[Sosfbay-discuss] Wes Rolley's Report on Orange County

[alexcathy at aol.com]

Dear Green Friends, 

See pasted below a fantastic report from Wes Rolley about what's up down in Orange County.  

I was just thinking this morning that one way to get around this pain-in-the-neck "spoiler" argument from the Dems while also giving those Ron Paul "libertarian" types something useful to do, would be to start organizing serious attacks on the Republican wingnut Machine in places like Orange County.

I have always said that another argument for the Green Party IS that we are NOT Democrats in places where, for various reasons, a lot of folks will NEVER vote for Democrats.  Say "Democrat" in Orange County and everybody immediately thinks about Los Angeles gangsterism, cronyism, and incompetence.  

Wes, do you know Crazy Dana's district includes part of Long Beach and lies right next door to CA-37?  A strong showing or a win by Daniel Brezenoff FOLLOWED by a simultaneous GREEN attack in BOTH districts in 2008 would be too beautiful for words!  (Oops!  I shouldn't say "attack" How about an outbreak of GREEN LOVE in BOTH districts in 2008).  


Alex Walker 


-----Original Message-----
From: Wes Rolley <wrolley at charter.net>
To: Green Discuss <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Sent: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 8:45 am
Subject: [Sosfbay-discuss] Progress in the OC



I have spent some time this spring working remotely with a group of 
ndividuals in Orange County.  The original intent was to mount a 
ampaign the out Congressman Crazy, a.k.a. Dana Rohrabacher. (CA-46)  I 
ind that what they are doing might sere as a good model for action here 
n Santa Clara County.
To begin with, since the target is a Republican and there is not yet an 
nnounced Democratic Candidate (Green Tom Lash has said that he 
intends" to run... again) to replace him, the group consists of active 
reens (One is a National Delegate) and PDA Democrats.  This may change, 
ut this group knows that they will have to make this decision at some 
oint in time.
One of the first tasks that took place was to establish effective 
ommunications channels.  This consists of a blog 
crazydana.blogspot.com) and an email list (sane46).  The latter took 
bout a month until everyone understood what it took to keep that list 
perational and effective.  (The participants in the Green California 
orum could take a lesson from this.)
After some discussion, the pieces started meld together into a work plan 
hat is being executed.
- The have a voter registration list for the District and it is on a 
ersonal computer.
 They have decided to target three specific issue areas: SB 840, Iraq 
ar, Climate Change.  At some point in time, they will have to figure 
ut what to do about Immigration, since that is where Dana opens his 
outh almost every day.
 Regarding SB 840, they have decided to also target State Senator Tom 
armon (SD-35), whose district is closely aligned with CA-46.   Harmon 
alls it "socialized medicine" and gets most of his campaign 
ontributions from big pharma.
 The have a plan to maximize the Letters to the Editors exposure in 
very local newspaper including the very Libertarian (surprise) Orange 
ounty Register.
 They will be tabling at all of the showing of Sicko - objectives - 
idicule Harmon, Hit Rohrabacher on his miserable Congressional voting 
ecord (against funding veterans trauma care, 11% rating from the 
merican Public Health Assn.) and registering new voters if possible.
 They will start walking precincts in Harmon's district (especially 
here it overlaps with Rohrabacher's Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, 
ountain Valley, Seal Beach).  Issue: Health Care. Targets: both.  But, 
hey will feed back the results of contacts into the voter registration 
B, making it a contact management system for use later.
This is still all grassroots without any connection to the Democratic 
arty apparatus in OC.  However, some leading OC Greens are on the 
ane46 email list: including 2 members of the County Council.
The degree of coordination that has been achieve between the various 
ctivities is extraordinary for a group that has been in existence for 
nly a very short time.  They demonstrate a political maturity in that 
hey are using individual actions to feed into an overall plan, one that 
an be executed in sections over the time that they have.  This is 
omething that this county could benefit from.  We do a lot of work, but 
ave not yet established the processes to connect them with each other 
r with an overall strategy.
They have also been able to bring together three constituencies: 
nti-war, environmental and Health Care in such a way as to allow 
ndividuals to work on that which motivates them the most and still to 
onnect it into the overall  objective, which is to Retire Dana 
ohrabacher.
While everyone cares deeply about the issues, the purpose of this 
ollaboration is political, not just to advance the issues.  It appears 
o me that much of what we do in Santa Clara County is only about the 
ssues and not enough is done to use those issues to build a 
onstituency for local political action.
My contributions to this have been:
 getting the Crazy Dana blog going.  There is one other author - a 
oung  PDA type who is also blogging against another SoCal Republican 
ongressman. We are now to the place where, if one does a google alert 
n 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 
eterans Health care, and his scorecard with health care organizations 
nd getting this information to the people who will use it... e.g. 
ilitary 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 
 couple of letters myself, responded on some newspaper owned blogs, 
ade sure that the sane46 email list knew about what I had done, 
ncouraged others to do the same.  Now, they do it themselves without my 
aving to spend time on it.
 connecting the Rohrabacher record back to some national news 
rganizations and blogs, e.g. TPM Cafe.  E.g. The recent Republican 
ttack on Pelosi for her "diplomatic" role regarding Israel / Syria was 
abeled hypocrisy when Rohrabacher had done the same thing himself with 
he Taliban in early 2001. (Interesting sidelight here in that one 
eporter 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 
he Delta.



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