Coinbase And Other Cryptocurrency Attorneys Vie For AD-12 Delegate Seats Against A Young, Pro-Ceasefire, Ex-US Marine. Why Didn’t “Marin Democrats” Tell YOU Delegate Voting Runs Through Sunday?
"Marin Democrats" Chair Pat Johnstone and member Steve Burdo won't explain why the group did little to no outreach in Marin City or Canal. But familiar faces/names on the dominant slate are revealing.
Editor’s Note: This weekend’s article is brief because I want to share this last-minute information as soon as possible so readers know they can vote in-person for California Democratic delegates tomorrow, Sunday, February 23, 2025. (I may update this article to respond to any additional reader questions about how to vote tomorrow.)
After I mentioned at the end of last Tuesday’s article that there was still time to vote for California’s influential Democratic Party delegates, many readers told me that they had not been notified by their local Democratic committees that there was an open election for delegates.
When I asked San Anselmo Councilmember and Marin Democrats member Steve Burdo about this, he conceded the party itself did little to get the word out. So let’s be clear: there is a voting process that ends on Sunday to select a full one-third of California’s Democratic delegates and you can still vote in-person on Sunday for AD-12 delegates. But only in Santa Rosa. And only from 12 noon to 4 pm.
Elected Democratic delegates will wield considerable sway over state legislation and local elections, and are miserably important, regardless of your (ahem) thoughts about the Democratic Party. (Recent polling shows Democratic favorability at about 37% — a historic if unsurprising low given that 80% of Democrats wanted a ceasefire but received instead over a year of Israel’s US-funded, ongoing genocide of Palestinian civilians.)
When I reached out to Marin Democrats Chair Pat Johnstone for answers about where in Marin County AD-12 residents could vote in person, I made sure to copy several County officials. (You may remember Chair Johnstone from earlier reporting about how viciously young, workingclass Democrats were treated over the ceasefire issue.)
Johnstone didn’t answer my question directly. Instead, she referred me to the AD 25 website for answers. That’s when I reached out to Marin Democrats member Steve Burdo, who offered a little more detail than Johnstone – and a frank admission halfway through, which I have italicized for clarity:
“Voting is both online and in person. Online voting runs through Feb 23rd. The in-person voting will occur this Sunday in Santa Rosa at the Sonoma County Dem HQ (448 Sebastopol Ave, Santa Rosa, see link below). From what I hear, the issues seem to stem from the party not getting info to the regional coordinators in a timely manner. Other than that, I’m not sure. Hope this helps.”
What Burdo’s Email Didn’t Acknowledge:
Burdo’s email didn’t acknowledge that, just to vote online, you needed to be specially registered just for this election by January 31 with the State Democratic Party.
It isn’t enough just to be a registered as a Democrat — the Party made an extra hoop that you didn’t even know about. According to younger members, if you hadn’t registered by January 31, you wouldn’t receive the special code in the mail that let you vote online.
What kind of a system is that?
Burdo also didn’t acknowledge that the single day of in-person voting for AD-12 will be open only from 12:00 noon to 4:00 pm.
Are you a restaurant or hospital worker in Marin who wasn’t told about the registration deadline and can’t make it to Santa Rosa between 12:00 noon and 4:00 PM this Sunday? Then you, unlike the Democratic Party insiders, won’t have a vote.
In other words, with the consent of obsequious delegate insiders, Texas-born State Democratic Chair (and Sacramento’s baddest good ol’ boy), Rusty Hicks, had engineered a system that willfully stymied participation from all but existing delegates and their connected friends, with whom they communicated by newsletter and limited social media.
I pointed out to Burdo that people from Marin City, the Canal District, and West Marin do not all own cars, and bus fare from Marin to Santa Rosa is $19.50 roundtrip. (And Sunday busses only run once an hour!) I asked Burdo whether this disadvantaged workingclass voters; Burdo dodged the question.
In response to questions about what Marin Dems did to inform voters that this election was even happening, Burdo offered this canned response, which was roughly in line with a response to follow-up questions I sent to Pat Johnstone:
“As for what Marin Dems did to promote, this was primarily advertised through our newsletter (our best form of communication), social media, and most importantly, our members. Each supervisorial district has four or five elected members who each have one alternate and up to two associate members. Our membership engages their communities and their personal networks to promote the opportunity locally. Hope this helps.”
That's right, kid, it's through their personal networks, and if you're not in that delegate network, as Rodney Dangerfield used to say, “you ain't going nowhere!”
In other words, Marin Democrats did little to inform West Marin, Marin City, or the Canal. And yes, there are people who can vote in all of these underrepresented areas.
A Pro-Ceasefire Ex-Marine Studying To Become A Nurse And Working As A CNA Is Running Solo Against A Slate With A Surprising Number of Anti-Ceasefire and/or CryptoCurrency Attorneys
After the emails to Burdo and Johnson, I made calls to younger, more progressive Democrats in the North Bay and East Bay, as they are generally more willing to talk about the process. I got an earful (too much for this article) of information about the many hurdles that the Democratic Party is putting in front of younger, more progressive party members and candidates.
In these discussions, I learned that there is a young AD-12 delegate candidate who in many ways represents a better path which the Democrats refused.
It’s not news that the Democratic Party has serially refused to permit younger, darker, more progressive, and/or more workingclass members into leadership positions. Nor do I have to tell you that when 80% of Democrats favored a ceasefire, the Biden-Harris administration’s total and abject failure to do so doomed any chance of a Harris victory last November.
Take AD-12, which includes Marin and Sonoma: Voters have the opportunity to elect as Democratic delegate, Trevor Merrell, a young, ex-Marine currently studying to become a nurse. Merrell publicly supported a ceasefire, despite the clear retaliation that we saw enacted against those who publicly supported ceasefire efforts. This retaliation included, but was not limited to, law professors and physicians losing their jobs.
Merrell had faithfully served on Sonoma County’s Human Rights Commission, which had unanimously approved a ceasefire letter a full year ago, under the direction of the dynamic Katrina Phillips. (By contrast, Marin’s historically dysfunctional Human Rights Commission, with its deep and undisclosed links to local law enforcement, refused even to mention the word “Palestinian” or “Muslim” before it was finally disbanded by the County.)
If you want the Democratic Party not just to survive but thrive, Merrell would seem like an obvious choice for a mere delegate seat: Democrats need to start putting younger people in the Party in leadership positions, and they need people who represent interests beyond themselves. (Whatever anyone’s position on the military and US foreign policy, joining the US Marines does involve personal sacrifice; so does entering the nursing profession amid the increasing hardships and risks given COVID and what may be an incoming bird flu pandemic.)
But Democrats and Republicans often laud “veterans” without actually giving them a seat at the table. Given how many veterans have been prominent in decades of anti-war organizing going back at least to the Fort Hood Three, Donald Duncan, Howard Levy, and the “Presidio 27” — that probably shouldn’t be a surprise.
(If you want a compulsively watchable crash course on this, I recommend this documentary “Sir, No Sir!” then Fred Gardner’s The Unlawful Concert. You can read more background about all these heroic veterans here.)
But who did win the endorsement of established Democrats? The centrist Democratic slate is packed with fiercely anti-ceasefire “Jewish Community Relations Council”/BANJO members, many of whom actively and viciously campaigned against ceasefire resolutions or any mention of Israel’s war crimes, including:
Sausalito City Councilmember Melissa Blaustein; former Sausalito Mayor Janelle Kellman (who is now running for Lieutenant Governor); Petaluma City Councilmember Janice Cader Thompson; and of course San Rafael City Councilmember Rachel Kertz, who as co-chair of BANJO, directly organized pro-Israel supporters to monopolize open comment to the exclusion of any actual town residents who had wanted to speak in support of ceasefire.
(The late, great Fairfax peace activist David Glick was long at pains for people to recognize that JCRC is and remains a de facto lobbying group for Israel, and he had often urged we demand they be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.)
Democrats United’s Anti-Ceasefire Slate Also Features At Least Three CryptoCurrency Attorneys:
As most of you already know, cryptocurrency is not only a scam, but because of the vast amounts of electricity it requires, cryptocurrencies contribute to climate change and instability. Unsurprising, then, that the fossilized “Democrats United” made sure to include at least three cryptocurrency attorneys on their AD-12 slate, none of whom acknowledge their cryptocurrency work in their bios.
They are: Janelle Kellman; Robert Sandoval; and Jordan Salberg.
I did try to contact Jordan Salberg for comment prior to publication. Salberg is an attorney for cryptocurrency leader Coinbase, and charmingly, the son of a “former director for international affairs policy and planning at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations”, a pro-Israel lobbying group so conservative that it had previously rejected liberal “J Street” as too progressive. Salberg said that it was too difficult to hear my questions over the phone and that he was busy with his children, which is understandable. I do hope that he will make time to answer questions in the near future since he is likely to win one of the AD-12 delegate seats, given the Democratic Party's fondness for cryptocurrency cash.
I'll have more information about these cryptocurrency delegates later, but I need to cut this short so that as many readers have additional notice before Sunday's only day of in-person voting. So forgive my typos, here's your choice:
In AD-12, you can vote for the sons and beneficiaries of people advocating for more war, genocide and environmental destruction, or you can vote for a veteran who knows why this is wrong and took the chance of publicly supporting a ceasefire. That's the choice. I pray you get out to Santa Rosa tomorrow, and if you have any questions about any of this, please contact me through the Substack gmail.
Thanks as always to patient readers for ideas, suggestions and inspiration.
©️2025 Eva Chrysanthe
PS: The wonderful Berkeley activist Elana Auerbach has informed me that you can vote tomorrow for AD14 delegates “in person this Sunday between 10a and 2p at Temple Beth Israel in Berkeley. You don't have to be a registered Democrat to vote.” She is supporting the slate that includes the courageous JVP Organizer Seth Morrison.
Attorney Yoana Tchoukleva has informed me that there will be buses from Oakland to take voters to their voting site, which is all the way over in Hayward.
It would be nice if Marin Democrats provided rides to people from Marin City, the Canal District, etc., who need to vote in person on Sunday. Maybe they'll take the hint.
Please check this official site for more information on in-person sites for delegate voting.
https://adem.cadem.org/where-to-vote/