Meet The Candidates: Charlie Brown and Russ Warner

As far as an overall take on the convention I would pretty much associate myself with Robert's remarks. Ultimately these events are more important for the time-honored political practice of networking, of meeting and gathering impressions on colleagues and candidates for the future, not in a formal speech setting but one-on-one. While these endorsement fights and resolutions and platforms get the attention of the activists and insiders, and as well you can pretty fairly judge the activist/establishment gaps in the party in this fashion (the activists got virtually everything they wanted in this convention, particularly with respect to the platform), ultimately it's about people. And at Calitics we were determined to bring that experience right to you by collecting audio and/or video of some of our most promising Congressional candidates.

First up are Charlie Brown and Russ Warner, but before that I wanted to sketch out some of the other candidates I met over the weekend:

1) Bill Durston (CA-03): We have an audio interview with Dr. Durston, an emergency room physician and a Vietnam combat vet. Unfortunately the audio might be a little heavy on the background noise, so let me offer this. While I've heard from some that Durston may be preaching too much to the choir and not going after Dan Lungren supporters, I feel he certainly would be credible if he chose to do that. Durston is pretty progressive, and his views on health care (he supports single payer and does so from experience) and Iraq (he opposed it from the beginning and speaks powerfully on the morality of war) are compelling. As I've been noting, CA-03 is a changing district, with more Democrats than any Republican-held seat in the state, and hopefully more to come before November, so this is an opportunity to offer a real contrast to Dan Lungren and roll the dice. Durston is running on Iraq, health care and the environment (Lungren has a worse environmental record than even Richard Pombo by some measures) and we'll see if he can gather support.

2) Debbie Cook (CA-46): Audio and video of our interview to come. Cook, running against certified loon Dana Rohrabacher in a district mostly in Orange County and part of Long Beach, is running on the environment, but not as an advocate against global warming necessarily. She is on the board of directors of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO-USA), and really is passionate about moving to a post-carbon future and radically reinventing our energy infrastructure. When I asked about carbon taxes or cap and trade systems, she really looked beyond that debate about greenhouse gas emissions and toward a debate about sustainable living. This is about land use, about smart growth, about living closer together, adopting mass transit, eating locally grown foods, reorganizing society to deal with the prospects of a world without as much oil. It's an interesting message for a Congressional campaign, especially when going up against someone who speculates that global warming may have been caused by dinosaur flatulence. But Cook also supports the Repsonsible Plan to End the War in Iraq and understands the post-carbon fight as a national security and an economic issue as well.

3) Russ Warner (CA-26): We have full video of this. I've seen Russ speak on a number of occasions, and let me say that I'm very impressed with his maturation as a candidate. He's more than ready to stand on a stage with David Dreier and go toe-to-toe with him. And there's a new passion to his message, including his belief that the Bush Administration is waging an effort to "destroy this county from the inside out," that is uncompromising. Warner will make Iraq a front-and-center issue in his campaign, along with health care and the economy (his answer on the housing crisis and the financial mess was pretty good). This is a race we'll all be talking about soon.



4) Charlie Brown (CA-04): WE'll have full video of this, but for the moment we have a couple bits and pieces. Listen to this part, when I ask how he'll deal with the expected "anti-government" message from the Republican he'll have to face in November, and you'll see exactly why those military veterans support Brown and rebuke those career politicians who claim to want to represent them.



There's another four-minute clip here.



Overall I think we have an excellent crop of candidates. I was only able to talk briefly with some of them but I'll be following up in the weeks to come. Ultimately the fight for progressive change must not end at a convention but be wrested away at the ballot box. These are some of the leaders trying to do just that.