Given the relative ambivalence in recent special elections in California, where members of Congress have been elected with 10,000 votes or less, I’d consider it an accomplishment that hundreds of people flocked to the Walnut Creek Jewish Community Center last night, on a Friday night, to hear from six of the Democratic candidates who will seek to replace Ellen Tauscher in CA-10, once she is confirmed to an appointment at the State Department and resigns her seat.  Reader dslc has a short on-site commentary here, and Lisa Vorderbrueggen has provided lots of multimedia over at Political Blotter.  The audio recording doesn’t seem to be working right now, but she had videos of every candidate’s closing statement.  In case you’re just tuning in, those candidates include:

Lt. Governor John Garamendi

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier

Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan

Adriel Hampton

Anthony Woods

Tony Bothwell

(Bothwell is a San Francisco-area attorney who doesn’t yet have a campaign website, but here’s his law office site.)

Sadly, this is pretty much the extent of major media coverage that exists of yesterday’s event, despite several hundred residents and a Congressional race that impacts hundreds of thousands.  Our dwindling press corps is definitely a problem.  But based on the closing statements, you can decide for yourself who performed well last night.  I’ll just throw around some other links as the race really kicks into gear.  As a side note, apparently Garamendi brought out the giant golden bear clearly planned as his mascot for a gubernatorial race.

• Luke Thomas interviews Joan Buchanan for the Fog City Journal, and Buchanan comes of as pretty knowledgeable about the challenges we face.  She foregrounded her support of mass transit and BART expansion, health care reform (she supports single payer but wouldn’t commit to supporting HR 676, and thinks that a plan currently moving through the House with a robust public option could be a “stepping stone” to single payer) and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (she generally supports Obama’s position).

• Also in the Fog City Journal, Harold Brown has an op-ed about Adriel Hampton, claiming that “SF lefties are missing an opportunity” by not rallying to his campaign.

• Anthony Woods is getting a fair amount of attention on the blogs.  AR Dem profiled him in this MyDD user diary, and today, Woods took questions at Firedoglake in a live chat session with Howie Klein.  I thought he served himself well.

• There’s another Democratic forum scheduled for July 2 in Antioch (Antioch City Hall, Second and H streets).

A couple updates:

• Lisa V. fixed the audio feed, which you can find here.  Her story on the forum is here.

In the first central Contra Costa County showdown of Democratic candidates vying for the chance to replace Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a packed room Friday night heard little in the way of substantive policy differences but saw vastly disparate approaches.

Relative youngsters Adriel Hampton and Anthony Woods, 30 and 28 respectively, emphasized their lack of ties to the establishment […]

The high-profile candidates with decades of political experience – Lt. Governor John Garamendi; Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo; and state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord – stressed their individual policy strengths.

Also, there’s actually another forum this Tuesday, June 23, sponsored by the El Cerrito Democratic Club.  It starts at 6:30 p.m. at Fellowship Hall, El Cerrito United Methodist Church, 6830 Stockton Avenue (at Richmond Avenue), El Cerrito.

…additional analysis of the forum from Halfway to Concord.