[Sosfbay-discuss] Progress in the OC

[Wes Rolley]

I have spent some time this spring working remotely with a group of 
individuals in Orange County.  The original intent was to mount a 
campaign the out Congressman Crazy, a.k.a. Dana Rohrabacher. (CA-46)  I 
find that what they are doing might sere as a good model for action here 
in Santa Clara County.

To begin with, since the target is a Republican and there is not yet an 
announced Democratic Candidate (Green Tom Lash has said that he 
"intends" to run... again) to replace him, the group consists of active 
Greens (One is a National Delegate) and PDA Democrats.  This may change, 
but this group knows that they will have to make this decision at some 
point in time.

One of the first tasks that took place was to establish effective 
communications channels.  This consists of a blog 
(crazydana.blogspot.com) and an email list (sane46).  The latter took 
about a month until everyone understood what it took to keep that list 
operational and effective.  (The participants in the Green California 
Forum could take a lesson from this.)

After some discussion, the pieces started meld together into a work plan 
that is being executed.

- The have a voter registration list for the District and it is on a 
personal computer.
- They have decided to target three specific issue areas: SB 840, Iraq 
War, Climate Change.  At some point in time, they will have to figure 
out what to do about Immigration, since that is where Dana opens his 
mouth almost every day.
- Regarding SB 840, they have decided to also target State Senator Tom 
Harmon (SD-35), whose district is closely aligned with CA-46.   Harmon 
calls it "socialized medicine" and gets most of his campaign 
contributions from big pharma.
- The have a plan to maximize the Letters to the Editors exposure in 
every local newspaper including the very Libertarian (surprise) Orange 
County Register.
- They will be tabling at all of the showing of Sicko - objectives - 
Ridicule Harmon, Hit Rohrabacher on his miserable Congressional voting 
record (against funding veterans trauma care, 11% rating from the 
American Public Health Assn.) and registering new voters if possible.
- They will start walking precincts in Harmon's district (especially 
where it overlaps with Rohrabacher's Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, 
Fountain Valley, Seal Beach).  Issue: Health Care. Targets: both.  But, 
they will feed back the results of contacts into the voter registration 
DB, making it a contact management system for use later.

This is still all grassroots without any connection to the Democratic 
Party apparatus in OC.  However, some leading OC Greens are on the 
sane46 email list: including 2 members of the County Council.

The degree of coordination that has been achieve between the various 
activities is extraordinary for a group that has been in existence for 
only a very short time.  They demonstrate a political maturity in that 
they are using individual actions to feed into an overall plan, one that 
can be executed in sections over the time that they have.  This is 
something that this county could benefit from.  We do a lot of work, but 
have not yet established the processes to connect them with each other 
or with an overall strategy.

They have also been able to bring together three constituencies: 
anti-war, environmental and Health Care in such a way as to allow 
individuals to work on that which motivates them the most and still to 
connect it into the overall  objective, which is to Retire Dana 
Rohrabacher.

While everyone cares deeply about the issues, the purpose of this 
collaboration is political, not just to advance the issues.  It appears 
to me that much of what we do in Santa Clara County is only about the 
issues and not enough is done to use those issues to build a 
constituency for local political action.

My contributions to this have been:
- getting the Crazy Dana blog going.  There is one other author - a 
young  PDA type who is also blogging against another SoCal Republican 
Congressman. We are now to the place where, if one does a google alert 
on the name Dana Rohrabacher, you get the hits from our Crazy Dana Blog.
- some basic research for issues: e.g. Rohrabacher's voting record on 
Veterans Health care, and his scorecard with health care organizations 
and getting this information to the people who will use it... e.g. 
Military Families Speak Out..
- establishing and setting the tone for the discussion on sane46
- encouraging the use of targeted letter to the editor campaigns.  I did 
a couple of letters myself, responded on some newspaper owned blogs, 
made sure that the sane46 email list knew about what I had done, 
encouraged others to do the same.  Now, they do it themselves without my 
having to spend time on it.
- connecting the Rohrabacher record back to some national news 
organizations and blogs, e.g. TPM Cafe.  E.g. The recent Republican 
attack on Pelosi for her "diplomatic" role regarding Israel / Syria was 
labeled hypocrisy when Rohrabacher had done the same thing himself with 
the Taliban in early 2001. (Interesting sidelight here in that one 
reporter writing on this story was D. Kucinich's daughter.)

I may just back off and monitor this for a while... too much going on in 
the Delta.



-- 
"I find I have a great lot to learn – or unlearn. I seem to know far too much and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am getting on." -- Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Wesley C. Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
(408)778-3024
http://www.refpub.com/