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Sun endorsements! Everything you’ve wanted to know about the June 8 election but were afraid to ask… “The speaker speaks, but the truth still leaks—where even Richard Nixon has got soul” —Neil Young, “The Campaigner” We’ll excuse Mr. Young for such deleterious cynicism, having written that line through the foggy haze of post-Watergate political misanthropy. But for the notion that his words ring as true as ever today there’s simply no excuse. This spring campaign season—supposedly the quiet election breeze before the big November storm—has been contentious, misleading and at times downright nasty. In other words, a typical spectacle for the Marin electorate. For our June 2010 endorsements, we’re sticking to the biggies at the state and national levels, while hitting pretty much all of the county campaigns (save for a couple of the hyper-local measures that we haven’t followed closely enough to offer a responsible opinion upon). Before we start, remember the words of George McGovern, who lost the 1972 presidential election to Nixon: “That wasn’t my mistake. That was the mistake of the voters.” To avoid similar mistakes, remember to clip out your Pacific Sun election guide on page 16 and bring it to the ballot box on June 8. Happy voting!
★ U.S. SENATE Barbara Boxer is seeking her fourth goround in the Senate and the former Pacific Sun reporter’s Democratic primary should be a breeze in advance of her toughest-ever campaign in the November general election. Her Democratic primary challengers are Brian Quintana, a wannabe socialite from L.A., and Robert “Mickey” Kaus, a blogger. The Republicans offer a far tighter contest with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore and former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell facing off. DeVore is easily the furthest to the right of the trio, appearing at Tea Party rallies and running on an anti-tax, anti-choice—but pro-drilling—platform. He’d be a disastrous choice for the Republican ticket. Similar to gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, Fiorina is a wealthy CEO with a poor voting record who developed an interest in public service only recently. Her first foray into campaigns came as an adviser on the McCain ’08 ticket, a poorly run show if there ever was one. Campbell is a pro-choice and pro-gay-rights moderate who served five terms in the House, earning respect from colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We recommend Barbara Boxer (D) and Tom Campbell (R).
★ U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, DISTRICT 6 Lynn Woolsey is pretty much a lock for another term in the House. No Democrats, Independents or Greens filed to challenge her and her Libertarian opponent, Joel Smolen, and Republican opponent, Michael Halliwell, didn’t put up much of a fight when they both ran against her in ’08. (Halliwell fared better, garnering 24 percent of the vote; Woolsey, meanwhile, was chosen on more than 70 percent of the ballots.) Halliwell, a crusader in the fight against breast cancer and a passionate 12 PACIFIC SUN MAY 14 - MAY 20, 2010
advocate of reapportionment, will probably pick up some ground in this anti-incumbent year, but he’s simply in the wrong district. Running against Halliwell in the Republican primary is Cotati resident Jim Judd, owner of a manufacturing business. According to his website, Judd believes he can help us “rekindle the beacon of liberty proclaiming, ‘America is good, America is great!’” Judd seems to be running for the Tea Party vote; he’s against Big Government, the healthcare bill, “ballooning taxes” (taxes have fallen for 95 percent of Americans since Obama dropped payroll taxes, we should note...) etc., etc. He’s a patriot who says “our nation teeters on the brink” since Obama took office. We endorse Lynn Woolsey (D) and Michael Halliwell (R).
★ GOVERNOR Jerry Brown’s decades-long transformation from our goofy cousin Moonbeam to our tough-talking Uncle Gerald was all but complete by the late ’90s when he was elected mayor of Oakland, moving politically to the center and governing the troubled city with tough talk and tough love. The 72-year-old Brown will sail smoothly past his six opponents in the Democratic primary and then basically run against his own past for a third term as governor in November. Out of the eight candidates on the Republican ballot, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman are the two contenders for the nod. Whitman’s run a nasty and record-breakingly expensive campaign, while billionaire Poizner has tried to paint her as a billionaire trying to buy her way into office—well, more of a billionaire than he, a former Silicon Valley CEO, is anyway. It’s a depressing state of affairs, indeed, when even the multimillionaires are priced out of politics.
From top left, Boxer, Brown, Poizner, Woolsey and Huffman.
Poizner, 53, found little success running for Assembly six years ago as a moderate Republican in favor of women’s choice, gay rights and the environment—so now he’s reinvented himself as an anti-gay-marriage, anti-choice immigration hardliner who has apologized for his earlier support of Prop. 39, which would’ve made it easier for voters to raise taxes in favor of school bonds. (A sad reversal, given his admirable support for education throughout his career.) The 53-year-old Whitman, meanwhile, has been so disinterested in politics for so long that she didn’t begin voting until 2002 (she claims that’s incorrect and she distinctly “remembers” voting once in 1984) and, according to the Sacramento Bee, wasn’t even registered as a Republican until 2007. Listening to her dodge questions from reporters borders on the painful (we recommend a YouTube search for her tete-a-tete with reporters at last year’s California Republican Party Convention). So far her strategy to improve her interview results has been to stop granting them. Whitman’s campaign platform has largely revolved around promises to “run the state like a business.” We seem to recall George W. Bush saying that a lot. California’s long-term fiscal and political crisis can be blamed on a lot of things—plummeting property values, a crippling anti-property tax attitude, shameless district gerrymandering, the list goes on. But the last time voters put a wealthy political neophyte (yes, that’s a reference to our current governor) at the helm of such a convoluted political structure, things went from bad to much worse. Whitman’s obvious lack of interest in politics and avoidance of answering tough questions really does make the charge that she’s a billionaire trying to buy her way
into office ring quite true. The better bet is that Poizner is running a disingenuous campaign to please the far-right base and would be a more thoughtful campaigner in the general election. Unlike Whitman, Poizner has dedicated his post-billionaire life to public service and wouldn’t be completely lost navigating California’s crippled governance structure. We recommend Jerry Brown (D) and Steve Poizner (R).
★ STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 6 Marketing consultant Robert Louis Stephens is running (barely) unopposed in the Republican primary for Assembly. We can’t find a campaign website for him and voterinformation sites don’t seem to have much to say about him either. One page credits him with writing the 19th-century literary classics Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If that turns out to be true, he’s got our vote. On the Democratic side, incumbent Jared Huffman of San Rafael is being challenged by producer-artist-caregiver Patrick Connally. In his first two terms in the Assembly, Huffman’s chaired the Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials as well as the Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee. The 46-year-old has authored and passed about 20 Assembly bills, more than half of them aimed at improving environmental standards (he was a director of the Marin Municipal Water District board for over a decade). Connally, 59, has said that Huffman’s been too weak on funding disability, senior services and public transportation (Huffman, we should point out, was one of the SMART campaign’s most vocal supporters). He also says that Huffman favors “minor” bills when he should be focusing on more ambitious legislation. Connally’s “minor bills” complaint is probably a reference to the wine labeling,