Assembly race already heating up

By ERIC LINDBERG — March 12, 2009

It’s still 20 months away, but the race for the State Assembly’s 35th District seat is already stirring up interest in the political community, particularly on the Democratic side of the ticket.

Longtime environmentalist, women’s rights activist and former business leader Susan Jordan has been hot on the campaign trail for several months in a bid to replace her husband and current Assemblymember Pedro Nava, who is termed out next year.

In recent days, Santa Barbara Councilmember Das Williams has started testing the waters with an exploratory committee and statement of intent to enter the race, allowing him to start raising funds to bankroll a possible campaign.

It’s a bit of a surprise move considering a few months ago the councilman had offered his support to Jordan, who he has worked with closely on previous campaigns.

The recent denial of an offshore oil deal by the State Lands Commission may have driven a wedge between the two, and many in the environmental community as a whole.

A hodgepodge of environmental heavyweights had backed the drilling deal after the oil company agreed to completely shut down its operations at a specified date, but Jordan, Nava and others didn’t find the agreement so appealing, or enforceable, and helped organize some opposition.

Williams preferred not to discuss the potential primary showdown with his old friend, adding that he doesn’t even want to set a date certain for when he’ll officially enter the race or back down.

“I think it’s just really important right now to concentrate on some of the problems in the city itself and I don’t want to be distracted by the assembly race when we’re dealing with things like the budget and gang violence,” he said.

Nonetheless, Williams said the pinch of the state’s budget nightmare is starting to be felt locally, describing how he visited a school yesterday where a large percentage of teachers had received pink slips.

“I’m pretty passionate about what’s happening — the destruction of our public education system,” he said. “It’s definitely made me even more serious about running.”

The councilman is also feeling out how his potential bid sits with a handful of voters in the district, which sprawls across a huge chunk of the Santa Ynez Valley and South Coast, as well as a portion of Ventura County.

Williams said he is speaking with 100 people from “all walks of life” throughout the district to get feedback.

“I’m getting pretty positive responses,” he said.

Jordan has also been reaching out to voters and said she is very accessible and open to meeting with her potential constituents.

“I’m a researcher by training,” she said, “Unless you go out there and talk to people, you aren’t going to know what the bottom line is.”

The 57-year-old has been entrenched in the environmental community for the past 15 years, having founded the California Coastal Protection Network. Prior to that, she was partner in a major market research and business development consulting firm.

When asked what made her decide to enter the assembly race, Jordan said she had originally been urged to run for a political seat nearly a dozen years ago when she was still living in Manhattan Beach.

Her son was 9 years old at the time and it didn’t feel right, she said, so the idea left her head until early last summer.

“I had just finished two very successful campaigns, one to stop the construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal and the other to stop a toll road through San Onofre State Park,” she said. “It felt like the right time.”

While an environmentalist and women’s rights advocate at heart, Jordan said anybody running for office would be remiss to focus on anything other than the economy at this point.

“We can’t have another train wreck that we had in this last budget session,” she said.

For now, her focus is on meeting with voters, gathering endorsements and raising money for what is shaping up to be a hotly contested race for the 35th District.

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is this a joke? : 3/12/2009

Neither one of these people have the foggiest idea how to fix our state economy or how to balance the state budget without trying to raise taxes. Both of them are so-called "environmentalists". Is the problem with our state economy the fact that we have too few environmentalists grandstanding in the state legislature at taxpayers expense? Do Democrat voters live in a parallel universe?

not amused

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