It turns out a bunch of fine women are after Tom McClintock. After his job, that is. Presumably no woman save Lori McClintock likes likes the guy, and since they married in 1987, I imagine the jig is pretty well up by now. He lies. He scapegoats. He doesn't listen. He consistently denies reality. These are deplorable traits in spouses and congressmen alike. So why don't we all agree to file for divorce in 2018?
The women who are presently after Tom's job are Regina Bateson, Jessica Morse, Roza Calderon, and Rochelle Wilcox, all Democrats and 4th District residents. Here in the nether region of the District, we've already been visited by two of the candidates. Jessica Morse was the main attraction at an Oakhurst Area for Peace / Coarsegold Indivisible gathering on June 13, and Regina Bateson at a June 24 meeting at the Oakhurst Public Library. Previously, I wrote about Jessica. Now it's Regina's turn.
First off, I have to say that after Jessica Morse, I didn't think it would be possible to be truly impressed with another candidate. Jessica was special. She flew in the face of all my political stereotypes. The other candidates would, I reasoned, be just as I knew politicians to be: impersonal and inauthentic, with loads of mascara, hair sculpted into no-nonsense helmets, and well-lipsticked mouths flapping rhetoric I couldn't even begin to trust.
So when Regina Bateson bustled into the room ten minutes late, looking harried, apologetic, and distinctly human, I was surprised. And when she started to talk, and filled up the room with warmth and humor instead of rhetoric, I sat up in my chair and started taking notes. Regina Bateson was not the droid I was looking for.
Regina's backstory, as told in that little meeting room at the Oakhurst Public Library, is that she grew up in an average American household in Roseville, California. She went to public schools, and as a teenager worked a variety of service jobs. She joked that if any of us were passing through Roseville in the late 1990s, there is good chance that she sold us an ice cream cone.
There was nothing average about her college years, though. She earned her BA at Stanford, and went on to study political science at Yale, where she emerged with an MA and a PhD. She carried her ivy league streak into her career, taking a job as an assistant professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She's been there since 2013; however, she shared with us that she'll be taking a leave of absence next year to serve as a visiting fellow at Stanford and focus on her bid for Congress.
Like Jessica Morse, Regina is an alumnus of the State Department. Between Stanford and Yale, she trotted off to Guatemala, where she worked as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Guatemala City. There, she interviewed visa applicants and supported American citizens living or traveling abroad. Not surprisingly, Regina is fluent in Spanish. And like Jessica, she has another language or two under her belt; her CV states she is "intermediate" in French and "conversational" in Portuguese.
But at the Oakhurst Public Library, Regina didn't belabor her own biography. She wanted to talk about Tom. To my delight, she confessed that she is actually somewhat obsessed with Tom McClintock and has taken it upon herself to track his slime trails through California and U.S. politics.
She asked if anyone knew how Tom McClintock came to represent California's 4th Congressional District. Some of us, including me, faintly nodded--but as she began to tell the tale, I realized I didn't know the half of it. By 2008, Tom was due to term out in the California State Legislature, where he'd represented various Southern California districts as an Assemblyman and Senator for more than 20 years. At the same time, the 4th District's incumbent congressman, John Doolittle, was in the hot seat for having skimmed campaign funds via his wife's consulting firm. The Republican Party instructed Doolittle not to run for reelection in 2008--and District 4, which always went red, dangled in space like a fat carrot, just waiting to be snatched by the first opportunistic conservative that came along.
Enter the ever-smirking face of Tom McClintock. With no future at the California Legislature, and having already failed in four separate bids for statewide offices, he decided to take a stab at federal politics. And despite a strong showing by his Democratic opponent, actually named Charlie Brown, McClintock won the 4th in 2008, and has won it every two years since.
Regina talked strategy with us. Why can't a Democrat ever beat Tom McClintock? The key here, she explained, is fundraising. Tom consistently raises $3 million in campaign funds. No Democrat since Charlie Brown has raised more than $100,000. Lacking money, Tom's opponents haven't been able to put anyone on payroll; no one since Charlie Brown has had paid staff.
Needless to say, Regina hopes to turn this around. She is planning a fundraising sweep of the District. She is inviting her supporters to throw house parties that she will attend, regardless of anticipated kitty size. She is calling for even the smallest individual contributions (think Bernie and his $27). She is turning to the District's wealthy groupies in the Bay Area, who own second homes in Tahoe and care about what happens here. Regina's vision is that, come primary time, we Democrats will be a force to reckon with, and that we can "signal our strength" with votes meeting or exceeding Tom's.
There is a strong sense of "us" with Regina. You don't get the feeling this is about her career. Indeed, as she put it, she had already been quite busy, and hadn't been looking to take anything else on. She loved her job, and enjoyed being a mom to her three small kids. But then came the 2016 election. It was, she said, a call to action. She decided to throw herself into overthrowing Tom. Her first thought was to form a super PAC to support the Democratic contender that would surely step forward. But when that didn't happen, she took matters into her own hands.
First off, I have to say that after Jessica Morse, I didn't think it would be possible to be truly impressed with another candidate. Jessica was special. She flew in the face of all my political stereotypes. The other candidates would, I reasoned, be just as I knew politicians to be: impersonal and inauthentic, with loads of mascara, hair sculpted into no-nonsense helmets, and well-lipsticked mouths flapping rhetoric I couldn't even begin to trust.
So when Regina Bateson bustled into the room ten minutes late, looking harried, apologetic, and distinctly human, I was surprised. And when she started to talk, and filled up the room with warmth and humor instead of rhetoric, I sat up in my chair and started taking notes. Regina Bateson was not the droid I was looking for.
Regina's backstory, as told in that little meeting room at the Oakhurst Public Library, is that she grew up in an average American household in Roseville, California. She went to public schools, and as a teenager worked a variety of service jobs. She joked that if any of us were passing through Roseville in the late 1990s, there is good chance that she sold us an ice cream cone.
There was nothing average about her college years, though. She earned her BA at Stanford, and went on to study political science at Yale, where she emerged with an MA and a PhD. She carried her ivy league streak into her career, taking a job as an assistant professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She's been there since 2013; however, she shared with us that she'll be taking a leave of absence next year to serve as a visiting fellow at Stanford and focus on her bid for Congress.
Like Jessica Morse, Regina is an alumnus of the State Department. Between Stanford and Yale, she trotted off to Guatemala, where she worked as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Guatemala City. There, she interviewed visa applicants and supported American citizens living or traveling abroad. Not surprisingly, Regina is fluent in Spanish. And like Jessica, she has another language or two under her belt; her CV states she is "intermediate" in French and "conversational" in Portuguese.
But at the Oakhurst Public Library, Regina didn't belabor her own biography. She wanted to talk about Tom. To my delight, she confessed that she is actually somewhat obsessed with Tom McClintock and has taken it upon herself to track his slime trails through California and U.S. politics.
She asked if anyone knew how Tom McClintock came to represent California's 4th Congressional District. Some of us, including me, faintly nodded--but as she began to tell the tale, I realized I didn't know the half of it. By 2008, Tom was due to term out in the California State Legislature, where he'd represented various Southern California districts as an Assemblyman and Senator for more than 20 years. At the same time, the 4th District's incumbent congressman, John Doolittle, was in the hot seat for having skimmed campaign funds via his wife's consulting firm. The Republican Party instructed Doolittle not to run for reelection in 2008--and District 4, which always went red, dangled in space like a fat carrot, just waiting to be snatched by the first opportunistic conservative that came along.
Enter the ever-smirking face of Tom McClintock. With no future at the California Legislature, and having already failed in four separate bids for statewide offices, he decided to take a stab at federal politics. And despite a strong showing by his Democratic opponent, actually named Charlie Brown, McClintock won the 4th in 2008, and has won it every two years since.
Regina talked strategy with us. Why can't a Democrat ever beat Tom McClintock? The key here, she explained, is fundraising. Tom consistently raises $3 million in campaign funds. No Democrat since Charlie Brown has raised more than $100,000. Lacking money, Tom's opponents haven't been able to put anyone on payroll; no one since Charlie Brown has had paid staff.
Needless to say, Regina hopes to turn this around. She is planning a fundraising sweep of the District. She is inviting her supporters to throw house parties that she will attend, regardless of anticipated kitty size. She is calling for even the smallest individual contributions (think Bernie and his $27). She is turning to the District's wealthy groupies in the Bay Area, who own second homes in Tahoe and care about what happens here. Regina's vision is that, come primary time, we Democrats will be a force to reckon with, and that we can "signal our strength" with votes meeting or exceeding Tom's.
There is a strong sense of "us" with Regina. You don't get the feeling this is about her career. Indeed, as she put it, she had already been quite busy, and hadn't been looking to take anything else on. She loved her job, and enjoyed being a mom to her three small kids. But then came the 2016 election. It was, she said, a call to action. She decided to throw herself into overthrowing Tom. Her first thought was to form a super PAC to support the Democratic contender that would surely step forward. But when that didn't happen, she took matters into her own hands.
 |
| Regina Bateson, left, talks with a potential constituent after the meeting at the Oakhurst Public Library |
On her Facebook page, Regina Bateson describes herself as a moderate Democrat. That was borne out in the Q-and-A at the Oakhurst Public Library. When asked about single-payer healthcare, she said that, while she can see the benefits of such a system, she feels it will be at least ten years before single-payer is workable at the federal level. For now, she said, she would work on strengthening the Affordable Care Act. When asked about the student debt crisis, she talked about lowering interest rates, improving community colleges, and bolstering loan forgiveness programs and vocational education--but stopped short of advocating free college tuition. When it came to the latter, she said, she'd have to look into it more. She didn't know if it would pencil out.
In general, Regina Bateson seemed a bit more hesitant to advocate particular points of view than Jessica Morse. She answered a number of questions with variations of "I'd be open to that, but I need to look into it first." She praised a friend of mine for having posed the first-ever foreign policy question at any of her campaign stops, but didn't reward her with a substantive answer; she merely lamented that getting out of Afghanistan would be a "conundrum." I never felt that Regina was being disingenuous. To me, her hesitation reflected a shortage of experience with the wide range of issues we lobbed at her, and that she would presumably encounter if elected to the U.S. Congress.
Perhaps Regina's biggest Q-and-A challenge came in the form of a California Democratic Party county-level official who lives locally. On the heels of a question from a man who was clearly skeptical of the Democratic establishment, this official detailed, at length, the process of endorsing a particular candidate for a House race. It involved an incestuous tangle of meetings, caucuses, votes, and rules, and meant exactly nothing to me. In fact, after trying to listen for about a minute, I spent the rest of the lecture silently congratulating myself for not being a registered Democrat. Elsewhere in the room, people got up and left.
Regina handled the diversion with grace. When the official finished speaking, Regina thanked the original question-asker for his patience, and attempted to translate some of the party jargon into human speak for his benefit. She restored the original flow of the evening, and the Q-and-A continued.
Having spent the bulk of her adult life in the study of political science, Regina Bateson clearly understands politics. She knows what it will take to beat Tom McClintock, and her path for getting there is well-lit by her academic credentials. She is bright, she is likeable, and she already knows how to play the game.
But leaving the Oakhurst Public Library that day, I felt vaguely depressed. Tom McClintock is a politician. He has no other trade; he has been a politician his entire career. If he were a woman, he would certainly sport a helmet hairdo and too much mascara. Regina Bateson is not a politician. She seems like an honest, down-to-earth human being. But her career has been mostly confined to the ivory tower, where she has busied herself with... politics. And it's paying off. The county-level official made a few comments at the meeting that, to me, suggested Regina was the California Democratic Party's 4th District darling.
I would like my next representative to be a leader rather than a politician or, frankly, a political scientist. I would like to know my representative has lived in the world, and has muddied her boots in the management of real-life problems. I would like my representative to embrace input from her constituents without shying away from her own truths, which she will unequivocally share with anyone who asks. And of course, I would like those truths to swing pretty far left.
My process for endorsing a particular candidate in the race to unseat Tom McClintock is nothing like the California Democratic Party's. There are no mind-boggling formalities here--just good, old-fashioned thinking tempered by gut instinct. So far, my candidate of choice is Jessica Morse. I will try to keep an open mind, however. Stay tuned for the next installment of Coup d' éTom, to be published after Roza Calderon's visit to Oakhurst on July 19.
In general, Regina Bateson seemed a bit more hesitant to advocate particular points of view than Jessica Morse. She answered a number of questions with variations of "I'd be open to that, but I need to look into it first." She praised a friend of mine for having posed the first-ever foreign policy question at any of her campaign stops, but didn't reward her with a substantive answer; she merely lamented that getting out of Afghanistan would be a "conundrum." I never felt that Regina was being disingenuous. To me, her hesitation reflected a shortage of experience with the wide range of issues we lobbed at her, and that she would presumably encounter if elected to the U.S. Congress.
Perhaps Regina's biggest Q-and-A challenge came in the form of a California Democratic Party county-level official who lives locally. On the heels of a question from a man who was clearly skeptical of the Democratic establishment, this official detailed, at length, the process of endorsing a particular candidate for a House race. It involved an incestuous tangle of meetings, caucuses, votes, and rules, and meant exactly nothing to me. In fact, after trying to listen for about a minute, I spent the rest of the lecture silently congratulating myself for not being a registered Democrat. Elsewhere in the room, people got up and left.
Regina handled the diversion with grace. When the official finished speaking, Regina thanked the original question-asker for his patience, and attempted to translate some of the party jargon into human speak for his benefit. She restored the original flow of the evening, and the Q-and-A continued.
Having spent the bulk of her adult life in the study of political science, Regina Bateson clearly understands politics. She knows what it will take to beat Tom McClintock, and her path for getting there is well-lit by her academic credentials. She is bright, she is likeable, and she already knows how to play the game.
But leaving the Oakhurst Public Library that day, I felt vaguely depressed. Tom McClintock is a politician. He has no other trade; he has been a politician his entire career. If he were a woman, he would certainly sport a helmet hairdo and too much mascara. Regina Bateson is not a politician. She seems like an honest, down-to-earth human being. But her career has been mostly confined to the ivory tower, where she has busied herself with... politics. And it's paying off. The county-level official made a few comments at the meeting that, to me, suggested Regina was the California Democratic Party's 4th District darling.
I would like my next representative to be a leader rather than a politician or, frankly, a political scientist. I would like to know my representative has lived in the world, and has muddied her boots in the management of real-life problems. I would like my representative to embrace input from her constituents without shying away from her own truths, which she will unequivocally share with anyone who asks. And of course, I would like those truths to swing pretty far left.
My process for endorsing a particular candidate in the race to unseat Tom McClintock is nothing like the California Democratic Party's. There are no mind-boggling formalities here--just good, old-fashioned thinking tempered by gut instinct. So far, my candidate of choice is Jessica Morse. I will try to keep an open mind, however. Stay tuned for the next installment of Coup d' éTom, to be published after Roza Calderon's visit to Oakhurst on July 19.
No comments:
Post a Comment