, Beckles is fighting in a Democrat-on-Democrat battle for the East Bay’s 15th Assembly District seat against Buffy Wicks, a longtime party activist widely credited as a key architect of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign’s grassroots outreach and an Obama White House appointee. Wicks got a boost this week from her old boss — Obama himself, who endorsed issued a rare endorsement in a state legislative race.

While Wicks has also been backed by a crowd of party leaders, including Sen. Kamala Harris, Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, ex-Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and Howard Dean, Beckles has been endorsed Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution, the Green Party, and the powerful California Labor Federation – and by five other Democratic candidates who vied for the Assembly district seat in the June primary.

The race has been so contentious that even the California Democratic Party this week voted to issue “no endorsement.”

Democratic strategist Katie Merrill, who served as a senior advisor to Sen. Barbara Boxer, warns that the current progressive divisions in California may be a harbinger of what’s ahead should Democratic Socialists like Ocasio-Cortez gain more traction.

“The Democratic party has always been a big tent party, and that has been the roots of its success -- it welcomes a diversity in all of its different forms, including center left and left,’’ Merrill said. But in the wake of a presidential campaign in which some Democrats questioned whether Bernie Sanders should even be allowed to run in their party, socialists “need to define whether they are Democrats -- or are they a separate party?’’

Activists say Beckles’ campaign gives a longtime progressive the chance to become the face of the movement in the West — and they’re hoping Ocasio-Cortez’ presence here will lend energy, and funding to her campaign.

Nicole Valentino, Beckles’ campaign manager — and also her wife — says that Beckles’ decades of progressive activism in her community, and her staunch refusal to accept corporate funding, has boosted her cause among those with socialist leanings in the East Bay district that includes Berkeley and parts of Oakland. “She’s been in the district for 30 years, doing the work on the ground day in and day out...she’s been in the council for eight years and she knows the community.’’

Abigail Guttman-Gonzales, an Easy Bay DSA activist, says Beckles is “a very proud Democratic Socialist, who talks about the movement we’re building for working class people.” Wicks, she said, “is part of the Democratic elites. … She has a lot of money, but what she doesn’t have is the buy-in of everyday voters.”

But former Obama campaign insider Debbie Mesloh, an adviser to Wicks — as well as to Harris, and San Francisco’s newly-elected Mayor London Breed — declined to go on the attack against Beckles, instead insisting that Ocasio-Cortez’s presence and win lifts all Democratic boats.

Wicks was a co-host of Ocasio-Cortez’ San Francisco fundraiser, she noted, adding that move “speaks to the new energy that’s been galvanized with new groups like Indivisible and Swing Left — they’re harnessing this energy with a slew of new candidates.”

The lesson for all Democrats, she said, is that Ocasio-Cortez “showed she could do retail campaigning and talk about issues that people care about -- and that’s exactly what Buffy has done, in more than 160 house parties in the district.”