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| Rep. Ro Khanna |
17TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
Rep. Eric Swalwell understood the fairly simple task last May of authorizing a proxy to place his vote for California Democratic Party chair candidate Kimberly Ellis. But neighboring Congressman Ro Khanna appeared flummoxed by the process.
Ellis, whose underdog campaign captured the imagination of progressives, came up short in her bid for party chair by just 62 votes. Her campaign issued an official challenge of the result last month leading to the disclosure of ballots and 220, which are under further examination.
Khanna, seeking support from progressives, publicly endorsed Ellis to lead the state party, but according to the review, he did not even cast a vote.
On Twitter, Khanna laid blame for the non-vote on his staff. “My delegates voted for her. My staff messed up my proxy. It was an honest mistake which I explained to Kimberly and her supporters,” Khanna wrote.
It’s unclear at what point in the process Khanna’s staff “messed up,” but according to the review, a ballot was never received. In contrast, other East Bay officials and delegates were flagged for examination related to problems with a proxy and other issues, but those instances were documented on the ballot review form.
Nevertheless, Ellis could have used all the help should could get against one of the most entrenched party insiders in the state, Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chair Eric Bauman.
At the time of Khanna’s support for Ellis, his nascent congressional career was only a few months old and featured a vigorous push to position himself as someone capable of inheriting the progressive mantle one day from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders. This despite a fundraising largess bolstered over the past election cycles by Silicon Valley elites and well-heeled charter school supporters
Ellis, for her part, had performed a similar pivot. A former supporter of Hillary Clinton during last year’s presidential campaign, she repositioned her message to gain support from a highly-energized progressive flank in the Bay Area and southland that strongly supported Sanders.
ebcitizen.com 
By MW:
For decades the Bay area, and especially San Francisco, was the real capital of California, and to some degree even the total United States.
The San Francisco area has had such creatures as Artie Samish, Willie Brown, John Burton, and Bill Lockyer acting as total dictators of the state legislature, Alameda County's Earl Warren for a long time was the Chief Justice of the USSC, the Bay area's Pat Brown and Jerry Brown had decades as the state's governor, for many years SF's Walter Shorenstein was considered the father of the entire country's Democratic Party, and for years Pelosi was the absolute dictator of the US House of Representatives, and Feinstein was the same thing in the US Senate. And previous to Feinstein and Pelosi, SF's Phil Burton, the elder brother of John Burton, served as the total dictator of the US House of Representatives.
And when SF based federal judge Marilyn Hall Patel decided she wanted Robert Mueller to be the US Attorney for the Northern California District, it was a done deal, and when she later decided that she wanted Mueller to be the head of the FBI, that also was a done deal. (I am not aware of any federal district judge in US history who could even come close to Patel in influence and real power.)
And now a lot of “liberals,” and especially in the Bay area, are pushing for San Francisco's and Alameda County's Kamala Harris to run for president in 2020.
However, I predict that the stranglehold the Bay area's sleazy politicians have had for decades on California and national politics will soon be weakening. And when that happens, people will look back and think about when Eric Bauman, a representative of Southern California, defeated Kimberley Ellis, a representative of the Bay area, for chair of California's DP.
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Blaming his staff? Really?
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