Tuesday: Special Election CA-37 (Long Beach/Compton)
Sat Jun 23, 2007 at 05:25:06 PM PDT
The election is almost on us, this Tuesday, and there has been shamefully little posted about this on the blogs.
Full disclosure: I've given assistance to the Peter Mathews campaign, so I am biased. Still, I think some people here might like to know what's been happening from my POV sorta close to the frontlines.
Their are eleven candidates in the open primary which is this Tuesday, June 26. Since this is an outrageously blue district, the winner of the Democratic primary will basically become our new US Congressperson to replace the late Juanita Millender McDonald, who died a few months ago from cancer.
There have been no real polls, so it's a guess about what is happening. I'll give you my impressions, though, based on the levels of campaign activity.
The Democrats that are putting the most serious effort into this, in my opinion, are Jenny Oropeza, Laura Richardson, and Peter Mathews.
There was a great deal of expectation for Juanita Millender-McDonald's daughter, Valerie McDonald. She is in the race, but has had almost no presence. I have not seen her at the two debates I have been to, and have received no emailings or calls from her campaign, so it seems perhaps to have imploded at some point.
Jenny Oropeza got the endorsement early on of the California Democratic Party. I have received a lot of fliers from her, and she has had some supporters at the debates. However, she is not a very impressive speaker or debater. A very nice, attractive person, otherwise. On the issue of the war, she, like the other candidates, are all anti-war, but she is the most squishy and boilerplate in her opposition. This is one reason I personally chose not to support her. The war is my biggest issue.
Peter Mathews came into this with the most grassroots support and pre-existing campaign operation because he has run for this seat before, challenging McDonald and getting more than 10,000 votes against her in the last primary. He is also supported by the PDA Progressive Democrats of America, and received press attention when he led a large PDA anti-war protest a while back. I voted for him then, too. His biggest advantage to his supporters has been accessibility. It's easy to reach him and talk to him about the issues, which was a big problem many of us had with Millender-McDonald when she was our Congresswoman. Mathews big issues are: Education, Impeaching Bush, and Getting out of Iraq. He is quite clear and unfuzzy about his. A week ago, I posted for him a diary, under his name but my account, which explained his rationale for impeachment hearings.
I have to give Laura Richardson credit for having the best campaign organization that I have seen. Her campaign people show up in numbers at events in suits and ties and look like they just came from a court appearance. Many fliers and campaign calls. A large part of her campaign has been based on the idea that CA-37 should remain an African-American district (numerous stories on this in the Long Beach Press Telegram and a diary on here about it too that somebody wrote, not me). It has been a really repulsive code-worded campaign that turned really negative this weekend, with campaign fliers attacking Oropeza personally. However, her claim to being the black candidate seems a little forced when you consider how many black candidates there are in this race. She was also publicly endorsed (against the rules) during a debate I attended, last week, by a Republican candidate, Bishop Guillory.
Robles is running a write-in campaign, and he seems to be putting a lot of effort into it, so it deserves some real mention. He is running on an environmental platform. Not being on the ballot in an eleven-way race has to make his position seem Quixotic, but that hasn't stopped the fliers and phone calls from coming in.
Based purely on fliers and phone calls, I would state that the 'serious' (however we define that, I don't know) candidates as Richardson, Oropeza, Mathews, and Robles. The others are making appearances at the debates but not buying air time or expending much money, from what I have seen.
I received a fake phone poll a few days ago, asking me which candidate I supported. It listed four: Robles (mentioned first), Oropeza, Richardson, and McDonald, or "Other.") The Mathews campaign commented to me that it was almost certainly a fake poll by Robles to increase his identification.
The buzz in the newspaper has been that it's between Richardson and Oropeza. I believe Mathews has a shot or I wouldn't still be pushing him. There have been no real polls, so it's a big question mark. However, if it really is between Richardson and Oropeza, I would guess that it would be Richardson because the Oropeza campaign's presence hasn't been all that impressive, and their fliers lacked the high professional quality of Richardson's. Still, Richardson is a creepy campaigner. If Robles wasn't a write-in, I would think that he might have a good chance, too.
Diary: "Peter Matthews: Why Impeachment Must Stay on the Table."
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