Tag Archives: Calitics endorsement

I Nominate Ron Shepston for Calitics Endorsement

(And if you’re in Southern California, YOU can also meet Ron Shepston at EITHER ORANGE COUNTY DRINKING LIBERALLY TONIGHT! Come to Rancho Santa Margarita at 7:00 PM and/or Santa Ana at 9:00 PM tonight, and meet the candidate! : ) – promoted by Andrew Davey (atdleft))

Yesterday, if you made your way to DailyKos, The Liberal OC, or right here to Calitics, you probably got the word that the blogosphere’s own Ron Shepston is running for Congress in California’s 42nd district against Dirty Gary Miller.  His campaign is being managed by DailyKos and Calitics poster Greg Diamond (aka Major Danby), and as you can see from his rollout yesterday Shepston’s starting out on the right foot.  He’s already hit on many of what I consider to be the most important elements of a campaign that’s insurgent and forward-thinking without abandoning everything good about traditional values and expectations.  So, for these and the other reasons I’ll dig into on flip, and in keeping with the newly established procedure for gaining Calitics endorsement, I nominate Ron Shepston to join Charlie Brown, Jerry McNerney and Mark Leno as an official Calitics Endorsed Candidate for 2008.

The Calitics endorsement process going forward will work like this (I’m sure with slight tweaks as necessary):

– A candidate can be nominated via diary by anyone, preferably with a bit of background on the candidate and why they would be deserving of consideration.  This diary will also be used as an opportunity for the Calitics community to pose questions for the candidate which would be relevant to determining if an endorsement is deserved.

– After questions have been suggested, an interview will be arranged with a member of the Calitics team in which the candidate will have the chance to respond to your questions and expand on what you may already know about them and their candidacy.

– The interview will be posted on Calitics for review by the general community who can then vote up or down on an official endorsement.  The community’s vote will count for 50% of the total and the Calitics Editorial Board will make up the remaining 50%.  A nominated candidate will need 60% of the overall vote to receive an endorsement and a spot on the Calitics ActBlue Page.

Confusing enough for you? Great. Now back to Ron.  Here at Calitics, we’ve been fortunate to have Ron as a diarist and commenter for quite some time, and the discourse has been better for it.  His stated goals are generally the sort that, just a few years ago, might have seemed rather humble, but now are desperately important.  “Defend the Constitution and the rule of law – while we can” he said yesterday.  Fighting for Democratic principles.  And no, it doesn’t hurt that he’s drawn on a number of impressive bloggers (thereisnospoon, Hekebolos, occams hatchet, clammyc, OrangeClouds115, atdnext, Shockwave, dday, vernonlee, theKK) to get the campaign rolling.

So this is our chance to get him talking about the issues.  I’ll be in Orange County tonight on a social call, and again over the weekend at which time, if we’ve gotten questions, I can hopefully sit Ron down and ask him your questions.  So how about it Calitics? The floor is open to you, ask whatever you need to ask in order to feel comfortable giving your endorsement.