The main French Parliamentary elections are next Sunday the 10th, but the first round for the constituencies for French citizens living abroad takes place this weekend. This includes the 1st constituency for French citizens abroad, covering the US and Canada. They were having a hard time finding volunteers to run the polling places here in the Bay Area, so I ended up signing up to help, which will be interesting. I’ve been an election worker four times for US elections, so it’ll be interesting to compare the procedures.

Background: In 2012, French MPs were elected representing 11 constituencies of French citizens living abroad for the first time. These constituencies were created by Sarkozy’s government because they expected to win most of the seats — expats tend to wealthier and vote for the right. But this backfired because the Socialists chose better candidates and won most of the seats. This time around, Macron did extremely well with French citizens abroad (more than 50% in the first round in most of the constituencies) and so expect to pick up a bunch of these seats.  

For the 1st constituency (US/Canada) the Socialist candidate Corinne Narassiguin won the seat in 2012, but the election was invalidated because she violated campaign finance laws, and the UMP/Republican candidate Frederic Lefebvre won the re-run in 2013. The first round vote in 2017 in this constituency was 51% Macron, 24% Fillon. 

Here are the main candidates in 2017:

Frederic Lefebvre (LR/center-right): The incumbent, had previously served as a suppleant (replacement) for an MP from the Paris area following the 2007 election. He lost in 2012 because he was a carpetbagger (the winning Socialist candidate actually lived in the US), but by the re-run in 2013 Hollande was unpopular and so Lefebvre won easily. However, he’s now in a very pro-Macron constituency and so has been trying to portray himself as pro-Macron. His election material has a picture of him with Macron on the back and he’s saying he’s ‘of the right but progressive.’ 

Roland Lescure (LREM - Macronist): The actual Macron candidate, he quit his job as a pension fund investor in Montreal to work for Macron’s campaign. Seems to very into Macronism and so would be a pretty loyal MP to Macron if he wins. Has a big picture of Macron on his poster to clearly convey that.

Clementine Langlois (France Insoumise - Melenchonist): She’s an entrepreneur from Ottawa. Has Melenchon in big on her poster. 

Yan Chantrel (Socialist Party): He lives in Montreal and is elected to the ‘assembly of french citizens abroad,’ an official body I didn’t realize existed. Looks to be more on the left/Hamon wing of the socialist party, judging by his list of endorsements, though unlike Lescure or Langlois, he doesn’t have a big picture of his presidential candidate — Hamon is probably more of a drag than a boost at this point. Has been sending out emails since last summer, earlier and more than any of the other candidates, but it’s probably not enough to save him.

Then there are 9 other candidates, including some who are trying to play the ‘we’re actually interested in local issues’ card, but I don’t think they’ll do very well. 

Prediction: Unlike the presidential election, the parliamentary elections aren’t a top-2. Instead, all candidates who get at least 12.5% of registered voters get to the second round. However, turnout in the US/Canada will be low and only two candidates will make the second round. Most likely it’ll be Lescure (LREM) and Lefebvre (LR), with Lescure winning in the second round as the real Macron candidate.

The Golden Compass

Last year they announced that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials would be adapted into a new miniseries, because everything has to be a TV show nowadays. In fact, The Underground Railroad, which I read last month, is also being adapted into a miniseries, which, actually, I think will be interesting because the book has well-contained episodes and I think could have really striking visuals if adapted. In any case, I’d been thinking of re-reading the Pullman books since the adaptation was announced. So far I’ve reread the first book, the Golden Compass. 

I’ve always liked these books, but on the reread I was especially impressed by how well the book was written. It’s set in an alternate earth that’s pretty substantially different, and Pullman chooses to switch up terms (anbaric for electric, Muscovites for Russians, coal-silk for nylon), but he has absolute trust in the reader and never condescendingly explains how his world is set up or all the clever substitutions he came up with. Instead, he lets the reader discover the world as it unfolds and figure out the tricks on their own. For a kid’s book, this is impressive but also smart: as a fan of these books as a kid, I loved being able to put together the hints and also being taken seriously enough to leave those hints as hints. There are some infodumps, of course, mostly around what daemons are, but most of those are spaced out through the book, because Lyra is discovering them with us. But these explanations make sense — after the basic rules are set out at the start, the book dabbles out the further details as they come into the plot, and every bit is exciting because we want to know how the world works. In this book at least, the real explanations for what is happening remain elusive, but the outline is traced out enough to give a good idea of where the series is headed. And the world building engages the reader emotionally, setting them up for the proper emotional impact in the sequels.

The writing is strong beyond just the way the world building is conveyed. Pullman has a good sense of character and setting description. The characters are all distinctive — and he does a good job of conveying their complex motivations, but does so lightly, without defining any character too tightly. The central conflict set up appears to be simply good vs evil for most of the book, but at the end is revealed to be multipolar, with different groups acting perpendicularly to each other, some of which we understand, and some of which we don’t. This is complex, let alone for a children’s book. The characters’ positioning among the different factions is uncertain, because they are themselves uncertain. But Lyra acts as the moral center: when Lee Scoresby asks Serafina Pekkala, “would you mind telling me whose side I’m on in this invisible war?” she answers “We are both on Lyra’s side.” Lyra tries to find her own moral path among all the adults trying to use and control her. 

Best of all, there aren’t any big villain monologues about how they can see the truth about the world no one else can’t, even though a few characters are well-positioned to do so. 

I think some of this good writing will be less crisp in the later books, where Pullman’s ambition means he spends more time explaining what his series is about, and there are a few too many characters to keep them all so sharply drawn in just a few paragraphs, but in the first book at least the balance of simplicity and hinting at hidden complexities is really on point. I think I’ve realized this is one of the things I really like in fiction: good writing that lets the reader understand the implications and subtexts in the story. Pullman does this partially through the behavior of the daemons, which throughout reflect the inner feelings and emotions of the characters but in a way that isn’t underlined explicitly most times it happens. 

I think the other appeal is the basic theme of the book. At it’s base the idea is ‘the original sin is good.’ At the end of the book Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon decide that if all the adults think Dust (which is associated with puberty/knowledge) is bad, and all the adults are people who try to control Lyra and do atrocious things in order to make Dust go away, then Dust must actually be good. This is great! For one thing, sin is a terrible concept and sex and such are actually good things. And then, it’s also about questioning authority figures — in this case Lyra’s parents. Lyra doesn’t want to accept handed down conceits, and decides instead to figure out what’s right for herself. And then goes on adventure where she ends up recreating the original sin, which saves the world. Pretty great stuff. 

The Underground Railroad

Note: This contains spoilers for the first half of the book. I was surprised by some of the developments, which was enjoyable and fun! So I'd recommend reading the book first.

I’m about halfway through The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, which recently won the Pullitzer Prize and basically has been the most critically acclaimed book that came out in 2016. It’s also our next book for my book club, which I’ll be missing since I’m going to my 5-year college reunion, but wanted to read the book for anyway. So far the book is pretty interesting. It’s going to be adapted into a miniseries by Barry Jenkins (who made Moonlight) and the choice to make it a tv show makes complete sense. The structure is episodic: the main character, Cora, travels from state to state on the Underground Railroad, and lives there a few months, discovering what’s going on in each place she visits.

This is where the central conceit of the book steps in: the US states that Cora travels through are not the historical US states, but mirror-universe versions that reflect the ways white people have tried to control black people in the US. This setting is revealed slowly. The first segment takes place in Georgia on the plantation where Cora is a slave. I’m not an expert on historical accuracy in how slavery is portrayed, but the portrayal is within the range of slavery narratives I’ve seen. The plantation is extremely violent — runaways are publicly tortured before being killed. This sets up the themes the book uses in terms of white control of black bodies and also the ideas it draws from horror; the plantation owner is sadistic and comes up with different creative ways to make recaptured runaways suffer. The first sign that Cora isn’t quite living in our world is when she escapes and gets taken to the underground railroad, which in the novel has recently extended a spur into the deep south. Here it is revealed that ‘underground railroad’ is not a metaphor: actual tunnels underground linking stations throughout the south have been built, and Cora escapes Georgia on a one-wagon train.

The train is an element of alternate reality and anachronism (I think the technology described, e.g. ventilation for a steam engine underground, would not be realistic for the 1840s-1850s), but it could fit in as an add-on to a realistic historical narrative: all along there was a hidden train conveying slaves from the deep south to freedom in the north. It’s when Cora arrives in South Carolina, however, that the novel reveals its true mode. The South Carolina in the book comes straight out of early 20th century progressivism and organization theory: workers (here slaves purchased by the government) are assigned to the jobs that fit them best and treated well, factories operate on assembly-line principles, and doctors examine and treat everyone, all the while controlling fertility for selective breeding of the black population. In terms of a historical setting contemporary with slavery, this is wholly anachronistic (the city is centered on a 12 story skyscraper serviced by an elevator, neither of which would have been invented yet, and the industrial efficiency paradigm would have been wholly foreign to the agricultural south at the very least). But the purpose of the book is not to be historical fiction. Both the book’s South Carolina, where efficiency and comfort are used to lull the black population into being victims of scientific experimentation (in addition to the use to sterilization to control for desired traits in the black population, this section also features a syphilis experiment reminiscent of Tuskegee), and in it’s North Carolina, where the white population has decided the solution is to expel its black population and now publicly kills and displays any black people found in the state, represent ways in which white americans have tried to control and repress black americans. The book presents chattel slavery (Georgia), technocratic scientific racism (South Carolina), and outright eliminationism (North Carolina) side by side as different facets of American institutional racist violence.

This violence is so far particularly focused on the black body. The Georgia and North Carolina sections of the book feature gruesome torture methods inflicted on slaves and freemen who violate the laws and customs imposed on them by the white authorities. The white characters who are not involved in the underground railroad relish this violence. In South Carolina, the violence is clinical instead of gruesome. All the black workers are subjected to regular medical exams. These are supposed to help them, but some of the men are being injected with syphilis, while most of the women are pressured to undergo sterilization so that the government can do population control. There is even an interlude set in Boston where a medical student goes hunting for bodies to dissect and specifically targets black cemetaries; even after death the black bodies belong to the whites. All these measures taken to control black people and their bodies are framed in the novel as ways to protect white bodies. The white characters voice the classic white supremacist fears of black people raping and killing them. Cora is specifically pursued because she killed a white boy during her escape. In the Boston segment, the city has cracked down on grave-robbing of white cadavers following a moral panic, making only the black ones available. The novel takes all these undercurrents of American society and  luridly makes them literal.

In doing so, the novel uses some literary techniques out of horror fiction. Cora is like a horror heroine trapped in slavery who has to escape but finds the slave catcher pursuing her at every turn. When she thinks she is safe — as in South Carolina — there is a sinister conspiracy lurking under the surface. I’d be interested if someone has written a comparison of this book and the movie Get Out, which from what I’ve read also makes literal the horror aspects of American racism. The use of different states as different episodes lets Whitehead use different types of storytelling — the North Carolina section has aspects of ‘The Lottery,’ where the whole village comes together for a public lynching — as well as ways that both legal and extra-legal violence participates in this horror.

So far I’m only halfway through, so we’ll see what the other parts of the US are like. The remaining segments are called ‘Tennessee,’ ‘Indiana,’ and ‘The North.’ I do think that Whitehead is (understandably) very excited by his worldbuilding, which means that he does spend a lot of time explaining it to us. The book doesn’t leave much of the subtext implied rather than explained. For example, in the South Carolina section, Cora is happy and thinks everything is fine until BOOM it’s revealed they’re all medical subjects and then Cora narrates how awful that is. Cora in general learns a lot of the customs of the places she visits in explanations and then narrates others to us. So I think the book could have been more reticent with the details and left more to subtext. But overall so far it’s very inventive and I am continually anxious about what horrors await Cora next. 

Australian politics is cutthroat!

So I'm reading this article and I have some thoughts, so I'll write them out here so that I won't bore Lydia and Spencer with them.

Australia has a very accelerated election cycle -- parliamentary elections are held every 3 years. The US election cycle is faster, with the House being up every 2 years, but the President is the main focus of the government and has 4 years between elections. Also, separation of the legislative and executive means the President can't get dumped by the legislative caucus and is also somewhat isolated from the political jockeying in the legislature.

In Australia, the power plays and the business of governing are thrown together and linked with a need to maintain political popularity in the short term, which seems to have lead to instability in leadership in the last 8 years. Three prime ministers have been overthrown by their party in the middle of their terms, and it looks like it might happen again despite the fact that an election was held just last month. What's up with that?

Here's the background: Australia has a weird mix of a strong two-party system in the lower house and a multi-party system in the Senate. The House chooses the Prime Minister but the Senate still needs to pass any legislation (like in the US but unlike the UK or Canada). The House is elected via ranked-choice voting in single member districts (hence the two-party dominance), while the Senate elects 6 members from each state by ranking either party lists or individual candidates and then distributing the votes. This makes for a roughly proportional seat assignment but the way minor parties can accumulate votes for the last few seats make the end process a little wacky. More on that later.

The main party on the center-left is the Labor Party (spelled the American way because apparently at some point Australia had a fad for 'modernizing' spelling). They're pretty much what you'd expect, with strong ties to labor unions and strength in the inner cities. As far as I can tell, Labor seems to have held up better with what in the US we'd call the 'white working class' vote than equivalent parties in Europe or the US. I'm not sure why, though it may just be that immigration and racial dynamics are different in Australia, or that the outlets for anti-partyism are different. Maybe compulsory voting also plays a role -- since everyone legally has to vote, people who might feel left behind and stay home instead still vote Labor or at least pick them as their second choice.

For the main center-right party it gets a little more complicated. It turns out there are two main center right parties, the Liberals and the Nationals, but they're in a permanent coalition called, appropriately the Coalition. There's some history there where the Liberals were big in the suburbs and the Nationals formed in rural areas because they felt neglected. The Liberals are mostly in charge and provide the PM but the Nationals control some rural seats and ministries have their own priorities. And they can run in the same seats without splitting the vote thanks to ranked-choice!

There's a fourth important party, the Greens, that have a consistent presence in Parliament. They only have one seat in the House, but get ~8% of the primary vote, most of which gets transferred to Labor. They also control the third largest block in the Senate. They're pretty much what you'd expect, to the left of Labor notably on refugee issues. The rest of the House is a couple of independents.

Then there's the mess of 'minor parties' in the Senate. Unlike other countries with multi-party systems, the extra minor parties are not so much ideological as personality-based. Basically in any country there are going to be people who vote for major, organized parties and then people who vote for anti-establishment candidates. In Australia that vote gets concentrated in Senate elections. Since votes get transferred, all the tiny vote percentages that in other countries would get wasted due to PR thresholds gets accumulated. This means wacky candidates with low ties to any real 'party' organization get elected to senate seats, while they get blocked from House seats, which makes for a strange dynamic. Since neither main party has a majority in the Senate, usually, they have to make deals with the assorted essentially independent Senators to pass legislation.

Anyway, back to cutthroatedness. Here are the main players: for the Labor Party, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard; for the Liberal Party, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull. These four politicans have been the last four Prime Ministers and yet all four have been deposed by revolts within their party.
It started in 2007, when Rudd let Labor to victory over John Howard's 11-year Coalition government. In 2008, Turnbull was chosen as the leader of the opposition. However, Turnbull soon got into trouble. The problem was that Turnbull came from a business background and was a moderate. His big sin was supporting the Labor government's cap-and-trade proposal. So the climate change denier faction of the party revolted and installed Abbott, a conservative, instead.

Then in 2010, three years into the Labor government and as an election was coming due, Labor MPs had their own turn to be restive. Some faction of the Labor party (which is very factional -- there's some stuff with left and right factions of the party in the various states conspiring against each other) decided they didn't like Rudd's leadership style and thought his polling numbers were too low, so they held a leadership election and replaced him with his deputy, Gillard. She then had to call an election and managed to use the fact that Abbott was very very conservative to squeak into a victory.

This worked ok for the next few years but the Labor government's popularity kept sliding (I think sexism didn't help Gillard, she had some of the public opinion problems Hillary has), and by 2013 even Abbott wasn't scary enough to keep Labor in government for the looming election. Therefore the Labor MPs decided Gillard was no good and held a coup to put Rudd back in power in hopes to bounce up the poll numbers (they always are watching the poll numbers). By then all this drama was a bit much for voters and when Rudd held an election, Abbott won in a landslide.

Of course now that the Coalition was in power they were ready for their own backstabbing! Abbott, being very weird as well as very conservative, had a very short honeymoon and saw his popularity slide. A year into his term, the Liberals were losing state elections they had won in landslides three years earlier, presaging a defeat after just one term, a rare occurrence. Abbott survived for two years, but by 2015 rumors of a coup by his caucus abounded. Finally, in September, his deputy Julie Bishop turned on him and Abbott was replaced by Turnbull. The hope was that his non-partisan moderate image would fix things, and he did get a massive poll bounce for the Coalition. However, by the time he had to call an election in 2016 his popularity slid, and in July he won a bare majority in the House, a big loss from the 2013 landslide.

And now we get to the article. Turnbull's underperformance in the election means that the conservative wing of his party are using the occasion to get restive again. He's having a hard time balancing his ideological moderateness and desire to implement popular policies (e.g. gay marriage) with his need for support from conservative party members. The article suggests that Abbott may attempt to lead a comeback. This is hilarious because in 2013 the Liberals ran against Labor dysfunction and coups, and now are embroiled in their own identical disputes.

As for Labor, they dumped both Gillard and Rudd after 2013 and Bill Shorten has been leader since then. He's relatively successful, especially with his overperformance in the 2016 election. However, right after the election, there were already articles about how the guy he beat, Anthony Albanese, was considering a challenge! In then end he didn't go for it, but we'll see what the future holds ... Though they did add a membership vote component to the leader selection, so it'll be harder to change leaders than the purely caucus-based old method.

Its hard to tell if fatigue with the major parties is causing constant leadership turnover, or if the coups are themselves causing voter fatigue. Anyway it sounds like this period of drama and caucus rebellions is far from over in Australia. As an observer from afar its pretty fun to watch, though maybe not so much for Australians themselves.

For the article, this was the paragraph I found most descriptive: "Ideally, a leader enjoys the support of caucus colleagues and the voters. Some, like Julia Gillard, get by with just the former. Others, like Kevin Rudd, seize office relying on the latter. Turnbull is losing in both groups, and without the support of the electorate or his party room, he can’t survive."

So I'm going to try to do some regular writing here in order to practice thinking and in order to avoid having thoughts about the world tumbling all around my head. I'll probably just do short posts about what I'm reading/learning and current events and the such.

This week I'm listening to the Revolutions podcast series on the English Civil War. It's a pretty popular series by this guy named Mike Duncan who started out doing a podcast on the history of Rome and now has moved on to one about revolutions. I think he does his research on the topic before putting together the podcast but has no particular training in these areas of history. It's a pretty decent way to keep myself entertained while aligning optics in the lab. The podcasting style is pretty engaging. Duncan makes sure to introduce all the characters when they first appear and does a good job of keeping the different concurrent plot threads straight. I think there's a little bit of presentism -- a few parts where the podcaster talks about modern political structures as if they're a self-evident progression rather than getting into the reasons expansion of republican and democratic structures was marginalized at the time -- but overall the tone is good. Though I feel like the podcast is more sympathetic to leaders like Cromwell and even Charles I than to the Parliament, due to some biases against squabbling politics and for strong action in government. I'll need to look things up when I'm done listening because I think Cromwell is not as principled as presented. Though I guess it follows up the Wolf Hall Cromwell-ancestor revisionism!

The English Civil war is interesting because we didn't cover it extensively in history class and its pretty complicated (lots of factions that switch sides) and so hard to just skim Wikipedia to learn about. And I feel like in US history we spend so much time talking about the Puritans who were oppressed and had to make their own colony to escape persecution while ignoring that only a few decades later the Puritans themselves took over the whole country for almost 20 years. There must have been some interactions there -- but we never covered them because US and European history were in different classes.

As I listen, I'm mostly noting parallels between the English Civil War and the French Revolution. The overall structure is surprisingly similar! There's a monarch forced to summon a legislature due to budget problems, conflict between the monarch and the legislature escalating, the monarch rapidly losing influence, purges and defections in the legislature leading to radicalization until the king is executed. And then after that there's rotation between various newfangled forms of government and finally takeover by a military leader who built his reputation on military victories abroad (Cromwell in Ireland). Of course the causes and political forces are different, but the ways the revolutions played out are similar, in a way that feels tied to the modern rather than medieval age. In both, the main conflict is between the king and an assembly of commoners, rather than between the king and his nobles or vassals. The commoners then had the opportunity to rethink the structure of government and formulate new forms of governmental legitimacy without a king. Again, of course the French Revolution was much more radical and inclusive in its conception of national politics, but it did come a century later.

Actually, speaking of the intervening century, I'm not sure if it the bias of the podcast or just the fact that the English Civil War was mostly centered on religious questions, but its interesting that there's very little influence of political theory on the way the politics developed. The people who launched the French and American revolutions were well versed in all the political philosophers of the Enlightenment and were ready to apply their favorite theories to their new government. That impulse seems less present in this telling of the English Civil War. I can think of a few explanations. First of all, the events take place in the 1640s-1650s, so a lot of the political theory hasn't been written yet. Second, the Parliamentarians were mostly interested in religion and so were intellectually motivated by religious doctrine instead. Third, some of the intellectual history may be cut out of the podcast -- he does mention separation of powers, but it turns out Montesquieu hadn't been born at the time so I don't know if this was intellectually rigorous.

Maybe my comparisons to the French Revolution are too far-reaching, and I should keep the English Civil War in the context of the wars between Protestants and Catholics ravaging all of Europe at the time. In all of those, the religious questions were paramount, and political questions were limited to balances of power between central and regional rulers as well as state religions. However, the English Civil War did set the course to Parliamentary supremacy in England -- and they did chop off the king's head! -- so I do feel like it has to be seen as a precursor to the 18th century revolutions.

Those revolutions are the topics of the next two part of the podcast, but I probably won't listen to them since I know a bunch about them already (and I have the Chernow Hamilton biography to read for the American revolution!). But then he has a series on the Haitian Revolution and a current one on South America so I might check those out because those are some cool topics.

June 2016 Election Guide

Election guide California June Primary 2016

US senate

Summary: This race is to replace Barbara Boxer (D), who has been one of the two US Senators from California since 1992 and is retiring this year. The person elected will serve a 6 year term. California has a top-2 system, so the two candidates who get the most votes on June 7th will move on to the general election in November, regardless of party affiliation. Kamala Harris is seen as the frontrunner, largely leading the other candidates in the polls, so this contest is seen as a race for who can get second place to compete with her in the runoff. The other major Democratic candidate is Loretta Sanchez. The republicans didn’t run any top-tier candidates, though Duf Sundheim, Tom Del Beccaro, and Ron Unz have the institutional support and poll numbers to make it to the debates. You can watch one debate here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K8rm88sFDQ) if you’re interested, though it’s long and not particularly informative.

Major Candidates:

Loretta Sanchez – Democratic – Loretta Sanchez is currently US representative for Santa Ana/Anaheim in Orange County. She has a typical California democrat platform, with a focus on her experience in national security and veterans’ issues from her 20 years serving on those house committees. She supports immigration reform, increasing Pell Grants, and helping women in the military. Sanchez is supported by most of the California congresspeople as well as other elected officials from Southern California and some labor unions. I think many of her supporters think it’s important to have someone from socal representing the state – almost all of the other statewide officials are from northern California.

Duf Sundheim – Republican – Sundheim was chair of the CA republican party 2003-2007, during the period of mild success where Schwarzenegger was elected governor twice, but has not held elected office. He is running the in the ‘moderate republican’ slot, supporting immigration reform and ‘pro-business’ policies. He wants to reform teacher hiring laws and supports more water storage and desalination plants. He also has a ‘Kamala Facts’ page featuring bad things Kamala Harris did, possibly to show he’s ready to compete with her in the general election? He’s been endorsed by most of the state’s republicans, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, as well as Charles Schwab,the Chairman of Cisco, and Charles Munger, who’s this rich guy who essentially keeps the CA republican party afloat.

Kamala Harris – Democratic – Kamala Harris is currently Attorney General of California (elected in 2010 and 2014) and previously was DA for SF County. Like Sanchez, she is running on a typical California democrat platform, though is seen as being somewhat more liberal than Sanchez. Given her background, her website focuses more on legal aspects: criminal justice reform (she has a ‘smart on crime’ platform), LGBT rights, her crackdown on for-profit colleges as AG, etc. She is supported by high-profile national democrats (Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren), statewide dems (LG and somewhat-rival Gavin Newsom), and most of the big labor unions and the California Democratic Party.

Tom Del Beccaro – Republican – Del Beccaro was chair of the CA Republican party 2011-2013 during which the party has major money problems. He is running in the more ‘tea party’ slot of the main republican candidates. He supports a flat tax, more water storage, a more aggressive foreign policy especially against Iran and ISIS, and stronger immigration controls in the interest of national security. He’s been endorsed by the conservative side of the California republican party including the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, as well as national flat tax people like Forbes and Laffer (of the Laffer curve).

   

Ron Unz – Republican – Unz is a curious candidate. His political experience consists of losing a republican primary for governor in 1994 and sponsoring a successful initiative in 1998 banning bilingual education in CA public schools. He decided to run this year because the legislature put a measure repealing that ban on the November ballot. His platform is a highly unusal mix of policies: he supports raising the minimum wage to $12 (which according to him would reduce the incentive for illegal immigration), reducing legal immigration limits by 50%, ending foreign wars and denouncing the Iraq war, implementing a financial transaction tax (he cites Bernie Sanders here), cutting college costs, and ending Affirmative Action. He’s been endorsed by Ron Paul.

Less-well-known candidates:

Pamela Elizondo – Green Party – This candidate provides only a facebook page which doesn’t work. I found a questionnaire she filled out for the green party (http://www.cagreens.org/elections/2016/statewide-candidate-questionnaire-pamela-elizondo-us-senate), which isn’t quite coherent. From what I can tell she wants to heal the earth, make things easier for independent candidates for political office, and grow more marijuana everywhere.

Akinyemi Agbede – Democratic – This candidate is another perennial candidate running on a kooky platform. His website (http://www.americamustregainitsgreatness2016.com) assures me that he is a “super genius man” who will make America “regain its greatness again” and prevent it from becoming a “glorified third world nation.” How this will happen is not clear because his writing is barely comprehensible.

Jerry Laws – Republican – Count of making America great again is now at 2. This candidate is an old veteran guy who is all about the Constitution – at least as it exists within the world of right-wing radio talk shows. His platform is inspired by those radio hosts and Ron Paul: no foreign wars, more guns, selling off all federal land (think of the Bundys), and especially ‘sound money’ aka the gold standard.

Ling Ling Shi – Independent – This candidate’s website is partially in English, but as far as I can tell, she runs an evangelical church and wants to ‘run for God’s heart.’ Her platform mixes a strong Christianist aspect (‘Christianity is our nation’s DNA and divine
identity and real strong strength’) along with very large expansion of the state – she supports a national bank, free college, free healthcare, the works.

Paul Merritt – Independent – His website looks like eat pray love and promises ‘cool stuff ‘n things’ but there isn’t much there. He thinks the main parties are bad, supports environmentalist, small government, and ‘Senator Feinstein’s boarder security fence.’ Now if only we had a fence that would keep the boarders safe.

Massie Munroe – Democratic – Now this one’s a doozy. She doesn’t have a website but her ballot description … If we elect her (and Bernie Sanders!) we’ll be on the right step to end ‘mind control slavery’ that is apparently happening via satellites and social engineering programs??? Also the global bankers are involved. But if we do that we can have a clean energy future!

Tim Gildersleeve – Independent – Judging from some undeleted phrases on this candidate’s website, he’s recycled it from a run for San Jose city council. For a fringe candidate his coherently presented? He calls himself a ‘Christocrat’ and is very worried about the moral decline of society. But on the other hand he thinks inequality is bad and wants a strong social safety net and union movement. He has a bunch of photos of him around San Jose looking awkward and I feel kind of sad for him though he literally thinks the US is losing the battle against Satan.

President Cristina Grappo – Democratic – This person has no website and has chosen to have her first name listed as ‘president.’ I don’t even know what to say, except ‘I am mainstream Facebook in social media.’

Don Grundmann – Independent – I went to this guy’s website and he had a picture of black people being lynched with something about how white people are coming back and I left immediately.

Herbert Peters – Democratic – This candidate claims to be an Andrew Jackson Democrat and so he’s very worried about deficits and the national debt (Jackson was the last president to eliminate the national debt!) He has all kinds of policies that he wants to borrow from 19th century democrats: vetoes of the National bank, welfare and farm aid. But then the filthy republicans led by Grant and Teddy Roosevelt implemented fiat money and progressivism. Also the media and government are covering up 9/11 and the JFK assassination.

Tom Palzer – Republican – This candidate is a veteran running as a conservative republican. He seems to have been involved in party politics at the local level, which means he’s pretty organized for someone who is going to get 1% of the vote. His website is garish, though.

Greg Conlon – Republican – This guy was the Republican nominee for state Treasurer 2 years ago. Of course that was because no other republicans ran, but he uses as a point of pride: he ‘knows how to run a successful general election’ even though he lost by 18 points. Again a pretty typical conservative republican platform: he wants to balance the budget, enforce the border, and cut the corporate tax rate.  Though apparently the big immigrant problem is foreign students overstaying their visas and taking high skill jobs?

Karen Roseberry – Republican – This candidate is running a S.A.V.E. campaign, which stands for Security, Accountable, Values, and Education. Her description of this platform is very competently written compared to other candidates except for the fact that it’s incredibly vague! She’s very good at looking like she’s saying a lot while not saying anything? I can tell that she is very into personal responsibility and against entitlements (free college would destroy the work ethic of young people!). Oh and she explains at length about how a ‘double-layered razor wire fence’ guarded by citizen militas would be better than a border wall.

Von Hougo – Republican – A classic type of gimmick candidate: he’s going to use an app in order to have every Californian vote on every bill in congress and then he’ll vote according to the results. Because representative democracy is overrated. Also both parties are bad and he’s not collecting any donations because money is bad and you should definitely post about him on social media.

Jason Hanania – Independent – This candidates ballot message is ‘01100101’ so maybe he’ll be a digital candidate? It turns out he is! The number represents ‘e’ for ‘evoting’ and it’s a protest against the fact that the state charges more for longer ballot statements. Anyway this guy also has an app so that his every vote can be controlled by people at home (someone has to tell these people that being a senator involved more than voting for bills – who decides what’s in the bills?). You can get his ebook where he explains that online communication is part of the right to bear arms.

Mike Beitikis – Independent – This guy is pretty funny/great. He says that all the issues don’t matter because we’re all going to die due to global warming and so we should be doing everything to stop that. He has a pretty nice website with a lot of humor (iwillnotdonothing.org). He also made an ad where he trains to fistfight the Koch brothers. A+ fringe candidate.

Jason Kraus – Independent – And we’re back to the candidates with terrible websites featuring eagles and flags. He wrote a novel about Falcon Sane, a young man who “travels through youth into adulthood crossing the paths of love, corruption, and power, in search of the American dream—freedom” and runs for president. The rest of his website features other attempts at poetic phrasing and his centerpiece proposal the “us personal responsibility act,” which would replace the income tax with a sales tax, repeal federal housing programs, and tighten up immigration controls.

Don Krampe – Republican – This is at least the third old veteran dude candidate so far. He wants America to have a ‘positive mental attitude’ and use the power of imagination. Policy-wise, he thinks we should fund upgrades to the port of Long Beach (his #1 priority!) and move away from entanglements in foreign wars.

Now moving on to candidates who didn’t file a ballot statement (big mistake!).

Eleanor Garcia – Independent – This candidate is representing the Socialist Worker’s Party, which according to its very detailed Wikipedia page, is supportive of Cuban-style communism. She is an aerospace worker involved in union organizing. According to the SWP publication, they think that workers and farmers should join together to overthrow capitalism. They also have a presidential ticket!

Clive Grey – Independent – Like many other candidates, this one is a regular person who will ‘bring common sense to government.’ He’s a woodworker who made a woodworking show for PBS! His policies are pretty grab bag, and illustrated with some nice stock photos: he is for clean energy, more jobs, a path to citizenship, campaign finance reform, no more lobbyists, animal rights, market healthcare reforms, and a flat tax.

John Parker – Peace and Freedom – This candidate belongs to the worker’s world party and supports socialism and anti-imperialism. He wants to remove abusive police departments in ‘black & brown communities … to enable community-organized self-policing,’ as well as defund the military to end ‘imperialist and proxy wars.’ Also wants food and housing for and and full employment.

Emory Rodgers – Democratic – This candidate is a civil rights and environmental activist ‘inspired by Bernie Sanders’ message for social equality.’ He wants to end corporatism and overturn Citizens United, as well as support justice for LGBT people and people of color. He also is an energy activist who went on a ‘79 day hunger strike to bring awareness to biomass fuels.’

George Yang – Republican – This candidate only has a facebook page which makes it difficult to figure out what his candidacy is about, though he does post regular video updates. He seems to have a basic conservative platform of lower taxes and smaller government, explained via infographics. He does want to have a reality tv show competition for best desalination plant design to solve the drought problem though!

Gail Lightfoot – Libertarian – This candidate is a mainstay of the CA libertarian party, I think she runs for something every major cycle. In fact her website is still that of her 2012 senate run. She has the libertarian view that the purpose of the US government should be limited to the courts, diplomacy, and the military, and all else should be done away with. She thinks we should end wars, remove limits on immigration, privatize all social programs, and inform juries about jury nullification.

Scott Vineberg – Independent – I couldn’t find any information on this candidate.

Steve Stokes – Democratic – This candidate also is inspired by Bernie Sanders and wants to end the ‘Corrupt Corporate State.’ He supports stopping the TPP, ending #CISA (surveillance) and #CitizensUnited (he really likes #hashtags). He previously ran for congress as an independent and lost. Judging from the number of comments on his website, he does seem to have somewhat of a following among some of the Bernie crowd that is mad at the Democratic party.

Phil Wyman – Republican Party – This candidate was a state legislator from Bakersfield in the 80s and again in 2000 but now seems to be a perennial losing candidate running every year without much support. He supports lowering taxes and tough-on-crime policies; he authored bills establishing 3 strikes, and promoting the death penalty. He also supports limiting access to abortion.

Jarrell Williamson – Republican – This candidate is a health care lawyer in the central valley who enjoys reading about morality and philosophy. He has a bunch of pictures of him with his guns and also his copy of the constitution! His issues page is a list of the parts of the constitution he thinks are most important, and he puts the 2nd amendment before the 1st, thus satisfying liberal stereotypes.

Mark Herd – Libertarian – The libertarian party has two candidates, which is pretty impressive. This candidate is on the Westwood neighborhood council and has previously run for LA city council and congress. He supports the free market, civil liberties, personal freedom, and non-interventionism. He’s worried about censorship and thinks that we should be tough on crime. His federal reserve policy is a Ron Paul video so I’ll assume he thinks it’s Bad.

Gar Myers – Independent – This candidate goes by GAR and is worried about that the ‘MASSIVE RIP CURRENT is dragging us out and away from our near shore waves of happiness.’ GAR loves the surfing metaphors. GAR has a lot of pictures of GAR in various poses accompanying very long text on his policies, which are a mishmash of conservative and liberal ideas, but which bury the lede which is that GAR is worried about chemtrails!! GAR is not very detailed but says that there is too much secrecy about aluminum particles in chem-trails and the public deserves to know! GAR we need to know more about this tell us about how the chem-trails are poisoning us.

US Representative, 18th District

Summary: The incumbent, Anna Eshoo, has been in office as US Representative since 1993. She’s not going to lose this time. This district includes Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Saratoga, Los Gatos, and Campbell.

Richard Fox – Republican – This candidate also ran for this office in 2014 and lost to Eshoo 68-32. He calls himself a ‘libertarian republican’ and thinks that the US is in danger of becoming like Greece or Venezuela due to big-government socialism. He wants to repeal Obamacare (which is a disaster that millions of people are abandoning) and replace it by tax-free ‘government-funded health savings accounts.’ He also thinks that the economy is way worse than the numbers say it is and that we need to cut taxes and spending in order to improve the economy and reduce the national debt. On social issues, he is a moderate and thinks that the country should be inclusive of all people, and as such rejects Donald Trump.

Bob Harlow – Democrat – This guy is a Stanford physics co-term who works on my floor. He seemed actually serious about running for congress though his choice of race was questionable (you have to start somewhere?). When he was collecting signatures to get on the ballot I asked him why he was running and he said that he thought Anna Eshoo hadn’t done enough in terms of universal health care. According to his website, his key policies are: adding a public option to the ACA, free tuition at public universities, and a high-speed rail to allow commuters to the Bay Area to live in the Central Valley.

Anna Eshoo – Democrat – As her achievements, Eshoo touts requiring coverage of those with pre-existing conditions in the ACA and success in maintaining a Net Neutrality policy. She wants to improve disclosure of political funding and supports overturning Citizens United.

State Senate, 13th District

Summary: The state senate is half of the California legislature and has 40 members. Senators serve 4 year terms and half are elected every two years. Incumbent Jerry Hill (D) was first elected in 2012 and is eligible for one more term. This is a very democratic district and its unlikely Hill loses. This district includes most of the peninsula from South San Francisco to Sunnyvale.

Jerry Hill – Democrat – Before being a state senator, Hill was a state assemblyman, San Mateo County supervisor, and San Mateo city councilmember. He supports funding environmental protection and education, and limits on antibiotics to reduce the impact of antibiotic resistance. He also touts his efforts to limit the powers of the CA Public Utilities Commission, which he sees as not doing its job to protect the public, and his attacks on PG&E after the gas pipe explosion in San Bruno a few years back. He’s passed a bunch of bills (like most CA legislators) and I’m sure some are bad and some are good but it depends on what you’re interested in.

Rick Ciardella – Republican – This candidate owns a landscaping firm and has been endorsed by the Santa Clara County republican party.

John Webster – Libertarian – This candidate thinks that democracy is doomed because we have given up all our freedoms, due to the majority voting to have the government take money from the rich to give to the poor. He wants California to secede from the US to be free of the evil empire. He also thinks we already live in a politically correct police state.

State Assembly, 24th District:

Summary: The State Assembly is the other half of the California legislature, with 80 members elected every 2 years. The incumbent is Rich Gordon (D) who is term-limited after 6 years in the Assembly. Due to changes in term-limits laws, the next assemblymember will be elegible to serve for 12 years. This district includes Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, and Half Moon Bay. You can read profiles of all the candidates here (part 1) and here (part 2), and a comparison of their specific positions here.

Vicky Veenker – Democrat – Veenker is a patent attorney based in Palo Alto. She wants to focus on improving funding for education, especially for poorer school districts, and a focus on STEM education, especially for girls. She thinks her strong links to the technology community will help her be an effective legislator, as well as her perspective from outside politics. She has been endorsed by the California Teachers Association, Sierra Club, Nurses Association, Palo Alto Weekly as well as groups who want more women in the state government.  

Mike Kasperzak – Democrat – Kasperzak is currently a Mountain View city council member and has been for 14 years, and claims his experience makes him the most qualified candidate. He also says that he is more independent from interest groups than the other candidates. He wants to focus on funding affordable housing, water infrastructure, and regional transportation. He is the only strongly pro-high speed rail candidate. He has been endorsed mostly by local elected officials but also some mayors from other parts of California.

Marc Berman – Democrat – Berman has been a Palo Alto city council member since 2012 and has had experience working on political campaigns. He says he is mostly passionate about education, infrastructure, and environmental protection. He wants to fund universal pre-K, affordable housing, infrastructure improvements, and environmental protections. He’s been endorsed by a lot of Democratic officials, including Gavin Newsom and Rich Gordon, as well as by the Mercury News.

Jay Cabrera – Independent – Cabrera is a ‘social innovation entrepreneur’ who identifies himself as ‘Bernie Candidate.’ He thinks that the current system is broken and we need to replace it by local participatory democracy, and that Bernie’s campaign provides a groundswell of energy to do that. He wants to increase the minimum wage, make it easier for regular people to get involved in politics, and get money out of politics. He also wants to preserve the environment and make sure state projects do not do any damage. He is a part of and supported by Bernie Movement Mid-Peninsula, and has run for various offices in the area in previous years.

Barry Chang – Democratic – Chang has been a Cupertino city councilmember for 7 years and is currently Mayor. He calls himself a ‘fiscally conservative Democrat,’ and is interested in education issues, suggesting a tax increase on the wealthy to fund schools. He is specifically running against the Lehigh Southwest Cement Plant, which he says is a major polluter that has dodged EPA regulations. He doesn’t feature any endorsements; I think his problem is that only a small part of Cupertino is in this district, so Chang doesn’t have much of a base. Chang previously ran for the 28th district, which contains most of Cupertino, in 2014, and lost.

Peter Ohtaki – Republican – Ohtaki has been a Menlo Park city councilmember for 6 years and is the only Republican in this race. He thinks his experience in finance will help him work on transportation and affordable housing issues (he wants more housing near workplaces) while keeping California’s budget balanced. Ohtaki is also worried about state pension liabilities and wants to reform pensions, as part of his belief in fiscal conservatism and limited government. He says he is interested in bipartisan solutions and has worked well with current assemblymember Rich Gordon, such as on a bill to allow cities to be more flexible in mixed-use zoning. He has been endorsed by Almanac News and the Daily Post.

Sea Reddy – Democratic – Reddy is a retired engineer who ran for Palo Alto city council in 2014 and placed 11th, and, from what I can tell, is a routine presence at city council meetings possibly harassing the city council. He says that the area is a great place to live currently and supports slow-growth approaches. Reddy wants to be an independent candidate opposed to ‘shady deals’ in the political sphere. He also is concerned about excessive airplane noise in the area.

John Inks – Libertarian – Inks has been a Mountain View city councilmember for 7 years and before that was a retired engineer. He is the most critical of current assemblymember Rich Gordon, saying he prefers a free-market libertarian approach to government. Inks wants to keep the state budget balanced and renegotiate pension benefits, and opposes surveillance and any attempt to give the government backdoors into people’s phones. He opposed any change to Prop 13 and is endorsed by the Silicon Valley Taxpayers’ Association.

Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, District 5

Summary: The BoS is the government of Santa Clara county. It has 5 members elected for 4 year staggered terms. The fifth district contains most of the cities north of San Jose. The incumbent is Joe Simitian, who was previously State Senator and Palo Alto city council member. He is eligible for one more term and is unlikely to lose.

Joe Simitian – Simitian touts his record of good financial management, efficient rollout of the ACA, and good constituent services.

John Mumy – Could not find information about this guy outside of the voter guide. He says he is an outsider and a regular citizen. He will support policies to protect the environment, reduce pollution, and find transport alternatives to reduce traffic.

Proposition 50

What it does/Background: Currently, the California constitution allows the legislature to expulse members with a 2/3 majority vote. In 2014, three democratic members of the state senate were accused of felonies. The state senate decided to suspend these three members with a simple majority vote. This means that the senators could no longer vote on bills but were still members of the legislature and still received pay and benefits.

    In response to this incident, the legislature decided to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment that would codify the rules for suspension of members. This measure would increase the threshold required for suspension to a 2/3 vote and would take away the suspended legislator’s benefits and pay during the suspension. The measure was put on the ballot via a bipartisan 31-3 vote in the state senate and 73-2 vote in the state assembly, with all the no votes being republicans

Campaign for: The YES campaign is led by California Forward, a group that pushes for government reform and accountability and has previously supported ballot measures for the redistricting commission, top-two primary, and the rainy day fund. They say that suspension is a necessary tool to discipline legislators who are under investigation but have not yet been convicted. Suspension is an intermediate measure that can be reversed if the legislator is cleared, unlike expulsion, which would require replacement via special election. In addition, increasing the fraction of the chamber needed to suspend a member to 2/3rds would limit the potential for abuse of this power. Prop 50 is endorsed by the League of Women Voters, California Common Cause, and the Sacramento Bee.  

Campaign against: The NO campaign is led by the legislators who voted against putting this measure on the ballot. They say that Prop 50 is a bad solution to the problem and instead the legislature should expel legislators accused of crimes. Suspension deprives constituents of their representation since their legislator can’t vote but also isn’t replaced. Also they worry that suspension could be used to sideline members of the legislature for political reasons. The LA Times also supports NO, noting that the measure has no guidelines for what is an appropriate cause for suspension, meaning the power could be abused.

Measure AA

Background/Summary: The San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority is a regional agency created by the state legislature in 2008 with the power to levy a tax over the 9-county Bay

Area in order to fund bay restoration programs. Its board is made up of elected officials from the region and it has an advisory committee made up of various experts, activists, and park and city officials. The authority has studied the problem and decided to put a $12 parcel tax (e.g. $12 per piece of taxable property) on the June ballot. This tax will be voted on in all 9 counties and needs a 2/3 vote to pass. It will last 20 years.

The programs funded by this tax will be administered by the Authority and will be regionally distributed around the bay. The programs will include pollution prevention and cleanup, shoreline and wetland habitat protection, and flood control.

Campaign For: This measure is supported by the Bay Restoration Authority and everyone involved; the Authority board put the measure on the ballot with a unanimous vote. It is also supported by most local elected officials, environmental and business groups, and the Mercury News/East Bay Times. They say that the parcel tax is necessary to fund environmental programs, and that the bay is a key part of our local environment and should be preserved. In addition, with global warming, the bay is even more at risk and these programs will become more important. More cynically, without this measure the Authority has no funding and so can’t really do anything.

Campaign Against: This measure is opposed by the Silicon Valley Taxpayers’ Association and the Santa Clara Libertarian Party. They say that taxes are bad and the money will be wasted on benefits to local politicians, instead of being used for the Bay.

Measure A   

Summary/Background: This is a Santa Clara County measure (unlike the above measure which is for the 9 county bay area, hence the different numbering) placed on the ballot by the County Board of Supervisors. Currently, the county charter sets aside 1.425 cents of the tax collected by the county per $100 of assessed property value in the county for the Park Charter Fund, existent since 1972, and sets how that money is spent in terms of park acquisition, development, and operation. These requirements expire in 2021. The measure would renew the requirements until 2032, increase the amount set aside to 1.5 cents, and shift the spending balance to spend more on park development and less on park acquisition. This is not a tax increase, but a rebalancing of the mandates for spending in the money the county collects, and therefore requires a simple majority vote to pass. It needs to be put to voters because it is a modification of the county charter.

Campaign For: This measure is supported by the County and the parks system, and also by business groups, environmental groups, and the Mercury News. They say that the parks program has been highly successful and that we should continue funding the parks as they have been funded for 40+ years.

Campaign Against: There isn’t really a campaign against this. Some brave soul did write up an argument against in the voter guide where he says that laws mandating minimum government spending are bad and lead to deficits, and also that government projects are inefficient.

Members of the Democratic County Central Committee, 24th Assembly District

What is this: I have this election on my ballot because I am a registered Democrat in the 24th assembly district. You’ll have different people if you’re registered for a different party or live in a different district. If you’re registered as an independent, then this race doesn’t appear because you’re not a member of any party.

The County Central Committee is the official organization of the Democratic (or other) party in the county (here Santa Clara County). The county party organizes party activities in the county, including campaigns and endorsements, and forms the first level of the party organization, building to the state and national party. The current members from the 24th district are: Alyson Abramowitz, Bill James, Diane Rolfe, James Thurber, Marcene Van Dierendonck, and Gilbert Wong.

    There are 6 members of the committee and 7 people are running for the election, so all but one will be elected. James. Abramowitz, Rolfe, and Wong are running for re-election. The other candidates are Otto Lee, Emily Thurber, and Peter Chiu. Lee was previously a city council member in Sunnyvale and also ran for congress in the Central Valley in 2012 (???). Wong is currently a Cupertino city council member. Abramowitz has a facebook page where she says she is supported by local elected officials and posts about activities of the democratic party. I could not find information about the other candidates.