June 3rd, the proper primary day for California, is upon us again. There’s basically nothing to talk about on the US Representative side of things. Barring an act of God, Lynn Woolsey is getting re-elected. Heck, nobody’s even running against her in her own party. The state Senate and Assembly positions are also uncontested at the primary level. The Presidential contest has already been weighed in on back in February. Heck, we only have two ballot measures to think over, both on the same issue:

Prop 98 Grrr! Eminent Domain bad! Kill with fire! Rarr!
Also includes lots of fun little provisions that get rid of rent control and make it practically impossible for the government to ever impose new regulations on anybody that could possibly be construed as damaging their property value somehow. Probably a bad idea.

Prop 99 Grrr! Eminent Domain bad! Kill with fire! Rarr!
Basically like Prop 98 but with less gotchas built in. Basically a populist backlash against something the Supreme Court did a while back. I’m unaware of any actual cases of the State of California seizing property from homeowners that didn’t want to sell, then turning around and selling it to private developers. The pro-98 campaign is basically just an anti-99 effort operating on the assumption that nobody wants the government to take their land. Well, so far as we can tell, the government doesn’t actually want your land, so I’m disinclined to give this one the thumbs-up either.

So it’s looking like a “no” on both of the live propositions.

Board of Supervisors
If you live in District 3 for the County of Sonoma (like me) you’ve got a bevy of supervisory candidates available. Wright, Zane, and Smith all look like the most likely picks here, with Sharon Wright having won the notoriously lousy endorsement of the Press Democrat, our local newspaper. The endorsement was posed as a close call between her and Tim Smith. Tim Smith has the great virtue of having the exact same name (down to the middle name, identical) as the former incumbent, and further benefits from having an atrocious website. Veronica Jacobi is another Santa Rosa City Councilwoman looking to make the jump to the county level, but her curriculum vitae reads like exactly the kind of political actor better suited to represent the West end of our county, not the 3rd district. Shirlee Zane looks credible, and seems to be hitting all the right buttons to appeal to the local body politic, but suffers from an apparent endorsement from the sci-lon empire, her election signs having appeared on their local HQ’s front lawn. Not a great association there, from my perspective. Wright also suffers by association with Herb Williams, local power broker that has helped shoehorn a number of local figures into positions of power that they haven’t done a lot of good in.

I probably should have done a series of posts on these folks, but I know that most of the people who comment on this blog don’t actually live in the 3rd district. Of course, I also figured I’d decide who I was voting for earlier than this, and I’m still fence-sitting. Bad burrowowl, you should be a better voter!