Some people have asked me for more background information about my campaign for the California State Senate District 29 seat, for which I'm running against Republican Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff. One question I've gotten, which I'm sure is meant in the nicest possible way, is -- "is it real"? Rather than answer that question myself, I'll let the Sacramento reporter for the right-leaning-libertarian local paper, the Orange County Register, explain it for me:
In the 29th state Senate District, Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar, faces off against workers' rights attorney Greg Diamond, a Democrat from Brea. The district covers Cypress, Fullerton, La Habra, Brea, Placentia, Yorba Linda and parts of Anaheim and Buena Park as well as pieces of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Republicans hold a 6 percentage point advantage in voter registration in the district.
...
Democrat Greg Diamond is an Occupy movement activist who claims roots in Orange County. He said he attended junior high and high school in Huntington Beach before eventually heading out East for graduate degrees in law and psychology, and to teach and work.
Today, in addition to representing plaintiffs in workplace harassment or discrimination cases, Diamond works as a contributing editor to the Orange Juice blog and serves as "primary civic liaison" for Occupy Orange County. Diamond said he has extensive experience in Democratic politics having worked for several campaigns, including as the Orange County Co-coordinator for Jerry Brown's gubernatorial campaign in 2010. Last year, Diamond joined the Orange County Democratic Party Central Committee and was elected to Executive Board. As of the last filing deadline, Diamond has raised less than $25,000.
"The fact that I'm running on an Occupy platform should be interesting to people because it goes beyond the standard Democratic platform, although I do believe they are compatible," said Diamond, who is interested in rooting out legal corruption and obstructionism in Sacramento. "To me, Occupy is very much a call to arms," he said.
So yes -- it's real and it's serious. Even getting those three paragraphs in front of tens of thousands of readers is a small victory. But while it's serious, it's also fun. I'll explain to you what I'm up to -- but first, below the gnocchi, I made you a little video about doing a photo shoot. (Website, Facebook, and donation info will be at the end this time.)
It was an actual (though impromptu) photo shoot, by the way, prompted by the fact that, for the first time in years, I had overdressed for an event. One doesn't want to let that sort of thing go to waste! This is probably the best shot we got:
OK, I admit that we were not using the best camera, just my iPhone. It looks better
when it's smaller.
And ... I think that that will be enough frivolity for the day. Now that I've driven off anyone who takes politics so seriously that they lose their sense of humor, I can tell the rest of you what's really going on.
The primary election will be on June 5, sixteen days from today. It's what's called a "top two" primary, the first one California has had in a statewide election since the 1950s. I'm the only Democrat running, my opponent is the only Republican running, and there are no third-party candidates, so in the old days this would have been extremely boring. Now, it's a little bit more exciting because he and I are on the same ballot -- meaning that every voter is going to make the same choice in June as they will in November. In effect, the state is running a nice big single-question public opinion poll for me.
By mid-August at the latest I'll be able to break the results down by precinct, to see where I'm strongest, where I'm weakest, and which Democrats and DTS voters actually came out to vote. (Given enough time, I'd call every last one of them myself. But realistically, I think I'll need some help.)
What you can do. If you're from out of the area and wonder what you could do to help, here's a possibility: you can get some postcards and handwrite and mail messages to constituents here. I like the personal touch. (More on that later!)
My role among candidates this year is twofold. First, I am supposed to make Bob Huff's life miserable. Luckily, he's giving me lots of material to work with!
As Senate Minority Leader, his job is to be snotty about the Governor and Democratic legislative majorities and to be disingenuous about what should be done about our problems. You can see his shtick here and especially on the YouTube page you'll see when you click here. (No, I'm not going to embed it. Shudder.) One example I like is from a few weeks ago when he went after the Governor for not going after a supposedly painless plan to fund education: sell advertising space on school buses. I doubt his claims of big budget payoffs here, but it's interesting to see the lengths to which he'd go just to keep the wealthy from paying even a small extra amount in taxes.)
I expect that Huff will eventually realize that he can call for kids to wear school uniforms -- but that that uniforms can be jumpsuits with logos on them like NASCAR cars. Maybe he could propose that we charge people more to have their logo put onto the jumpsuit of one of the cool kids! And really, kids have lots of forehead space -- can't they wear stickers on them during the school day? After all, you can't put a price on dignity -- but Huff doesn't distinguish between what is valueless and what is priceless.
What you can do: I'd like research done on each of the videos I can find for him. Part of the task is identifying the claims and assertions he makes ; part of the task is evaluating them; part of the task is crafting responses to them; part of the task is getting those responses out. The good part of this is that when we can rebut Huff, we're rebutting the argument of the California Republican Party generally, because all he's generally doing is regurgitating their talking points.
Ideally, my responses to Huff's video comments -- which I plan to video myself, will come out soon after his, and will point out the lies and misleading statements in memorable style and good humor.
California is going to have both some great and some terrible propositions on the ballot this year. An example of the former is our Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones's plan to give him the badly needed ability to limit the size of health insurance premium increases. An example of the latter is corporations plan to prevent both unions and corporations from using money taken out of paychecks for politician purposes -- which sounds pretty evenhanded until you realize that unions take money out of people's paychecks for political purposes, and corporations do not so this is a pure attempt to slant the playing field: the equivalent of our pushing an initiative to prevent political activity from any organization that has a limited liability corporate structure. The difference is: we wouldn't do that.
This is long enough, so I'm not even getting into the Occupy perspective that (as you can see) will be a big part of my campaign. I'm still working on campaign materials, but I'll plan to roll them out after the primary, as part of a slow move through the district where I try to wake people up to the kind of tool of the 1% than my opponent is. If you can support me with time and effort, or financially, please let me know either here or through my website or Facebook page!
[A reminder: the "♦" at the front of the title means that this is a diary for my campaign for State Senate, CA-SD-29. Again, the announcement is here. You can like my Facebook page here. You can donate here (or write me for my campaign's mailing address). If you want to be rickrolled, you can click this link.]