#he's running for mayor of San M but hes down in the polls

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victor feng desperately tries to repair his image in spite of infidelity scandal with actress venessa jeong.

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Factbox: Nineteen Democrats, Three Republicans Eye U.S. Presidential Nominations

The crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates seeking to challenge President Donald Trump next year swelled again on Thursday as former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick entered the race, seeking to carve a fresh path toward the party’s nomination.

Patrick’s entry into the race brings the total number of candidates vying for the nomination to 18 plus former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has filed as a candidate in Alabama and Arkansas but not yet decided whether to run.

The diverse group of Democrats includes a record five women as well as black, Hispanic, Asian and openly gay candidates who would make history if one of them becomes the party’s nominee.

Here is a graphic https://tmsnrt.rs/2UhJ7WE of the Republican and Democratic hopefuls to take on Trump, the likely Republican nominee, in the November 2020 election.

**TOP DEMOCRATIC CONTENDERS**

There are four candidates who have separated themselves thus far from the rest of the field among Democratic voters.

JOE BIDEN

Biden, the early front-runner in opinion polls among Democratic presidential contenders, waited until late April to enter the race, launching his bid with a direct swipe at Trump. Biden, 76, served eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president and 36 years in the U.S. Senate. He stands at the center of the Democratic debate over whether the party’s standard-bearer should be a veteran politician or a newcomer ,and whether a liberal or a moderate has a better chance of defeating Trump. Biden, who frequently notes his “Middle-Class Joe” nickname, touts his working-class roots and ability to work in a bipartisan fashion. Some fellow Democrats have criticized him for his role in passing tough-on-crime legislation in the 1990s.

ELIZABETH WARREN

The 70-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts is a leader of the party’s liberals and a fierce critic of Wall Street who was instrumental in creating the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the 2008 financial crisis. Her campaign has surged in recent months, equaling Biden in some polls. She has focused her presidential campaign on a populist anti-corruption message, promising to fight what she calls a rigged system that favors the wealthy. She has released an array of policy proposals on everything from breaking up big tech companies to implementing a “wealth tax” on the riches Americans. Warren has sworn off political fundraising events to back her campaign.

BERNIE SANDERS

The U.S. senator from Vermont lost the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton but is trying again. For the 2020race, Sanders, 78, is fighting to stand out in a field of progressives running on issues he brought into the Democratic Party mainstream four years ago. Sanders suffered a heart attack while campaigning in Nevada in October, but there has been little impact so far on his support. His proposals include free tuition at public colleges, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and universal healthcare. He benefits from strong name recognition and an unmatched network of small-dollar donors.

PETE BUTTIGIEG

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, emerged from virtual anonymity to become one of the party’s brightest stars, building momentum with young voters. A Harvard University graduate and Rhodes scholar, he speaks seven languages conversationally and served in Afghanistan with the Navy reserve. He touts himself as representing a new generation of leadership needed to combat Trump. Buttigieg would be the first openly gay presidential nominee of a major American political party. His poll numbers in Iowa, which holds the first nominating contest in February, have rivaled that of the other leading candidates, even though his national standing is lower.

TRYING TO BREAK THROUGH

The rest of the Democratic field is a mix of seasoned politicians, wealthy business people and others still looking to break into or regain their toehold in the top tier of contenders.

KAMALA HARRIS

The first-term U.S. senator from California would make history as the first black woman to gain the nomination. Harris,55, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, announced her candidacy on the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. She supports a middle-class tax credit, the Green New Deal and marijuana legalization. Her track record as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general has drawn scrutiny in a Democratic Party that has grown more liberal in recent years on criminal justice issues. She saw a significant bounce in the polls after a high-profile clash with Biden over racial issues during the first Democratic debate in June but has since seen her numbers drop back down.

ANDREW YANG

The New York entrepreneur and former tech executive is focusing his campaign on an ambitious universal income plan.Yang, 44, wants to guarantee all Americans between the ages of18 and 64 a $1,000 check every month. The son of immigrants from Taiwan, Yang supports the Medicare for All proposal, which is based on the existing government-run Medicare program for Americans 65 and older, and has warned that automation is the biggest threat facing U.S. workers. His campaign has released more than 100 policy ideas, including eclectic proposals like creating an infrastructure force called the Legion of Builders and Destroyers.

AMY KLOBUCHAR

The U.S. senator from Minnesota was the first moderate in the Democratic field vying to challenge Trump. Klobuchar, 59,gained national attention when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearings last year. On the campaign trail, the former prosecutor and corporate attorney has said she would improve on the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, by adding a public option, and is taking a tough stance against rising prescription drug prices.

CORY BOOKER

Booker, 50, a U.S. senator from New Jersey and former Newark mayor, gained national prominence in the fight over Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Booker, who is black, has made race relations and racial disparities in the criminal justice system a focus of his campaign. He embraces progressive positions on healthcare coverage for every American, the Green New Deal and other key issues, and touts his style of positivity over attacks.

TULSI GABBARD

The Samoan-American congresswoman from Hawaii and Iraq war veteran is the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and has centered her campaign on her anti-war stance. After working for her father’s anti-gay advocacy group and drafting relevant legislation, she was forced to apologize for her past views on same-sex marriage. Gabbard’s populist, anti-war approach has won her fans among the far left and the far right, and she recently engaged in a Twitter war with Hillary Clinton, whom she called the “personification of the rot” after Clinton suggested Gabbard was being groomed for a third-party run at the presidency. Gabbard, 38, slammed Trump for standing by Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

JULIAN CASTRO

Obama’s secretary of housing and urban development would be the first Hispanic to win a major U.S. party’s presidential nomination. Castro, 45, whose grandmother immigrated to Texas from Mexico, has used his family’s personal story to criticize Trump’s border policies. Castro advocates universal prekindergarten, supports Medicare for All and cites his experience to push for affordable housing. He announced his bid in his hometown of San Antonio, where he once served as mayor and as a city councilman. In the third Democratic debate on Sept. 12, Castro drew jeers from the audience for an attack on Biden that was perceived as questioning the former vice president’s memory as a way to draw attention to his age.

TOM STEYER

The billionaire environmentalist, a force in Democratic fundraising over the past decade, said in January he was focusing on his efforts to get Trump impeached and get Democrats elected to the U.S. Congress. Steyer, 62, reversed course inJuly, saying other Democrats had good ideas but “we won’t be able to get any of those done until we end the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy.”

JOHN DELANEY

The former U.S. representative from Maryland became the first Democrat to enter the 2020 race, declaring his candidacy in July 2017. Delaney, 56, says that if elected, he would focus on advancing only bipartisan bills during the first 100 days of his presidency. He is also pushing for a universal healthcare system, raising the federal minimum wage and passing gun safety legislation. A former business executive, Delaney is self-funding much of his campaign.

MICHAEL BENNET

Bennet, 54, a U.S. senator for Colorado, has based his political career on improving the American education system. He previously ran Denver’s public schools. Bennet is not well known nationally but has built a network of political operatives and donors helping elect other Democrats to the Senate. During the partial U.S. government shutdown in January, he garnered national attention criticizing Republicans for stopping the flow of emergency funds to Colorado.

STEVE BULLOCK

Montana’s Democratic governor, re-elected in 2016 in a conservative state that Trump carried by 20 percentage points, has touted his electability and ability to work across party lines. Bullock, 53, has made campaign finance reform a cornerstone of his agenda. He emphasizes his success in forging compromises with the Republican-led state legislature on bills to expand the Medicaid healthcare funding program for the poor, increase campaign finance disclosures, bolster pay equity for women and protect public lands.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

The 67-year-old best-selling author, motivational speaker and Texas native believes her spirituality-focused campaign can heal the United States. A 1992 interview on Oprah Winfrey’s show led Williamson to make a name for herself as a “spiritual guide” for Hollywood and a self-help expert. She is calling for $100billion in reparations for slavery to be paid over 10 years, gun control, education reform and equal rights for lesbian and gay communities.

WAYNE MESSAM

Messam, 45, defeated a 16-year incumbent in 2015 to become the first black mayor of the Miami suburb of Miramar. He was re-elected in March. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he played on Florida State University’s 1993 national championship football team and then started a construction business with his wife. He has pledged to focus on reducing gun violence, mitigating climate change and reducing student loan debt and the cost of healthcare. Messam has done little campaigning, however, and raised just $5 during the third quarter.

JOE SESTAK

The retired three-star Navy admiral and former congressman from Pennsylvania jumped into the race in June. Sestak, 67,highlighted his 31-year military career and said he was running to restore U.S. global leadership on challenges like climate change and China’s growing influence. Sestak said he had delayed his entry in the race to be with his daughter as she successfully fought a recurrence of brain cancer.

DEVAL PATRICK

Patrick is a late entry, launching his candidacy just days before early state filing deadlines. The 63-year-old African American and former Massachusetts governor said he was seeking to draw in Americans who felt left behind and to bridge a party he saw split between “nostalgia” or “big ideas” that leave other voices out. “Neither of those, it seems to me, seizes the moment to pull the nation together,” he told CBS News amid his campaign launch. The state’s first African American chief executive, Patrick was credited with implementing Massachusetts’ healthcare reform plan and tackling pension reform, transportation and the minimum wage. He resigned as a managing director of the Boston investment firm Bain Capital to launch his White House bid. In 2014, Obama said Patrick would make “a great president or vice president,” although Patrick said Thursday the former president was remaining neutral in the current race.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

Former New York City Mayor and billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg, 77, has filed as a candidate in Alabama and Arkansas, but has not yet decided whether to run.

**THE REPUBLICANS**

Trump is the clear favorite to win the Republican nomination, and there has been criticism among his opponents that party leadership has worked to make it impossible for a challenger. Still, the incumbent will face at least two rivals.

DONALD TRUMP

Serving in his first term, the 73-year-old real estate mogul shocked the political establishment in 2016 when he secured the Republican nomination and then won the White House. His raucous political rallies and prolific use of Twitter were credited with helping him secure victory. After running as an outsider, Trump is now focusing his message on the strong economy, while continuing the anti-immigration rhetoric that characterized his first campaign as he vies for re-election.

JOE WALSH

A former congressman, Walsh, 57, has become a vocal critic of Trump, who he argues is not a conservative and is unfit for public office. Walsh won a House seat from Illinois as a candidate of the Republican Party’s fiscally conservative Tea Party movement in 2010, but was defeated by Democrat Tammy Duckworth in his 2012 re-election bid. After leaving Congress, he became a Chicago-area radio talk-show host.

BILL WELD

The 74-year-old former Massachusetts governor ran unsuccessfully for vice president in 2016 as a Libertarian. He has been a persistent critic of Trump, saying when he launched his 2020 campaign that “the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering.”

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson, Joseph Ax, Tim Reid, Sharon Bernstein, Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT FROM his party’s recent San Diego convention was the state’s top Democrat, the longest serving governor in its history, a man touted nationally as the de facto leader of the opposition to the Trump administration. Why was Jerry Brown not there for his own party’s party? Well, as the Los Angeles Times noted, at a previous convention he had “faced protests and heckling from critics who did not agree with his stance on fracking” (he doesn’t oppose it). And, if you witnessed the 2017 convention razzing of even nominal single-payer health insurance backers whose support was deemed superficial or insincere, you knew what Brown could expect if he showed up (he doesn’t support it). After all, retiring California Nurses Association executive director Rose Ann DeMoro did tell the San Francisco Chronicle that “not convincing Jerry to do single-payer” counted as “my greatest failure” — and there was a large and vocal CNA contingent at both conventions. This issue, entirely missing from California Comeback: The Genius of Jerry Brown, Narda Zacchino’s otherwise fine review of the governor’s career, does suggest that the author goes a bit too far in her subtitle — which is not to say that the long-time Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle journalist is off base in considering Brown’s career as one characterized by seriousness and intelligence beyond the political norm.

Calling California “a nation-size state famous for its progressive models” and “the key test case not only for the United States but also for the entire world,” where “observers will learn if a multicultural, democratic, and postindustrial society can remain united, functional, and progressive in the face of globalized, high-tech capitalism” (whew!), Zacchino is particularly impressed with the “radical moderate” Brown’s shepherding of 2012’s Proposition 30 tax increases, effectively closing a tax-cutting era that began with the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 during his first stint as governor.

Prop 13 reduced the state’s real estate taxes, previously soaring in tandem with its real estate values, to no more than one percent of assessed valuation. Its passage, coming at a time when California had a $4 billion surplus — equivalent to $14.6 billion in 2015 — was epochal. A counter measure allowing local governments to create a “split roll” — taxing owner-occupied residences at a lower rate than commercial properties — had also been placed on the ballot by the legislature, but the 20 percent cut it offered was too little, too late, and Prop 13 carried with a 65 percent majority, immediately reducing property tax collections by 52 percent, from $10.3 billion to $4.9 billion. Additionally, Zacchino writes, it set off “a flurry of initiatives, most of them constitutional amendments,” so that between “1978 and 2014, California’s state constitution was amended seventy-three times, compared with forty-seven amendments in the preceding sixty-five years,” making it “the third longest constitution in the world.” Although Brown, then finishing his first term as governor, had been a staunch opponent, he immediately declared that “the people have spoken” and, as Zacchino notes, “did a turnaround and embraced it with such fervor that a Los Angeles Times poll three weeks after the election revealed that a majority of people thought the governor had supported it all along.”

After a single year on the Los Angeles Community College Board, Brown — the son of Edmund “Pat” Brown, California governor from 1959 to 1967 — made the leap to statewide office as Secretary of State in 1970, where he succeeded an arguably even more remarkable father-son act — the Jordans, Frank C. and Frank M., Republicans who had held the office for all but two years since 1910. (Frank M.’s widow ran in 1970, but lost the Republican primary.) Four years later, at age 36, Brown became the youngest governor in the state’s history, winning California’s closest gubernatorial election in 50 years and replacing Ronald Reagan, the man who beat his father.

To the rest of the nation, Brown seemed echt California — a one-time Jesuit seminarian who dated pop star Linda Ronstadt and took a post-campaign vacation at the Tassajara Hot Springs Zen retreat house (although Zacchino notes that “ironically, he has never been a politician to mix God and politics in his speeches or persona”). He eschewed the Reagan-era armored Cadillac and the privately funded governor’s mansion constructed at the behest of outgoing First Lady Nancy, preferring his own Plymouth and a “modest $250-a-month, sixth-floor apartment furnished with a few things from the governor’s mansion and other state apartments” — bedsheets and towels that Zacchino reports were “provided by the state’s psychiatric hospital in Napa.” He canceled his inaugural ball and spoke about the right of farmworkers to unionize in his inaugural address. He floated the idea of the state launching its own communications satellite and hired an ex-astronaut as a space advisor. He ran for president in 1980 (his second try) on the slogan “Protect the Earth, serve the people, and explore the universe.” Although Zacchino describes his resulting nickname, Governor Moonbeam, as “a moniker he still disdains,” when the Trump administration recently threatened to discontinue collecting climate change-related data, Brown reminded scientists: “I didn’t get that moniker for nothing. […] [I]f Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite. […] We’re going to collect that data.”           

Brown lost a US Senate race in 1982 and would not hold office again until becoming mayor of Oakland 16 years later. He did, however, run for president again in 1992, accepting only individual donations of $100 or less, a stance fueled by his distaste for the corporate fundraising he’d done during a stint as chair of the state’s Democratic Party. During the race, Zacchino tells us, he “developed a dislike for the Clintons — or certainly their brand of ‘Democrat’ as part of the Democratic Leadership Council,” a group that included “among its membership tobacco lobbyists, who are in the business of killing people.” Over the years, his career has exhibited something of an inverse relationship between power and radicalism. In the years when he hosted guests like Noam Chomsky on his We the People radio show, he sometimes appeared to be flirting with socialism. He got over that, though, as soon as he returned to elective office.

One of the book’s stories most worthy of wider recollection comes in a chapter contrasting the economic development strategies of California and Texas and actually doesn’t involve Brown at all. Gray Davis, Brown’s one-time chief of staff, occupied the governor’s office during the passage of the state’s 1996 energy deregulation law, which the Center for Public Integrity has called “the most costly public policy miscalculation ever by state lawmakers.” The bill passed with no legislative dissent from either party, in either branch — a useful, if unpleasant reminder of the Clinton-era business-oriented neoliberal ideology that then dominated the Democratic Party and continues to haunt it to this day.

A 1998 repeal initiative failed in the face of a $40 million industry-funded campaign against it, coming on the heels of “an $87 million advertising campaign — the cost being passed on to ratepayers — explaining the new system to the state’s residents.” Reality begged to differ, however, and Zacchino reports that, in San Diego, “[t]he average price of residential electricity increased 413 percent from the third quarter of 1999 to the third quarter of 2000.” Corporate reaction to this windfall was revealed in audio tapes released in a lawsuit involving one of the laws’s greatest beneficiaries, the Enron corporation — George W. Bush’s largest campaign contributor over the years. The conversations, she says, “sound like a Hollywood parody of amoral greed, and in nearly all of them Enron traders are heard laughing. […] [I]n one crass example […][,] two unidentified Enron traders celebrated when a forest fire shut down a major transmission line into California, cutting power supplies and forcing an increase in prices.” Says one, “Burn, baby, burn.” At one point, the company’s top West Coast trader compliments a co-worker: “He just fucks California. […] He steals money from California to the tune of about a million.” When interrupted and urged to rephrase, he says, “Okay, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day.” All in all, she writes, it was,

[A]n opportunity for master manipulators to rip off consumers, plunge the utilities into near bankruptcy, cost the state tens of billions of dollars, and subject nearly every man, woman, and child in California to rolling blackouts not experienced since the days of World War II, when the reasons for what was happening were at least comprehensible.

At this point, Brown was making his political comeback, starting with two terms as mayor of Oakland and then one as the state’s attorney general. Transformed from visionary to administrator in his more methodical second rise to power, his breadth of knowledge has served him well as he has taken on a leadership position in the opposition to Trump over the last two years, when he has been the oldest governor in California history. And he has not shied away from challenging the shibboleths of more liberal administrations, either — for instance, telling Obama administration Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “You assume we know how to ‘turn around all the struggling low performing schools,’ when the real answers may lie outside of school,” and explaining to Zacchino that “the latest effort principally by hedge fund and other individuals at the top of the income scale to apply business practices, performance metrics, to the school, is an untested set of propositions. There’s not empirical data that justifies them.”

A recurrent theme of Zacchino’s book — which is a revision of her 2016 tome, California Comeback: How a “Failed State” Became a Model for the Nation — is the sheer size of the issues in California, where, as Newt Gingrich once noted, “in thirty-three years, the state built twenty-two prisons and only one additional public university.” And lest we think that the Golden State’s famous environmental problems began with fracking or anything like that, Zacchino recounts how mid-19th-century gold diggers revived the ancient Roman technique of hydraulic mining, blasting away entire hills to uncover the bits of gold they might contain — at one site, seven nozzles each spewed a million gallons of water an hour, 24 hours a day. As a result of this largely forgotten practice, she writes that “in some areas, land levels were raised as much as seven feet by the aquatic transfer of some twelve billion tons of earth, the equivalent of eight times the earth that was removed to carve the Panama Canal.” In comparison, current problems like the fact that it takes a gallon of water to grow a single almond may come to seem like, well, peanuts.

Returning to the vexed politics of single-payer health insurance, the state’s Democratic leadership has engaged in an elaborate charade on this issue for some years now. In 2006, a single-payer bill actually passed both Democratic-controlled legislative houses before being vetoed by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a scenario repeated two years later. So with a Democrat taking over as governor during the next legislative session, it should have been problem solved, right? Alas, no — during the next two legislative sessions, the bill died in committee. And in the session after that, it wasn’t even filed — despite considerable pressure on legislators known to be sympathetic to the idea. Not that there’s anyone talking about it, but the legislative leadership obviously gave the members to understand that they were not to file the bill (that is, if they wanted any bills important to them to be passed). It seems equally clear that the reason for this ban had to do with the fact that Governor Brown does not wish to see single-payer legislation passed on his watch.

Here we have another instance of the Jekyll/Hyde nature of Jerry Brown’s career. In 1992, the out-of-power Brown argued in a presidential primary debate with Bill Clinton that “through a single payer, as we’ve seen in Canada, you can eliminate tremendous amounts of paperwork both for the doctors, the hospitals, and the […] insurance companies.” But 25 years later, when he is in a position to shape a state-level single-payer system that would be larger than Canada’s, we find him asking: “Where do you get the extra money? This is the whole question. I don’t even get … how do you do that?” The bill was refiled in this, the last legislative session of Brown’s career, but the co-chair of the single-payer advocacy group Campaign for a Healthy California told the Sacramento Bee, “We’re hearing the governor is doing everything he can to make sure this never gets on his desk.”

If Jerry Brown really were the genius Zacchino thinks he is, or wants him to be, surely he’d remember how “you do that.”

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Tom Gallagher is a writer and activist living in San Francisco. He is the author of Sub: My Years Underground in America’s Schools (2015) and The Primary Route: How the 99 Percent Takes on the Military Industrial Complex (2016).

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