California Democratic Party jumps into all-Democrat battle in East Bay Senate race

Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla has had the endorsement of the California Democratic Party in the Concord Democrat’s quest to succeed former state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier in the East Bay’s 7th Senate District. Now she has the party’s financial backing in her May 19 runoff against Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer, a fellow Democrat and former top adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown.

The California Democratic Party has contributed more than $73,000 to Bonilla’s campaign, state filings through Thursday show. It is the first time the party has spent significant money in an open race featuring two Democrats.

The money has paid for pro-Bonilla mailers to Democratic voters, party spokesman Michael Soller said Thursday.

“She’s the kind of smart, progressive Democrat we’re going to support across California,” Soller said. The party-funded mail, timed to come after the April 20 start of mail voting in the contest, are positive pieces that “remind voters of Assemblwoman Bonilla’s record and support from local leaders,” he said. He declined to detail any party objections to Glazer.

Glazer called the party spending “precedent-setting” and “very disappointing.”

“They could have made a choice to let the local interests fight it out,” Glazer said. “It goes to show how special interests are using the party to defeat Democrats who are independent enough to represent their district interests over their narrow agenda.”

Glazer, who helped guide Brown’s 2010 campaign for a third term as governor, angered organized labor, a key Democratic constituency, for his support of restricting transit workers’ ability to strike and his past consulting work for pro-business campaign committees. Through Wednesday, union-backed outside spending groups had spent more than $1.9 million since the March 17 primary supporting Bonilla or opposing Glazer. Committees bankrolled by businesses, charter schools and wealthy businessman Bill Bloomfield have spent more than $2.4 million to help Glazer, records show.

The state party contributions to Bonilla began showing up last week and are the first to a Democrat in a same-party runoff since fall 2012. Those donations, though, aided the re-election campaigns of incumbent Assemblymembers Betsy Butler and Michael Allen. Both lost to fellow Democrats: Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, and Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, respectively.

Call Jim Miller, Bee Capitol Bureau

 

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California Democrats Push Gov. Brown To Demand Water Conservation From Farmers During Drought

SACRAMENTO (CBS/AP) — California’s Democratic state senators are pushing Gov. Jerry Brown to speed up water spending in the face of a relentless drought.

In a joint letter, they are calling on the Brown administration to tap into voter-approved water funding more quickly and to demand greater water conservation from farmers.

They want money from bond measures and pollution fees to go to water savings projects in months, not years. The letter calls it “unacceptable” that Brown’s office may wait until next year to start funding water recycling.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon’s office released the letter Thursday. It is dated Tuesday, the same day Brown called for $10,000 fines for water wasters.

Brown’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

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Harvard faculty backs Democrats 96% of the time, says school paper

Republicans running for president might as well skip any fundraisers at Ivy League universities like Harvard, where a new analysis shows 96 percent of faculty donations over the last three years went to Democrats.

Academia in general, and the elite northeastern schools in particular, have long been seen as a bastion for left-wing professors. Nationally, about two-thirds of college professors say they are liberal and less than a tenth identify themselves as conservative, according to one study. The imbalance at Harvard, uncovered by the student newspaper Harvard Crimson surprised even Harvard administrators.

“If someone gets in trouble on campus it is far more likely to be because of socially conservative views, and I have no doubt that is partly because of groupthink on campus.”

– Greg Lukianoff, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

“I am amazed at how high that number is,” Harvard Dean Michael D. Smith told the Crimson.

In the presidential race in 2012, every one of the eight universities in the Ivy League saw more than 90 percent of faculty donations go to Obama. Some say that shows a troubling lack of ideological diversity on campuses and could lead to students getting biased educations.

“It is a shame that our greatest universities have become ideologically monolithic,” Georgetown law professor Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz told FoxNews.com. “At many of these schools, including Georgetown Law School, most students will graduate without ever laying eyes on a single Republican professor.”

One Harvard faculty member, who does not share his colleague’s politics, declined to even discuss the ideological dynamic on campus.

“Sorry, but the smart thing for me to do about this kind of issue is not to comment!” he said.

Some professors say the disparity is nothing new and shouldn’t be a big concern.

“While this may narrow the range of political debate on campus, it doesn’t mean that students at these schools aren’t getting a first-rate education,” said Neil Gross, visiting professor of sociology at Princeton and author of “Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?” “American higher education needs reforming, but political imbalance is the least of its problems.”

Non- Ivy League colleges appear to be somewhat less liberal. A survey done by UCLA researchers found that 65.7 percent of public university faculty identified as liberals compared to 9.5 percent who call themselves conservatives – a ratio of 7-to-1. Private colleges as a whole were just as liberal, but private Catholic colleges were a bit less so, with a liberal-to-conservative ratio of 4-to-1.

Surveys have also found differences between fields. Sociology has about 16 Democrats for each Republican, history has 6-to-1, and economics just 2.5-to-1.

Gross has done studies on the issue and found that ideology is self-reinforcing.

“College teaching got a reputation as a liberal occupation early in the twentieth century for historical reasons, and that pulled even more liberals in, in a self-reinforcing process. Today relatively few conservative students aspire to become professors.”

Free speech advocates say that the result is campuses that often stifle free speech.

“If someone gets in trouble on campus it is far more likely to be because of socially conservative views, and I have no doubt that is partly because of group think on campus,” Greg Lukianoff, a self-described liberal and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) told FoxNews.com.

He cited the example of an ongoing case at Marquette University, where a teaching assistant forbade a conservative student from opposing gay marriage in an ethics class discussion, saying that doing so could be offensive to gay students. After John McAdams, a conservative professor, took issue with that on his blog and wrote that the student should be allowed to speak, the university suspended him and began trying to fire him. Lukianoff said they are still attempting to do so.

Rosenkranz says he would like to see more ideological diversity on campus.

“Ideally these universities would expose students to the most powerful arguments on both sides of the great issues, rather than indoctrinating them with the ideology of the far left,” he said.

The author, Maxim Lott, can be reached atmaxim.lott@foxnews.com

 

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Senate Democrats send drought suggestions to Jerry Brown

By Alexei Koseff and Christopher Cadelago

As California officials ramp up response to the historic drought, Senate Democrats are pitching in with their own suggestions for water conservation and emergency relief under these “new normal” conditions.

In a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown released Thursday, the Senate Democratic Caucus offered a list of 12 steps the state could take to deal with the four-year dry spell, including appointing a “water czar” within the Governor’s Office to coordinate the state’s drought response.

Among the other suggestions are using money from the $7.5 billion water bond and the greenhouse gas reduction fund for drought relief programs; creating new incentives for farmers to use water more efficiently; replacing lawns at state buildings with drought-friendly landscaping; and investing in more residential recycled water systems.

Senate Democrats also said the state should adopt a new model tiered-rate system that could be used by local governments after one such method was ruled unconstitutional by a state appeals court.

“As the crisis grows, our two branches of government should work even more closely so that the state responds quickly and appropriately to the conditions on the ground,” the letter states. “Therefore, we want to offer our help and suggestions for additional actions that may be needed as we enter the driest months of the year.”

On Tuesday, Brown proposed granting local water agencies new enforcement powers, including fines of up to $10,000 for violations of conservation orders. At an appearance in Oakland Thursday to offer a revised plan for his twin Delta tunnels project, he was cool on the Senate Democrats’ ideas.

“We’ll take a look at them,” Brown said. “This government … I don’t just snap my fingers and everything starts, engineers start making things happen. It’s complicated.”

He said state officials are “working pretty hard to get stuff done.”

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Obama Pledges to Defend Democrats on Trade Deal

Senate Democrats sue Florida House over abrupt end to Legislative session

(AP) – Democrats in the Florida Senate are suing the Florida House over the abrupt end of this year’s annual session.

The House adjourned earlier in the week due to a disagreement with the Senate over health care spending and Medicaid expansion. The session was scheduled to end Friday.

Democrats want the Florida Supreme Court to order House members back for the final day. Democrats maintain House leaders violated the state constitution by leaving early.

The constitution reads that neither chamber can adjourn for more than 72 hours without an agreement between the House and Senate.

Senate Democratic Leader Arthenia Joyner called the departure of House members “unacceptable.” She said Democrats filed the emergency petition to make sure that similar actions are not taken in the future.

State legislators are ending their regular session without passing a new state budget.

Senate President Andy Gardiner has proposed legislators return in June.

 

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98% of Harvard Law Faculty Political Donations Go to Democrats

There are almost no Republican donors teaching at Harvard Law School. Ninety-eight percent of the political donations from faculty go to Democrats.

Indeed, across the university, most political donations go to Democrats. The findings are part of an analysis done by the Harvard Crimson.

“Eighty-four percent of campaign contributions made by a group of 614 Harvard faculty, instructors, and researchers between 2011 and the third quarter of 2014 went to federal Democratic campaigns and political action committees, according to a Crimson analysis of Federal Election Commission filings,” the student paper reports.

“During the three years, the Harvard affiliates represented in analyzed public filings gave nearly $3 million to federal campaigns and candidates. Each of Harvard’s schools leaned to the left in the contributions made by their affiliates, many by wide margins. Ninety-six percent of donations in the data set from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes Harvard College, supported Democratic efforts. That figure was even higher—nearly 98 percent—at Harvard Law School. Harvard Business School was the most Republican, with 37 percent of its contributions supporting Republicans and 62 percent going to Democrats.”

Both Barack Obama and Ted Cruz are graduates of Harvard Law School.

 

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