THE TOWN SQUARE, COMMUTER STYLE

How do you do face-to-face politicking in an Assembly district with nearly a quarter-million people, many of whom spend 10 to 12 hours a day either out of town working or on their way back and forth to their jobs? You look them in the eyes, through their windshields. At 6:30 in the morning.

Every weekday last week, and for every morning from now until Election Day, 37th Assembly District candidate Audra Strickland has been at intersections in Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park and other high-traffic commuter neighborhoods waving at motorists while volunteers and staff members display "Strickland for Assembly" signs. They call the practice "Burma Shaving," after the celebrated roadside advertising from the 1950s. To be sure, the crew places signs leading up to the intersection, but they don't have the wit and rhyme of the Burma Shave originals.

Audra
Strickland
4
Assembly

just doesn't have the same appeal as, say,

Special seats
reserved in Hades
for whiskered guys
who scratch their ladies

The problem, said Strickland campaign strategist Joel Angeles is that "nothing rhymes with Audra." Maybe not, but how about this?

One candidate talks
the other waxes
she's the one
who won't raise taxes.

Got any better ideas for Audra, or perhaps for any of her three opponents, Mike Robinson, Jeff Gorell or Eric McClendon?

Send them my way, to therdt@venturacountystar.com, and we'll post the best ones next week.