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03-03-2016, 09:14 PM #1
California Dems raise prospect of Trump candidacy to rally party By John Wildermuth
California Dems raise prospect of Trump candidacy to rally party
By John Wildermuth and Joe Garofoli
Updated 5:09 pm, Sunday, February 28, 2016
Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León spoke in Spanish as he denounced Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump’s call to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
With both the Senate and the House in GOP hands and a Supreme Court spot likely at stake, Democrats worry that businessman Donald Trump,
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will get a chance to make good on their increasingly heated conservative rhetoric.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Leslie Katz, a former San Francisco supervisor. “Usually the fringe candidates fall off, but now these are
all fringe candidates. I never thought there would be a time when Jeb Bush was the moderate.”
There’s nothing new about taking shots at the other side during a party convention, but California Democrats took it to a new level this weekend.
“I’m appalled by what I see and hear” from the GOP presidential candidates, said Dave Jones, the state insurance commissioner and a 2018
candidate for attorney general. “Just when I think they have gone beyond the bounds of decency, they say something even further past the bounds.”
There is no doubt Democrats see Trump as a human get-out-the-vote machine, especially for Latinos. Almost every speaker at the San Jose
convention Saturday and Sunday, which included many of the state’s top elected Democrats and union leaders, mentioned Trump, usually in context
with his hard line on immigration or his mantra calling for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We’re California,” state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, told the audience in Spanish on Saturday: “We don’t build walls
here — we tear them down.”
Gov. Jerry Brown slammed Trump at a dinner Saturday night and Vice President Joe Biden argued during his featured speech that the Republican
presidential hopefuls have created a poisonous political atmosphere with their talk of building walls and barring Muslims from entering the country
“We can’t let this go because our politics is pulling this country apart,” he said.
‘There’s a lot of anger’
The prospect of a conservative Republican in the White House might not be all bad for the state. Having Trump on the November ballot would be a
political winner for California Democrats, said John Burton, the party’s outgoing chairman.
“I wouldn’t want to be a Republican running,” Burton said. “If Trump is on the top of the ticket, I think it increases our chance to pick up seats across
the board.”
That doesn’t mean Trump — and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side — hasn’t tapped into an important vein of concern this
presidential year, Burton added.
“There’s a lot of anger in this country, and rightfully so,” he said. “If you’re not mad at the way things are going in this country, either you’re very
wealthy or you’re just ignorant of what’s going on.”
A Trump presidential run in the fall could boost California’s Democratic fortunes for years, said Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist and
philanthropist. He’s about to launch — and pay for — a huge voter registration drive in California to sign up some of its 7 million eligible and
unregistered residents.
“If you look at who isn’t registered in California, there are a hell of a lot of unregistered Latinos and there are a hell of a lot of unregistered Millennials,”
Steyer said. “Right now, (Trump) turns off more than half of all Americans, some of them, like me, really violently.”
It’s not just Trump who worries California Democrats. Both Rubio and Cruz, who are trailing Trump in the polls, have raised concerns of their own during
the GOP presidential campaign. And the enthusiastic support those Republicans are collecting all across the nation is even more worrisome for Democrats.
“Something about this election has brought out the worst in people,” said Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is running for U.S. Senate. “I’m very
concerned that the Republican campaign has taken on an ‘us versus them’ flavor.”
Scott Wiener, a San Francisco supervisor in a race with fellow Supervisor Jane Kim for state Senate, said the situation would be humorous if it weren’t
so scary.
“As leaders, we have a responsibility not to demagogue,” he said. “You can always as a candidate tap into the worst of human nature, appealing to
racism, homophobia and xenophobia.”
Seeing that on the Republican side, he said, “makes us want to work harder as Democrats.”
Uniting against Republicans
There were supporters of both Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, in
evidence at the convention, marching through the halls, waving signs and cheering their candidates, who were busy campaigning in other parts of
the country.
But while the Democratic primary fight now is raucous, hot and heavy, party leaders are confident everyone will come together against whomever
the Republicans put up in November.
The bitter, high-profile GOP debates, with their mean-spirited attacks and hectoring, are actually good news for the Democrats, said Rep.
Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House.
“I certainly would say that Trump has given us enough material to just put up (in ads) just what Republicans have said about him,” Becerra said.
John Wildermuth and Joe Garofoli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers.
Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com, jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth, @joegarofoli
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/artic...cy-6859405.php
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03-03-2016, 10:12 PM #2
In this Nov. 17, 2008 file photo, a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle stands guard along the border fence with its concertino wire topping it, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi, File) — AP
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...order-fencing/NO AMNESTY
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