These are my recommendations on the candidates that I believe fellow Democrats (and non Democrats for non-partisan offices) should vote for in the June 2012 elections.  I’m providing brief explanations of my rationale here, but please click on each candidate’s name for my complete analysis of their merits.

Download my handy Printable Voting Guide to refer to when you vote.

Alameda County Democratic Central Committee – 18TH AD

Vote for 10
I’m running for this office with a slate of committed Democratic activists.

Pamela A. Drake
Jim Oddie
*Margarita Lacabe
Corina N. Lopez
*Robin Torello
Helena Straughter
Mario Juarez
Diana Prola
Linda Perry
Howard Egerman

Alternative: skip one of the above candidates without an * and vote for Michael Katz (my husband)

US Senator: David Alex Levitt

Dianne Feinstein has a terrible record protecting human rights and civil liberties.  Levitt, a computer scientist and former member of the MIT Media Lab, is intelligent, liberal and solidly anti-war.

US Representative: Barbara Lee

She’s the most progressive member of Congress, and the strongest voice for human rights and peace.

State Senator: Loni Hancock

A good progressive, plus she’s running unopposed.

Member of the State Assembly: Abel Guillen OR Rob Bonta

I still haven’t decided.  Guillen is more progressive, but lacks maturity as a candidate.  Bonta is solid and experienced, but has Perata’s support plus seems to be too centered on the problems of municipalities, not the state as a whole.

Judge: Tara M. Flanagan

She’s smart and a good legal analyst.

School Board: Geraldine Sonobe

She has a lot of first hand experience in education plus she’s shown a commitment to take her position on the Board seriously.

Prop 28: YES

We need more stability in both houses of the Legislature.  Plus, by allowing legislators to complete 12 years in one house, they will be relieved of some fundraising pressures and will make them less beholden to contributors and lobbyists.

Prop 29: NO

Prop 29 is a regressive use tax that will hit low income people the most – as they are more likely to smoke.  Only a small percentage of the funds collected by this tax will go intro programs to help smokers stop.

There are two exceptions to this, however.  You can only vote for Presidential candidates for the party you are registered under.  That means that if you really don’t like Barack Obama, you don’t get to vote for Green candidate Roseanne Barr instead (at least, not in June).  And  you don’t get to vote for County Central Committee members from other parties.  Now,  I can imagine that it could be great fun for Democrats in the Bay Area to try to take over the local Republican party, but they still can’t do that, at least without changing party registration.

All of this is to say that if you are a Democrat – but only a Democrat – and you live in San Leandro, Alameda and most of Oakland (Assembly District 18) you get to vote for me for the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee (ACDCC).  You also get to vote for nine other of the nineteen candidates in the ballot.  I am running as part of a slate (see below) and I’m asking that you vote for all the candidates on that slate.  Of course, you can pick and choose as well

The ACDCC is the body that sets policy for the Democratic party in Alameda County.  It endorses candidates and propositions, works to get them elected or passed,  issues resolutions and presses its issues on the State party.  Its members are Democratic activists, who work on a myriad of issues at the local level.  All the members are elected from the different Assembly districts that fall in Alameda county.

This year, the elections for the AD18 members (us) has become quite interesting.  Oakland Councilman and power house Ignacio De La Fuente is running a slate of close associates, purportedly to take over the ACDCC.  In response, the incumbents (including me) have put out their own slate.  Two or three candidates have been slateless.

Marga’s Slate

While the candidates on this slate are all quite progressive, they don’t all share the same political vision.  Some of these candidates, for example, admire Obama just as much as I disapprove of him.  However, in my estimation they are all people with integrity, who want what’s best for the country, the state and the party.

Margarita Lacabe.  Yours truly.   I’m a international human rights activist, dealing mostly with issues of truth, justice and memory in Latin America.  I’m also a local community activist in San Leandro and I want to help steer the Democratic Party into one that can challenge those within the party that do not have a clear commitment to human rights and civil liberties.

Robin Torello.  Robin is the current chair of the ACDCC and the ONE person that needs to be re-elected for our local party to function.    Robin has been a Democratic activist since she moved to the Bay Area ages ago.  I’ve never seen someone so committed both to the party, and to the ideals that it represents.    She doesn’t receive compensation as Chair of the local party, but she spends countless ours in administration, fundraising, volunteer support, helping candidates, etc. etc. etc.  Honestly, I don’t know anyone else even wants to try to do her job, much less would be able to do so with any competence.  If you vote for ONE person in the slate, make sure it’s Robin.

Diana Prola.  Diana is a retired teacher and principal and a current member of the San Leandro School Board.  She’s been a party activist for years, has worked in countless campaigns, and has a real concern for the community.  What I value most about her is how much of an independent thinker she is, and how she will understand the consequences of issues in ways that I haven’t seen.

Pamela Drake.  Pamela is another long-time Democratic activist.  She is new to the Committee and I’m really hoping she will be elected.  I have only met her a few times, but I’ve been reading her blog about Oakland, and I’m blown away by the combination of progressive ideals and ethical pragmatism that she displays.  I encourage you, in particular, to read her entries about the Occupy Movement.

Corina Lopez.  Corina is new to Democratic activism, but I’m pretty sure she’s here to stay.  After serving as president of her neighborhood association, she stepped up and ran for City Council here in San Leandro in 2010.  Corina is yet another instance of the “American story”.  She grew up as the child of immigrant farm workers in Soledad.  She did well – very well – and got into Princeton, later became a financial analyst and finally started her own technology business with her husband.  Her commitment, however, is to her community, and I think she has a long political career ahead of her.

Howard Egerman.  Howard has been a Democratic activist since he turned 18, he was even elected as a delegate for Robert Kennedy the day of his assassination.  He is a federal employee, and a labor activist.

Linda Perry.  Linda Perry has been a Democratic activist since High School (or at least, so I’m told).  She was in the San Leandro School Board and City Council and has been the ACDCC treasurer for years.

Mario Juarez.  Mario is another Oaklander, with a profound commitment to his community.  He’s a very successful realtor, but he’s committed to stay in the part of Fruitvale where he lives, to make it be a safe place to live for everyone.  He’s run for Oakland City Council before, and I’m sure he will again.   Our views don’t always coincide – but then again, I live in the mostly safe San Leandro – but I admire the fire in his belly and his commitment to make his part of town safe.

Helena Straughter.  I’ll come out and say it, Helena is an Obama supporter – and, as a human rights activist, I’m anything but -, but I’m also in awe about the fire in her belly and her commitment to the party.  Whenever there is a party function, whenever there is a door to be knocked on, there is Helena.  She’s been an associate member of the ACDCC for years, I hope this time she finally gets elected.

Jim Oddie.  Jim is the lone representative of the City of Alameda at the ACDCC.  He’s a Democratic activist over there, very involved in local campaigns (he’s currently helping Rob Bonta get elected to the Assembly).  He’s a lawyer, and I mostly like lawyers (at least, run of the mill, intelligent, liberal lawyers) because we speak the same language.  So yep, I want him elected

 The Slate-less

Three people are running for election without the “benefit” of a slate.  They are:

Bernard Ashcraft.  Bernard is a very well respected leader in the African American community.  We tapped him for running for Surlene Grant’s seat back in 2008, but he had too many other commitments at the time.  He hasn’t been active in Democratic politics in a while, but I am sure he will bring an experienced perspective to the committee.

Michael Katz. Yep, it’s my Mike Katz.  For the un-initiated he is my husband.  He’s been a member of the San Leandro School Board for six years, we pretty much share the same political ideology but he’s much nicer, more respectful, non-judgmental, non-confrontantional and likable.  This is why I married him, rather than myself

Joe Macaluso.  He’s a newly appointed associate member, I believe.  I know he works as city auditor or something of the sort for the City of Oakland, but I know nothing else about him.  I met him once, he seemed nice.

The Ignacio de la Fuente Slate

Ignacio De La Fuente.  The man himself.  He is a powerful Oakland city council member with Mayoral ambitions.  I haven’t met him but I’ve heard that he started as a community activist wanting to improve life for his constituents, and slowly he was swallowed by the dark side.  Leaving Star Wars aside, in addition to my practical fears that he’ll actually take over the local Democratic Party and destroy it, I’m bothered by the many corruption allegations that plague him. 

Claudia Burgos.  She is a staff member for De La Fuente.

Winnie Anderson.  Winnie is Abel Guillen’s campaign manager.  She was recruited to run for the ACDCC by De La Fuente, who is also a supporter of Abel’s.  I like Winnie, but, as I’ve written before, I find this move politically troublesome.

Monique Rivera is a business manager who first ran for BART board in 2010 with the support of De La Fuente.

Mónica Tell is a former staffer of Don Perata, a close ally of De La Fuente.

Sandra Johnson.  I don’t really know anything about Sandra Johnson, I don’t believe I’ve ever come across her at any Democratic functions, but I believe she was recruited by De La Fuente to run on his slate.

De La Fuente is also running a couple of other candidates in a different district – he wasn’t careful enough to notice where the lines were drawn after redistricting took place in 2011.

Remember, you get to vote for 10 of the 19 candidates, so make your vote count!

Joel Young

He is petty, lacks ideas and beat up his ex-girlfriend.  Why is he running?

Joel  Young was the first candidate for Assembly to reach out to me last year  Until then, I hadn’t really thought much about who was running.  I didn’t know anything about Young, so I did what I’d do before meeting anyone: I googled him.   Young can only hope that voters don’t take that step.  If they do, they will come across story after story about Young’s “altercation” with a former girlfriend, one that left her with injuries to her face and neck deemed consistent with domestic violence.  The story is pretty sordid.  The woman walked into Young’s apartment and found him in bed with another woman.  She yelled and slapped him.  She says he responded by slapping her forcefully and cranking her head on the bed repeatedly.  He says it was self-defense.  According to a sworn statement by the emergency room physician’s assistant who saw her, her injuries were consistent with domestic violence and not self-defense.  Young is a former football player, his ex-girlfriend is 5’2″ and weighs 120 lbs.

When Mike and I met with Young, the story about the extent of her injuries had not yet appeared.  At that point I was prone to see it as a “he said/she said” sort of thing.  I was willing to give Young the benefit of the doubt, and focus on his merits as an Assembly candidate.  I was not impressed.

The first issue had to do with his platform, at the time it was: jobs, education and the environment.  The problem is that that’s everyone’s platform and Young had nothing original to say about those issues, no new solutions to offer.   It sounded to me like these were issues he’d chosen for their appeal to voters and he was reciting a script when talking about them.  I didn’t feel he had any passion for them, or really, for anything, perhaps other than getting elected.  This impression was solidified at a recent candidates’ forum where Young answered almost every question by repeating the mantra “jobs, jobs, jobs” – but never once intimating how he would create more jobs in this economy.

During our meeting, I brought up the issue of the domestic violence allegations.  He was insistent that the woman in question had never been his girlfriend, just someone he casually dated and had broken up with.  He said it was she who beat him, he was just covering himself against her attacks.   Not having read about the hospital records, that seemed plausible.  But then Young said her allegations were politically motivated – which made much less sense.

I let Joel know that I am a human rights activist and that my biggest concern is about protecting civil liberties.  This brought the conversation to the issue of freedom of expression and Joel’s conviction that we should do away with anonymity on the internet.  You see, the story about the domestic violence incident was “broken” by indybay and was not signed.  Joel saw that as reason enough to do away with the first amendment protections on anonymous speech.  I tried to convince him otherwise, explain to him the importance of anonymous speech, the risks that victims and whistleblowers experience if they are forced to reveal their identities.  He didn’t get, he wouldn’t get it, what happened to him was the only thing that mattered.

I’m sure that it will come as no surprise that I will not support someone who is willing to restrict freedom of speech.  But I also will not support someone who will use his power as a legislator to protect his own interests, who puts pettiness ahead of public policy, who see himself as more important than the people he represents.  I won’t support someone who has no principles.

After the scandal, Joel Young lost the support of many of his backers.  He was seen as the heir apparent of termed-out Assemblyman Sandré Swanson, but Swanson quickly distanced himself from Young.  Kathy Neal, another prominent supporter, was so appalled by Young’s behavior that she almost threw her hat into the Assembly race.  His prodigious fundraising, slowed down significantly.  But Young still retains a lot of support from within the African American community and parts of Labor.  Sharon Cornu, the former Secretary-Treasurer at the Alameda Labor Council, has been particularly effective in cajoling endorsements for Young from labor unions and activists.

The issue of the scandal, moreover, has not yet come up in the campaign.  Neither Bonta nor Guillen have brought it up in their literature – though surely they will if Young makes it past June.  The media hasn’t put much of an emphasis on it – though Young’s most recent mishap, when he threatened and spat on a legislative aid, was covered briefly by the Oakland Tribune.

Needless to say, I recommend that you do not vote for Joel  Young.  Rob Bonta and Abel Guillen are by far better choices, and my bet is that they also are much less likely to end up in jail.

Abel Guillen

Abel Guillen has charisma, energy and optimism – but is he mature enough for Sacramento?

When you meet Abel Guillen, and get past his physical presence (Abel is a big guy), you cannot but feel at ease with him.  He is friendly, smart, empathetic – and real.  The latter is something you don’t find often in politics:  people who don’t hide themselves behind facades or carefully sculpted images.  To use the Bush-age phrase, Abel is someone you’d definitely like to have a beer (and some nachos) with.  I can’t really say the same thing about either of his opponents.

Abel’s genuineness extends to his ideals and his agenda.  He’d be your typical grass root progressive, if such thing existed any more.  His belief in a more equitable society, in education as the “ticket out” of poverty, but also the cornerstone of a democracy, harkens to a time before the Democratic party lost its idealism and commitment to justice in all its forms.   Abel wants to create a better California from the ground up.  Education, healthcare and social services are essential; children who are malnourished, sick and uneducated will not only fail to accomplish their own potential as human beings, but might become a burden on society.   The nurses and teachers support him because they see him as the most likely candidate to fight for these services – and I’d even say, the most likely candidate to fight for anything, period.  Abel is a fighter, he is in his mid-thirties and has won quite a few battles, he still has hope.

I had already endorsed Rob Bonta when Abel called last January and asked to meet with me.   Abel had not answered my request for a meeting back in the Fall, when I was interviewing all the candidates. I’d figured, if a candidate doesn’t want to make an effort to meet with me, he doesn’t really want or deserve my endorsement.  Plus I was a bit suspicious of Abel to begin with.  The pictures of him on his website made him look arrogant; he is not married or has children, which for me is a big minus.  Still, my friend Jim Prola kept telling me that Abel was the candidate for me, that he was the closest to my political beliefs and that I should meet him.  So I did.  His hope and optimism won me over.

If you’ve been following my blog, you probably know that I have become disenchanted with politics, and the possibilities of real change.  I the last six years, I worked on the campaigns of several School Board members, the Mayor and a council member, hoping that if we just had the right people in office they’d bring change.  None of them did, it’s all more politics as usual with different suits.  Nationally, things are even worse.  I will admit that I never drank Obama’s kool-aid, but for a few moments I dared, perhaps, to hope.  Then Obama made such a mockery of that word that I thought my hope would be buried forever.  And now comes Abel and maybe, just maybe, he’s rekindling it.

I think Abel has hope, I think he believes things can be better.  He, himself, is the son of poor immigrants.  His parents came from Mexico, his dad worked his way from a dishwasher to a pastry chef in a hotel, his mom became a cook.  He grew up in the Mission and saw friends and acquaintances fall victim to violence, but he persevered, was lucky enough to get the right teachers and mentors, and went on to graduate from Berkeley.  His goal, he told me, was to “do good, but also do well,” anything else would be a betrayal of his family and their dreams.  I think that is exactly the philosophy we should instill on our children.  Abel got a job with a financial company helping school districts pass bonds, it’s a good job, he does well, but by helping schools he’s also doing good.  His work as a trustee at the Peralta Community Colleges board is yet another instance, he’s probably the most engaged trustee I’ve ever seen.

I have high hopes for Abel if he gets elected to the Assembly.  He has some very innovative ideas that he’ll be able to push directly.  One that has my full heart support is that of creating a state bank.  A bank that is not driven by profit could do much good and definitely much less bad than one that is.  It would assure that any revenue was re-invested in the state, it would make it easier for small businesses to have access to credit and could help all consumers to not be taken in by ridiculous bank fees.  I do hope that if Abel is not elected, whoever is will take this idea on.  But it’s exactly this type of bold ideas that make me excited about Abel.

I do, however, also have a couple of concerns.  My main one has to do about how he’s ran his campaign.  Not following up and meeting with me back in the fall was a basic mistake – whether I have any influence with voters through my blog is debatable, but as a member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee (ACDCC) I do get to vote on which candidates the party should endorse.  But there have been many other mistakes – from not getting a good photographer to do his pictures (he still has that picture with his arrogant smirk on his website), to having badly designed mailers, to not following up with people who were willing to host events or do volunteer work for him, etc. etc.

Just as problematic is the fact that his campaign manager, Winnie Anderson, decided to run for the ACDCC this June.  Anderson was recruited to run by Ignacio De La Fuente, an Oakland City Council member who is trying to take over the party.   I think any casual political observer would see how having your campaign manager take the side of someone who is trying to subvert the party, and have her run against some of your supporters (I, for example, am also running for re-election to the ACDCC) is not a good move.  Indeed, it’s almost a guaranteed move to lose support within the party.  I’m not personally bothered that Anderson is running against me, 19 people are running for 10 positions, but this shows such a lack of judgment by Abel that it makes me question whether he’s politically mature enough to go to the Assembly.

All that said, the choice for me is really between Bonta and Guillen.  I’ll be honest and tell you that I have yet not decided who I shall vote for.  I think, however, that either is an excellent choice.

Just got my first mailer from Rob Bonta, after getting four or five from Abel J. Guillen.  And for election junkies, here is my analysis   I’ll post pictures of the mailers after I scan them.

Bonta made a bad move by 1) having his mailers delivered after Guillen’s and 2) having them be very similar colors.  Guillen’s is more purplish, but they are too alike.  That means that after so much stuff from Guillen, I almost didn’t look at Bonta’s and just assumed it was another piece from Guillen.

Guillen gets brownie points for having gotten his first mailer out first, but loses them for having sent out so many in such a short period of time.  Granted, one of them is not from his campaign but from the Nurses association, but it’s so similar in look to the other ones that you wouldn’t be able to tell.  Four mailers make him look desperate and begin to make me wonder about his concern for the environment.   I think I’m going to scream if I get another mailer from him with my absentee ballot!

Guillen’s mailers wouldn’t be so annoying (and ineffective) if it wasn’t for the fact that they are too similar.  Two of them (granted, one is a walking piece but it was dropped in my mailbox) feature the exact same photograph of him.  Unfortunately, it’s not even a good photograph.  It includes too much of his body and given that he’s a big guy, that takes some attention away from his face.  Even worse is that the picture was taken in the sun so he’s squinting.  When you are hoping that people trust you, it’s actually important to have them be able to see your eyes.

But the similarity in the look of the mailers also implies a similarity in the message – so there is no incentive, even for an engaged voter, to look carefully at more than one of them, specially as they have nothing that visually grab you.

And even bigger sin, however, is the fact that Abel’s mailers hide his name.  The most important part of any campaign is to have voters remember your name (and hopefully in a good way).  Expert say that they need to see your name at least five times for it to stick in their minds.  That means that the first rule for a mailer is: have the name of the candidate prominently displayed on the first page.  And that means that it should be in larger letters and a different font than anything else on the mailer.  I truly don’t understand how Abel could have missed something so basic.   (Now, this rule can be broken when you make a mailer so compelling that people actually turn the page and/or read it – but a mere picture of the candidate won’t accomplish that).

I wish I didn’t have anything more to criticize, but Abel’s mailers also need to be faulted for their design and content.  Abel’s first mailer was an 8 1/2 by 11, double page affair.  Inside it had two photographs (including one of just himself, squiting, again) and so much text, in so many different fonts and so many different sections of the page (10 in addition to his logo) that makes it too busy and a nightmare to read.  Indeed, I had to force myself to read it, and couldn’t even do it on my first try.  I just wanted to close my eyes and run away from it.

His second double-paged mailer was slightly better.  It has a nice picture of a beautiful African-American professor (the race matters here, as Abel is trying to show that he has support from all demographics), but the name issue remains.  While the text inside is better organized (less prone to give me a headache), there is way too much of it.  He has four paragraphs about himself and five points on his accomplishments, plus a quote from a newspaper.  Again, I love Abel but even I will not read so much stuff.

The two postcards I’ve gotten from him are better in that they at least have less text but he seems to be unaware of the rule that 1) you should have only three items per mailer (that’s as much as a reader is willing to look at and remember) and 2) you shouldn’t have long paragraphs.  Candidates should remember that people get their mailers along with their mail – which means they are flipping through it and unless for some reason they grab them, they won’t do much more than glance at them.

And that may actually be a good thing – for the content on Guillen’s mailers is also repetitious.  He mostly talks about what he has accomplished in the Peralta Board, which would be great if he was running for re-election, but he’s running for Assembly.  If he’s going to talk about accomplishments, he needs to explicitly divorce at least some of them from the Board.

Now, I’ve only received that one postcard from Rob Bonta, so it may not be fair to compare him to Guillen yet.  After all, his mailers to be may be just atrocious.  But Bonta does several things right on this postcard.    First of all, his name is prominent on both sides of the postcard.  It’s in the style of his lawn sign (assuming he has one), which I wonder if is a trend our graphic designer started in Mike’s campaign or existed before that.  I might have liked the sign to be a bit larger, though.  Bonta should remember older people vote more and some of us can see less and less.

I also wish the picture of hims with his family – all smiling at an ice cream parlor – would be larger.  Now, I understand they had space limitations, but a good photo editor would have been able to delete the space between him and his younger children and crop the edges of the picture some more and thus be able to make their faces more prominent (remember those older people with bad eyesight).    On the plus side, the picture is wonderful.  It’s a perfect setting, it emphasizes the fact that he is a family man and his children and wife are just beautiful so it’s a pleasure to look at them (yeah, I think it’s horrible that beautiful people grab more attention, but it’s a fact of life).

The other side of the mailer is OK.  It has two pictures of him.  A larger one with firefighters, which is good, and another one sitting with a bunch of kids – which, again, is too small for me to see without effort.  He is smart and keeps to the rule of three, listing three accomplishments in which he bolds just a few words (so people can glance at them and get the point) and with less excessive text.  I do think, however, that the font should have been darker and the margins had a brighter color that would draw me more to that side.  Content wise, one of his three points wasn’t clearly linked to his work as Vice Mayor and showed benefits for people beyond his current stakeholders.

I am curious to see if anyone is interested on this type of  campaign analysis, so I would appreciate if you let me know by commenting, or at least “liking” or “sharing” this article on Facebook.  Thanks!