I went to the Grand Opening of Hannah-Beth Jackson's campaign office Wednesday night in Ventura. After the excitement outside and inside the Tony Strickland w/ Mitt Romney event I was let down. It was the standard office opening party.
When I was walking up I ran into Republican activist Steve Frank who was a lone protester outside the event. Steve was holding a Taxin' Jackson sign and keeping tabs on the amount of people or who was attending the event. I asked if he wanted to talk on a short video but he declined and had no comment as he was there for business.
Inside the event there was about 25 people total. I looked around for signs of liberalism and found this:
( Looks like the tomato crisis is over!)
I didn't find any MAC computers running Firefox, pilates mats, or Nalgene bottles.
There were local Democratic Activists ( Steve Cummings from the Ventura Democratic Club), labor union supporters, people from the education community, business people, and a few young people, and as far as I could tell no other media. But ask Steve Frank. He was keeping track of that stuff too from the outside.
For about 15 minutes Hannah-Beth Jackson spoke about the campaign thus far, her issues, and then she took questions.
She started off by expressing her shock at the shoving that happened outside the Tony Strickland fundraiser. She said she would not tolerate that from her campaign and went on about freedom of expression and the constitutional right to free speech. She even mentioned Steve Frank and his right to stand outside the meeting and talked about how that is a great part of our nation's freedoms.
At a past event I asked her if she would pledge to not take contributions from gambling interests and the prison guards' union being that she had talked about her budget priorities including funding education at a high level. She said it was wrong how much we spend on prisoners while we cut education. Hannah-Beth Jackson said she wasn't going t pledge to not take any money from them but she said her record shows that she isn't beholden to them. ( Rough paraphrase, I don't know if she used the word beholden or not).
Last night she said there was two industries that she wouldn't take direct contributions from: oil and tobacco. That reminds me of the movie Zoolander. Tobacco and Oil do not go together:
How many of you got the reference without watching the video?
On the issue of tobacco funding she said the major difference was not the money but the voting patterns. She discussed key votes where she and her opponent voted differently when they served in the state assembly together. If you want to read more about the tobacco issue click on continue reading to see her latest press releases.
She discussed the need for some regulations and the role of government in a free market economy to provide for infrastructure and an educated workforce.
The long drive back to Simi Valley gave me a chance to reflect how large this state senate district really is and how hard it is to organize events when the drive time along back and forth would be a few hours. It would be awesome if both campaigns opened offices in Simi Valley soon. Maybe they could team up with local Democratic or Republican clubs?
Trivia question: Being that Tony and Hannah-Beth served in the assembly at the same time and both represented parts of Ventura County can you name any legislation they worked on together?
If they are promising to work with members of the other party did they ever work together?
I will be very impressed with your research skills if you name the legislation or action.
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