When A Party Compromises Its Principles For Money
The Democratic Party in California is limiting voter choices and working class advocacy groups are throwing in with a billionaire
My latest in the Sacramento Bee (link below):
Something has gone wrong inside the California Democratic Party – and the 2026 governor’s race is where it finally became impossible to ignore.
The insurgents who once stormed the gates are now the gatekeepers. The voices that once demanded power be shared are now the ones consolidating it. And the institutions built to represent working people spent this primary commissioning polls designed to clear the field - inevitably benefiting a billionaire who could self fund his campaign having made his fortune in coal, oil, and private prisons.
That’s not democracy and it’s certainly not the actions of a party defending it.
Willie Brown, the iconic African American Assembly Speaker, once stood on a national convention floor in 1972 in Miami and demanded his delegation back from a party trying to silence working-class voices. Fifty years later, he’s the one handing the microphone to a hedge fund manager. The revolution didn’t just end. It switched sides.
California has the highest cost-of-living-adjusted poverty rate in the nation. More than half its children under five qualify for Medicaid. The party that was supposed to fight for those families is instead running runoff math.
When the outsiders become the establishment, who speaks for the people they left behind?
From Willie Brown to billionaire politics: What happened to California Democrats?
Seeing the negative results and parallels of entrenched one party rule (in blue as well as red states) is hard to unsee for me, and I’m not sure how I can help other people see it. Thank you for doing what you do to help clear the fog out of people’s perspectives. Hope you are able to share a link to the Oxford debate with us also. Can’t wait to hear about your experience!
So sad to see this.