Fwd: Big news from Brian Lawrence!

Dear friends,

You may have heard- I've decided to run for elective office! I'm running for the Mt. Diablo School board- there are seven candidates for three spots (one incumbent is running).

I have a huge interest in the district because Thomas (our oldest child) just started kindergarten in the district and Reid and Amelia will soon be entering the district. Plus, as a product of California public schools (University City High School, UCSB, Cal), I'm a passionate believer in the importance of a strong public school system. If we don't improve our educational system, America will fall behind countries like China and India.

The tough part is that I have to very quickly raise money for mailers, yard signs and door hangars. In order to have the printer get started on my campaign walk piece (I attached it to this email if you'd like a sneak peek) and signs, I need to raise $8,000 by Monday.  ANY contribution would be helpful and greatly appreciated! 

Could you make a donation today to help with the campaign? 

You can go here to my campaign website to donate via PayPal. You can also mail a check:

Please make it out to: Brian Lawrence for MDUSD Board- 2010 

and then mail to:

Brian Lawrence for MDUSD Board- 2010 

702 Windmill Court
Concord, CA 
94518
FPPC#:1330156

I feel really good about my chances to win the race- I've been endorsed by Senator Mark DeSaulnier, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, Supervisor Susan Bonilla, Walnut Creek Councilman Kish Rajan and community leaders from across the district. Volunteers are signing up to help me canvas the district, phone bank and host meetings at their homes.

You can also join the Facebook group and follow me on Twitter.

Thank you in advance for your help!

--
Best regards,

Brian Lawrence

Candidate for MDUSD Board

Click to check out the campaign on:

Twitter

Website

Facebook

--
Best regards,

Brian Lawrence

Candidate for MDUSD Board

Click to check out the campaign on:

Twitter

Website

Facebook

--
Best regards,

Brian Lawrence

Candidate for MDUSD Board

Click to check out the campaign on:

Twitter

Website

Facebook

Dreaming of Carlyfornia

Mike Bloomberg and Mark Warner are two examples of wealthy business executives who have had electoral succes, but it is not always that easy- ask Al Checchi or Mitt Romney. I know Mitt was the governor in Massachusetts, but this is not a man who has successfully transitioned to politics:




Dubya Bush was a unique case- a constant business failure who ended up having electoral success. 
Carly Fiorina just might be in a class of her own. Here's how HP stock fared during her tenure as CEO:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Carly "helped John McCain by saying things like Sarah Palin couldn't run a major corporation (considering what a great job Carly did, that is really saying something).


Now Carly's running  for the US Senate in California. Her campaign website has been rightfully described as the worst campaign website ever:





Earlier  this week Carly rolled out her new attack video targeting Tom Campbell. 




 So many questions:
- Where did they get the wanna-be Morgan Freeman narrator?
- Which sheep are the ones we should aspire to be?
- Did Carly herself play the demon sheep?
- Did anyone know that there was such a thing as a demon sheep before this ad?
- How much did they pay the the demon sheep?
- Did they use their own animals or have to tell a rancher that they were creating a demon sheep political ad?


The good news is that John McCain thought she did a good job as CEO:



Meg Whitman will need to kick it up in order to keep pace with Carly.

Looking forward to seeing Tebow

The Saints vs. Colts makes for a pretty good Super Bowl match up- both teams were undefeated after 13 weeks, have high powered offenses and elite quarterbacks. But every year most Americans look forward to seeing the commercials (Monster.com's "I want to be a yes man" is one of my all time favorites). The most talked about commercial this year is the one featuring Tim Tebow and his mother. They tell the story of her difficult pregnancy with Tim and her decision to continue with the pregnancy.

A number of women's groups are protesting the ad (partly because it is funded by Focus on the Family). Perhaps they've had a sneak peek at the ad and it shows aborted fetuses, but it sounds like most people haven't even seen the ad yet. I'm hoping that it is an ad that celebrates the choice that Tebow's Mom made- she's obviously quite proud of her son and she has every right to be.

I'm anti-abortion- I believe that it is a tragedy for everyone involved. If this ad decreases even slightly the number of abortions in this country, that's a good thing. But I'm also pro-choice. Bill Clinton summed it up well when he said that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare."

Until we've actually seen the ad, I'll go back to picking a winner in the game and assessing how Tim Tebow will fare at QB in the NFL......I'm picking the Saints 35-24 and think Tebow will end up being a damn good QB.

What Gavin Newsom should do next

The SF Mayor had folks yammering when Maureen Dowd wrote an article in which Gavin appeared to indicate he was retiring from politics after his term expired. “This is it. God bless. It was fun while it lasted,” he said of his career, with a rueful smile. “Guys like me don’t necessarily progress very far, which is fine.”


The obvious move is for Newsom to run for Lt. Gov. He is at least considering it, although seeming to lean heavily against it according to KTVU.

If he wants to have a significant career in politics, it is the best move he can make. He's termed out as mayor, his gubernatorial campaign was a non-starter, no other logical races for him to get in to.

The current Dem contenders, Janice Hahn and Dean Florez, aren't exactly setting the world on fire. Hahn's biggest campaign coup so far is getting the endorsement of Ed Begley Jr. And Florez's biggest achievement is that he has no ties to Ed Begley Jr.

According to the Fresno Bee:

• Lieutenant governor: Florez reported raising $229,747 in the second half of 2009 and has $957,381 cash on hand. Democratic primary opponent Hahn, a Los Angeles City Council member who only recently entered the race, raised $420,691 and has $341,341 at her disposal.

So we are 5 months from the primary and both candidates have less than $1 million Cash on Hand. Newsom swamps them both in name rec and could easily raise that type of cash- he couldn't keep up with Jerry Brown, but Florez and Hahn he can take.

Lt. Gov is not a high profile job, but Newsom doesn't need to raise his profile. He should spend the time traveling the stay, going to all the red counties and SoCal and letting people see that he is not a fire breathing San Francisco radical (funny how many people in SF think he is  way too moderate).

If Whitman or Poizner becomes governor, Newsom is a front-runner in 4 years. If Jerry Brown wins, Newsom bides his time- either for 8 years or 4 if Jerry only runs for 1 term. Newsom would also have a great platform to run for Senate in 2012 if Feinstein declines to run for reelection (decent chance since she's 117 years old).

And with all the wackiness from Edwards, Sanford, Spitzer, Vitter, etc., the fact that Newsom slept with his campaign aide's wife is old news. Kind of.

Here's Eliot yucking it up with Colbert:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Eliot Spitzer
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

Yuck!

I want to relegate John Edwards to the dimmest region of my memory, but more and more stuff just keeps coming out.  You'd think that the sex tape with his pregnant mistress, made while his wife was battling terminal cancer and he was running for President, would really be the lowest point of this nonsense. Now you've got whipping boy Andy Young revealing even more horrifying details. I think may go take a shower now.

State of the Union

Obama is like Michael Jordan back in the day- when the money is on the table, you just know he'll rise to the occasion. Every time he has needed to come up huge- 2004 keynote, Jefferson Jackson dinner in Iowa, Rev. Wright, 2008 nomination acceptance- he's done it. The SOTU was a home run- it struck just the right tone between bipartisanship and rallying the base.

Things I especially liked:

- Acknowledged that health care had been tough and that it wasn't politically easy
- Challenged anyone else to come up with a better way of fixing our system (and I really don't know how anyone can argue with a straight face that it doesn't need to be fixed).
- Don't ask, don't tell- gone this year- it is about time
-  Laid out facts that have been obscured- not a single American has had their taxes raised, millions of people received a tax cut with the stimulus package

Sneak peak at the State of the Union

Bayh makes the case for moving to the middle

I'll elaborate at a later time on where I think the Dems need to go, but I did think Bayh raised some interesting points in this WSJ article. 

And Calitics has a good article on how Jerry Brown might be the next Martha Coakley.  This is why I thought it might not be a great idea to have Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial  successor as our nominee. Funny how it looked like we could have a massive free for all for the nomination- Antonio, Gavin, Garamendi, Westly, Feinstein, Brown- and instead Jerry will be the nominee and he still hasn't even declared!

Bernanke

Paul Krugman has a good piece on why he is grudgingly supporting Bernanke's reappointment as the chair of the Fed.For me, knowing that hooker aficionado  David Vitter, John McCain and Jim Bunning oppose Bernanke is probably enough to get me to support him.

Bernanke is getting equally attacked from both the left and the right- in this case, he is about where he should be. In retrospect, the Fed did a horrible job of understanding the financial catastrophe that was developing in 2007 and 2008. Highly leveraged banks, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, lack of regulatory control, CDOs run amok, etc.- the entire federal government failed to intervene in any type of meaningful way.

However, starting in September of 2008, Bernanke has been incredibly aggressive in trying to avert another depression. He vastly expanded the role of the Fed and that was vital to saving our financial system. He's currently keeping the Fed rate at zero in order to continue stimulating the economy.

My guess is that he'll get between 65 and 70 votes to continue as the head of the Fed.

More teabaggery

Maverick John McCain is going to have a primary challenger in 2010. Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth thinks that McCain just doesn't breathe enough fire so he'll try and replace him.  Apparently, the myth of moderate Maverick John McCain exists even within the Republican party, not just with the Washington press corps.

The moderate McCain vanished in about 2003 when he realized that there was no presumptive heir apparent for President Bush. Suddenly, McCain stopped attacking the Bush tax cuts and started embracing them as just the sort of thing we needed. Of course the highpoint of his embrace of Bush was...his embrace of Bush.

There was speculation that McCain would return to his alleged moderate roots after both he won the GOP nomination in 2008 and after he lost the general election.  Especially after his loss to Obama, there were rumors that he'd become an elder statesman and try to work with the new President. Instead, McCain is trying to make opposition to Obama the centerpiece of his reelection campaign with quotes like: "I stand in his way every day."

One upside of Brown's victory (even though it is mostly downside)  in Massachusetts is that it has embolden the tea party contingent to attack their own. Much like the Republican infighting in NY-23 helped Bill Owens win, primary battles like this one in Arizona and the gubernatorial battle in Texas will hamper GOP efforts to create a landslide in 2010.