Eric Bauman, a gruff and tireless political operative who led two of California’s most powerful Democratic organizations before resigning amid misconduct allegations, died Monday.
His family said in a statement that Bauman died at UCLA West Valley Medical Center after a long illness. He was 66.
Born in the Bronx to an Army doctor and a registered nurse, Bauman went to military school and moved to Hollywood just before he turned 18. He became a nurse and met his husband, also a nurse, in a hospital cafeteria during an overnight shift in the early 1980s.
Motivated in part by the AIDS crisis, Bauman became active in the Stonewall Democratic Club Los Angeles, a progressive political group, and was elected president of the organization in 1994.
Bauman grew L.A. County Democratic Party into a political force as chairman from 2000 to 2017 and expanded the number of Democrats winning elections at every level of government, from water boards to the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I turned the L.A. Democratic Party from a $50,000-a-year organization into a $1.5 million-a-year organization,” he told a reporter in 2011.
With a Bronx affect and a gold signet ring on his pinkie finger that he twisted when he was under pressure, Bauman built a reputation as an old-school party boss who would give you the bad news straight. Democrats compared him to Ray Liotta, and some called him the “Godfather of Democratic politics.”
“People come up to me on the street all the time and think I’m Joe Pesci,” he told the Times in 2017. “I try to work with that.”
Bauman ran for state Democratic Party chair in 2017. After a bruising election that exposed the fractures between the progressive and establishment wings of the party, Bauman was elected by a mere 62 votes.
He was the first openly gay and first Jewish person to chair the party.
“I don’t wear a button that says, ‘Look at me, I’m gay,’” Bauman said in a 2009 interview with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. But, he said, “I never fail to recognize my partner from any podium. It is in my bio. It is a part of who I am.”
The high point of his tenure was the 2018 midterm elections, when California Democrats flipped seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and won back a veto-proof supermajority in the state Legislature.
Bauman said he wanted to overturn California’s voter-approved “jungle primary” system, which allows the top two vote-getters to advance to the general election, regardless of party. Bauman argued that Democrats should pick their own nominees, rather than spending millions of dollars fighting in the primaries.
In late 2018, The Times reported that Bauman had made crude sexual comments and had engaged in unwanted touching or physical intimidation in professional settings, citing 10 party staff members and political activists.
Bauman resigned, saying he planned to seek treatment for health issues and alcohol use. The state Democratic Party fired top staffers in the wake of the allegations and eventually paid more than $380,000 to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by three of his accusers. A party spokeswoman did not respond to requests for a statement on Bauman’s death Tuesday.
After his resignation, Bauman disappeared from public life for several years. More recently, he began hosting a radio show called “The UnCommon Sense Democrat” on the Inland Empire’s KCAA-AM 1050.
In the mid-2000s, when Republicans still represented many outlying areas of Los Angeles County, Bauman set up a “red zone program” at the L.A. County Democratic Party that funneled money and volunteers to Democrats running for seats in GOP strongholds.
The investments were a gamble, but they built relationships and better candidates — and sometimes, a long shot candidate actually won, said former state lawmaker Miguel Santiago, who first got involved with the party in the early 2000s.
“He was really hungry for Democratic wins,” Santiago said. “There was no seat that that guy left on the table, whether it was a community college seat, a school board race, a water board race.”
Bauman also worked to strengthen ties with organized labor, now the California Democratic Party’s most powerful ally, and build voter registration and turnout.
State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, who chaired the county party after Bauman, said he spent countless hours as a young volunteer entering information about newly registered voters into the party database.
The data came from a booth that the Democratic Party set up outside citizenship ceremonies where newly eligible voters could register to vote as Democrats, he said. Bauman sent a signed card to each person, congratulating them and welcoming them to the party.
“That touched people, and it showed them that they matter,” Gonzalez said.
Bauman also worked for Gov. Gray Davis and insurance commissioner John Garamendi and as a consultant to several Assembly speakers, including Anthony Rendon of Los Angeles and Toni Atkins of San Diego.
He is survived by his husband and partner of 42 years, Michael Andraychak, and his father and sister, Richard and Roya Bauman.
