GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Did Team Gahan really eject former mayor James Garner from its campaign kickoff love-in last Saturday?

The Green Mouse received this shocking note from an attendee at Slick Jeffie's campaign kickoff Saturday, which was held at Warren Nash's neglected downtown building on Bank Street, where generations of right-wing Democrats have gathered to plot the division of the patronage spoils, and an occasion for the many assembled municipal employees to gladly sing love songs to their beloved benefactor far into the night.

The note received by the Green Mouse has been edited slightly to protect the Mouse's source.

"At some point I saw (former mayor) James Garner, and I thought good, this means we're past the primary, and the party can get back together again, but then the mayor's son-in-law (Chris Gardner) and police chief (Todd) Bailey went over and started barking orders at Garner. I could only hear some of what they were saying -- they were telling him to leave! I couldn't believe it, chasing an ex-mayor and a lifelong Democrat away from the kickoff. I mean what have we become? Are we Democrats or some sort of gangsters?"

That's a good question.

You'd think Adam Dickey would see the merit in Garner's presence, so maybe the Don Corleone "offer to leave which you can't refuse" routine was Gahan's own feeble idea. He's prone to fits of rage, you know.

Heaven forbid, is Dickey's iron grip on the party apparatus finally fading?

Wait -- not THAT iron grip.

Ew.

Has anyone inspected that building lately?

(instructive links follow)

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 12: Madam I'm Adam, or the way HMB's Dickey brokers power and channels his party's beak wetting.

When it's time for personal status protection, local Democrats rally around the Kool-Aid.

In which Deaf Gahan regales public housing residents with ribald tales of the "superstar" Warren Nash.

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 20: Buying and selling a city? Our master list of 59 Gahan wheel-greasers is a pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

Merchant meeting this morning at the Pepin.

Readying to trot over to the Pepin Mansion for this morning's merchant meeting, and playing it perfectly straight, allow me to thank certain community-minded friends for forwarding the information. If you cannot attend today, there's always June and July.

Meanwhile in California: "Will Buffy the Bernie Slayer Win in Pro-Sanders District?"

While not directly applicable in our antebellum neck of the woods, this essay remains instructive. There are swamps, there are jungles, and there's the AdamBot.

Flush With Cash: Will Buffy the Bernie Slayer Win in Pro-Sanders District?, by Steve Early (CounterPunch)

In a political culture shaped by big money, entrepreneurial candidacies, single-issue campaigning, and union dis-unity, you can run but not hide from crowded fields of Democrats. In many current primary races, they are all claiming to be “progressive,” even as they raise and spend millions of dollars competing against each other—money that might have been better spent on actual movement building?

snip

Our East Bay constituency has one of highest levels of Democratic Party voter registration in the state. Two years ago, residents of Berkeley, a slice of Oakland, Richmond, and several adjoining communities chose Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in AD 15, while Clinton won the statewide presidential primary.

These local results may not herald a permanent Sanders-inspired “revolution,” however. When the first stage of an election to replace our current Assembly member is completed next month, one of the top finishers could be someone who was nicknamed “Buffy the Bernie Slayer,” when she directed Clinton’s 2016 California primary campaign.

In our state’s “jungle primary” system, legislative candidates are lumped together—regardless of party affiliation– in the first round of voting. Buffy Wicks’ first-time run for office benefits from a crowded field of twelve (which includes a single token Republican) and, most importantly, national Democratic Party donor networks. Wicks is a newcomer to AD 15. She had little local name recognition and no track record of service on any city board, council, or commission before announcing her candidacy.

But she did direct the pro-Hillary Super-PAC, Priorities USA Action, serve in the Obama Administration, and work on both Obama presidential campaigns. Her past experience as a high-powered political operative makes her a magnet for the wrong kind of money in politics today.

snip

In Hillary Clinton fashion, Buffy markets herself as the candidate of “Progressive Values, Real Results.” (Hillary, not surprisingly, hasn’t appeared in any Buffy material so far.) In a just released video, Wicks instead boasts of her “100 organizing meetings in living rooms across the district” and legion of volunteers. She explains how she is “trying to run [her campaign] like a real grassroots movement” because that’s the only way to bring about “sustained change in the community.” If you go out and build such a movement, she says, “that lives far beyond any election cycle and far beyond election day,” citing as examples, the 2004 presidential primary campaign of Howard Dean and Obama’s more successful effort four years later.

Of course, with regards to two of the most important grassroots movements in California at the moment—for single payer healthcare and expanded tenant protection—Wicks is MIA or worse.

snip

 ... I’ve put my time and/or money into the “corporate free” AD 15 campaign by Jovanka Beckles. This two-term Richmond city councilor is a black Latino Lesbian Teamster county worker, with a real track record of movement building and little inclination to become part of “business as usual” in Sacramento.

As I reported in Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of An American City, Beckles and her Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) allies overcame heavy corporate spending against them in 2014 and 2016, because they championed refinery safety, rent control, campaign finance reform, and independent politics in Richmond.

snip

Draining the political swamp in Sacramento is no easy task, under any circumstances. The costly left-liberal free-for-all in the East Bay may end up adding to that challenge, instead of helping networks like Our Revolution overcome it. But the AD 15 race does demonstrate what too much candidate-driven campaigning and independent spending—combined with not enough real organization building—can produce, even in Sanders country, when municipal reformers all try to move up at the same time.

She left out something ... can't put my finger on it ...

Reprinted below is my correspondence yesterday and today with Tonya Fischer, whose official municipal job title is City of New Albany Economic Development Business Coordinator.

Previously, I'd asked her for the minutes of the Urban Enterprise Association meeting in November, to which she replied that she could send them only after their approval at the December meeting (3rd Wednesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. up on the Third Floor of Horrors).

I thought a friendly reminder was merited, along with a helpful point about Thursday Top-Down Meeting notifications ...

Tonya

A reminder that I'd like to get those UEA minutes after next week's meeting, thanks.

Also, I didn't get a meeting notification for today's shindig at The Exchange.

Cheers,

R

 As you can see, she promptly replied ...

Roger,

I do remember you would like the minutes and I'll hopefully have approval after next
Wednesday meeting. I'll email them to you then.

Tonya

... to one of the two points.

Then again, batting .500 is better than her immediate superior has managed lately.