Last night I attended a forum held by the Green Party. Not normally my type of thing, but I was invited by local activist and Green Party member Michael McCue.... and McCue has always been very fair in his local politics and campaigns. Even when he opposes you, he is willing to hear your side of things. I figured ... I can do that, too. The forum was lightly attended...only about 50 people showed up, but I consider that a big success for the Green Party, being as they are a small third party that doesn't win elections.
The first speaker up was this guy pictured above...I didn't catch his name. He's a Green. He went off on a long spiel about this ballot Measure H, where the Greens want to "get the money out of elections". Unfortunately for the Greens, they are living in a fantasy world. Money and power have always gone hand in hand for thousands of years. If this lunacy goes through, every shopping-cart pushing maniac will try to run for office simply to get their hands on government funds. The way it stands now, you have to raise a lot of money to cross a certain threshold to get funds. I would prefer no public funding.
The world is an unfair place. Wealthy people have bigger homes, drive better cars, and go to better schools. They also have an easier time winning elections. That's just part of life.
If you want to win, go out and raise more money. Don't ask voters to pay for your nonsense.
My good friend Joe Essavi was there to promote his Community College Board election. Good man. I support Joe 100%. I'll even give him some blog time in the next two weeks.
When the Greens called for the appearance of Paul Krekorian and Augusto Bisani, I immediately started to panic, fearing the presence of The Dark Lord. Luckily for me, Michael McCue was teasing the crowd. Krekorian was giving the Green Party his usual show of respect... the middle finger salute. He wasn't there.
Augusto Bisani did a nice job speaking and probably won a few more votes. His mailer to over 20,000 voters goes out this week. Go Augusto!
The forum was moderated by several people, including the talented Paul Hatfield of the Village to Village blog. A moderator named Cary admitted that he had donated to Stephen Box's campaign. Again... why do these forums choose people like this to be moderators? Was Judy Price unavailable? At least she is very open about her bias and her hypocrisy.
Before the forum, CD 4 candidate Stephen Box showed off a new technical toy. He had stickers that looked like bar codes and he showed how people could scan them with their cell phones and be taken right to his campaign website. Pretty cool. Box also announced he had qualified for matching funds! Now that he and Tomas O'Grady have both qualified, CD4 is becoming a very interesting race.
"Touchdown" Tommy La Bonge might have to find something else to talk about on the campaign trail other than obscure City trivia...
