California Democrats Convention: Choosing a Party Secretary

The California Democratic Convention starts tomorrow in Sacramento (April 12).  I’m a delegate so I will be there.

This year we get to elect party officers, but most of the incumbents are running unopposed.  So John Burton will continue as California party chair, Alex Gallardo-Rooker and Eric Bauman will stay as vice-chairs and Hilary Crosby will remain as controller.  Our own Region 5 director, Royce Kelley, is also unopposed (though a few other regions are having elections).

The only state party office that will be contested will be that of Party Secretary. The candidates are Daraka Larimore-Hall and Carolyn Fowler.  Daraka (everybody refers to him by his first name), who is completing his PhD in Sociology at UC Santa Barbara, is the former President of the UC Student Workers Union (UAW Local 2865) and the chair of the Santa Barbara Democratic party.  Fowler is a business consultant and booster chair for the state party’s women caucus. 

I hope to learn more about both of them during the convention, but right now I’m learning towards voting for Fowler. The main reason is that Fowler seems to be primarily interested on the job rather than just on the title.  When she came to speak before the ACDCC she focused not just on who she was, but what she wanted to accomplish if elected.  Her website could use some cleaning up in the grammar and style department, but at least it features her platform.  I have yet to hear from Daraka what he plans to accomplish if elected - his website is silent on the matter.

I’m also a bit concerned about Daraka’s leadership potential.  At the last ACDCC meeting, someone brought fliers highly critical of him.  The anonymous fliers included accusations that, as a leader in the Progressive Caucus, Daraka had supported a primary challenge against Obama in 2012 .  The flier also included a copy of an open-letter directed to him by members of his union during the 2011 elections.  I asked Fowler if she knew about the flier, and she said that she did but had no connection to it or the people behind it, whoever they are.  I have no reason to doubt her. 

Daraka has the support of may of the more progressive members of our local party - Hilary Crosby came and spoke in support of him at one of our meetings - so I was learning towards voting for him.  If anything, the accusations in the flier made me like him more.  That changed, however, when I got an e-mail from his campaign setting the record straight: Daraka had actually opposed the resolution criticizing Obama that the Progressive Caucus passed.  According to his campaign, Daraka found it “divisive and harmful to the party”.

To me that’s a sign of moral cowardice.  I do believe that politicians should put the party first of personal ambition, but only as long as the party is a tool for carrying out a progressive agenda.  We should never put the party ahead of the agenda itself.

Fowler, on the other hand, was a DNC delegate for Obama, so I can’t imagine her being too critical of the President either - but so far I have no reason to believe that her focus will be on helping build the Obama machinery in California.

What I actually find more troubling are the allegations in the open letter that was copied in the flier.  After I got the e-mail from Daraka’s campaign, I fished out the flier from the bottom of my recycle bin, read it and then spent some time reading other information on the 2011 UAW Local 2865 elections.  There is a lot of confusion and back-and-forth accusations as to what took place, but what is undeniable is that as President of the union he oversaw an election that was filled with allegations of fraud, where two campuses (including Cal) were initially disenfranchised and that ultimately union members rejected his leadership.  Regardless of his political views, it does not seem that Daraka has the administrative skills to be Party secretary.

Still, I don’t know enough about the candidates to have a full opinion and I look forward to learning about them - and reading your comments about them, if you have them.

(Marga Lacabe is a member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee.  She blogs about Alameda County Democratic politics and about San Leandro)