Teleidoscope

Thu, Jul 31, 2008

Semi-Ept

Posted at 1:43 pm MDT to Current Events

Interesting.

The Shafroth campaign has enough awareness of the blogoverse to have someone scanning for mentions of him in blogs, but they respond to what they say are inaccuracies in an email.

Apparently my little 'add a comment' link is merely decorative. Or else maybe they don't want to commit to a public discussion?

They included an offer of a followup phone-call, if I will provide them with a number to call. I think not. I am sufficiently unimpressed by their website, and I have no intention of getting on a list consenting to incoming spam-calls.

I'm not going to quote from the email either: I assume if they wanted a public discussion they would have used the comments, so I am going to respect their privacy.

Somehow this reminds me of those bozos who were claimed to be representing the blogging world in negotiations with the AP, but you needed to use email or the telephone to get information about them.

I should probably check my logs and find out if anyone is actually reading this blog these days besides the handful I more or less know about.

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Democratic Primary

Posted at 9:07 am MDT to Current Events

There are three Democrats in the race for my local Congressional District: Jared Polis, Joan Fitz-Gerald, and Will Shafroth.

A few weeks ago I was called by a political poll about the race. As far as I could tell from the questions they asked, Will Shafroth was running on a platform of having a wife and kids, not on policy matters. I found that a little odd and suspicious until this morning, when I checked wikipedia on all three candidates. The article on Jared Polis describes him as 'openly gay'. Suddenly all the 'family' questions made sense. Shafroth was running on a "I am a man and not gay' platform". Ewww.

According to Shafroth's website, he has been endorsed by both Denver newspapers, which swing much farther to the right than the Boulder area that the Representative will actually be representing. This would suggest to me that he is the surrogate Republican in the race (this is a fairly solid Democratic seat) even if the push-poll questions had not made me suspicious.

I'm having trouble deciding between Polis and Fitz-Gerald.

I like Jared Polis' policies on various issues, and his website seems to address more of them and in more detail than Fitz-Gerald does. He has been a successful creator of several businesses and worked as head of the State Board of Education (an elected post), and created a foundation that, among other educational endeavors, supports education for immigrant children and homeless and at-risk children. He has also pledged not to take PAC money.

He seems competent (unlike Shrub's business background of repeated failures), and I like his ideas. He has a well-done personal website and one for his educational foundation as well as the political one that's tied to the campaign, so he seems to be a resident of the 21st century. But he does lack legislative experience.

Fitz-Gerald was the first woman President of the Colorado State Senate, and is very plugged into the old-style Democratic organization. She was previously a County Clerk (in a strongly Republican county) who introduced Vote-by-Mail to Colorado. She has most of the big endorsements from Democratic politicians and unions.

Legislative experience is desirable, but I am very disappointed with the way the organization Democrats in Congress have failed to do the things we elected them to do in 2006. They threw away two years in which they could have made corrections to the appalling course this country has been on. Legislative experience is way too likely to mean 'business as usual' in all of the worst ways.

I think I am going to vote for Polis in the primary.

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