Thursday, July 27, 2006

Moving On

I know I haven't been on here in a while... not that it really matters, no one reads this anyways... but still, I should give an update.

Since June, I have moved on with my life. Francine's loss on June 6 devastated me, but now I've come home to my native Orange County to help all the Democratic Congressional Candidates here. Will any of them win? Well, Loretta (47th) of course! Also I think Jim Brandt (46th) actually has a good chance of upsetting incumbent (psychotically radical right) Republican Dana Rohrabacher. Hopefully if this Democratic "wave" turns into a full tsunami this year, Florice Hoffman (40th) and Steve Young (48th) might be able to ride it into DC!

Of course, the main reason why we're finally seeing real campaigns in Orange County is because we want to begin rebuilding our party here. I'm now the Santa Ana Captain for Steve Young. I'm doing this because I want to reach out to my neighbors and personally engage them into the Democratic Party. I saw what happened to Francine Busby, and I don't want to see it happen again!

You might ask, "Whatever happened to Francine Busby?" Well, I can answer that now! As soon as Duke Cunningham resigned and the DCCC smelled blood in the water, they chose the 50th Congressional District as one of their target races. Now don't get me wrong... I appreciate that they did give the campaign much-needed money for a great field program. However, they also gave the campaign money to hire not-needed consultants. Of couse, later on they bypassed the campaign (when they legally maxed out the amount of money they could give to the campaign) and matched the sleazy negative ads the Republicans were putting on TV with their own sleazy negative ads! This, coupled with the negative ad wars between Westly and Angelides, drove down Democratic turnout on June 6. That, of course, meant a bitter death for our aspiration to send Francine to Washington.

Now I recognize the real problem we're facing with a top-down style of leadership in Washington that thinks that we can win elections by sending slick mailers and gnarly commercials. In reality, this tactic is simply turning off voters. In turn, this lower turnout is benefitting the Republicans.

Now I recognize that things need to change. That's why I want to be a part of it.

To be continued...