Back in 2008, Tony Strickland ran something of an interesting campaign to defeat Hannah-Beth Jackson. He ran as a neo-environmentalist. His mail was all about Green energy, and how he has quite the record in developing said energy.
Of course, you’d have to consider some pretty dirty energy to be “clean” to buy that. However, Strickland snuck through by a few thousand votes as enough people bought the hype.
Now, fast forward to today, and it’s all being run over again. This time it is Sam Blakeslee, the man who has consistently taken Big Oil dollars trying to make himself all clean and green. It’s a tough task to be sure.
But CalBuzz goes ahead and punches the holes out of that story:
The blunt truth of the matter, however, may be found in 1) the lavish oil industry contributions shoveled into committees that have forked out more than $1 million to back Blakeslee’s play in the 15th State Senate district and 2) the photograph posted at the top of this story, which shows exactly where the San Luis Obispo GOP assemblyman stood on offshore oil drilling in California – before that whole Gulf of Mexico thing made it really, really unfashionable. (CalBuzz)
As John Laird pointed out about his election, this truly is critical. We’ll likely see Laird and Blakeslee in the runoff, but this is where we must start to tell Central Coast voters the real story. Fortunately, the CDP has gotten a virtual phone bank system up and running, so now’s the time. The election is Tuesday, let’s push John Laird over the top. Heck, maybe we can even avoid that runoff…
As one of the volunteers manning the phone banks said, “Maybe he considers cleaning up oil spills a green job. If so, then–as a former oil executive–some of his claims could be true. He has created “green” jobs.”
Despite this generous interpretation, there’s not much getting around the fact that the ads supporting Blakeslee are lies. The positive ones about him. The negative ones about Laird. They’re just not true.
Big business–especially big oil–is trying to buy this election. It’s up to Central Coast voters to tell them no!
Go to LairdforSenate.com to find out how to join the virtual phone bank. But do it now!
and I went down on Friday night and was dialing away for John Laird.
I have seen the multitude of TV ads for Blakeslee, sometimes 2 in a row and they are ugly. The folks that I talked to last night via phone said that they had been bombarded with literature from Blakeslee.
Just because Santa Maria is in Santa Barbara County doesn’t mean that it votes Democratic like Santa Barbara proper. It is VERY conservative. I felt sorry for one woman I talked to last night. She had the only Obama lawn sign within a 2 block radius and she said she faced a wrath of hate from her neighbors.
It’s going to be tough…but we have to do it.
So often in politics we get a bad choice and a worse choice. We respond by showing how the worse choice is not just worse, but disasterous.
Now we have John Laird who will, if elected, become one of the top 2 or 3 Senators in Sacramento the day he walks into the place. I know we have to respond to the Chamber of Commerce lies, but I wish the people of the Central Coast knew what a great gift we have to give the state in John Laird.
Not only is Sam Blakeslee NOT an environmentalist (he has a feeble 25% lifetime rating by the League of Conservation Voters), he even used our tax dollars to promote offshore oil drilling. In a taxpayer-funded mailing to his constituents, he promoted the T-Ridge drilling plan as a boon to the environment! Get all the facts (and see the mailer) at http://www.blamesam.org.