Democratic Consultants’ Indictments Add to Public Disgust
Polling shows deep dissatisfaction with both political parties
The tale of a couple of political consultants being charged for diverting pandemic paycheck assistance money has implications beyond the government’s allegations. It’s not-good news for local Democrats at a critical juncture.
Jesus Cardenas, the former chief of staff to San Diego Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, and his sister, Andrea Cardenas, a sitting member of the Chula Vista City Council were charged on Wednesday with multiple felonies by County DA Summer Stephan.
The siblings are power players on the local Democratic Party scene, having founded and run numerous party clubs in the South Bay area that played a role in the endorsement process. Attempts to rectify that corruption were fruitless, given that they were —at the time— technically not violating existing party rules, leading to accusations of racism leveled against a longstanding party activist (not the one named below).
From Voice of San Diego, reporting on the clubs’ issue in the 2018 elections:
Cody Petterson, an activist from La Jolla and president of the San Diego Democrats for Environmental Action, wrote a 10-page report last month in which he identified the ways he thought Cardenas had benefited from a system in the South Bay that exists at the “nexus of crooked politics and profit.”
Petterson said the issue first crossed his radar when he was trying to whip votes for an endorsement for then-candidate Monica Montgomery in San Diego’s District 4, and recognized how hard it was to overcome the fact that the 13 clubs associated with Cardenas all supported her opponent, Myrtle Cole.
“For people in the know, it was pretty well understood when it started happening in 2017,” he said.
Since releasing his report and forcing a conversation on the issue, Petterson has been accused of having a white-savior complex for seeking to reform politics in the minority-majority South Bay.
Their backing of San Diego City Councilman Stephen Whitburn election effort and providing advice to Board of Supervisors Nora Vargas campaign is also indicative of their influence. One insider told me they believe the party’s ‘friendly’ endorsement of Andrea Cardenas, despite already existing questions about ethics, was pushed through because Jesus Cardenas was tapped out.
San Diego County Democratic Party campaign records filings show that Grassroots Resources continued to raise and spend political contributions despite being suspended by the California Franchise Tax Board for failing to submit required paperwork.
Back to the scene of the crime…
Allegedly $176,000 in federal COVID-19 relief funds provided to meet payroll for 34 employees at Grassroots Resources, a political consulting firm, ended up paying personal and campaign expenses for the Cardenas siblings. The 34 employees in question actually worked for marijuana dispensary Harbor Collective, an overlap that could be related to Grassroots Resources advocacy for local pot sales licensees.
“The defendants have both been charged with conspiracy to defraud by false pretense, grand theft, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering (and) failure to file tax returns,” according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Via the Union-Tribune:
Once the Cardenases received the money, they diverted tens of thousands of dollars to credit-card payments, a Venmo account and personal checking accounts, the complaint asserts.
More specifically, Jesus Cardenas used the proceeds to make two payments to American Express totaling $21,010, the complaint states. Andrea Cardenas directed $35,000 of the funds to her personal checking account, then steered $33,500 of that to her council campaign account, prosecutors said.
“On May 17, 2021, Andrea Cardenas’ campaign wrote a check (check 8064) from her campaign account ending 7401 to TMC Direct in the amount of $34,166.89,” the complaint states.
TMC Direct is a campaign print and mailing firm that has done hundreds of thousands of dollars in business with candidates represented by Jesus Cardenas. The company was at the center of a series of likely campaign violations by Andrea Cardenas during her council campaign.
Grassroots Resources, which started as a consulting business working to get cannabis companies licensed, was the firm that prompted Jesus Cardenas to resign from his San Diego City Hall job this year. The company not only helped Whitburn and Andrea win their respective council seats in 2020, it also was a key adviser to Nora Vargas, who won election to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors that same year.
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I certainly hope the local Democratic party won’t keep its head down over this, using the “couple of bad apples” ploy. That would be a short sighted move, since the stench wafting in the party’s direction needs a big shot of transparency-scented Febreze.
Much of the current leadership within the party has direct ties to Jesus Cardenas, including voting members of the area caucuses and Central Committee.
As one activist with a pessimistic view of the Democratic Party told me:
But as we all know, the coverup is worse than the crime. And they will continue to lose real people who come with good intent.
One aspect of this worth also considering in light of the potential reputational damage to the local Dems is the partisan slant of DA Stephen’s choices in prosecutions:
After reading about polling from the Public Policy Institute of California released on Halloween about voter dislike of political parties, I think Democrats have a lot to worry about. It’s brutal.
According to our recent survey, half of Californians hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party and three-quarters have a negative view of the Republican Party. Interestingly, a third of Californians report having unfavorable views of both parties, and an overwhelming majority (71%) say a third major party is needed, up from a smaller majority of 54% in 2019.
The spin that George Skelton at the LA Times and the Institute would like you to consider is about a desire in the electorate to see formation of a third party.
The political infrastructure in California and the rest of the nation to support a third party does not exist, thanks in large part to the rules of the game as dictated by the existing parties and the winner-take-all nature of elections in most states.
Historically speaking, successful new parties in the US have formed atop the ashes of a collapsing existing party. Despite the idealist version of partisanship that believes ideas should be the basis for parties, the reality is that affiliations can be best described as tributaries in a river basin.
In California, we effectively exist in a one party state. The alternative to the ruling party is saying nothing to the electorate in addressing real needs, and is largely led by people oblivious to cultural and economic norms. How the GOP generally fails to disavow its bigots in a majority minority state is beyond me.
There’s bad news for Democrats going beyond this polling.
The 2024 election is, by most accounts, setting up to be a referendum on the question of the future of democracy and rule of law in the United States. In thousands of “little” elections with “little” referendums and candidates, voters will be asked to make choices adding up to big differences in the future.
In our state, a lackluster view of our majority party will enable otherwise unappealing candidates and issues to have an opportunity to make gains. Democrats mostly agree on the big issues, abortion, same sex marriages, and maintaining secular governance. I might be all fired up about book burning, but less inclined to vote if I have to associate myself with evildoers to get there.
The reality that the incumbent president’s popularity is diluted, partly by misinformation and the lack of willingness by mass media outlets to portray the upcoming election as more than a horse race, is also a disincentive to vote for many.
And the indictments of the Cardenas siblings helps to blur partisan distinctions. If “they’re all corrupt” and the party I belong to gets squishy about being on the side of truth, justice and the American way, it doesn’t bode well for the future.
I think Democrats are supposed to be the good guys.
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Short Stuff You Should Read
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Speaker Mike Johnson’s Past Holds Many Unanswered Questions By Jay Kuo
When the Republican conference in the House went to their fifth in line, Rep. Mike Johnson, and decided, in collective utter exhaustion, that they would unanimously back him for Speaker, my first reaction was, “Who?”
And this is from someone who follows politics quite closely.
After hearing that he was a Christo-Nationalist extremist, whose wife, as he claimed, had been on her knees in prayer for the last weeks—hoo, boy—my second reaction was “I’ll bet there are tons of skeletons in that closet.” After all, it has been my experience that the most devoutly Christian, virulently homophobic and sexually repressed people often have something pretty deep they desperately want to cover for.
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Social Security is class war, not intergenerational conflict Via Cory Doctorow
The GOP says it wants to destroy Social Security for two reasons: first, to promote "choice" by letting us provide for our own retirement by flushing even more of our savings into the rigged casino that is the stock market; and second, because American doesn't have enough dollars to feed and house the elderly.
But for the *New York Times*' audience, they've figured out how to launder this far-right nonsense through the language of social justice. Rather than condemning the impecunious olds for their moral failing to lay the correct bets in the stock market, Social Security's opponents paint the elderly as a gerontocratic elite, flush with cash that rightfully belongs to the young.
To support this conclusion, they throw around statistics about how house-rich the Boomers are, and how much consumption they can afford. But as Kuttner points out, the Boomers' real-estate wealth comes not from aggressive house-flipping, but from merely owning a place to live. America's housing bubble means that younger people can't afford this basic human necessity, but the answer to that isn't making old people homeless - it's providing *a lot* more housing, and banning housing speculation.
It's true that older people are doing a lot of consumption spending - but the bulk of that spending isn't on cruises to Alaska to see the melting glaciers, it's on *health care*. Old people aren't luxuriating in their joint replacements and coronary bypasses. Calling this "consumption" is deliberately misleading.
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When Libs of TikTok Tweets, threats increasingly follow Via Will Carless at USA Today
These cases, and many more, share a common link: The victim of each threat had also been targeted, in the days before, by the enormously popular conservative social media channel Libs of TikTok.
In almost every case, the perpetrator of the threat is unknown, and Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer who runs Libs of TikTok, says she opposes violence, and that because there have been almost no arrests, there’s no proof the threats come from her followers.
But whoever is making the threats, the posts show a clear pattern. USA TODAY has confirmed dozens of bomb threats, death threats and other harassment after Libs of TikTok’s posts since February 2022, based on exclusive new research from the progressive analysis group Media Matters for America.