She joins Marsha McLean as the only other incumbent to have a re-election website, and I’m glad she named it “Go Weste.com” because I always joke on her name and it just fits with her personality:
I must say that 2010 has been quite different from 2008 when it comes to Santa Clarita City Council elections and the web. In 2008, just about every candidate had a website. This time around, that’s not the case.
Maybe that’s because people are using Facebook more now to organize, campaign and spread information. Myers has already covered the “FriendGap” between various candidates on Facebook (Laurie Ender recently started a fan page for Frank Ferry to close said gap).
As all the hip cats know, Facebook is little more than the AOL of the 21st Century and Santa Clarita’s move to that platform makes an open-standards browser/www guy like me cry a little inside, so I welcome Weste to the web in 2010.
Now if our City Council candidates could have caught on to Twitter in time…Maybe in 2012?
ON THE WEB:
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You forgot harrisonforsantaclarita.com
About a month too late, but probably the nicest site of the lot.
Did Johnny Pride exit the race?
I think it is the law, but even if not, Laurene needs to add her campaign ID to her website. Just an observation
Harrison Katz indeed has a website
http://www.harrisonforsantaclarita.com/
Laurene Weste
Saving Open Space. “As the leader for Open Space Natural Land Preservation, the City has already acquired over 4,000 acres. This land will be preserved forever from development.”
I would like to have a clear outline on a map of the 4,000 acres of open space that the city has acquired from her stated Open Space Tax that was perpetrated upon the property owners.
She stated it, it’s a legitimate question in my mind. Is it an Honest statement?
Keep one eye on the ball Ms. Weste, you are about to lose it.
Having open space is nice, I just wish the space was within the city. Taking credit for all 4000 acres is a bit disingenuous.
You missed one more.
david4scv.com
Tho his logo looks a lot like Katz’s
Excellent points Sterling and Cash. Her touting of her Open Space efforts makes me sick to my stomach. Anybody who doesn’t know the true story of what she perpetuated just click on my name for my site. I’ll admit the production value of the site is poor, but you will find the facts about what she perpetuated on the homeowners. I can back all of them up.
So Ferry doesn’t have a website? Is he that confident or just not really that into it?
Publius,
Tough read on him. He raised almost nothing in the last period, and all of his FPPC forms are handwritten. I wonder if the average voter even knows he’s on the ballot. Indifference or arrogance? An indifferent arrogance?
Remember a few years ago when he said low voter turnout wasn’t such a problem, that it indicated voter satisfaction?
With just a little over two weeks to go to the election, it’s time for the last push for voter registration.
Go to http://www.votesantaclarita.com to register to vote before March 29. You can also apply for a Vote-By-Mail ballot that must be returned to the City Clerk by 4/6.
Many polling places have changed locations for this election. Find your location at the same website.
It is important for you to tell your friends to register to vote.
You will need to re-register to vote when:
You move to a new permanent residence,
You change your name,
You change your political party choice
To clarify, David Gauny has a Twitter account, started last week for the final leg of the election. Contrary to Tim Meyers belief, this election is not over.
The final leg just happened. A lesson learned for next time, I suppose.
Says who? While yes, historically the mail in ballots did decide the election, but this year we will see more people, maybe even record numbers, at the polls. Stop trying to discourage voters.
I encourage people to vote, and in particular to vote in person. But from the standpoint of a campaign, the persuasion game is over.
On some measure, Gauny understood it, with an announcement and a website really early in the game. But he, and (luckily for his sake) all the other candidates, didn’t operate with the urgency necessary to woo undecided voters prior to the ballots coming in the mail. The net result? I’m not sure, but it’s certainly a missed opportunity.
I’m not sure why you think that record numbers will show up at the polls. If it’s so, it won’t be in record proportions. Thing is, people that vote absentee tend to stay that way. It’s very rare that an established absentee voter elects to vote at the polls.
No, I agree with you that the absentee voters will likely stay the same. I think the irregulars (ones that don’t vote every year) will be the ones that show up at the polls in larger numbers this year.
If you are rooting for a challenger, you should hope not. If someone isn’t a regular voter, their chance of voting for an incumbent is much greater. This rule goes out the window if a challenger breaks from the incumbents in a radical way (say, a youth movement or something). But I’m afraid that only those of us that follow this stuff on a daily basis really know how a Boydston or a Gauny is distinct from the other candidates.
Aside from seeing Ferry lose, which I don’t think will happen, I don’t have a dog in this fight. Just observations…
I dunno. I’m open to the idea that people are frustrated, they were with the Presidential election and we saw a big swing in that election. Could happen here too.
I think you should be more optimistic on Ferry’s loss this year. Crazier things have happened….
OK, just got the Weste email blast, was in my JUNK folder. What’s odd is I never signed up to be on her list and not on any other list managed by her email provider. It was total SPAM and a federal violation.
I’d pose this: people who follow politics are upset by the conduct of the elected officials. People who do not are generally happy with the way things are run here, especially compared to other municipalities. A funny thing happens around election times. People in the SCVtalk orbit tend to vote very similar to one another, despite the wide spectrum of ideologies we represent. We tend to coalesce in such a way, it gives the impression of a consensus forming. Then you see the election results and you see that the electorate at large views this community through an entirely different spectrum. I don’t know what that spectrum is, but it’s different than those of us who are really paying attention.
For better or worse, the best predictor seems to be Buck McKeon’s unambiguous endorsement. Maybe he’s just good at picking a winner. I’m not sure.
Now Boydston seems like a such consensus candidate, though his prior stint in office may just be enough to push him past the line. That’s my guess, at least. I’ve heard that a poll was done in the last few years and it found that Frank Ferry had the highest name ID in the city, even more so that Bob Kellar. That’s a tough thing to compete with.
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I’ve heard from a couple people who received a blast as well. Just their luck that Federal spam law exempts campaigns from its restrictions.