As I mentioned last week, I made a trip out to Stockton yesterday.  The weather was beautiful, warm and sunny. It made for a nice day to walk a precinct. The CDP Rural Caucus couldn’t have chosen a nicer day.

I got to Stockton at around 10, after a gorgeous drive over the Altamont pass and through the sea of wind turbines (and the “Jesus Saves” cross burned into the side of a hill). It really is beautiful, when you see the hills with a smidge of foggy haze over them.  As I walked into the building, a former movie theater, you can see a few things. One, this wasn’t fancy. There wasn’t even a restroom, you had to use one at the sympathetic coffee shop next door.  There was insulation and old movie theater seats in the back room that was now housing a proliferation of lawn signs from local candidates.

And there are a lot of strong local candidates.  The event was designed to support Assembly candidates Huber and Eisenhut as well as State Senate candidate Lois Wolk. (Note: I do some work for Wolk’s campaign.) However, it went further than that. We had the CDP’s flyer with the Obama Highway picture that contained some pretty good recommendations for the props (except that the CDP couldn’t come to a recommendation on Prop 10…vote no on 10!) and a flyer for Stockton mayoral candidate Ann Johnston.  

I walked with CDP Rural Caucus Chair Jamie Beutler and Region 4 Chair Owen Jackman. Well, I’ll put “walk” in quotes there.  It’s weird, because for all I complain about the huge hills in SF, there are advantages to walking precincts here. Namely, everything is close. So, we drove around talking to voters. We were in a pretty mixed neighborhood, with a bunch of students from University of the Pacific as well as some working class families. Overall, the impresion of the voters we spoke to was very positive.

I was, once again, impressed with Alyson Huber. For a political newcomer, she has run a great campaign. While I might have tweaked a few tactics here and there, overall she has managed to stay competitive in a tough district.  In the next 8 days, she has a better shot than anybody has had in this district for a long time to put a Democrat in this seat.  Her opponent, Jack Sieglock, is a longtime politician. He’s been a city councilman, a supervisor, and generally hanging around GOP politics in the region for a while.  

At this point, Sieglock’s running a pretty negative campaign. (Even using a quote from the Calitics podcast out of context on a mailer). But all that’s just the name of the game in politics, but more troubling are all the lies.  Namely, Sieglock is alleging that Huber is some sort of McClintock-esque carpetbagger.  Trust me when I say that Huber is no McClintock, carpetbagger-wise or in any other stretch of the imagination.  Huber was born and raised in the Central Valley. She graduated from Lodi High School and attended Cal State, Chico before finishing up at Cornell. She attended one of our fine state law schools, Hastings, and now practices from her home in the Valley. Huber deserves respect for working her way up, and she should be the next Assembly member from AD-10.

It really was a great experience, and I topped it off with a stop in Tracy to stand at a street corner to oppose Prop 8.  We got a lot of great support, honking horns and the sort.  It was a great group that turned out, a lot of young newly energized Californians opposing the joke that is Prop 8.

Now that’s a beautiful day…