from Ballot Access News
California Will Hold 3-Party U.S. House Race on July 14
May 20th, 2009
On July 14, California will fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 32nd district. The three ballot-listed candidates will be Democrat Judy Chu, Republican Betty Chu, and Libertarian Christopher Agrella.
California held an election in this seat on May 19, under blanket primary rules (California partisan special elections always use blanket primary rules). No one got 50% on May 19, so the top vote-getter from each party advances to the run-off. The May 19 ballot included 8 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and one Libertarian. The 32nd district seat is vacant because incumbent Hilda Solis had accepted an appointment into President Obama’s cabinet.
Will the results of the election be posted tomorrow or later today?
i found out this week that in order to have a candidate’s statement on the sample ballot sent out to every voter in this district, the cost was around $1900 for the may 19th election with 12 candidates in the race. now there is only three candidates, and the l.a. county voters office told me now it would need over $6,300 dollars from me in order to have my statement on the july 14th ballot, well, NUTS! to quote the u.s. commander surrounded at the battle of the bulge. i will just have to get my candidate statement out by other means. anyone out there want to help with this? and talking about reform, this fee is obscene from the get go. yours truly, chris, aka “the carpenter”, agrella, the “better choice for congress!” call me direct if you like, 909-509-2119, how’s that for transparency!
@Gary #29
“Chris needs to try and we should all support him. But we also at the same time need to look at getting reform on the ballot or nothing will change.”
Chris (or anyone else) running and election reform are not mutually exclusive efforts… Why would you use the word “but” there? 😉
I’m also curious what 3rd party success rates look like when you factor in the Republican coup over the Whigs. I am not arguing against your point but rather that we should understand that change is not easy, but when it happens it happens fast. The abolitionists spent nearly 100 years before they won.
Lastly I want to say that you are correct that election reform is very very important and that it is most potent and poignant at the state level.
I mention election reform at the state level only because there will be ZERO reform at the Federal level. At the state level there is at least a small chance of breaking the corrupt system.
1948 was the last time a 3rd party candidate was elected to the House of Representatives. A member of the American Labor Party. That is 435 individual House seats elected times 30 elections since 1948. That equals 13,050 elections with only one 3rd party winner. I suspect that opposition party members did better under the Soviet Russian election system than the American.
Chris needs to try and we should all support him. But we also at the same time need to look at getting reform on the ballot or nothing will change.
@ 17 Steven R Linnabary that is the second time recently I have read comments by you regarding public relations, or marketing. And you are right on the money.
Great Point!
The LP’s failure to tell its story allows everyone else to define the LP as they wish.
Gary, that is so irrelevant to Chris’s Congressional race that it needs no further comment.
Except to say once again please donate and volunteer for Chris’s campaign at http://www.agrella4congress.org.
Do you really want to break down the “wall” that prevents 3rd parties from winning?
Then all the 3rd parties in California need to get together and put a constitution amendment on the ballot for proportional representation in the state legislature. When voters can see for themselves that their 3rd party vote results in the election of Libertarian or Green Assemblymen the dam will start to crack.
Try this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australian_Legislative_Council
The upper house of the state of South Australia is by proportional representation. Six different political parties are represented.
Free elections. What a concept.
Chris is doing a great job. He made the listless crowd at one well attended LoWV forum stand and cheer for him. Quite a feat when the crowd was primarily the close supporters of the other dozen candidates on the panel.
The normal golf claps gave way to rousing applause as Chris gave answers to his last question and identified himself as a union journeyman invited people to call him “Chris the Carpenter”, about his experience in the district as a school building inspector. His ending statements had quite a few out of their chairs as he railed against bailouts and asked the crowd why they would want to send a state assembly-person to national in the face of what condition California was in. One Dem candidate high-fived him as he returned to his seat.
Chris can move a crowd, he sells the philosophy, and deserves our support.
As a freedom-loving libertarian, Agrella should point out the dangers of the Chinese Communists.
George, on behalf of Chris, thank you!
Gene, it’s the truth whether you think it’s disrespectful or not. If voters had to pass a political literacy test to vote, turnout would only be 10%.
That’s the battle we face–winning over the hearts and minds of voters who have huge mental blocks to what we are and do.
George Whitfield: No, no, no, ALL open minded folks need to support Chris, not just Libs……
I sent Chris Agrella a contribution and I encourage all liberterarians to do so, too. See: http://agrella4congress.org/
A significant number of voters take the two-party system as the natural order of things. To them, it is the way God intended politics to operate. On many occasions I have been at candidate events where people said to me afterward that they liked my ideas and if I was a Democrat or Republican they would vote for me.
Breaking that mindset is tough, but it won’t happen if alternative candidates don’t run. Fundraising is even tougher for alternative candidates. If voters won’t cast a vote that doesn’t cost them anything, they often won’t contribute money.
It used to be that you should prepare to spend at least one dollar for every vote that it will take to win an election. Now it can be more like three or four dollars per vote. That’s a lot of fundraising, and candidates need good campaign staff to carry it out.
Libertarians will never get anywhere if they don’t respect the people whose votes they want.
Calling people “Zombie voters” is a sign of disrespect.
Mike @ #16: if someone says
“I like your candidate/positions/ideas except for X, so I won’t/can’t vote for you”, then that is probably their honest position. It does not make them a Zombie.
Well Michael. You might be right. But I would bet good money that most voters voted for Obama because they saw his picture on TV several times a day. Because he spent million$ of dollar$, something I’ve never seen any Green candidate do.
And while I don’t have first hand information, I would also bet good money that in the campaigns where you “did everything right”, your campaign still spent significantly less than the first or even the second place finisher. That tells me that there was at least one area where your campaign did NOT “do everything right”.
That’s of course not to say that labels don’t mean anything. Even followers of Lyndon LaRouche typically get 30% of the vote running s democrats, and spending little, if any money.
PEACE
Steven,
Every time you hear a voter say, “I like your candidate/positions/ideas except for X, so I won’t/can’t vote for you”, you’re dealing with a zombie voter.
Every time you hear a voter say, “I’m a Democrat/Republican because my parents/grandparents were,” you’re dealing with a zombie voter.
Every time you hear a voter say, “I vote Democrat/Republican because I always vote that way,”, you’re dealing with a zombie voter.
Yes, the LP has them too. Every political party has them.
It’s one of our biggest problems. We can market our candidates until the cows come home or the Cubs win the World Series, but that wall has to be breached, and that’s always the biggest problem.
You know what? I’ve busted major ass on campaigns where we’ve done everything right, and we still run into that problem, and it kills us.
And you know what? If Obama ran as a Green, we’d have Panama John or Hillary as President.
The label does matter–a lot!
And yes, voters are way too influenced in a badly naive way over those labels. That’s the political mainstream, for better or worse.
Gary & Michael @ 6 & 7:
And when was the last time any Green or Libertarian campaigned as hard, or raised as much money as their democrat or republican opponents?
I think it is time to quit blaming the media or stupid or lazy voters when we lose. We lose because we don’t work hard enough.
Don’t get me wrong, I am just as guilty as anyone. I have an aversion to asking friends and family for money. But I’ll also be the first to tell you that spending $50 on a US Congressional campaign and expecting to win is inane.
But democrats and republicans don’t have this problem. They spend day after day asking for money from everybody.
I think most voters will respond to a candidate they have met and/or heard from.
PEACE
Chu-Chu train, I admit that’s a good slogan for you Third Party losers. We here at the Catholic Trotskyist Party of America endorse Democrat Judy Chu in this important congressional race to keep Democratic power in the great and undertaxed state of California. God bless the zombies who benevolently control America, amen, for the two-party system is popular and will always be, get over it. And Robert, yes Agrella should endorse the Progressive alliance strategy, if he won’t endorse the Fringe Alliance strategy. Either would at least get him more attention than the average libertarian.
Cousins by blood, or marriage, doesn’t matter, and because there really isn’t much difference between D’s and R’s anyway, we don’t want it to matter. 🙂
Milnes, your strategy makes no sense, as your level of (lack of) support indicates. It makes even less sense than that alliance of social and economic conservative statism called the GOP.
We here at Third Party Revolution endorse Christopher Agrella in his campaign for California’s 32nd Congressional District, along with many other third party and independent candidates seeking public offices nation-wide, ranging from local to federal levels.
Find out more about Chris Agrella’s campaign @ http://www.agrella4congress.org/
His campaign site includes a “Donate” button so you can support the Libertarian choice in California’s 32nd District.
re: Mike @ #1: The Los Angeles Times reporst that Betty Chu is married to Judy Chu’s cousin, but that the two are not blood relatives.
Apparently, the two don’t like each other at all.
In any case, Chris Agrella is the only alternative to the Chu Chu train of bipartisan statism.
M.S., you seem to understand the dynamics of the duopoly. Why do you have a mental block with The Progressive Libertarian Alliance Strategy?
M.S., Sounds like a sure way to win. Yes, sir, why don’tcha?
Gary, that’s always been the problem. Voters see the D or R and they become zombies, and the name doesn’t matter. Why? Because they’re uninformed because they lack the time to get informed, so they rely on the false stereotypes of each party fed to them by the media and other propaganda shills. Then those elected cause more time and money to be subtracted from those voters, and the cycle perpetuates itself.
California state government is one giant bi-partisan crapfest. But what happens at the special Congressional election? The so-called “angry” voters vote 98.8% for the two ruling parties. In the special state Senate election on the same day they vote 91% for the two ruling parties.
People claim to be angry, but they drop their pants and bend over when a candidate has an “R” of a “D” after their name.
I’ll be sure to take that up with him, Milnes, right around July 15.
A clear opportunity to try the Progressive Alliance Strategy. Candidate Chris Agrella should declare support for the strategy. Heavily democratic means heavily left progressive which voters wind up voting for the democrat. Especially if there is no Green on the ballot. Left progressives-vote for the Libertarian. Libertarians and libertarian leaning republicans-vote for the Libertarian also. If the Libertarian wins, support will HAVE TO HAVE come from left progressives.
Morgan, there’s always the phone bank, which IIRC can be done from your quiet little area. Call Bruce Dovner and ask, OK?
I’d help out, if I didn’t have a chronic fear of any part of Los Angeles outside of my quiet little area – northern Glendale.
Chris needs as much support in both people and cash as possible. Betty Chu and Judy Chu are in fact cousins, and that name issue may cause some ballot confusion as well, but Judy Chu is the favorite in this heavy Democrat district.
See http://agrella4congress.org/ to donate or volunteer. If you’re not in Southern California to help with the boots-on-the-ground work, we can always use help on the phone bank!