(cross-posted at MyDD)

We may have gotten beaten in the two congressional special elections that were held yesterday, but there was one little election here in California where the good guys won...and won big.

Private mercenary firm Blackwater USA is best known for the private armies it has deployed in Iraq and the lack of accountability and oversight that have come with that. But less is known about their activities here in the US, for instance, where this private army is trained.

Right now, Blackwater has two training facilities, one in Moyock, North Carolina -- the home of their headquarters, as well as 100 miles west of Chicago, a facility referred to creepily as Blackwater North. Well guess what, Blackwater is expanding...or at least they'd like to.

Starting around the middle of last year, Blackwater began to lay the groundwork for building a third training camp in the tiny rural town of Potrero in San Diego County, California. The proposed facility would be housed on 824 acres in the pristine Round Potrero Valley and is in danger of turning this peaceful wilderness into a private army training zone.

Well, their plans may have just gotten a little more difficult.

Late last year, after Blackwater had spent months stealthily lobbying local officials, the local planning group (an advisory body) approved the Blackwater West proposal. Once local residents and activists got wind of Blackwater's infiltration into their tiny peaceful town, they launched a grassroots effort to block Blackwater. First they circulated a petition to the fewer than 500 registered voters in Potrero to keep Blackwater out and even launched recall of the members of the planning board who voted in favor of Blackwater. Last night the returns came in and the results were overwhelming.

Julia at calitics has the details:

The recall was an overwhelming success.  All five members of the Planning Group who voted to approve Blackwater's plans were recalled by unbelievable margins.  The election will be certified within two days and the Save Potero slate will take office, hopefully in time for their Thursday meeting.

Keep in mind that Bush won by 25.8% in 2008.  Everybody was recalled by over 60% of the vote.  Gordon Hammers, who has been the most vocal Blackwater supporter and served as chair of the group, was recalled by nearly 70% of the vote.

Just an incredible victory.  They did a phenomenal job on GOTV, getting 160 or so out of the 190 who signed the original petition against Blackwater to turn in their ballots.

My friends at the Courage Campaign (for whom I do part time work) headed up the GOTV effort and have been instrumental in getting the word out and building support for this local effort. From this little people-powered revolution has come the first electoral referendum on Blackwater, and the vote is clear: Blackwater, get the hell out!

Yesterday's recall was only the first step. Another vote on Blackwater West will be held, but as it is only advisory, a resounding NO! from the local board will not be able in itself to block the facility; that lies in the hands of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. From what I've heard, as of right now, the board would approve the facility, but the vote won't be until some time next year as Blackwater jumps through more re-zoning and environmental impact report hoops. In the meantime, Courage Campaign has set its sights on the Board of Supes and you can be sure they're taking note of the fact that every pro-Blackwater planning group member was recalled yesterday.

To find out more about this effort and to join the fight to keep Blackwater out of California's pristine wilderness, head on over to BlockBlackwater.com where you can also watch a great video featuring accidental activist and, as of yesterday, new chair of the Potrero Planning Group, Carl Meyer.

The right-wingers pushing the Dirty Tricks initiative here in California are desperate. They've been making a final fundraising and signature gathering push over the past month in hopes of getting the initiative, which, if passed, would deliver 20 or so of California's 55 electoral votes to the Republican candidate, onto the June 2008 ballot. But looks like it's not going quite as planned.

On Saturday, the LA Times reported that they had missed a deadline set by the Secretary of State for turning in signatures because they still lacked enough money to pay all of their signature gatherers and they didn't want to turn in fewer than 700,000 or so for fear that the final count would result in fewer than the 434,000 valid signatures required by law. The actual deadline to qualify for the ballot is January 24 but now that they've missed their submission date, as yesterday's Sacramento Bee explains (h/t calitics):

...backers of an initiative to change how California's electoral votes are counted are at risk of missing the June ballot because it will be difficult to finish counting signatures by a state deadline next month.

Of course, if they do miss the June ballot deadline, they'll still shoot for the November ballot, but in the meantime they're in desperation mode and the tricks they've been resorting to in order to qualify for June have gotten dirtier and dirtier.

As I wrote last week, my colleagues at The Courage Campaign (for whom I do part-time work) caught some Dirty Tricks signature gatherers on tape luring unsuspecting signers with a petition funding children's cancer research. As Courage's intrepid investigative blogger Erik Love reported at the time:

the petitioners said that their petition would "help children with cancer," and then proceeded to instruct well-meaning students to sign several petitions that were attached together on a single clipboard.  The petitioners clearly tried to obscure the language on the petitions, using a rubber band to make it difficult for anyone signing to read beyond the first page.  When pressed, the petitioners described some of the other issues (besides curing cancer) they were advocating, but their descriptions of the petition language on eminent domain and presidential election reform was unclear or inaccurate.

Based on the video footage Erik took, Courage Campaign has requested a formal investigation into the right-wingers' signature gathering practices and now CBS news has picked up the story using the actual footage Erik took.

Watch the report below:

This is a great example of the local netroots taking a local story and pushing it up, not only through the netroots but into traditional media and having a real world impact. This is really at the heart of the power and influence of the netroots. Too bad we weren't around to push back against the recall back in 2003. Of course, we haven't won yet. The Courage Campaign will continue to fight this right-wing power grab (is there any other kind?) and you can join the effort over at NoDirtyTricks.com or help build the CA progressive infrastructure by giving a little to them over at ActBlue.