Gavin Newsom left out as California Democrats pick convention delegation leaders

A pair of Bay Area representatives is in and Gov. Gavin Newsom is out as California Democrats chose the leaders of their delegation to the Democratic National Convention in August.

Rep. Ro Khanna of Fremont and Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland will join Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis as the co-chairs of the 495-member state delegation rather than Newsom, who as California’s highest-ranking Democrat would normally lead the state contingent.

Dubbing the proposed co-chairs “California’s unity team,” Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, told delegates on a Sunday morning dial-in meeting of the delegation that the three “will represent the great diversity of California.”

When the delegates voted 368-20 to accept the three, it ended a nasty spat between rival groups of Democrats that threatened to cast a shadow over the party’s effort to unite the progressive followers of Bernie Sanders behind the more moderate Joe Biden, who will be the Democratic nominee.

For the past two weeks, Sanders supporters have argued that his March 3 primary win in California meant a progressive like Khanna — an early endorser of the Vermont senator and a national co-chair of his presidential campaign — should be the face of the state’s delegation.

“We were eager to have Ro Khanna as chair because he reflects the Sanders campaign,” said Norman Solomon, an Inverness resident who is national director of RootsAction.org, a progressive group that supported the Vermont senator. Khanna “articulates those views so clearly, showing this is not a time for murkiness or hedging.”

Faced with the prospect of a noisy, very public dispute during the conference-call vote, Hicks worked out a compromise with the Biden and Sanders campaigns and tweeted the deal late Saturday night.

He pushed hard on that agreement Sunday, reminding the delegates that “both campaigns strongly urge a ‘yes’ vote on the proposed co-chairs.”

“I believe we’ll land in the right spirit to go into our convention united,” Hicks said in an interview Saturday.

The agreement is a definite win for California progressives, who got Khanna and Lee. While Lee backed California Sen. Kamala Harris in the primary, she’s an icon on the left for her history as an antiwar activist and her support for most of Sanders’ platform.

Solis, a former Southern California legislator and congresswoman who was labor secretary during former President Barack Obama’s first term, was reportedly the choice of the Biden campaign.

more https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-left-out-as-California-Democrats-15371760.php

The case for Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate

Joe Biden has offered a one-word job description for his vice presidential running mate.

“Simpatico.”

What he means is someone to fill the role he enjoyed with President Barack Obama.

Sitting in his West Wing office one day, he explained that role quite graphically. He gestured behind him to the Oval Office around the corner. He said that “five times a day” the president would call him in to get his thinking on something.

This is Joe Biden’s notion of the vice presidency, a fellow politician who has the president’s comfort and trust to help him make the right decisions.

You’ll find none of this in the U.S. Constitution, which had the veep serving mainly as president of the Senate.

President Abraham Lincoln didn’t meet his first vice president until both of them had been elected In 1860. As vice president, Richard Nixon never had an office near the White House but instead spent his days in the Senate Office Building across the hall from Sen. John F. Kennedy.

It was Nixon who changed the vice presidential geography. He put Spiro Agnew in the Executive Office Building across the narrow avenue from the West Wing. It was there that the former Maryland governor was still receiving those manila envelopes with the payoffs from state contractors.

Walter Mondale was the first vice president to have an office in the West Wing itself, and the role of consigliere that comes with it.

In filling that role for the next four years, Joe Biden has had to ask himself a couple of key questions.

First, can he trust the person with his confidence? My old boss, Speaker Tip O’Neill, used to warn us that “the walls have ears.” What’s said in the backroom needs to stay there, he was warning us.

Whoever Biden picks must be capable of keeping his candid remarks in that room. Second, comfort. Joe and Barack had a good chemistry. Despite the gaffes, Obama seemed to appreciate what Biden gave him. That was more than his insight into the personalities of the U.S. Senate. Perhaps more important, it was the street-level savvy of a regular middle-class guy from the suburbs.

For these reasons, I believe he will pick Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. He didn’t like the way she came at him on the busing issue in their first debate last year. But he has sent clear signals that was last year.

The most important signal is what he’s said recently about his late son Beau having become friends with Harris when they were their states’ attorneys general. What Beau felt carries tremendous weight on those issues of trust and comfort.

more https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/The-case-for-Kamala-Harris-as-Joe-Biden-s-15366994.php

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