In 1974 I ran for State Senator against Democratic incumbent Alan Robbins (the same Alan Robbins who later was convicted of various felonies while in office). In order to run for office that year I had to get a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals injunction against the enforcement of California’s filing fees for which there was then no legal alternative. You couldn’t even have write-in votes counted for you without paying a fee, meaning that indigents and people who worked for a living couldn’t run unless they had rich supporters to finance their campaigns.
While my case tied up the state with the injunction, Don Paul Lubin of the Peace and Freedom Party, who wanted to run for Board of Supervisors, got his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Marge Buckley handled both cases. When Lubin vs Panish was decided 9-0 by the Supreme Court striking down California’s filing fees as facially unconstitutional, Jerry Brown, then Secretary of State, responded by throwing five (5) candidates off the ballot for not paying the fees that had just been declared unconstitutional, including Peace and Freedom Party candidates Bob Donovan (Attorney General), Bernie Klitzner (Controller), and Jim Stanbery (State Treasurer).
Since then, I’ve run for everything from Assembly to President at one time or another.
In 1974 as mentioned, I ran against Alan Robbins for State Senator in the San Fernando Valley. In 1976, I ran against Jim Keysor in the SFV for State Assembly. In 1978, I was the PFP nominee for Lieutenant Governor against Merv Dymally and Mike Curb. In 1980, I caused the defeat of ranking Californian in Congress Jim Corman by taking away nearly 2,100 votes, almost three times as many as the 750 votes he lost by to the Republican. In 1982, I ran for the PFP nomination for Governor against a candidate who claimed that nuclear power was safe and environmentally sound in the Soviet Union (sure, like the plant at Chernobyl). I lost the election, but in the light of history, I won the argument.
In 1992, I ran for Congress against Republican Carlos Moorhead, who had answered a question I posed to him at a community forum by saying he voted against Barbara Boxer’s bill for abortion funding for rape and incest victims because it included funding for victims of spousal rape, which he described as being “when a husband gets a little too aggressive with his wife.” I exposed him for the male chauvinist pig that he was throughout the district.
In 1994 I was the PFP Candidate for State Treasurer against Phil Angelides and Matt Fong Eu. Following the one debate that included Angelides, Eu, and Libertarian Petersen along with myself, Eu and Petersen congratulated me admitting that I’d really kicked ass in the KQED FM forum, while Angelides stalked off.
In 1996, I ran for the PFP Presidential nomination and placed second out of four candidates in the primary, trouncing the Socialist Party’s candidate and edging out the party leadership endorsed candidate. I placed second to the Workers World Party nominee, Monica Moorhead.
In 1998, I was again the PFP’s State Treasurer nominee, setting the record for the highest vote ever in any PFP primary election that I hold to this day. That year, I was the party’s highest vote getter in the general election and got more votes than Green Party gubernatorial candidate and former Democratic Congressman Dam Hamburg. That was in spite of the fact that the party leadership refused to support me and overtly denounced me. In 2000, while PFP was off the ballot, I ran in the Green Party’s U.S. Senate primary.
Now, due to the death of State Senator Jenny Oropeza, I’ve taken out petitions to run for the 28th State Senate special election, but there’s a catch. After our court victories in 1974 getting the old filing fee law thrown out, the legislature wrote a new law. It imposed thousands of signatures to wave the filing fees for Democrats and Republicans, and a pretty hard but doable 10% or 150 signatures, whichever is less for a district or statewide election, for third parties. That may sound easy but it still is very, very difficult and almost impossible for candidates who are actively opposed by their own party’s leadership (which defeats the very purpose of party primaries, which are supposed to give the choice of a party’s candidate to the party rank and file, not to party bosses). Usually, you have months in which to gather the necessary signatures.
However for the special election in the 28th District, in which the State of California is now implementing the so-called “open primary” rules under Proposition 14, the alternative to paying the filing fee is that I got to take out the petition yesterday (Friday) and they have to be back with 3,000 good signatures on Monday. The State of California is just pretending to have an alternative to paying the filing fee at this point, because this is ridiculous, especially when it’s raining cats and dogs throughout the 28th District.
So California, get ready for another lawsuit.
For more info about my candidacy, go to the Facebook event page: