In December 2014, prior to Clinton announcing her candidacy, Robby Mook and John Podesta (who would become Clinton’s campaign manager and campaign chairman, respectively) discussed their preference to keep blue stats like California late in the primary process.

Mook had been contacted by another Democratic strategist, Chris Lehane, who served in Bill Clinton’s administration. According to the email, Lehane had called Mook about the California primary after speaking with Podesta, who had given Lehane the impression that he wanted to move the date.

Mook sought clarification, as he believed there was already a strategy in place to keep reliably Democratic states late in the primary process.

“FYI–Lehane called me about CA primary and I told him that the operating strategy is to keep blue states late (i.e. don’t move CA),” Mook wrote to Podesta. “He said he was at dinner with you and was under the impression that you wanted to move it earlier. He’s wondering how to proceed and I said I’d try to get us on the same page and go back with an answer. Are you ok with me saying that we both want CA to stay where it is?”

There was no reply from Podesta in the email dump. But an email from March 2015 — just weeks before Clinton officially announced her candidacy — showed Mook hoping California Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon would weigh in on the timing of the primary. 

“I met with Cal State Senate President. Super enthusiastic,” Podesta wrote to Mook in an email with the Los Angeles Democrat’s name in the subject line. “Do anything including travel to other states. Also volunteered to line up other state senators.”

“Fantastic,” Mook exclaimed. “Did he mention moving the primary date at all?”

A spokesman for de Leon did not immediately return requests for comment. Clinton’s campaign did not immediately respond as well.

Complaints of a rigged process

This election cycle has been rife with complaints and conspiracy theories that the Democratic nomination process was skewed toward Clinton.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley complained the Democratic National Committee scheduled the debates to favor Clinton. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders had his own concerns. 

Indeed, the complaints of a rigged process from the public and Clinton’s primary opponents and their supporters — some of the complaints were supported by other Wikileaks dumps — were so great that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was ousted from her perch atop the DNC.

No biggie?

As voters know, the date of California’s primary did not change. And Clinton won handily in June, as well as in 2008 against Barack Obama.

According to John J. Pitney, Jr., a Roy P. Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, those two facts should quiet concerns of a “rigged” election in a “Clinton-friendly state.”

“Conspiracy-minded Democrats might pounce on the staff chatter, but it’s not the kind of thing that makes a difference to voters,” Pitney said. “The issue might get more traction if there are revelations that states did shift dates in a deliberate effort to help Clinton, or if Clinton herself was involved in the effort.”

By Chris Reed

In June, California voters rejected a hike on cigarette taxes to fund cancer research. The defeat of Proposition 29 strongly suggested that the general anti-tax beliefs of most of the Golden State electorate remained intact, no matter the lunatics they elected to the Legislature and statewide office.

But in November, voters backed Proposition 30, increasing the sales tax on everyone and income taxes on the wealthy, to the surprise of many pundits. And they also approved Proposition 39, which wiped out a corporate tax loophole in favor of a bizarre and dubious scheme to subsidize green energy projects, which have gone haywire over and over in similar federal subsidy schemes.

We know why Prop. 30 passed: Gov. Jerry Brown and a well-funded TV ad campaign framed it as a referendum on public education by linking its rejection directly to massive school budget cuts. But how did Prop. 39 succeed?  By threats to personally demonize the CEOs of the companies most likely to fund opposition. Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star has the back story:

 “It was a story jointly written by a brassy political consultant whose style was forged while fighting off scandals in the Clinton White House, a billionaire Silicon Valley investor with a passion for public policy, and a dogged state senator who waged a three-year crusade to change a tax policy he believed was shortchanging California businesses and taxpayers. …

“The solution, [Democratic consultant Chris] Lehane believed, was ‘to change the value proposition’ for companies considering whether to finance a campaign to defeat Proposition 39.

“Because Sen. Kevin De León, D-Los Angeles, had fought for three years in the Legislature to change the tax formula, he knew what to expect.

“‘The multistate corporations were so effective in their lobbying. They killed every effort,’ De León told me. ‘I knew who the players were.’

“He knew that the most likely opposition to Proposition 39 would come from the out-of-state companies that had most aggressively lobbied against the idea in the Legislature: Chrysler, General Motors, International Paper and Kimberly-Clark.

“Full-page newspaper ads, featuring photographs of the companies’ CEOs, were purchased, asking them not to oppose the measure. De León sent a letter to the CEOs challenging them to a public debate ‘so voters can plainly see how devastating your efforts are to our state.’

“By Sept. 26, only GM and Kimberly-Clark were still holding out. The Proposition 39 campaign threatened to start running TV ads and to ‘unleash a relentless barrage’ of commercials calling out those two companies.

“Because venture capitalist Tom Steyer had deposited $21 million into the Yes on Proposition 39 campaign, potential opponents knew this was not an empty threat. And they knew it would be impossible to wage an opposition campaign on the cheap.

“‘Tom was not going away,’ De León says.

“By Sept. 28, all four companies had promised not to oppose the initiative. And in the end, the opposition campaign was almost nonexistent.”

Politics is not for the weak of heart. These tactics aren’t illegal. But the cause they helped is such a disaster that stories like this are disheartening. If only defenders of taxpayers could figure out ways to play such effective hardball.