This year is going to be great for blog traffic. I have many races that the print media won't be covering much combined with candidates like Audra Strickland and Jim Dantona who always get massive attention.

Jim Dantona is running for Ventura County Clerk-Reporter. He has shown in the past he is a tough campaigner when he defeated an incumbent supervisor and then came close in a run-off to Peter Foy in a Republican district. His declared opponent is Supervisor Peter Foy's Chief of Staff Mark Lunn.

The Ventura County Clerk-Recorder is in charge of voter registration and running elections. I want to see a candidate that isn't on the central committee for their party and won't use the position to directly influence elections. I wouldn't mind if they resigned from their party and promised to rarely endorse candidates.

I also want to expand voter registration and Vote By Mail efforts across our communities including (but not limited to) minorities, young people, military members and senior citizens. My ideal candidate will rally young people on campuses to vote and see a major duty of theirs to increase voter turn out.

I will be following these candidates closely to see who offers us the clear choice. Jim Dantona has earned my respect for his energetic campaigning. Let's see if he will earn my vote.

In related news Peter Foy might be too busy to help Mark Lunn much. Check back in a few days to see why.

To all of the candidates: If you ever see a comment that is personally offensive or otherwise over the top send me an email to have it removed. I often remove comments and I don't post who requested me to delete the comment.

I recently posted that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had spoken to Jim Dantona about CA 24. My post even made the front page of the very influential blog Dailykos.com :

Click here to see the Daily Kos post. For some reason they called him Peter Dantona.

Then this was reported within days:

A group that campaigned for supervisorial candidate Jim Dantona in 2006 has agreed to pay a $700 fine for accepting contributions that exceeded the county's legal limit.

Click here for the rest of the story from The Ventura County Star.

The article discusses that it was likely an oversight because the independent committee reported their wrong doing, rather than getting caught trying to hide it. That's the strange thing about our campaign finance laws. People frequently get caught up in the regulations on accident. But as far as justice goes by the time the bureaucracy rules on a complaint it is long after a campaign is over and voters could hold a campaign accountable.