Well, this is interesting news: Steve Glazer, Gov. Brown’s top campaign strategist and a long time local politician in Orinda, is looking to replace the termed out Joan Buchanan.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s political adviser, Steve Glazer, will run for a state Assembly seat in 2014, Glazer announced this morning. The Orinda councilman will seek election in the Democratic-leaning Assembly District 16, the East Bay district from which Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, will be termed out.
Glazer cast himself as a moderate in a prepared statement, criticizing a legislative process he said is captive to “the extremes of both political parties.” (SacBee)
Glazer just started his third term on the Orinda council, so he has the local connections that are often the key to the endorsements that make races in the low turnout June off-year elections.
The district is a fairly moderate district, so it hardly shocks to see him to go moderate. Brown, for his part, has been called the “most powerful conservative in Sacramento.” Glazer’s campaign would fit right in on both levels.
The top-2 format will treat such a “moderate” campaign well, and his name ID and connections to money should put him as a favorite to at least get in that top 2. However, there are a long list of viable candidates for this district, so there is more to shake out before next June.
What a night! As you may have seen, last night I was the highest vote-getter in the 10th Congressional District special primary election and will now face Republican David Harmer in the November 3rd general election.
I want to thank our incredible team of hard working volunteers. They spent countless hours knocking on doors, making phone calls, and making their presence known at community events throughout the district. Our success would not have been possible without them, and they have my deepest gratitude. Because of their efforts, we won all four counties in the district.
I also want to take a moment to acknowledge my competitors in this election:
To David Harmer: Congratulations on your victory among Republicans. I look forward to two months of dialogue focused on the issues and solutions that matter to the people of the 10th Congressional District. I intend to make it clear that a radical right wing agenda that seeks to stop health care reform, starve the education of our children, fails to finance the transportation and infrastructure systems we need, and advocates more tax breaks for the most wealthy is not in the interests of the people of the 10th Congressional District, California, or America.
To Senator Mark DeSaulnier: Your health care town halls helped establish an important dialogue in the campaign about the need for comprehensive health care reform. You are an institution in Contra Costa County, and you have many admirers. You deserve special acknowledgement for your work seeking a constitutional convention. The two-thirds majority requirement has worsened California’s problems and I look forward to working with you to bring a working democracy and majority rule back to California.
More over the flip…
To Assemblymember Joan Buchanan: Thank you for highlighting the concerns of small businesses in your campaign. I look forward to having a conversation with you about innovative ways we can promote job growth in the region. As a former school board member, you also helped focus the debate on education policy, and I thank you for that. I think you’d agree that in the long term, a sound investment in education is the most important economic stimulus of all.
To Anthony Woods: I’m not the first person to say this and I won’t be the last: you have a bright future in politics should you choose to pursue a political career. I first joined the state legislature around your age, and I quickly fell in love with public policy. You have an intelligence, grace, and resume that is worthy of elected office. Thank you for your service to our nation; and thank you for helping to make the issues facing LGBT people a focus in this campaign. You deserve the freedom to openly serve our country, and I pledge that one of my first acts in Congress will be to co-sponsor legislation to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”
To Adriel Hampton: Thank you for highlighting the importance of online outreach. We followed your use of social networking and Web 2.0 tools, and I look forward to chatting with you about the ways we can use the Internet to better reach out to our constituents. You were an accessible and upfront candidate and have my sincere respect.
It’s been a hard fought campaign, and now that the primary is over, we Democrats must unite. We will not allow radical, regressive right-wingers, with their block-progress-at-all-costs agenda, to get a toehold here is the 10th Congressional District – this is a forward-looking, forward-thinking, progressive Democratic district and I intend to fight for every vote to keep it that way!
I look forward to working with President Obama and the Democrats in Congress to protect Social Security, fix our broken health care system, create jobs, broaden educational opportunity, protect the environment, and bring needed federal money back to the district. This election was truly a wonderful experience. I can’t wait to get to Washington, DC to represent the people of the 10th and begin to tackle the many challenges facing our nation!
Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi is the Democratic nominee for California’s 10th Congressional District. He is a University of California regent, California State University trustee, chair of the California Commission for Economic Development, and chair of the California State Lands Commission. He was a twice elected State Insurance Commissioner, Deputy Interior Secretary under President Bill Clinton, and a Peace Corps volunteer. A special election will be held on November 3rd. For more information, please visit http://www.garamendi.org.
• Survey USA has been maligned by some for its robo-polling techniques, but they consistently overperformed other pollsters throughout the 2008 primaries, and they basically nailed the polling in CA-10. The final numbers track almost precisely with the final vote tally. Well done.
• These special elections largely come down to name ID, and there’s not a whole lot you can do about that. The challengers certainly tried – Joan Buchanan spent $850,000 of her own money and got a whopping 12% of the vote. But Garamendi really cruised to victory in this one.
• Katie Merrill, last seen yelling at the netroots for daring to consider a primary of Ellen Tauscher, became Mark DeSaulnier’s campaign manager, where she devised the craptacular strategy of focusing on Garamendi’s residency requirement, which approximately nobody cares about, instead of building a campaign infrastructure outside of Contra Costa County. Despite having a minority of residents, in Solano, Alameda and Sacramento counties, Garamendi picked up over 6,000 votes on DeSaulnier, who finished well back in all those regions. There was no way he could have ever won that back in CoCo, where he lost as well by 2,300 votes. Maybe introducing yourself to people outside your base would have worked better than the “neener-neener, here’s this technical non-violation” nonsense that is a proven loser.
6. I thought Anthony Woods might break into double-digits. Instead, he ended up with 8.5 percent of the vote. He is a strong candidate who was probably too liberal for the moderate 10th District but he kept the elected officials on their toes. I suspect we will see Woods on a ballot again one of these days.
This “moderate district” thing really has to get flushed down a toilet somewhere. John Garamendi was endorsed by the California Nurses Association, the most progressive organization maybe in America. He’s a single-payer advocate. He’s strongly liberal and far to the left of Ellen Tauscher. And he won. Woods’ difficulty was simply a product of name ID and a quick-strike primary. He didn’t have labor ground troops and that was that.
• Just to reiterate, there will now be a general election between Garamendi and David Harmer on November 3. Garamendi will be strongly favored.
As John Garamendi touts in a diary here, the most recent SurveyUSA poll shows the Lt. Governor with a comfortable lead in the CA-10 primary set for Tuesday. I am surprised that another candidate hasn’t talked it up as well, however, because the only candidate showing movement from the previous SurveyUSA poll is Anthony Woods.
In fact, this new poll, from 8/26-8/27, has Garamendi at 25%, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier at 16%, Asm. Joan Buchanan at 12% and Anthony Woods at 9%, with 5% undecided. The last poll, from 8/10-8/11 was Garamendi 26%, DeSaulnier 15%, Buchanan 12% and Woods 5%. I don’t think there are enough undecided voters to push Woods much further, but he’s running the only race drawing undecided voters, if the polls can be believed.
Among those who have already voted, the numbers are similar: Garamendi 27%, DeSaulnier 18%, Buchanan 13% and Woods 10%.
Certainly, Garamendi looks very strong for victory, and there aren’t likely to be enough voters Tuesday to favor a late riser, but Anthony Woods is running the only race moving from no built-in support to a credible challenge. As for the relative flatness of the two state legislators, I’d say the choice by Sen. DeSaulnier to decide on a monomaniac focus on Garamendi’s residency issue, which simply has not moved voters in numerous other instances, instead of giving voters a reason to support him, would offer some answer. Buchanan has run a self-funded campaign focused mainly on finding female support, but not necessarily a larger message. In an environment with three safe or fairly lackluster campaigns, the expected form is holding. Only Woods appears to be taking in new support, but his uphill battle was perhaps too high to climb.
Just a rundown of events in the CA-10 race with a week until primary day:
• Late last week, fundraising reports were due, showing that over $2 million dollars has been raised by the various candidates seeking Ellen Tauscher’s old seat in Congress. By any metric – total cash raised, cash raised in the last cycle, cash raised since June 30, cash on hand, and cash on hand less debts – John Garamendi has the lead, though much of his money comes from big donors. Anthony Woods, and to a lesser extent Mark DeSaulnier, have found a smaller-donor base, though Woods’ is mostly out of district. Joan Buchanan has basically not raised money at all; she has given herself as much as $750,000 in loans and is generally self-funded (and what donations she has not given herself have come from such health industry interests as Wellpoint, one of the largest insurers in America). I would say the top four candidates probably have enough money to get out the message within their budgets, however.
• The Contra Costa Times, the main newspaper in the main population center of the district, endorsed John Garamendi for the position. However, their criticism of Mark DeSaulnier, that he “acced(es) to the wishes of organized labor, particularly public employee unions,” gives you an indication of their orientation and whether or not you find them a trusted source.
• DeSaulnier continues to hammer on the largely irrelevant point that Garamendi doesn’t live inside the district. Here’s a mailer to that effect. And practically every missive from campaign staff re-emphasizes this point. I would like their research department to find one instance of when a residency issue like this had any impact on a Congressional race. I just really think DeSaulnier has missed his target here. He’s better off showing his progressive bona fides on issues like health care, transportation and the environment, IMO. This is such a critical time, and residency issues do not appear to be at the top of the minds of people who want to see this country make good on the change agenda from 2008, particularly Democratic partisans who would vote in a special election primary.
• Anthony Woods held another live chat at AmericaBlog this week. His position in local endorsements always comes at the end and reads something like “we were very impressed with him and think he has a bright future.”
The San Francisco Chronicle, which is not completely the local paper in CA-10 (I would imagine the Contra Costa Times has more readers) but which is a large regional paper with reach into the suburbs, endorsed John Garamendi for Congress today.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi stands out in this crowd because his vast portfolio of experience is so well aligned with the issues of the times and the big concerns of the district.
Garamendi said he withdrew from the governor’s race when this seat became open because “these are the issues I’ve spent my life on.” Others might suggest his decision was conveniently pragmatic – his bid for the Democratic nomination was going nowhere – but there is no doubt about his qualifications for Congress, especially in this district. He was an aggressive and effective insurance commissioner (think health care, consumer issues such as foreclosure), deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior (delta, climate change) and a state legislator from 1974 to 1991.
The 64-year-old Garamendi has the confidence and depth of knowledge that would allow him to hit the ground running in Congress – and his history suggests he would be unabashed in doing so.
The op-ed had good words for practically everyone running, particularly Anthony Woods, but went with Garamendi. In a weird example of symmetry, Bruce Brugmann and the SF Bay Guardian wrote almost exactly the same editorial today.
Meanwhile, Joan Buchanan debuted a spot for the last two weeks of the campaign, which looks pretty much like a generic bio spot, although with her being the only prominent woman in the field, an ad just repeating “Joan Buchanan, Joan Buchanan” for 30 seconds would be somewhat effective (and basically that’s what this spot does). The three electeds are all up on cable TV now. Will Anthony Woods use some of his money for TV?
Joan Buchanan is familiar to the voters of the San Ramon Valley School District, where she was elected 5 times to the School Board. But, she’s now introducing herself to her second new set of voters in just 10 months. She was elected to the Assembly in November, winning a comfortable victory over Abram Wilson.
She’s not what you would consider a progressive champion. She actually bears many similarities to the woman she is vying to replace, former Rep. Ellen Tauscher. Yet Asm. Buchanan is a rather humble, no-nonsense kind of politician. She may not have the oratory abilities to rally the crowds for miles around, but she does put her nose to the grindstone.
The voters of the tenth district are now going to have to decide exactly what kind of Congress member they want. Over the flip, you’ll find a very roughly transcribed version of a pretty informative interview. It’s definitely worth a read, especially if you are a voter in the district.
Flip it…
BL: Thanks for taking some time to talk with us. It’s great that we have been able to talk with all of the major candidates. Before we move to the federal issues, let’s talk about the budget. First, how do you think the process could be changed, and how does it reflect on indiviudal legislators
Joan Buchanan: We need a lot more openness. There were $60 Billion in cuts. With cuts in this magnitude, we need more transparency. The Big 5 negotiatied both final agreements, in February and July. I accept that it was done, but it’s not an ideal process and it probably could be better.
BL: In terms of the result, how do we produce a more stable budget going forward.
This is California, given the 2/3 requirements, our tax revenues are too tied to the economy. With all of the revenue sources, we get more revenue when the economy is doing well. We are in the situation we are in today because we had a significant debt and borrowing before the collapse, and the collapse magnified the problem. We found ourselves cutting $60 Billion from the general fund. Karen Bass was right that we have a taxation system that was built in the 30s that doesn’t work for us anymore. We need to change how we tax, not necessarily more taxes, but more dependable revenue that is more tied to our economic productivity and not the swings in the economy.
BL: Besides the budget issues, what have been some of your accomplishments have been?
JB: Greatest accomplishments have been through working with people at the local level. I met with the Livermore Chamber of Commerce with sales tax revenues being taken from Livermore, now fixed via legislation signed by the governor and pushed by Sen. Hancock and myself. Returning $2.5 mil to Livermore at a time when it is critical. School Board Member from Mountain View had problems getting matching funds. Asm. Buchanan helped to get state funds by appeal.
Brentwood Mayor Bob Taylor talked about Highway 4, local electeds put together proposal to state and feds to get funding to complete the bypass.
BL: You have been praised for a campaign with a solid field campaign:
JB. I focus on field campaigns. It’s the only way I know how to campaign. I’ve been involved in 17 campaigns over 21 years, many school board elections and other local campaigns. And I really believe in campaigning the old-fashioned ways.
BL: How do we proceed with Iraq now that we have moved away from the cities?
JB: I opposed it from the very beginning. 3/4 of Iraq was covered by the no-fly zone. The UN Inspectors couldn’t find WMDs. Our job now must be to bring our troops home safely. We may be able to accelerate.
BL: The other area of insecurity – Afghanistan
BJ: raq was the real impediment to our success in Afghanistan. Afghanistan – our goals should be focused, secure border with Pakistan, get economic and political stability, and to bring our troops home safely.
BL: Pakistan – How do we balance the need for security and winning the hearts and minds. Specifically, what is your position on the drone attacks?
JB: Anytime we go to war, we need to avoid attacks on civillians. You don’t win hearts and minds when that happens.
BL: THe other big issue of the day would be Health Care. What are the principles you are focused on?
JB: Start out with three issues:
1) Cover 47 mil Americans without insurance, and the estimated 50 million underinsured, and another 25 million who are in gaps of coverage. We are in a health care crisis, and we have to find a way to fix this issue.
2) How do we bring down costs? Companies are experiencing 10-20% increases. Bring down escalating rate increases. These costs get passed on to employees and employers. The trajectory is not sustainable.
3) Capacity – We are rapidly approaching a ciritical shortage of primary care providers. We need to address those shortages, nurses, doctors, technicians.
4) Access, people who live in urban and rural districts should both be able to get same health care. Areas in San Joaquin County have half of the doctors per capita than in the cities.
Elements that I think are critical:
1) Preserving patient – doctor relationship. People want to have a choice in their doctor and who treats them.
2) Adequate fair reimbursement levels. MediCal levels are far too low. You can’t cover your overhead.
3) We need a system that focuses on prevention rather than accute care.
4) Fiscally responsible payment for the program. We need to be sure that it’s sustainable 5,10, 20 years down the road.
BL: How would you regulate prices? Would you be ok with taking away Congress’ ability to set prices and moving that to a seperate board.
JB: Can you elaborate on that?
BL: Sure, more generally, shoudld Congress have the power to set prices
JB: My understanding is that that they are trying to take a look at pricing, across specialties, make sure it is fair. They need an independent body that will look at procedures that it is fair and equitable across the board.
BL: Where do you stand on the public option?
JB: I could support a wide spectrum. I would have no problem supporting a public option. My #1 goal is to ensure that 47 million people is my number one problem. If the compromise includes a public option, then I could support that.
BL: Back to foreign issues, Iran, how should we be involved?
Economic sanctions are powerful tools to effect change in countries. When you look at Iran, and its insistence on continuing to enrich uranium and to move towards the production of nuclear weapons, its supplying of terrorist groups with missiles, and its posturing. It is probably the most destabilizing force in teh middle east. I agree when the presidents says there are going to be changes, and we are not going to wait forever. WHen a country can make money without investing in its people by just drilling a hole in the ground, there’s a problem. We could embargo refined petroleum, as they import 40%.
BL: One last question – how do we address some of the economic inequality that we are seeing throughout the country?
JB: Congress does that between its policies it enacts. We need a strong middle class to have a strong economy. Restoring the middle class has to be a top priority for Congress.
One way we can do that is to help small business. I’ve toured small businesses across the district from Dixon to Livermore to Antioch to Livermore. They are responsible for 50-80% of job growth now. We need to do as much for Main Street and small businesses as we are for Wall Street.
BL: Thank you very much for taking time from your day.
The special election to replace Ellen Tauscher in CA-10 is taking an ugly turn. The CDP has announced that its endorsement caucus will take place on August 1, and I’m already having flashbacks to Migden-Leno and the 2008 CDP convention.
You see, even though major flaws in the endorsement process were exposed over a year ago, nothing has changed; nor is there, at least to date, any apparent desire on the part of the CDP to address a situation where powerful outsiders are invited to skew the outcome of endorsements in local races.
I’ll do my best to explain it all on the flip…
First a brief lesson in how the endorsement process works in a special election. The chair of the party picks a caucus date and location, and all the members of the California DSCC (Democratic State Central Committee) who live within the district meet and cast their votes. In order to win the endorsement of the CDP, a candidate must receive 60% of the votes cast by these local party members.
So what is the DSCC and how do you become a member of it? Well, statewide, the DSCC is comprised of about 2800 people. Approximately one-third of them are elected by County Central Committees every two years; approximately one-third of them are elected through the ADEMs every two years; approximately one-third of them are appointed by elected officials (or nominees) and serve at their pleasure.
So the Central Committee and AD delegates serve for fixed two-year terms, but the people appointed by the electeds can be changed purely at the whim of their elected. And, as it turns out, there is no requirement in the CDP bylaws that the electeds select their appointees from within the district they represent.
So now that the endorsement caucus has been set for August 1, we can start to examine who will be showing up to vote that day. There will be members elected to the DSCC through the Central Committees of Alameda, Contra Costa, Sacramento, and Solano Counties — but only the ones who physically reside in CA-10. So, for instance, if you’re a DSCC member elected by the Solano Central Committee and you live in Fairfield (CA-10), you can attend the caucus; but if you’re a DSCC member elected by the Solano Central Committee and you live in Vacaville (CA-07), no dice. Same thing goes for the AD delegates. But it’s an entirely different story for the appointees of the electeds.
At least in theory, every Democratic state officer, Senator, Congressmember, State Senator, and Assemblymember in the entire state could dismiss their current appointees and replace them with people who live within CA-10 and are therefore qualified to vote in the caucus. And that’s a lot of appointees. The CDP Bylaws (PDF, Art. II, Sect. 2, beginning on P. 2) spell out how the appointees are allotted:
State Officers — 6 delegates each
US Senators — 6 delegates each
US Congressmembers — 5 delegates each
State Senators — 6 delegates each
State Assemblymembers — 5 delegates each
(And those nominees who ran for the offices listed above but did not win their election are allowed to appoint ½ the number of delegates as their elected counterparts — either 3 or 2, depending on the office).
So what’s happening in CA-10 right now? Well, reports have surfaced that the campaigns are pulling out all the stops to get electeds to replace their appointees with CA-10 residents.
So, several of the CD10 Democratic candidates’ campaign teams have in the past couple of weeks lobbied elected officials from up and down the state and asked them to appoint as their delegates folks who live in the 10th District and support their respective candidates.
As a result, the number of delegates in the 10th District has expanded to as many as 300, sources say. Reports put state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier in the delegate count lead over Lt. Governor John Garamendi and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan.
Well, that makes sense. A cursory look at the endorsements listed on the major candidates’ websites shows the following:
Joan Buchanan: Not listing her endorsements at this time.
John Garamendi: Five Congressmembers and one Assemblymember, for a total of 30 potential appointees.
Mark DeSaulnier: One state officer, four Congressmembers, eleven State Senators, and eight Assemblymembers, for a total of 142 potential appointees.
Now, we currently have no way of determining whether the electeds who have endorsed are backing up their endorsements by appointing CA-10 residents (or, for that matter, whether electeds who have not formally endorsed are doing likewise). But just speculating, based on the raw numbers, it would look like Mark DeSaulnier is going to be the big winner of this sweepstakes. After all, he has a lot of friends from having served recently in both the Assembly and the Senate, and he has a major Congressional cheerleader in Rep. George Miller.
Indeed, if that 300 number is accurate, there’s already more stacking taking place than occurred even in the Migden-Leno conflagration of 2008. It’s exactly this kind of raw power play that turns loyal local Democrats who have been plugging away on behalf of their candidate into cynics who end up walking away from Democratic politics. And I’m saying this as someone who definitely leans toward supporting the beneficiary of this cronyism.
Here’s the thing. Whether they find the practice acceptable or repugnant, all campaigns are going to play the hand they’re dealt. And when the CDP bylaws offer candidates the opportunity to exploit the delegate selection process, they have to take it; frankly, they can do no less.
But, you know what? It doesn’t have to be that way. We now have a CDP chair who campaigned on the issue of reform. John Burton has been giving a lot of lip service to “grassroots activists”; yet here is a perfect example where the local stakeholders are being pushed aside by the electeds who are stacking the deck against them. If Burton really intends to walk the talk, he might want to start by taking action to amend the bylaws so that electeds are required to appoint their delegates from within their district.
It may be too late for CA-10, but this kind of rigged endorsement process should never be allowed to happen again.
The primary election in California’s 10th Congressional District is set for September 1, with the general election on November 3. If nobody gets 50%+1 on September 1, the top vote-getters in each party advance to the general election, and given the orientation of the district, the top Democrat on September 1 will be the next Congressmember from CA-10.
The lieutenant governor, John Garamendi, is considered the early favorite to replace Ms. Tauscher. Mr. Garamendi, a Democrat who had considered running for governor next year, said he opted instead for Congress in large part because of the abbreviated campaign […]
Mr. Garamendi’s principal challengers among the Democrats, some polls show, are State Senator Mark James DeSaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan. Both were elected to their current posts last fall […]
The rest of the Democratic field is not as well known, though one candidate has attracted some national attention: Anthony Woods, a 28-year-old graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a veteran of the Iraq war who was awarded the Bronze Star for two tours of duty. Shortly after his return from combat, while at Harvard working toward his master’s degree, Captain Woods told military superiors that he is gay, resulting in an honorable discharge […]
Others in the Democratic field include Tiffany Attwood, a local planning commissioner and self-described “mom who plays soccer” – do not call her a soccer mom – and Adriel Hampton, a former reporter for The San Francisco Examiner who said he was entering politics because of a “Howard Beale moment,” referring to the fictional insane anchorman from the 1976 film “Network.”
We’re slowly starting to learn further details. While candidates don’t need to announce fundraising totals until July 15, Anthony Woods got the jump by announcing that he raised over $100,000 from 800 donors, which his campaign reports as twice as many as the number of donors John Garamendi announced a week earlier. He’s pushing his online efforts:
Woods’ campaign is also leading his CD 10 competitors in online fundraising and online organizing. According to ActBlue.com, Woods is far outpacing the two other Sacramento politicians in the race-State Senator Mark Desaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan-in internet fundraising, and Woods has organized more supporters on Facebook (more than 4,700) than every other CD 10 candidate combined.
Woods has captured some national attention, particularly in the blogosphere, and we’ll see if that translates to a quick-sprint campaign. John Garamendi seems not to think so:
Garamendi said it’s a three-way race, and he’s not counting Woods as a top-tier candidate: “He’s a serious young man that’s capable, and he’s got a national issue and a good story to go with it. And that’s to his benefit.”
But he said Woods is similar to the half-dozen or so other confirmed or prospective candidates who lack a natural base for their campaigns: “Everybody regards me as the front-runner.”
To that end, Garamendi secured a local labor endorsement, from the Alameda County Central Labor Council. There’s a small patch of Alameda County in the district, particularly around Livermore. But the dynamic in the race thus far has been that Mark DeSaulnier locked up all the early local support, including Contra Costa County’s Labor Council, and Garamendi had roped in the national labor groups. The Lt. Governor getting local labor support helps him with manpower.
I hope to have much more on this race as it moves forward, including some discussions on the issues currently facing Congress.
…couple updates. I hadn’t realized that Garamendi announced a $300,000 haul for the last quarter about a week ago. Also, per babaloo in comments, the Alameda County Central Labor Council made a dual endorsement of Garamendi and DeSaulnier.
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:
(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.
• 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.
Well, this is interesting news: Steve Glazer, Gov. Brown’s top campaign strategist and a long time local politician in Orinda, is looking to replace the termed out Joan Buchanan.