DAY THIRTY-THREE - AMMAR CAMPA-NAJJAR

Oct 1

Day Thirty-three | Ammar Campa-Najjar | CA-50
738 Sawbuck Patriots | $7808 pledged today | $280,825 donated overall

Team:

THE SITUATION: CA-50 is a congressional district in the southern part of California, encompassing a substantial part of San Diego County and the corner of Riverside County. CA-50 is fun for a variety of reasons; the most fun being that its former representative, Duncan Hunter, quit his seat and will soon go to prison for massive and self-indulgent campaign finance illegalities.

This District is a little bit more red than blue, voting for Cox over Newsom in 2018 by nearly 20 points, and Trump over Clinton by 25. It goes blue from time to time, choosing Obama in ‘08 and Harris for Senate in 2016, but it is still a hard place for Democrats to eke out a win.

THE COMPETITION: Darrell Issa. He’s notorious. The founder of Viper, a car alarm company, Issa was of the wealthiest members of Congress, when he served. One of the most clever, also - when he started Viper, he did so with a fire insurance settlement from a previous business - in which he’d coincidentally increased his insurance by 462% just three weeks before the place burned down.

(Narrator voice: “coincidentally.”)

Issa served in Congress for nine terms, choosing not to run for re-election to his district in 2018, because the math had changed, and it was likely that he would lose. However, when Hunter pled guilty to campaign finance violations, Issa decided to run for Hunter’s old seat, adjacent to his old one.

Issa’s lack of independence is a matter of public record - in his one overlapping term with Trump, he voted with the President 93.3% of the time. His campaign is a list of Trump priorities: building Trump's stupid wall and repealing Obamacare and protecting your right to own all the guns. He has voted against LGBTQ+ issues, and has stated a desire to defund Planned Parenthood. Also, something he got rich from has woken you up in the middle of the night when a car electronically yelled at a passer-by, "STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE." Those Vipers, man. They were awful. (And they were EVERYWHERE.)

OUR CANDIDATE: Ammar Campa-Najjar is a rising star in the Democratic Party. He is Latino and Arab-American, the first such combo to run for Congress. He narrowly lost a race for this seat two years ago to Duncan Hunter after shocking a pile of more experienced Ds in the primary, and now, as a reward, he gets to face off with a senior member of California’s Republican Party in 2020 - and one with unlimited funds of his own at his disposal - to flip this seat from Red to Blue.

Ammar served in the US Labor Department’s Office of Employment and Training Administration, and also for the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in their communications office. While he's only in his thirties, he has proven a savvy and successful candidate, standing up to Hunter and his money machine in one of the nastiest congressional races in the nation, and raising more than Issa this year. (Issa, of course, is substantially self-funding, as he’s worth half a billion dollars.)

While the district has a slight Republican registration advantage, the political handicapping class rates this district as consistently Lean R or Toss-Up. Recent polling consistently has the two candidates neck and neck, largely due to Issa's notoriety and growing Orange County disaffection with Trump, so this race is anybody’s game. Issa is hitting the airwaves with a major negative media buy as I write this, and his deep pockets need to be countered by our people power. THE MATH SAYS AMMAR CAN WIN, so let’s help him do so.

Sawbuck Patriots, it’s go time: click HERE and send $10 (or more) to Ammar's campaign. Our collective effort will invest $7808 today.

Thank you.

- Alex

Alex Clemens

DAY THIRTY-THREE - AMMAR CAMPA-NAJJAR

Sawbuck Patriots, it’s go time: click HERE and send $10 (or more) to Ammar's campaign. Our collective effort will invest $7808 today.

DAY THIRTY-FOUR - RIDESHARE2VOTE

DAY THIRTY-TWO - GARY PETERS

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