Eighteen candidates – Six Republicans, five Democrats, one Libertarian, one Peace and Freedom and five candidates without party preference – met the deadline to file nominating papers for the May 17 special primary election ballot to replace Congresswoman Jane Harman, who resigned last month.
The candidates who filed nominating papers include the following (candidate descriptions are from the filing papers):
DEMOCRATS
Daniel H. Adler. New media entrepreneur in Marina del Rey.
Debra Bowen. California Secretary of State.
Loraine Goodwin. Physician, teacher, arbitrator of Madera.
Janice Hahn. Los Angeles City Councilwoman.
Marcy Winograd. High school teacher and anti-war activist.
REPUBLICANS
Patrick “Kit” Bobko. Hermosa Beach City Councilman.
Stephen Eisele. Businessman and aerospace entrepreneur.
Mike Gin. Redondo Beach Mayor.
Craig Huey. Small business owner.
George Newberry. Real estate agent and retired military.
Mike Webb. Redondo Beach City Attorney.
LIBERTARIAN
Steve Collett. Certified public accountant.
PEACE and FREEDOM
Maria E. Montano. Public school teacher.
NO PARTY PREFERENCE
Matthew Roozee. Business executive, mathematician.
Michael T. Chamness. Non-profit consultant.
Katherine Pilot. Longshore office clerk.
Al Salehi. Entrepreneur.
James L. Thompson. Retired.
The list may change again if some of the candidates’ nominating papers can’t be verified.
The number of candidates pretty much guarantees no one candidate will succeed in winning the May 17th election outright. Under the new “top two” primary election rules, if no candidate receives 50%+1 of the votes, the top two voter-getters will advance to a July 12th election.
The Mayor and the City Attorney of Redondo Beach are both running as Republican candidates for the 36th CD. It is a 45% Democratic district with some VERY high profile Democratic candidates. I wonder what’s going on in Redondo Beach?
The race does present an opportunity for name recognition, especially for Mike Gin. Mike Gin did quite a “me too” performance in the Courage Campaign candidate forum. His D socially R economically “independent Republican” approach may help in this race and certainly when CD 36 gets reapportioned.
He works for Don Knabe who will term out in 2016. This race gives him a chance to build name recognition for that race too.
We who watch politics know that “independent Republican” is an oxymoron, but the DS numbers keep climbing and those voters especially might get seduced by that chimera.