LOCAL
06 • JULY 26, 2019 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM
Splitting the LGBTQ vote Many in California embracing Biden, Buttigieg, Harris By KAREN OCAMB kocamb@losangelesblade.com Many who read Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s devastating 448-page investigation into Russian intervention in the 2016 elections and Donald Trump’s criminal complicity found the report so compelling that calls for impeachment intensified and threatened Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s edict to focus on domestic issues, not Trump, for the 2020 elections. After Mueller’s testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees on July 24, there’s been an uptick in calls for impeachment, a constitutional recourse to deal with a rogue, lawless president as was described in the hearings. But at day’s end, after an apparently robust private discussion among Democratic Caucus members, Pelosi still held firm. “Whatever decision we make in that regard [to initiating impeachment proceedings] would have to be done with our strongest possible hand, and we still have some outstanding matters in the courts,” Pelosi told reporters. That means the next focus of intense political attention will be July 30 and July 31 as the Democrats hold two more presidential debates and the country takes stock of the 20 candidates in light of the pressure for impeachment and the candidates’ need to highlight other complicated issues of concern to voters throughout the country. With the California primary moved up to Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020, some LGBTQ voters are already starting to settle on a candidate, while others are bundling and maxing out for multiple candidates. CalMatters reporter Ben Christopher has compiled data indicating that voters are contributing more to Sen. Kamala Harris and South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg than former Vice President Joe Biden, who is in the third spot. That candidate pack comports with informal conversations with LGBTQ voters, some who mention Sen. Elizabeth “I have a plan for that” Warren as their second choice. Meanwhile, Equality California is looking at voter interest, as well, sending out surveys to their 800,000 members and active email subscribers around the country, most
Financial donations complied by Ben Christopher, courtesy CalMatters
residents of California. (To sign up for email alerts go to eqca.org.) “As part of our endorsement process, we have been sending surveys to our members to gauge their interest in and enthusiasm for each of the top tier proequality candidates. In the coming months, we’ll be asking each candidate to fill out a thorough questionnaire and participate in an interview with our PAC committee,” Equality California Communications Director Samuel Garrett-Pate told the Los Angeles Blade. But the debates will be the first dedicated opportunity for voters to watch the Democratic candidates explain their reaction to the Mueller report and hearings, which apparently is not the end of the story about what happened in 2016 and what Mueller suggested may happen again in 2020. Mueller appeared old and halting during the Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday morning, July 24. But he became more animated before the Intelligence Committee after Chair Adam Schiff framed Trump’s campaign as an unpatriotic crass financial pursuit to benefit Trump, his family, his
organization and his campaign staff in collusion with a foreign adversary. Looking like he was barely capping a volcano, Schiff stopped just short of denouncing Trump as a traitor. “Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?” asked Schiff, a former federal prosecutor and a longtime LGBT ally representing West Hollywood and Silver Lake. Schiff sat next to Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes, a rising Trump-Republican star who helped with the cover up when he was Chair of the Intelligence Committee, exposed by his “midnight ride” to the White House to concoct a plot about the investigation as a Russia hoax. It was no hoax, no witchhunt, Mueller said. Nonetheless, Politico reported that Trump wants the Tulare, Calif., native to replace Dan Coates as Director of National
Intelligence. Schiff to Mueller: “I gather that you believe that knowingly accepting foreign assistance during a presidential election is an unethical things to do.” Mueller: “And a crime, given certain circumstances…. Schiff: “We can agree that it is also unpatriotic.” Mueller: “True.” Mueller let slip that the FBI is still investigating “different aspects” of counterintelligence attempts to interfere with and compromise vulnerabilities in the 2020 elections by Russia and other countries. “It wasn’t a single attempt,” Mueller told Texas Republican Rep. Will Hurd. “They’re doing it as we sit here.” Mueller’s report ends “with a scheme to cover up, obstruct and deceive every bit as systematic and pervasive as the Russian disinformation campaign itself, but far more pernicious since this rot came from within,” Schiff said. “This is what is at stake. Our next election, and the one after that, for generations to come. Our democracy.” “I hope this is not the new normal,”