Stark raving again? East Bay Rep. slamming developers in campaign mailer—while soliciting their $$$

SFGate: Politics Blog ^ | 10/18/12 | Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

[SmithL]

East Bay Rep. Pete Stark has launched a nasty mail piece accusing his challenger, Eric Swalwell, of allegedly accepting “pay to play” donations from area developers.

But the attack comes just weeks after Stark called a major development association, begging for the maximum donation for his 2012 re-election campaign — while bragging he used to be a developer himself.

And we have the voice mail tape.

Now locked in the toughest race of his career, Stark, 81, a 20-term Democrat, won’t debate Swalwell, 31 — a fellow Democrat, Alameda County prosecutor and Dublin City Councilman who seeks to represent the 15th Congressional district stretching from Livermore and Danville to Newark and Fremont.

In April, Stark was forced to apologize after falsely charging in a primary debate that Swalwell had taken “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes from developers. Here’s a link to a (somewhat painful) video of that apology at a Bay Area News Group editorial board.
But now, with Swalwell threatening to unseat him, the Congressman has sent out a blistering mailer reprising the charges that his challenger is playing footsie with area developers.

[SmithL]

Stark Raving Mad!

But he does seem to represent his constituency.

[MasterGunner01]

Is it fear of losing his job in Congress? Just asking, because — next to Pelosi — Stark ought to be fired for the malignant cancer he is.

[SES1066]

I believe that California has the largest list of long-term serving US Legislators. I do believe that they do have term limits on the State Legislature.

The fact that California is sliding ever deeper into the red debt swamp obviously has no correlation to this fact. With people like Pete Stark being ever re-elected proves this.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Both California and New York can claim about the same number of Democrat members that have served longer than 20 years as of Jan 2013: (11 in NY; 12 in CA)

CA Democrats:

40 years
Pete Stark

38 years
George Miller
Henry Waxman

30 years
Howard Berman

26 years
Nancy Pelosi

22 years
Maxine Waters

20 years
Xavier Becerra
Anna Eshoo
Sam Farr
Bob Filner (running for Mayor of San Diego)
Lucille Roybal-Allard
Lynn Woolsey (retiring)

NY Democrats:

42 years
Charles Rangel

30 years
Gary Ackerman
Edolphus Towns

26 years
Louise Slaughter

24 years
Eliot Engel
Nita Lowey

23 years
Jose Serrano

20 years
Maurice Hinchey (retiring)
Carolyn Maloney
Jerrold Nadler
Nydia Velazquez

However, neither has the two longest serving Democrat House members, that honor belongs to Michigan...

57 years (elected in 1955)
John Dingell, Jr.

48 years (elected in 1964)
John Conyers

[SES1066]

Thanks for this info, amazing the shelf-life for reliable Democrats.

It will be interesting to see the outcome for the Berman-Sherman race in the new 30th Congressional District (CD). One of the first of the Dem vs Dem races from the new California law and redistricting.

And, as you pointed out John Dingell Jr. is the longest serving Congress-critter but it should be added that his father, John Dingell Sr. was a Michigan Congress-critter from 1933 to 1955 for the same CD at the time that Junior took over on his death. So this father-son combo has lived in this post for 79 years - Wowser, Michigan is also doing well, isn’t it?

[fieldmarshaldj]

It’s pretty much the same situation you had in the post-Reconstruction South when the GOP wasn’t competitive, so it wasn’t unusual to find Democrats serving 20, 30 or even almost 40 years (Dingell himself has just about broken the all time record previously set by Arizona Congressman and then Senator Carl Trumbull, who served for 57 years as well, from 1912 (statehood) until 1969 — indeed, Dingell served with him, albeit in the opposite body, for almost 14 years). Now, most of these members hail from urban/moonbat one-party wastelands, and tend to have more infamy attached to their names than bonafide positive accomplishments.

Of course, in both the Sherman-Berman and the Stark races, we don’t have a dog in the hunt. I’ve always said if you’re going to elect a leftist, let them be the most offensive possible to scare the rest of the country into electing normal Conservatives. A lower-key leftist who still votes almost identical doesn’t really help our cause.

You are quite correct that Dingell father and son have occupied a House seat in MI since the FDR landslide of 1932, an unprecedented 80 years. However, not mentioned much is that Detroit once had about a half-dozen or so CDs either within or abutting it and Wayne County. Detroit has so rapidly loss population that it doesn’t qualify for more than a single member entirely within its boundaries.

The district that Dingell, Sr. was originally elected to was an urban strip that stretched from the Detroit River northward. Junior’s district has since been augmented and moved either southward and/or westward and (I believe) no longer contains any of that original area within the city.

Not to mention the execrable Conyers, whom has the singular distinction that more people have moved out of his district on his watch than virtually any other in the United States (I estimate more than a half-million people). His district, too, has had to be augmented far beyond its original urban boundaries. Come January, Conyers will be the sole remaining Black member (as the historic old 14th, which has been Black since 1954, will now have a White suburbanite Dem as its member, after the defeat of freshman Hansen Clarke).