I have been running a contest for my readers to submit Where in Ventura County pictures that include pictures of their signs in an interesting location. Here are the winners:

Most on message photograph:

Honorable Mention:

Best essence of Ventura County:

Honorable Mention:

Fan Favorite (Determined by unscientific online poll results):

Click on continue reading for the other pictures.

Last week Don Facciano accused his opponent for Treasurer / Tax Collector of many wrong doings, including using his influence to help a convicted sexual offender. Now he continues on the attack with a radio and television campaign.

This ad just started playing on local television:

Steven Hintz has thus far refused to comment or release anything related to the allegations. His opponent claims there is a letter where Hintz asked for leniency for a convicted sex offender but so far no letter has emerged as proof. But Hintz has responded by releasing new endorsements to show leaders are willing to put their name on the line as character witnesses. Here are some of those new endorsements:

The Ventura County Star has a news story that summarizes the race in detail. The news article includes this quote:

In 1992, Hintz was admonished by the state Commission on Judicial Performance for three instances of misconduct: ordering a search of spectators in his courtroom, criticizing jurors for their verdict, and improperly using his judicial office for a personal purpose in ordering a new trial.

I'm not interested in being critical of searching the crowd but I'd like to know more about the state commission admonishing him for ordering a new trial.

People say endorsements don't matter much but in a story like this where it is difficult for a voter to know the truth watching how many leaders are willing to be character witnesses is very powerful.

Retried Judge Steven Hintz is running for Treasurer / Tax Collector against former President of the Ventura County Taxpayers' Association Don Facciano. I'm not sure which of the two has a stronger ballot designation. Steven Hintz has run a much more effective campaign collecting an impressive list of endorsements.

His latest entry was sent in by a supporter of his. The goal of the Where In Ventura County contest is to send in pictures that are hard, but not impossible, to guess where the picture was taken. I will name winners before the election with categories like most on message photograph and best landscape photograph. Keep submitting your entries by email or by uploading them to facebook.com/briandennerthere

The leader of a Ventura County Tea Party group and a leader of the local chapter of the NAACP have both endorsed Steven Hintz for Treasurer-Tax Collector. How does a candidate for a low profile office unite a birther with a civil rights group leader? Hintz has been running an energetic and impressive campaign. Unless something changes I expect him to win.

Click on continue reading for a list of the people endorsing him.

For the June Primary I asked campaigns to send in pictures of their candidate with a dog. Steven Hintz and Heather Lacayo won the contest and went on to win their elections. Is there a strong connection? Probably not.

For this election I am asking candidates to take pictures of their signs as they campaign across Ventura County. I will post every entry with the winners being announced the night before the election. The goal is to make it difficult, but not impossible, for readers to determine where the picture was taken. I want readers to look at the picture for clues and then post a comment with their guesses. The more specific the guess the better.

Like all of my blog entries you don't need to register to post a comment. But please keep it classy. The reader that accurately answers the most challenges will also be recognized.

There will be several awards campaigns can win. So, campaigns can send in multiple entries. I am thinking about categories like most memorable location, most obscure, funniest, best representation of a city, and a few others. Feel free to post suggestions with new categories. I will be asking The Star to cover this contest in the print edition and with online ads. They did support the cutest dog contest with a link on the front page and I expect they will do the same this time. So start taking pictures. To submit a picture send it to me at my email address posted on the right side of this page or upload it to my Facebook page for my blog.

For this first entry let's see who can most accurately determine where Treasurer / Tax Collector candidate Steven Hintz was when it was taken. Thanks to Steven Hintz for getting this contest started.

This contest was inspired by blogger Andrew Sullivan's View from your window blog posts that have now been made into a book.

Steven Hintz sent me this picture from the Santa Paula Independence Day Parade. He has been bringing that dog with him all over the campaign trail. I'd like to see a picture of his dog with other politicians. Steven, I will post every picture that you send me with your dog and other candidates. Maybe when someone endorses you they take a picture with your official campaign critter?

His campaign has continued to gather support with his latest endorsement being the union that represents Ventura County Sheriffs. Besides being able to claim support from law enforcement support from the Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs' Association often comes with a large campaign contribution, sometimes as a donation and sometimes as an Independent Expenditure (IE).

Getting the support of a large labor union does carry risks. With concerns by many that pension costs are unsustainable and that public employee unions are too influential in public debates this gives his opponent a line of attack. But for that to work his opponent would need to be running an aggressive campaign and could antagonize law enforcement supports. I am not sure what is happening with the other campaign but Steven Hintz has been dominant publically since the primary.

Since the primary has ended one of the most energetic campaigners has continued to be Steven Hintz. He sent in some pictures from a recent parade over the 4th of July weekend and today he officially announced he has earned the endorsements of two of the candidates he defeated in the June primary. Because no candidate earned more than 50% there will be a run-off in November between Steven Hintz, and his closest opponent Don Facciano.

I haven't seen many updates to Don Facciano's campaign website or recent news from his team but being that the election is in November it would appear he has time to start campaigning more. I am not sure how much attention voters are paying to an election like this but Facciano is taking a chance that Ventura County political powerbrokers will assume that Hintz is the frontrunner if he waits much longer. I am not sure who is the frontrunner because the power of ballot designations in a low information race can be immense. Retired Judge sounds good but what about something like Taxpayer Advocate?

Steven Hintz's press release came to me from a new public relations firm. He might have been using them before but I didn't notice. Click on continue reading to see the press release and the bio of his consultant.

Steven Hintz was campaigning for Treasurer / Tax Collector on Saturday in Ojai and sent in a few pictures. If you see any candidates out campaigning this weekend send me the pictures and I will post them.

Here is Steven Hintz with the return of his campaign dog plus a new friend:

Click on continue reading for his other photos from the Ojai parade.

I haven't claimed that my online poll of readers is a scientific measure of voter preferences but they do reveal some information including which elections have energetic candidates and/or supporters. My readers correctly picked Steven Hintz to be the top vote getter in the June Primary, although they were off by a large margin. After that the results were wildly off with the exception of Ed Summers, who did almost exactly as well at the polls as he did in my reader survey.

Here are the results of my poll:

Here are the official results from the June Primary:

Because no candidate won more than 50% of the votes the top two candidates will face each other in the November general election. I will be posting almost every press release and photo the two campaigns send in over this long summer. Here is a new poll that only includes those two candidates:

You can hit the share button to post this poll to Facebook and other social networks.

Steven Hintz has a great sense of humor. If that was the prime requisite for Ventura County Tax Collector / Treasurer I would endorse him. He often sends me lines so funny it would be great to share them. Recently, I clicked on a link to his page and noticed one of his many opponents , Keith McLaughlin, had his ad show up on Hintz's page. I know Facebook ads are placed by keywords but that's funny.

Steven, thanks for giving me permission to post a screenshot of your page.

Candidate for Treasurer / Tax Collector Steven Hintz sent me in a picture as a part of my pets campaigning contest.

I am posting pictures of pets with a campaign sign over the next couple of weeks. The candidate with the best picture will get a blog entry at the top of this page on the day of the primary election.

Every candidate that sends in a picture will have it posted. Think of it as free publicity. In addition I will link to their campaign website.

Click on continue reading for the other dogs. Click here for my past interview with Steven Hintz.

I don't have any predictions to make so far in the Treasurer / Tax Collector's race. Without an incumbent or a well known candidate I am not sure who has the advantage. Money and name ID will be important and Hintz has both. In addition he has a great ballot designation. I expect he will be at or near the top of the candidates in a few weeks.

I am interviewing Steven Hintz tonight using the comments section of my blog. I asked him for a one on one interview but when we are done please leave me feedback or comments for my next interview.

Click on continue reading to see the interview.

I will be asking a variety of questions, some of which will likely be surprising. Because we can count on traditional media to ask the typical questions I am going to use this opportunity to explore the ideology and background more.

If you know a candidate that would like to be interviewed on Thursday Night Live have them contact me.

Steven Hintz has announced that he has the support of previous Former Ventura County Treasurer-Tax Collector Hal Pittman for his campaign for the same position. Click on continue reading for the press release.

I didn't think at first the race would be a very competitive but the top two candidates look like they will be drawing support from across Century County. I also understand that Warren Harwood announced he is running for this position. I will believe it when he turns in the signatures and puts up a website.