After recounting how his 17-year-old son, Jamiel Shaw II was killed in 2008, Jamiel Shaw said “only Trump called me on the phone one day to see how I was doing.”

“Only Trump will stand against terrorists and end illegal immigration,” Shaw said, drawing cheers from delegates at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. The convention closed July 21 with trump formally accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for president.

“Only Trump mentions Americans killed by illegals. Trump will put America first, not crooked Hillary,” Shaw said, using the derisive nickname for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton often used by Trump.

Shaw’s speech followed another address by a Southern Californian with a child killed by a man living in the country illegally.

The son of Sabine Durden of Moreno Valley was killed in 2012 at the age of 30 in a collision with a Chevrolet pickup truck driven by an unlicensed driver who was in the country illegally.

Clinton has said that immigration enforcement must be humane, targeted and effective. She has pledged that as president, she would focus resources on detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety.

Shaw has spoken at previous events featuring Trump. At a Trump rally in Costa Mesa in April, Shaw said that when he saw television coverage of Trump announcing his candidacy on June 16, 2015, “for the first time, it gave me real hope.”

Shaw also stood next to Trump at a July 10, 2015 news conference in Beverly Hills. Trump asked Shaw if his rhetoric was racist. Shaw replied, “It’s not racist. What he’s doing is he’s speaking for the dead. He’s speaking for my son.”

Jamiel Shaw II was shot and killed in 2008 near his Arlington Heights home by a gang member who prosecutors said mistakenly perceived him as a gang rival because he was carrying a red Spider-Man backpack.

Shaw was a star running back at Los Angeles High School and the Southern League most valuable player in 2007. He had been contacted by Stanford and Rutgers about continuing his football career at the time of his death.

Pedro Espinoza, convicted of first-degree murder in 2012 and sentenced to death for killing Shaw, was living in the United States illegally at the time of the killing.

He had been freed from jail two days before the shooting without immigration authorities placing a hold on him.

Trump said in 2015 that the younger Shaw was “shot from nowhere by an illegal who shouldn’t have been in the country, and nobody wants to talk about it. … The system is really screwed up.”

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Wen, a Bellflower resident who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, was looking for something fulfilling to do after finishing college and getting together with friends for a while to run a start-up clothing company. He had heard through fraternity brothers that Faulconer was looking for good, young help.

He applied and helped Faulconer win the election,

Wen, 24, is now the campaign manager for Steve Napolitano’s bid for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ Fourth District seat in the Nov. 8 election.

“I wanted to make a difference,” said Wen about working in politics. “I realized it was something I really loved to do.”

As campaign manager, Wen helped Napolitano finish in second place in the June 7 primary to gain a spot on the November ballot against U.S. Rep. Janice Hahn, D-San Pedro. Napolitano received about 37 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Hahn. A third candidate, Whittier Union school board member Ralph Pacheco, received about 16 percent of the vote.

Wen said he believes in the principles of limited government, lower taxes and fiscal responsibility.

He said he learned to appreciate those values by way of his experience as a Chinese immigrant. He came to the United States with his parents when he was 3.

When his parents divorced while he was in grade school, he learned about low-income living and the hard work that’s needed to move ahead socioeconomically. He later learned when his father, an architect, was dying of cancer, to get serious about schooling and making a career for himself.

“I didn’t want my family experience to dictate my future and how I treat other people,” said Wen, who remembers how proud the family always felt about coming to the U.S. and earning citizenship. “I use it for motivation, to keep going and to pursue the American dream every day.”

Wen has worked on several successful Republican races for the state Assembly and Senate, city councils and local ballot measures.

He has managed hundreds of campaign workers and has always made sure they reflected a mix of races, ethnicities, sexual orientation, ideologies and political parties. He has also brought in independents, veterans and disabled people, the spokesperson said.

“You couldn’t get a better melting pot of people than those I have in my campaign groups — the on-ground teams, volunteers and interns,” Wen said.

Napolitano learned of Wren’s talents and hired him help to run a campaign in the cosmopolitan Fourth District, a crescent-shaped territory that extends from Diamond Bar through Long Beach to Marina del Rey and west to Catalina Island.

Napolitano, who is running to replace Supervisor Don Knabe, who will leave office because of term limits, previously served as mayor and city councilman in Manhattan Beach and currently serves as a senior deputy to Knabe.

Wen and his teams have visited many households around the district. He said he is absolutely convinced that voters, especially undecided ones, value the personal touch and interaction when a campaign makes the extra effort to have a representative go out and knock on doors.

Billboards, mailers and TV commercials can only go so far, he said.

“In my experience, that’s what makes the difference,” said Wen about creating dialogues with residents and working to earn their votes. “Because they’ll remember at the polls that someone tried talking to them, someone wanted to get to know them. And because at a local level of politics such as this, every vote truly does count.”

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Among $514 million that Democrats spent on political consultants during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, only $8.7 million (just 1.7 percent) went to minorities, according to a June 2014 study by Democratic minority advocacy firm PowerPAC+. Seventeen companies, among 287 approved consulting firms, were minority-owned — or just 5.9 percent.

The report fueled existing anxiety within the African-American community over whether Democrats truly have black people’s best interests at heart. Although 56 percent of blacks thought the party had become more representative of minorities in recent years, 35 percent disagreed, as a Kaiser Family Foundation/CNN survey discovered last November.

“Democrats are wasting millions of dollars chasing after white swing voters instead of investing the money in engaging communities of color,” said Steve Phillips, founder and chairman of PowerPAC+. The company could partner with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Phillips said. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee already has made reforms based on the study.

America’s population is 13.2-percent black, according to 2014 Census Bureau estimates, but African-American voters are expected to play an outsized role in November’s elections. Eighty percent of black voters are Democrats. Only 11 percent are Republicans.

Some consulting firms repeatedly prosper. Event Transportation Associates, the go-to transit service for the past two Democratic conventions, seems poised to thrive again this year and partner with diverse local vendors.

The company, which did not reply to repeated requests for comment, last month announced its preparations for the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Janie Hollingsworth, the company’s CEO and majority owner, co-chaired the 2012 convention’s transportation subcommittee, according to her LinkedIn profile. Hollingsworth also provided logistical expertise for Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia last year.

The Democratic National Convention Committee declined comment on the company or Hollingsworth, citing sensitive contract negotiations. The committee instead offered a statement by its CEO, the Rev. Leah Daughtry.

“It is an article of faith for us that we ought to allow the people who move our party forward to be able to be beneficiaries of the party’s resources,” Daughtry said.

But Vectour Transportation Group, a 2012 convention contractor, lost its bid to return.

“Things did not go exactly how we would have liked for them to go this year,” said Reggie Halsam, the black-owned company’s CEO.

Internal Democratic National Committee statistics show that in 2015, women composed 48 percent of its staff, and nearly 36 percent of its employees were minorities. Also, 23 percent of contracts and 25 percent of total dollars spent that year went to minority-owned enterprises. Twelve percent were African-American owned, representing 14 percent of the total dollars spent.

“As for vendors, we have an unprecedented goal of awarding 35 percent of our contracts to diverse companies,” said convention committee spokesman Lee Whack.

Two African-American-owned firms are among five major contracts the Democrats’ convention committee granted to minority businesses. There are 500 diverse suppliers and vendors registered to do business with the DNC and other Democratic entities.

Cornell Belcher, president of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies, said the party’s real power and spending are centered in the congressional and senatorial committees, the Democratic Governors Association, and EMILY’s list, where Belcher once worked.

Groups like EMILY’s List (which supports pro-choice Democratic female candidates) face zero scrutiny and accountability, Belcher said.

Meanwhile, Republicans hope to erode black support for Democrats.

However, the Republican National Committee, which announced in 2013 that it would spend $10 million on minority outreach, did not respond to requests to analyze its own internal and vendor-diversity statistics.

Telly Lovelace, the GOP committee’s director for African-American Initiatives & Urban Media, instead spoke of its grassroots-level training efforts to engage the black community, including African-American operatives placed in seven battleground states, and plans to boost hiring into the fall.

Despite several notable departures among minority staffers in recent months, Lovelace denied the Republican headquarters is experiencing a so-called “black exodus.”

Kirsten Kukowski, the committee’s communications director, said organizers are working with more than a dozen minority-owned vendors and have several staffers conducting community outreach.

Richard Dickerson, a Democratic campaign operative, said an important conversation about money and influence needs to occur, because the people who run Democratic campaigns end up in senior government positions.

“They’re going to spend a billion dollars,” Dickerson said. “Ten percent of that is $100 million. If you put $100 million into the black community, you can see it.”

Peterson is a reporter for Urban News Service.

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“The American people are sick of silence,” said Rep. Janice Hahn, D-San Pedro. “They are demanding that Congress take action and protect their families. This nation has just witnessed the deadliest mass shooting in history and more people are dying every day. If we do not take action now, when will we?

“Inaction is tantamount to being complicit in the next attack,” she said. “I cannot stand for that.”

The sit-in was led by Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, who walked into the House chamber before noon and was joined by four dozen other Democrats who vowed to continue the sit-in until Republicans moved forward with a vote on gun-control legislation.

Democrats are pushing for legislation known as the “no fly, no buy” bill, barring people on the national no-fly list from being able to purchase guns.

The sit-in gained the attention of the White House, with President Barack Obama posting on Twitter, “Thank you John Lewis for leading on gun violence where we need it most.”

The action, however, did not appear likely to sway Republicans to vote on the issue.

AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, issued a statement saying, “The House cannot operate without members following the rules of the institution, so the House has recessed subject to the call of the chair.”

Democrats in the U.S. Senate staged a filibuster last week to push for a vote on gun legislation. Senators eventually held votes June 20 on four pieces of proposed legislation, all of which failed.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, was among those taking part in the sit-in, saying at one point that Republicans “don’t have the guts” to take on the “gun lobby.”

Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, also joined the protest, along with Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank.

Schiff announced his participation on Twitter, using the hashtags #EnoughIsEnough and #NoBillNoBreak.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Los Angeles, applauded the sit-in and said he was honored to take part.

“Since the Orlando massacre, the worst mass shooting in our history, 500 more Americans have been the victims of gun violence,” Lieu said. “Enough is enough.”

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“Our goal is to make police departments serve the people and not intimidate the people,” said Sanders during a Wednesday afternoon press interview with California Black Media.

With the June 7 Democratic primary approaching, Sanders spoke about the issues facing African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and the middle class all across California.

The Vermont senator reiterated his plans of re-thinking the war on drugs and getting rid of privately owned prisons.

“Our criminal justice system is very broken,” Sanders said. “We’ve got more people in jail than any other country. Disproportionately, African American, Latino and Native Americans; and we are spending almost $80 billion a year to lock up fellow Americans.”

The candidate for the nation’s top office said rival Hillary Clinton is an establishment politician. He said the former first lady is an example of how the Democratic Party, which typically garners support from most black voters, is not working in favor of the American public.

Sanders denounced Clinton’s support of the Iraq War and said instead of funding the American war machine we should invest in inner cities where the schools are failing and citizens can’t afford housing.

“We need a political revolution,” he said. “We do need a government that’s representing all of us and not just the one percent.”

A recent NBC News and Wall Street Journal/Marist poll shows, the Democratic race is tight in California. Clinton has 49 percent support and Sanders has 47 percent, with a margin of error plus or minus 4.2 percent.

Clinton leads with 1,769 pledged delegates with Sanders trailing closely by 1,501. There are 546 delegates up for grabs in California.

The former secretary of state has 543 super delegates to Sanders’ 44. Super delegates consist of elected officials and party figures affiliated with the Democratic Party. They are usually high-ranking members of the party — such as current congressmen, governors, and former presidents.

The super delegates are not bound to follow the will of the voters, nor are they required to stay true to the candidate they’ve pledged to support. During the National Democratic Party Convention in July, super delegates act as wildcards and can change their vote.

On May 30, over 20,000 supporters attended Sanders’ campaign rally at the Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in Oakland.

Actor Danny Glover opened for the senator. The “Lethal Weapon” star said he and Sanders met with different communities including members from the Allen Temple Baptist Church in East Oakland, a famed black church, to discuss issues facing Californians.

“We talked about everything from the violence against young black and Hispanic young men,” said the NAACP Image Award-winning actor. “We talked about the issues around climate change and the impact that’s having on communities of color. He’s a truth teller and that’s what we need.”

Sanders told supporters at the rally his goals of creating social, economical, racial, and environmental justice for all Americans.

“Our message in this campaign is to bring people together,” he said. “Black, white, Latino, Asian American, Native American — we will never allow the Trumps of the world to divide us up.”

In a national poll average gathered by Real Clear Politics, if Sanders were to run against Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump in the general election, the senator would win by 11 percentage points. Conversely, the same poll shows Clinton would lead by one percent against the New York real estate tycoon.

More than 55,000 volunteers and thousands of rally supporters hope to turn California into Sanders’ Golden State.

“Decisions are being made today, which impact your life and you should have a say in what those decisions are,” Sanders said. ”What seems impossible today in fact happens when millions of people demand that it happens.”

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Measure P, also known as the Vital City Services and Neighborhood Protection Measure, is a proposed ordinance to add a one percent sales tax increase that will provide additional revenue to fund public services, such as repairing local streets, sidewalks and increased street lighting.

It also will provide funding to hire more public safety personnel including sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and paramedics, expand gang and drug prevention programs, economic development, youth job training programs and improve parks.

The 1 percent sales tax increase will affect residents and non-residents alike on all sales in Compton stores. Sales tax is not charged on groceries and prescriptions.

Proponents of the measure say Measure P would raise around $7 million per year in general fund revenue for Compton. The general fund is the city’s main, unspecialized fund.

“The city has several funds for specific purposes, but then we have this main catch-all fund, where personal costs come out of, cost for law enforcement, sheriff’s department, it’s our general obligation fund,” Compton City Attorney Craig Caldwell said.

The ordinance requires an appointed Citizens Oversight Committee to monitor the spending. Also, all expenditures are subject to an independent annual audit procedure to make sure it’s in agreement with the requirements of the proposed ordinance.

“Measure P is Compton’s own economic stimulus program and will create a mandatory minimum of 35 percdent local hiring for Compton residents and priority bidding for local businesses and contractors per our city’s local hiring ordinance and community benefits legislation approved by the City Council in 2013,” Compton Mayor Aja Brown said.

“Most importantly, Measure P does not have a sunset clause which will allow the city to reduce property taxes for homeowners in the long term.”

If voters approve Measure P, the number one priority is to repave all the major streets in the city, including Wilmington and Rosecrans avenues, and Compton, El Segundo, Greenleaf, Artesia and Long Beach boulevards. Repairs on Central Avenue will begin in the next 30 days, Brown said, and residents will start to see improvements before the end of the year.

“The city plans to take advantage of the state’s I-Bank Program that provides cities with funding for infrastructure up front with a low-interest repayment plan,” Brown said. “This program will allow residents to enjoy the benefits of Measure P before the end of 2016 and create jobs for local residents.”

However, not everyone is on board with the measure. Former City Clerk Charles Davis and Haskins Caldwell Watch President Jackie Barra wrote an argument against it.

“Years ago when I was city clerk, we thought about doing the same kind of sales tax initiative and discovered it would be an aggressive tax for those least able to afford it, that is to say people that can’t drive to another city to buy goods and services and also it would hurt most of our major retailers, because if you’re going to buy something that will cost $1,000, $10 is $10. You might go to another city to buy the same item,” Davis said.

The biggest concern for most opponents is that they believe the tax is designed to pay for bonds the mayor and City Council are trying to sell.

“I don’t the trust the true intentions of what the increase in revenue will go towards,” said attorney Marcus Musante, a Compton resident who is also running for Congress in the June 7 election.

Musante said the money is not guaranteed to go to fixing potholes and even if it were, it would probably take $100 million to fix all the streets in the city.

“If you don’t trust Measure P, how are you going to trust them spending hundreds and millions of dollars?” he asked

Barra has lived in Compton for more than 48 years. After working her full-time job, she’s been walking door-to-door passing out a flier informing residents why they should vote against Measure P.

“My main reason for opposing is the strain that it will have on senior citizens who are on a fixed income, as well as low-income families,” Barra said.

The mayor disputes opponents who say the city wants the sales tax increase to pay for bonds, saying it is illegal and impossible for Compton to pass Measure P, a sales tax, and convert the tax into a bond, which is attached to property tax bills.

“The state Board of Equalization approved the sales tax for the ballot and maintains oversight of sales and use taxes,” Brown said. “But, don’t take my word for it, please call the State Board of Equalization and they can confirm that Measure P is a sales tax and not a bond or property tax.

In contrast, the same committee supporting “No on Measure P” is the same committee that supported the Compton school board’s recently passed bond Measure S, a $350 million bond to be paid by Compton property owners through a property tax.

“Measure P is not a bond and will not raise property taxes but the School Board’s Measure S was and has raised property taxes,” Brown said.

There will be a Measure P Town Hall Meeting on June 4 at 10 a.m. at the Dollarhide Community Center, 301 N. Tamarind Ave., where more information about the measure will be discussed.

Anyone interested in becoming part of the Citizen Oversight Committee can contact the city clerk or a council representative.

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The business tycoon kicked off the three-day Republican Convention April 29 at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, 16 miles south of San Francisco, to a crowd of 600 advocates at a $100-a-plate luncheon.

Supporters cheered and greeted the mogul with enthusiasm and hope. Attorney Chet McGensy from San Francisco was the sole African-American supporter among those in attendance.

“I believe that the African-American community is in a terrible state right now in the country, so we have to be able to look at opportunities in terms of rectifying those issues,” McGensy said. “When you look at tons of other issues, health issues, crime issues and everything else, it really stems from creating economical empowerment to influence all those other areas. I believe that Mr. Trump is really focused on the issues and that’s why I’m really interested in supporting him.”

Trump reiterated his plans of making America great again by bringing back jobs to the U.S., having better trade agreements and building a 1,000-foot wall along the border of Mexico.

The television personality has been leading in the primaries and said he is looking forward to being the party’s nominee to become the next president of the United States.

“When I can focus on Hillary, as I say, ‘Crooked Hillary,’ she’ll go down easier than any of the people we just beat,” Trump said.

He said the road to the presidency is far more challenging for Republicans than Democrats and the need for unity to exist among conservatives is critical.

Republicans are widely known as the party of President Abraham Lincoln. Historically, the party of the emancipation attracted the majority of black voters and politicians.

But more than 50 years ago, African-American voters began to migrate away from the GOP. Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson ended segregation, captivating more black voters.

In 1964, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater was the Republican Party’s nominee for president. He believed the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional. His statements attracted many white voters in the South, paving the way for the southern strategy used by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

With the majority of black voters today identifying with the Democratic Party, Trump is adamant in attracting African-American voters.

In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina a day before Martin Luther King Day, Trump said he would create more opportunities for African Americans in a year than President Barack Obama has in nearly eight years.

“We have an African-American president and the black youth, the African-American youth, has essentially all never done worse,” Trump said. “You look at the unemployment in the ’50s. You look at African-American people that are 30 and 35 and 40, in the height of their strength and lives, and they’re doing horribly.”

Hundreds of protestors rallied outside of the convention during Trump’s speech. Activists with Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, and Democratic nominee supporters were demonstrating with every intent to stop him from entering the hotel.

Minutes after Trump left the convention without taking any questions from the media, picketers were able to get past the plethora of police officers guarding the entrance to the hotel and unfurl a banner from inside the hotel that read, “stop hate.”

Protestor Odalis De La O Cortez of Hayward said she is appalled by the amount of hatred that is being projected by Trump.

“I’m here not so much to hate, but I feel more bad for his supporters because they’re planted with all this hatred,” the first generation college student said. “Nobody is born hating somebody else. They’re taught it.”

The remainder of the GOP convention remained peaceful during the speeches of the other two Republicans vying for the nation’s top political position — Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The two candidates had a group of supporters who stood by their policies, but it would be their last weekend on the campaign trail.

After Trump swept to victory in the Indiana primary May 3, both Cruz and Kasich suspended their campaigns.

Prior to his departure, Cruz voiced California’s vital role for the future of the Republican Party.

“California is going to decide this Republican primary,” Cruz said. “I could tell you right now, we’re going to spend more money in California than we raise in California. We are all in and we’re going to compete for all 172 delegates in California and all 53 congressional districts. It is going to be battle on the ground, district by district by district.”

Madlen Grgodjaian wrote this article for California Black Media.

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“We cannot allow our nation to be pitting groups of people against one another,” the former secretary of state and first lady said at the USC Ronald Tutor Campus Center. “We cannot give in to panic and fear. That’s not in keeping with our values.”

A divisive approach “is not effective in protecting us, and it plays into the hands of terrorists who want nothing more than to intimidate and terrorize people, turn [us] against each other, which leads to radicalizing more people and creating even more problems for us,” she said.

Emphasizing the need for everyday people to play a role in combating terrorism, Clinton spoke about a taxi driver who unknowingly took three terrorist bombers to Belgium’s airport last week.

“This gentleman … heard about the attacks and immediately wondered whether the three passengers he had taken to the airport that day, who he thought were somewhat strange-acting, could have been involved,” she said. “What he did was reach out immediately to law enforcement and say, ‘I picked up these three men and I can tell you where I picked them up.’”

She said that taxi driver led police to a terrorist stronghold.

Clinton was greeted at USC by Mayor Eric Garcetti, who introduced her as, “in my opinion, the next president of the United States.”

In remarks during the roundtable discussion, Garcetti said, “As a global city, we reflect the world,” and noted that the group was assembled to talk about “a dangerous time, a worrying time, a difficult time.”

A string of terrorist attacks have occurred in recent months, including in Paris, San Bernardino, Lebanon, Turkey and West Africa.

Clinton echoed another speaker’s call for amplifying the voices of moderate Muslims, saying a bigger stage needs to be given to more even-keeled views amid discussions about terrorism.

“It’s become harder and harder for moderate, reasonable voices to be heard,” she said. “The way you get eyes or ears is to be provocative, even extreme — to say things that are going to draw attention.”

Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said mosques — where members of the Muslim community gather — should not be viewed as “centers of radicalization,” but as “assets” in fighting terrorism.

Al-Marayati said reaching out to mosques and the Muslim community means that family members who are often the first to detect something has gone wrong with a relative will be readier to report it or intervene.

Increasingly, he said, “radicals are being told to detach” from their mosques and families.

“We have to see that American Muslims are part of the solution” and that terrorists are “nothing more than a mafia,” Al-Marayati said.

Clinton said she hopes roundtable discussions like the one at USC “will be replicated in many places.” She added that an analogy Al-Marayati made comparing terrorist groups to gangs could be useful for those who feel uncertain about what to do about terrorism and how to understand it.

“People who feel marginalized, left out, left behind want to join something,” she said. “L.A. has a long history of dealing with gangs and doing so more successfully than other cities in our country. And thinking about it in that way may give more Americans an understanding … there are many hats for us to take to counter violent extremism, to find more positive experiences, to empower, particularly, young people.”

The roundtable discussion — hastily arranged in the midst of a Clinton fundraising swing — came one day after Clinton used a speech at Stanford University to further outline her strategy for defeating the Islamic State group.

In a statement released in response to the roundtable, Republic National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the blame for the recent terrorist incidents should be placed on Clinton and President Barack Obama, who have been “wrong about ISIS at every turn, which has resulted in more attacks and a more
dangerous world.”

“From her failed Libya policy, to her support for the president’s hasty withdrawal from Iraq, to her failed online counter-terrorism program at the State Department, Hillary Clinton has backed policies that have enabled ISIS to grow into a global threat,” Priebus said.

“We need a president who will take a fundamentally different approach to defeat radical Islamic terrorists, not someone like Hillary Clinton who dangerously believes we ‘finally are where we need to be,’” Priebus said.

Clinton also appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and spoke at two fundraisers for her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in her ninth trip to the Los Angeles area since declaring her candidacy on April 12, 2015.

Clinton’s first fundraiser was a late-afternoon event at the Santa Monica home of Julia Franz and Chris Silbermann. Tickets cost $2,700, the maximum individual contribution under federal law to a candidate seeking a party’s presidential nomination, according to an invitation obtained by City News Service.

Individuals raising $10,000 for what the campaign is billing as a “Conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton” were designated as co-hosts and received an invitation to a reception with fellow co-hosts and were able to have their pictures taken with Clinton.

Silbermann is a co-founder of the talent agency ICM Partners. Franz, his wife, has produced such television series as “State of Affairs,” “Men at Work” and “Made in Jersey.”

Following her appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Clinton spoke at an evening event at the Avalon Hollywood nightclub, which also included performances by the singers Estelle and Ben Harper. Hip-hop music magnate Russell Simmons served as master of ceremonies.

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“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published March 22.

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin – and then criminalizing both heavily – we could disrupt those communities,” said Ehrlichman, who died in 1999.

“We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news,” he added. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Ehrlichman’s comments – given to an author in 1994 – represent the first time the War on Drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.

John Ehrlichman

Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton said Ehrlichman’s comments proved what black people have believed for decades – the government was targeting them.

“This is a frightening confirmation of what many of us have been saying for years. That this was a real attempt by government to demonize and criminalize a race of people,” said Sharpton, president of the National Action Network.

“And when we would raise the questions over that targeting, we were accused of all kind of things, from harboring criminality to being un-American and trying to politicize a legitimate concern.”

In her 2010 book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” author Michelle Alexander argues that mass incarceration of black and brown men in America — starting in the 1960s and 70s — served as a way to blunt the advances of the civil rights movement while functioning as a system of racial control similar to how Jim Crow once operated.

Ehrlichman’s comments did not surface until recently when Baum remembered them while going back through old notes for the Harper’s story. His statements are a stark departure from Nixon’s public explanation for his first piece of legislation in the war on drugs, delivered to Congress in 1969, which framed it as a response to an increase in heroin addiction and the rising use of marijuana and hallucinogens by students.

President Richard Nixon

Ehrlichman served 18 months in prison after being convicted of conspiracy and perjury for his role in the Watergate scandal that toppled Nixon and sent many presidential aides to prison.

His recent comments surface during a marked shift in attitudes across the nation toward how to handle drug use – ranging from the legalization of marijuana in various states to White House candidates focusing heavily on treatment as an answer to New Hampshire’s heroin epidemic while they were campaigning across the state.

Baum said he had no reason to believe Ehrlichman was being dishonest and viewed his comments as “atonement” from a man long after his tumultuous run in the White House ended.

“I think Ehrlichman was waiting for someone to come and ask him. I think he felt bad about it. I think he had a lot to feel bad about, same with Egil Krogh, who was another Watergate guy.” Baum told CNN.

Baum interviewed Ehrlichman and others for his 1996 book “Smoke and Mirrors,” but said he left out the Ehrlichman comment from the book because it did not fit the narrative style focused on putting the readers in the middle of the backroom discussions themselves, without input from the author.

Baum equated Ehrlichman’s admission with traumatic war stories that often take decades for veterans to talk about and said it clearly took time for Ehrlichman and other Nixon aides he interviewed to candidly explain the war on drugs.

“These guys, they knew they’d done bad things and they were glad finally when it was no longer going to cost them anything to be able to talk about it, to atone for it.” Baum said. “Nobody goes in to public service, I don’t think, on either side of the political aisle, to be repressive, to be evil. They go in because they care about the country.”

Attempts to reach Ehrlichman’s family for comment were not immediately successful.

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Obama’s pick of Judge Merrick Garland for the vacant Supreme Court seat March 16 was an intriguing multi-layered move in his last great showdown with Republicans that comes at a time of volatile political upheaval.

His selection demonstrates cold-eyed calculation and represents a clear case of Obama calling the Republicans’ bluff after its leaders made clear they would refuse to consider his nominee whomever it turned out to be.

Garland’s elevation offers a new window into the state of Obama’s political philosophy in the twilight of a presidency that began in a burst of historic potential but has been constrained by the grueling struggle to govern in a polarized era.

The pick, a mild surprise, also seemed to hold up a mirror to the president’s nature. Obama billed himself as the picture of swashbuckling audacity at the beginning of his career but has often proven to be too centrist from some liberals’ tastes on issue from health care to anti-terrorism policy.

Rarely immune to the lofty gesture, Obama also aimed to make a profound statement about America’s political institutions and democracy itself at a time when a vicious election campaign distilled from years of raging partisan heat is tearing at them.

Though he did not mention Republican presidential front-runner Trump by name, Obama’s point was hardly subtle. The president argued that while the rules of politics in a rabble-rousing moment might be fraying, some things — like the nomination of a Supreme Court justice — are so vital that they should be above the partisan swamp.

“At a time when our politics are so polarized, at a time when norms and customs of political rhetoric and courtesy and comity are so often treated like they’re disposable — this is precisely the time when we should play it straight,” he said.

“Because our Supreme Court really is unique. It’s supposed to be above politics. It has to be. And it should stay that way,” said the president who once called out the justices in person over the Citizens United ruling on campaign finance during a State of the Union address.

“To suggest that someone as qualified and respected as Merrick Garland doesn’t even deserve a hearing, let alone an up-or-down vote, to join an institution as important as our Supreme Court,” Obama said, “that would be unprecedented.”

Calling the Senate’s bluff

Obama has admitted that he has sometimes fallen short on the theatrics of the presidency.

But he did not shirk on the stage management as he shepherded Garland into the spring-filled beauty of the White House Rose Garden, the venue for many symbolic and ceremonial presidential moments over the decades.

The president’s appearance validated one of the great truths of Washington — that when someone professes to be above the grubby political impulses of his rivals, he’s usually playing the game at a more sophisticated level himself.

In essence, Obama was signaling to the GOP that whatever political price there is to pay for their refusal to consider his pick, the bill is now due.

“In this sense, then, the president is calling the Republican Senate’s bluff,” said professor Thomas Keck, an expert on the Supreme Court and U.S. politics at Syracuse University.

“If the Senate’s leaders stick to their pledge not to consider or even meet with any Obama nominee, it will be clear that they are doing so solely for partisan reasons and not due to any concerns with the nominee’s qualifications or record.”

There was also another implicit political message for Republicans to digest. Obama could have chosen a more liberal, Democratic-base-pleasing nominee in an election year, but didn’t, disappointing some on the left of his party.

In the context of a campaign that could produce a mandate for a Democratic successor, Hillary Clinton, who has been dragged left by her own party, he seemed to be saying to Republican senators: take what I am offering or you may rue the day.

“President Obama is saying to the Senate Republicans, you can take my 63-year-old now or wait for President Hillary Clinton to bring up a 45-year-old in 10 months,” said CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

In many ways, Garland is a case of cometh the political hour, cometh the man.

He has been passed over for previous spots on the court as apparently insufficiently historic or youthful, as Obama picked the first Hispanic on the bench in Sonia Sotomayor and then Elena Kagan, who could have decades left to exert her progressive legal outlook.

But the spectacularly conventional nature of Garland’s resume — from Harvard Law to distinguished and unblemished service in the Justice Department to the top appeals court in the land — that worked against him before suddenly became an asset.

So while Sotomayor satisfied his impulse to make history, his later picks of Kagan, his former solicitor general, and especially Garland show a streak of pragmatism often evident during his presidency.

A president hoping to make Republicans look bad for blocking his appointment could hardly have found anyone so objectively qualified to serve.

It didn’t hurt either that Garland had previously been confirmed by several sitting Republican senators when he was nominated by President Bill Clinton.

The picture of unquestioned merit was solidified when Garland took to the microphone in the Rose Garden. His voice cracked as he spoke of the “gift” of his nomination and his love for his family, his nation and the Constitution, coming across as the modest and personable antithesis of the scheming, agenda-driven vortex into which he had just stepped.

And now the Senate battle

Contrasting with Obama’s theatrics, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in his unspectacular style, put on a show of quiet defiance to stiffen the spine of his troops in swing state re-election contests who may not relish the fight ahead.

“It is a president’s constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice and it is the Senate’s constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent,” McConnell said in his flat monotone, like a lawyer stating the facts of a case.

And McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, showed the president that two can play the political game, reviving an old quote from Vice President Joe Biden.

“‘It would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is under way, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over,’” McConnell quoted his old Senate sparring partner from 1992.

Republicans trawling for White House hypocrisy might have also taken exception to Obama’s Rose Garden announcement itself, since Biden — a key player in obstructionist Supreme Court confirmation fights in the past, including his orchestration of the rejection of President Ronald Reagan pick Judge Robert Bork — stood alongside the president as he made his speech.

In some ways, Garland’s nomination is a poisoned chalice: it is highly likely that he won’t get a hearing and his chances of claiming late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat are questionable at best. There is no guarantee, for instance, that Hillary Clinton, if elected president, would renew his nomination, given pressure on her to demonstrate early progressive credentials by appointing a more clear-cut liberal.

That was why Garland’s comments about his nomination being “the greatest honor” of his life other than his marriage and the “greatest gift” other than the birth of his daughters were so striking.

They seemed to hint that even if he does not make it to the bench, Garland may view the fact that he was chosen at all as no small honor. Or he could be a man for whom the prize of the high court is so great that it is worth braving the political fire to come.

If Garland’s nomination does fail, he can go back to his job as top judge of America’s second-most prestigious bench — the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Thus, Obama will not have torched a less established judicial career, or burned a potential Supreme Court nominee likely to excite liberal ideologues, like Garland’s colleague Sri Srinivasan, who a future Democratic president may wish to put forward.

And while Washington seems resigned to a stalemate in which Garland is left in unconfirmable limbo, the White House may still hope that things could change.

Should November’s election produces a President Clinton — or even the unpredictable ideological prospect of a President Trump — some GOP senators could be tempted to cut their losses in a lame duck session of Congress and settle for the judge they know.

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