Bera to lead the DCCC? + A concession in the race for Senate District 6
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
BERA MAKES PLAY FOR DCCC LEADERSHIP
Sacramento-area Congressman Rep. Ami Bera announced Monday that he intends to seek leadership of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
“I know how to win in a competitive district. I unseated an incumbent Republican in a purple district and have won some of the closest and costliest reelections in the country,” Bera said in a “Dear Colleague” letter. The Republican incumbent he referred to was Rep. Dan Lungren, who he defeated to win his first term in 2012.
The DCCC is a fundraising arm of the Democratic Party, charged with recruiting Democratic candidates and supporting their campaigns. It operates a series of affiliate programs, including Frontline and Red to Blue that exist to get candidates elected in toss-up and Republican-leaning districts.
Bera pointed to his bonafides as DCCC Frontline Chair for the past four years, and also to his service on current DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney’s team.
“I have a proven fundraising ability. This cycle alone, I have directly raised and given almost $500,000 to Democratic Members and candidates. And through my work at the DCCC, I have directly helped raise over $3.8 million for Frontline and Red to Blue races and over $1,400,000 for the Committee,” Bera wrote.
A first-generation Indian-American, Bera said that he understands the strength of diversity, and that he would work to be “a unifying bridge” for a party with many ideological differences.
He is the second California congressman to seek the position; Politico reports that Rep. Tony Cárdenas has previously announced his intention to seek the position.
VILLESCAZ CONCEDES IN SD-6
The race for Senate District 6 is over. Democrat Paula Villescaz announced Monday that she had conceded to her Republican opponent, Roger Niello.
“While votes are still being counted, we are short of the votes necessary to win. This is not the outcome I had hoped for. I want to sincerely thank every person who voted for me, volunteered their time to reach out to neighbors, or made a donation to our campaign. I am so grateful for what we built together,” Villescaz said in a statement shared on Twitter.
Villescaz said that she called Niello Friday evening to congratulate him on his victory.
She added that the fight “isn’t over and this is just the beginning.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I guess attacking trans people wasn’t enough for Dave Chappelle. On SNL, he validated Kanye’s antisemitic stereotypes of Jews & defended Kyrie Irving’s promotion of antisemitic conspiracies. It’s deeply shameful that SNL/NBC provided a platform for normalizing antisemitism.”
- Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, via Twitter.
Best of The Bee:
State lawmakers and local tribal leaders shared details Monday on the plan to replace the toppled statue of missionary Junípero Serra in Sacramento with a monument dedicated to Native American tribes upon whose land California’s state Capitol grounds were built, via Michael McGough.
Instead of heading to her Monday instructors meeting for the class she teaches, graduate assistant Paige Kouba joined the UC Davis picket line. Kouba, along with tens of thousands of UC academic workers across the system’s 10 campuses, walked off the job Monday morning, three weeks before final exams, after contract negotiations with the University of California failed to reach an agreement by the union’s Nov. 14 strike deadline, via Maya Miller and Ari Plachta.
In some of California’s most conservative counties, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Dahle was the clear favorite over Gov. Gavin Newsom and where anti-abortion Christian conservatives are leading in partial returns, voters still showed up for abortion access by supporting Proposition 1, via Jenavieve Hatch.
California lawmakers earlier this year declined to put an anti-slavery measure on the ballot, delaying a decision on a proposal to forbid the practice of using work as a form of criminal punishment. Voters in five other states – Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont – this week saw similar measures on their ballots, reflecting a nationwide push to wipe out the vestiges of enslavement in American law. Of the five, only Louisiana voted not to ban slavery as a form of criminal punishment, via Marcus D. Smith.
Two of the nation’s closest congressional races that will determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives drew even closer, updated returns released Friday evening show, via Gillian Brassil.