Laura gave a nice candidate speech. She showed us her new campaign newsletter/flier that her daughter had made, and went over the main points on it biefly. One side talks about the need to reform Prop. 13, and the other about California's need for a State Bank to fix the way money works here. She said that for anybody that wanted a stack of 100 of them to share with friends and neighbors she had it at the back table. (I got a stack of the things. If you want one let me know the address to send it to.)

Deacon started with "This campaign started on Skid Row, and it's going to end on Skid Row." He wanted to explain something about homelessness to us, but he only had ten minutes on the stage for everything, and that would take an hour by itself. Then he explained something about how he isn't there to challenge Laura, but rather using the Green Party candidate status as a pulpit to make some statement to the leadership within the Black Church. He also talked about how he was looking forward to working with us to get a real rainbow crowd to show up for our speak-a-thon in the park in a couple of months.

     

During Q&A my question was "Can you guys pose for a picture together?" As you can see, they did a good job.

Paul Alan is our last minute candidate for Attorney General. He explained that he is a San Diego based water rights attourney whe has done a lot of work with the Sierra Club. In the distant past he spent some time working as a prosecutor. Since deciding to run he has put most of his effort into getting his name on the ballot, but he expects to have a website and a flier in a week or two.

Greg Jan read a letter sent by another candidate that couldn't be there.

     

Carol Wolman has worked for many years as a psychiatrist. She has also spent a lot of time working in coalition with other groups like the Longhouse Coalition to put forth a progressive platform that we can move forward together on. The Congressional District she is running in covers the northern coastal part of California. She needs all the help we can give her to take on the current incumbent, an awful Republican.

Duane Roberts is a Car Free Orange County Green Party U. S. Senate Candidate. He has a large and cheerful personality. He ran his own newspaper for a few years. In earlier election cycles he helped other Candidates, and he is hoping to build on that work in this campaign. He expects to do some fun viral campaign strategies. He gave us an example of an email he sent out that ended up in the LA Times getting thousands of emails on a subject.

  

Jane Rands may be the only candidate challenging the guy that just won the special election a couple of months ago in a safe Republican district.

Dave Heller decided to run against Barbara Lee when he realized there was nothing progressive about one of her votes a few years ago. He was a write in two years ago, but now he is on the ballot.