Democratic Legislators Behaving Badly

Democrats are behaving badly this year, when they should be minding their manners, lest their 2014 shellacking shake them all the more.

First, there was Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), who tried to intimidate True the Vote North Carolina with the race card, that the agency was poll-watching in majority-minority districts. Then there was Cummings' outburst earlier this month against Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who had abruptly adjourned a hearing into the IRS abuses of conservative groups. Because Lois Lerner, the head of the division responsible for tax status of non-profits, insisted on pleading the Fifth Amendment. While Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi takes reporters to task for calling "Obamacare" what it is, while Debbie Wasserman-Shultz tries to "True the Vote" for Democratic House members, her liberal ilk in state houses are also behaving badly, and give a worse name to an already bad political party. In the supermajority Democratic states, like Illinois, Rhode Island, and then California, politicians have been governing poorly and behaving badly, in some cases very badly.

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Illinois

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich went to federal prison following his attempt to sell Senator-turned-President Barack Obama's Senate seat (Blago on tape: "I'm not given it for f--king nothing!"). The next governor, Pat Quinn, has waffled on pension reforms and gun rights, approved gay marriage in spite of conservative resistance throughout the state, and now he wants to make temporary tax hikes permanent. In Quinn and Illinois' Democrats' case, governing badly is behaving badly, enough that centrist Democrats are supporting the Republican challenger for Governor this year.

Rhode Island

On to Rhode Island, the bluest state in the union, with only eleven Republicans in the one hundred plus member legislative body. Speaker Gordon Fox, openly progressive and openly gay, engineered comprehensive pension reforms with Democratic Treasurer Gina Raimondo, yet also commandeered a government loan to a private video game company, 38 Studios, which went bust and left $75 million in debt (and rising) for Rhode Island taxpayers to defray: an immoral "moral obligation debt." Fox had ties to the deal, yet on live television refused to recuse himself from the investigation. This past week, FBI officials raided Speaker Fox's office, seizing boxes and reams of documents. Despite prior admissions of election-campaigning malfeasance, Fox has said nothing about the current investigations, aside from suddenly resigning his Speakership. The reaction of one Democratic state senator to the mess? "Go F--- yourself!" state senator Joshua Miller shouted, but not at Fox, mind you -- at a pro-Second Amendment supporter, since the lawmakers will not mind their manners, but want to make law-abiding citizens helpless. Miller later apologized (but not really), inadvertently exposing to what depths state senators have descended in Rhode Island, where one-party rule has made the ruling Democratic Party unruly. Pension crises, structural debts, and a failing state health care exchange have turned little Rhode Island into one big mess.

California

Now to California, where Democrats in 2012 grabbed supermajority status for the first time in decades, with a slightly more conservative Democratic governor Jerry Brown at the table. Like a doting mother keeping spoiled children in line, Brown has said yes to more spending, but also balanced budgets and vetoed some bad legislation. Still, the tale that California is in the black instead of the red is a blue myth, wounded purple by the struggling school districts still seeking funds lost from the Great Recession, plus the largest case load of welfare recipients, prison overcrowding (and realignment), dry spells in the Central Valley, and a left-leaning state seeing the light in the right and giving the GOP a chance at ending the Democratic supermajority. From governing to behaving badly, four Democratic state senators have been implicated in public corruption. In January, State Senator Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood) was found guilty of eight felony counts of perjury and voter fraud: not living in the district which he claimed to represent. Despite the convinced conviction of the jury, Wright has wrongly remained in office, and State Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said nothing, and did even less to have Wright removed. However, Steinberg's hypocrisy knows no bounds. Another state senator, Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), part of a connected East Los Angeles political family, has been indicted on numerous counts of pay-for-play corruption, passing tax credits for hospitals and the movie industry for cash. Though indicted yet not convicted, despite the reams of evidence against him, thus technically innocent until proven guilty, Steinberg has pressured Calderon to step down. The cauldron of corruption is heating up in Sacramento, as another state senator, Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was hauled away in handcuffs, arrested for more of the pay-for-play, but also gun-running with organized crime (and possible connections with Islamic militants) A state senator who hated guns and preached transparency, Yee has exposed the exact opposite. . . and now incoming State Senate President Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) may be connected to Calderon's corruption, too. Democratic lawmakers in deep blue states have been up to no good this year, and all before April Fool's Day. Let's hope that voters stop being fooled and vote the fools out.