The Republican Party Doesn't Exist

but it still cashes the checks

There is no opposition. There are party offices, and there are party officials, but your hand passes right through them if you try to reach out. You can write checks to them, and the checks will be deposited, and the money will leave your account, and then the silence will continue. Watch, and I’ll show you — and the ending will be a surprise.

California Assemblyman Corey Jackson is a ludicrous figure, churning out destructive bills in a cloud of semi-literate babble. As I’ve written before, the Moreno Valley Democrat has a doctorate in social work from a program that delivers degrees through a “flexible online modality,” and on the strength of a dissertation that runs to dozens of pages. But he is so highly credentialed that his very name is Dr. Corey A. Jackson, DSW MSW, as his campaign website tells you:

Jackson is the proud author of the “anti-book banning” law that guarantees yummy little eight year-olds in California public schools plenty of curricular material on hot and sexy blowjobs, and Governor Patrick Bateman proudly stood with him to brag about it on video. He was a proud supporter of the California bill to allow children to leave home and enter residential mental health programs without parental consent, explaining on the floor of the Assembly that government must learn to ignore the “talking points” of parental rights. And he’s the author of Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7, an ongoing effort to undo Prop 209, the still-popular-in-a-blue-state 1996 referendum that banned discrimination and preferential treatment by state entities. The blunt stupidity of his political framing can’t be exaggerated. Here, this takes less than a single minute to watch:

The childless Corey Jackson is aggressively opposed to parental rights in a state in which parental rights (in the context of questions like school notification policies regarding on-campus gender transition) have 80% support. He is provably well to the left of even a left-facing electorate, and is a remarkably clumsy speaker with a tendency to express himself in MSNBC-style rants.

Jackson is serving in his first term as a state legislator, after winning a seat against a conservative Latino challenger in a heavily Latino purple district in 2022.

In the open primary this year, with vote-by-mail ballots still being counted, it looks like that 55-45 split has narrowed a bit, turning into a 52-48 split, as two Republican challengers split the opposition vote.

However. This very slight shift appears to be happening all by itself, with no evidence that anyone has tried to help voters move in that direction. For weeks, now, I’ve been emailing the state GOP and Jackson’s 2022 challenger — and more recently the county GOP — asking them about the state of the race and inquiring about the help they need to campaign against a candidate who can obviously be defeated. You can look at district maps here; redistricting shifted Jackson’s district east, into solidly middle-class and majority-Latino communities in the Inland Empire. This is not an AWFL-dominated district, consumed with luxury beliefs.

The responses to my messages, so far: nothing. Zero. Complete silence. An aggressively out-of-the-mainstream Democrat in a purple district is on the bubble at 52% support, and no one responds to messages expressing interest and offering help in the race. Jackson is running semi-opposed, having nominal challengers but no real challenge. I can’t find evidence that the local press has taken notice of the race, and the state and county Republican Party appear to have nothing to say about it.

Now, here comes the big ending. I’ve been watching Jackson for a while, and he has struck me as…not a smart man? And as a preening fool, tending toward excess: DOCTOR Corey A. Jackson DSW MSW. Last night, it occurred to me to wonder if someone with that tendency to dumb grandiosity has wandered into real trouble, and I spent a whole ten minutes searching court records to answer my own question.

So.

A class-action lawsuit filed in January by labor attorneys at two law firms alleges that a nonprofit organization in Riverside County called Sigma Beta Xi has failed for years to comply with wage laws. The allegations go on for a while, and seem, if proved, to suggest the practices of an unusually abusive employer:

Class Action Complaint For:

1. Failure to Pay All Minimum Wages,

2. Failure to Pay All Overtime Wages,

3. Failure to Provide Rest Periods and Pay Missed Rest Period Premiums,

4. Failure to Provide Meal Periods and Pay Missed Meal Period Premiums,

5. Failure to Maintain Accurate Employment Records,

6. Failure to Pay Wages Timely during Employment,

7. Failure to Pay All Wages Earned and Unpaid at Separation,

8. Failure to Indemnify All Necessary Business Expenditures,

9. Failure to Furnish Accurate Itemized Wage Statements, and

10. Violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code, §§ 17200–17210).

Here’s the full complaint:

Sigma Beta Xi Complaint

364KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Sigma Beta Xi provides youth and family services; see a list of their youth services here, for an example of what they do. They have new leadership, but were led by this team in a period covered by the extensive allegations set forth in the lawsuit:

Corey Jackson’s LinkedIn page offers this list of work experience:

And Sigma Beta Xi’s corporate registration with the office of the Secretary of State shows that Jackson was registered as the leader of the organization until last year:

By the way, while Sigma Beta Xi faces a lawsuit alleging sloppy and careless wage practices, the same organization has repeatedly faced penalties and threats of suspension for failing to maintain their required corporate records with the state:

Does anyone in the California Republican Party know any of this? Has anyone done any opposition research? Is anyone paying any attention at all to this race, with a far-left Democratic incumbent in a purple district whose seat can be taken by shifting three percent of the vote?

If anyone sees any of this, or has any plans to make use of it in an actual campaign, they haven’t bothered to mention it to me — after repeated inquiries.

I’m skeptical of lawsuits filed during campaign season, even when those lawsuits are filed against candidates I don’t like, but several pieces of evidence suggest that this isn’t an example of lawfare. For one, the attorneys who filed the thing haven’t publicized it, and haven’t responded to my emailed questions. And the lawsuit is against Sigma Beta Xi and “DOES 1-50,” not naming the longtime leader of the organization. Hard to wage lawfare without mentioning it.

Adding to the list of people who I’ve emailed without a response, I’ve sent Corey Jackson messages about Sigma Beta Xi and this lawsuit at both his legislative and campaign email addresses, without hearing back. I’ll update this post if he replies.

As always, my point isn’t only about the specific example. How many Democratic officeholders are benefitting from the absence of a serious Republican effort to do basic work like simple opposition research? What would California look like if we had a tough and disciplined party organization to oppose single-party rule?

Instead we have a party that governs and a party that does…what?