Hearing Maldonado on the radio, I'm wondering why isn't this guy running for governor? I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. Well, the reason is he is running for Lt. Governor. Against San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who was not very visible during the emergency despite it being much closer to his home. Many SF fire and EMT crews were working that disaster. I've never liked Gavin. Especially not since he had an affair with the wife of his closest aide, and accepted the aide's resignation.
Which leads me to the no win part of this.
We have running for governor a loser and a type A bully. The loser is Jerry Brown, who was governor once before (a position he basically inherited from his father) but all I remember about his time in office was his failed relationship with singer Linda Ronstadt. The bully is Meg Whitman, who took eBay from a small but trusted auction place for individuals to buy and sell items online, to a mega-mall where the individual seller can no longer make a reasonable profit, and it's all about the volume sellers who fill eBay's coffers as much as their own. She has spent $120 million of her own money on the campaign so far, which makes one wonder how extremely over-paid she was at eBay. Oh wait, she was also on the board of Goldman-Sachs.
While Meg confessed to not having voted in the past 28 years, Brown has been elected to string of lesser jobs (he's now the Attorney General, and his record has been lackluster). When he was mayor of Oakland** their schools went into state receivership and homicides skyrocketed.
I can't see voting for either of them.
The same goes for our US senator's race. The Republican candidate is a person who by all rights should be in jail. As CEO of HP, she was responsible for breaking some serious privacy laws, but somehow the charges were squelched. She took a $22 million severance package when she was fired. While at HP she destroyed a company I had worked for for 5 years. She had HP buy Compaq, and the merger was like mixing chocolate and oyster sauce. Everyone lost on that deal. She spun off the test & measurement division and cut the cord. That was the core of HP for its first 25 years, and was still a going concern, but they don't do consumer items, so they didn't fit her marketing plans.
The democrats are running Barbara Boxer again. She needs to retire and let someone with a backbone take over. A lot of Obama's failure in Congress is due to her lack of resolve and political acumen.
Again, I can't see voting for either of them.
My local Congressperson has tried very hard to push the agenda I'm in favor of, but she has failed, along with Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats. I can't see sending her back with that kind of record, but having a Republican in there would be worse.
Argh.
**While Jerry Brown, who is white, was mayor of predominantly black Oakland, Willie Brown, who is black, was mayor of mostly-white San Francisco.
