CA Primary voting

If you don't want 400 words about who to vote for if you happen to live in Oakland, read no further. Californians are reminded to vote against Prop. 98, and (reluctantly) for 99. Both suck, but this is the only way to minimize the suckage.

After long and studious consideration, I'm gonna recommend that you vote for a dude who shot a man. Alas, he did not shoot the kid just to see him die; he insists that it was self-defense. Whatever. That's not why I'm voting for him. I'm voting for him because literally everyone endorses him, and they do so for good reasons. Patrick McCullough for city council.

Based on endorsements and a careful review of independent local blogs, I'm also endorsing Kriss Worthington for state assembly, Loni Hancock for state senate, Rebecca Kaplan for city council (though the argument for Clinton Killian is also compelling, I don't like the politics underlying the fearmongering flier he mailed me), and Jody London for school director. There are good arguments to be made for Brian Rogers over London, so anyone who listens to my endorsement could really pick whoever they like in that race. Do not, however, vote for Tennessee Reed. Honestly.

I have no idea how to vote for judges, and frankly don't like the idea of electing them. I'd rather see them appointed with opportunities to retain them or reject them every so often thereafter. That said, Victoria Kolakowski's résumé is interesting, but her candidate statement doesn't read as impartial (even though her partiality swings my way). Dennis Hayashi was in the Clinton administration's Office of Civil Rights, and represented Fred Korematsu in his effort to vacate his bogus conviction for defying WWII concentration camps in America, and has the Sierra Club endorsement. I'll probably vote for him. Phil Daly isn't a bad choice, but I'd rather have judges who haven't spent years thinking only about putting people in jail. His time as a deputy district attorney will be compelling to some, but not to me.

For the county's Democratic Central Committee, I'm largely voting the Grassroots Progressives party line, but there's a University of Chicago alumna, Elizabeth Echols, who I feel obliged to support over Janet Flint. Special thanks to the LaRouchite who littered my porch with a handout of candidates for the wrong district. The more fliers were wasted here, the fewer will get into the hands of people who could vote for the batshit LaRouche supporters.

Vote for the county and city ballot measures.