A 12-person slate committed to Assemblymember Mark Leno swept to a landslide victory on Sunday in the election of delegates to the California Democratic Party. The delegate election had become a proxy battle between Leno and State Senator Carole Migden, who are likely to square off against each other in the June 2008 Democratic State Senate primary. Each of Leno’s candidates won handily in the June 14 vote, while Migden became so convinced that defeat was inevitable that she abandoned her own chosen slate and skipped the event. Leno’s capacity to mobilize hundreds of people to come down to the State Building and vote in the middle of a holiday weekend was a powerful demonstration of his grassroots electoral strength. Migden has not faced a seriously contested election in over a decade, but now has an uphill fight for re-election.

After all the insider political chatter and maneuverings, Carole Migden and Mark Leno’s battle over the election of delegates to the state Democratic Party convention was no contest. Leno’s slate won by an overwhelming landslide, with each candidate getting over 200 votes more than the next closest competitor (out of around 400 votes cast).

Leno’s 12-person slate included London Breed, Jeff Anderson, Kamala Harris, Alec Bash, Jennifer Longley, Dan Enrique Bernal, Hydra Mendoza, David Chiu, Eva Royale, Toye Moses, Leah Shahum, and Michael Sweet.

What’s significant about this list is that includes San Francisco’s District Attorney (Harris), a School Board member (Mendoza), the frontrunner to replace Aaron Peskin as District 3 Supervisor (Chiu), and the District leader of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office (Bernal). These are the type of folks who not only can pull people out to vote for Leno on a Sunday, January 14 state Democratic election, but who will know how to do the same for the actual election between Leno and Migden in June 2008.

Assessor Phil Ting also knows how to get voters to the polls, and sent out an e-mail urging support for Leno’s slate.

Why have people encouraged Leno to run against a fellow Democrat for the State Senate? The late Miquel Contreras, whose leadership of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor starting in the mid-1990’s soon transformed the city into a pro-labor stronghold, offered the best explanation in a similar context.

Contreras drew some criticism when he backed Democratic State Senator Hilda Solis against an incumbent Democratic Congressperson Marty Martinez, who had an 80% pro-labor voting record. Contreras said labor would no longer be content to support politicians who simply voted right, instead “we want warriors for working people.”

Mark Leno has proved a warrior for progressive causes in the Assembly, and many San Franciscans want the city to have a fighter for its interests in the State Senate. In contrast, Carole Migden is so disinterested in fighting for her constituents that she abandoned the powerful role as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee so she could devote her full energies to Steve Westly’s campaign for the Democratic nomination of Governor.

That’s not a misprint. San Francisco’s chief representative in the State Senate cared more about advancing the political career of the multi-millionaire Westly than she did the economic interests of her own constituents.

And Westly was not even the candidate backed by most of San Francisco’s activists, labor unions and progressive groups. So Migden was more concerned about helping a candidate preaching “bipartisanship” than she was about serving the interests of her very partisan constituency.

Some believe Migden abandoned her Committee chair before she could be forced from the position. Migden so alienated her Senate colleagues that they asked Senate Leader Don Perata to remove her from the leadership position.

Success in the State Legislature requires getting along with people. John Burton, Migden’s predecessor, rose to State Senate leader not because he shared the ideology of most Senators, but rather because he was liked and respected even by those who disagreed with his progressive views.

Leno has proved effective in the Assembly, far more effective than most ever imagined. Leno is such a friendly, unassuming fellow that it seemed he would be overwhelmed in Sacramento. But underneath the exterior is a fiercely competitive and tenacious man who literally works day and night to get legislation passed.

A sign of how people can mistake Leno’s politeness for weakness emerged when I spoke to activists last fall about a possible Leno challenge to Migden. The most common response was that it made sense, but that Leno would never have the political courage to mount a challenge to an incumbent Democrat.

Whereas Carole Migden may be the least popular Democrat in the Senate, Leno is among the most popular Assembly members. The importance of this in Sacremento cannot be underestimated. When I worked with Leno on the bill excluding SRO’s from the Ellis Act, a key legislator clearly did not like the bill and made that clear. But Leno had built a good relationship with this legislator, who agreed to vote for the bill in a spirit of friendship and collegiality.

Considering the bill passed by a single vote, it was clear that a legislative sponsor less popular with his colleagues would not have gotten the necessary votes.

Carole Migden entered politics with a stereotypical hard-driving New York-style personality that alienated some San Franciscans but that enabled her to be extremely effective. The San Francisco Democratic Party was a well-run machine under her leadership, and during her Supervisor years nobody chaired meetings with more efficiency.

Migden was reasonably effective in the Assembly, but has been in over her head in the State Senate. Migden seems like a completely different person from the hard-driving leader she was through the early 1990’s, and has become disconnected from her own constituents.

While running unopposed for the Assembly in 1996, the State Board of Equalization in 2002, and the State Senate in 2004 had its advantages, it left Migden without an active campaign organization. Migden did not have to press the flesh at community events, so many activists have not talked to her in years, if ever.

Migden’s inability to mount a serious challenge to Leno’s slate of delegates for the California Democratic Party convention reflects her disconnection from the city’s activist base. For a sitting Senator to field a slate, then abandon the slate, then deny she ever tried to run a slate, is not a good sign for her chances against Leno in the June 2008 primary.

With term limits limiting Assembly members to six years, the State Senate’s importance has magnified. San Francisco tenants, labor unions, environmental groups and other progressive constituencies benefited mightily from John Burton’s State Senate tenure, and appear likely to support Leno against Migden in 2008.

Based on the campaign thus far, Leno has to like his chances.

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