Tonight, as the election returns from voting in the California Primary come dribbling in, OB Ragsters Doug Porter and Frank Gormlie will be joining CityBeat in blogging live results. (San Diego City Beat is a liberal weekly magazine with an online presence.)
The OB Rag bloggers will balance out the panel of political pundits as it includes conservatives, centrists, and others somewhere on the local political spectrum. (CityBeat considers itself “progressive” – yet they advocated “no” on Prop B [term limits for County sups] and “Yes” on Prop D [strong mayor].)
Here is the press release for the event:
At SDVotes.com, San Diego CityBeat will be blogging live results from Golden Hall’s election central Tuesday night and gauging the impact with a panel of some of the wittiest political minds from the right, left and center.
We’ll have video and photos and tweets from the scenes and we’ll even twist a few politicians’ arms to make them come sit down and live blog with it us.* This is an experiment, but it will rock. Readers shouldn’t be surprised if it spirals into chaos—as any good election night does.
Here’s what SDRostra.com says about SDVotes.com:
“We may be Center-Right, the folks at CityBeat may like to call themselves Progressives.… Yet, we can all agree that it would be way cool to provide some real time, high-tech election analysis, discussion, and good-natured smack to our respective readers on Tuesday night. Which IS pretty progressive, if not in the philosophical sense.
“Plus, they asked us. Which we thought was pretty cool as well.”
If you have no clue what we’re talking about, just show up at SDVotes.com sometime after 6 pm. on June 8. You’ll figure it out quick enough. (Logging in to comment is easy: Just type your name or use the Twitter or Facebook login.)
Hosts: Justin McLachlan and Dave Maass
Featured guests include:
» Carl Luna, USD / San Diego Mesa College , Political Lunacy
» Chris Crotty, Crotty Consulting
» Doug Porter, and Frank Gormlie, OBRag.org
» Barry Jantz, Flash Report / SDRostra.com
» Gayle “Libertarian Lass” Falkenthal, Falcon Valley Group
» Paul M. Bowers, School District Wonk
With appearances from CityBeat editor David Rolland, voiceofsandiego.org writer Liam Dillon and maybe even Undercover Gover, whoever the anonymous political blogger may be.
Plus readers, tweeters and any politician or player we can grab at Golden Hall.
For more information: Dave Maass – davem@sdcitybeat.com
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome night, folks – sad I missed a good chunk of it due to a random personal fund-raising opportunity…and very cool to see youse guys recognized as “featured guests” representing the Rag – amazing how far this site has come in the last couple years, for some reason seeing that really drove it home.
It was an interesting experience. Swapping tidbits with a range of pundits as the results came in slowly. Doug was there, but so was Patty, then Dave R, so the OB Rag was well represented. Other friends came in like Landry Watson, Catherine, and Curt.
It was okay. I certainly enjoyed seeing the Rag get recognition. But as an observer I have to say that it moved s l o w l y–it was dull at times. There has to be a way to make it more exciting. Maybe if the City Beat’s frothing commenter Pistol Pete, the Rag’s reactionary Ray Hoobler or know-it-all Lisa OB had chimed in it might have been more fun. Or maybe we just needed videos of the local TV news screw ups, like when Fox declared Whitman the sure winner over Brown or Bow Tie Bob drooling all over the blonde anchor on KUSI.
lol….Kittle was such an a-hole. that was hilarious.
I thought it was just dull because I tuned in late – but man, the feed was really choppy given that every comment was moderated.
psd, yeah, I recall you coming on. We need to give CityBeat some feedback. What’s yours? What do you mean by choppy? The panelists’ comments were not pre-moderated and some readers’ comments were allowed free rein after they had been approved for several already. So, let’s hear it, how can they improve it -as they plan on doing it again in November.
i didnt get to check in “live” but did look everything over after the fact (around midnight). It was certainly a good idea, but Doug is right – even looking it over after the fact, i found the conversation kind of dull. Still, good job guys and I’m certainly glad the Rag is getting well deserved recognition!
I enjoyed the format, though it tired and depressed me. Kinda like reading Mike Allen or Chuck Todd. Lots of insider campaign consultant, “the game” talk, not as much discussion of issues. Though I don’t fault CityBeat for that. It seems to be just the way the world works. I did ask a question that wasn’t answered as far as I know and that’s why there was no real race in District 2. I don’t have any major gripes with K-Faulc. He’s a Republican and I tend not to agree with Republicans and I don’t like how he never mentions OB in his twitter stream. Maybe I’m overly sensitive there, but it strikes me as a lack of interest or pride in the community. But these are not major things that would prevent me from voting for him. He was very quick to respond to my request for help with regards to an overflowing dumpster recently and the situation was resolved quickly. I appreciate that, but I also expect it. So it’s not that I’m anti-Faulconer. I just resent that the Dem party apparently devoted no resources to District 2 and basically decided that there would be no contest here. What gives them the right to do that? I realize they have to determine where to devote sometimes limited resources. So, we had an election, but no real debate about the issues in our district or how they intersect with larger citywide issues. It all makes me very sad. And frankly, these party machine politics are what pushed me to support Prop 14. These are the party politics that were causing so much talk of Gloria or Faulconer for Mayor and Susan Davis yet again on the SDVotes.com blog last night. Just a lot of insider promotions. What gives them the right to decide these things before a debate has even happened? I’m not naive about politics and I’m not suprised, but sometimes it just pisses me off.
two things about the dist 2 council race:
1) Faulconer follows up on constituent complaints. that’s the only contact most voters have with their councilman, and when they see somebody responding that’s a plus.
2) The dem candidate, Patrick Finucane, failed to come up with anything that would differentiate himself other than his party id (in a non-partisan race). Platitudes will not beat an incumbent. Hell, Faulconer even positioned himself as the candidate leading the charge for “change”.
As for the democratic party, it’s my guess they didn’t want to commit resources to race they didn’t think they could win.
I noticed that even though I got a few Finucane mailers, he had nothing but vague flowery language on his site – was told by a few folks ‘in the know’ that it’s not really appropriate to take specific stances in a primary. I heartily disagree. I voted Finucane because I still have beef with Faulconer for pushing the last Prop D, but I would’ve liked to know where he stands on the booze ban, the assault on 215 dispensaries, the attitude toward the general decrim law we’re voting on in the fall (because I know SD is going to lead the rallying cry against honoring the voice of the people if it passes), or his stance on the homeless (he seems very focused on his Crown Point/PB/MB locale, even though a good chunk of action in D2 goes down in OB and Downtown). I’d have loved to see him expand as well on some of the issues he did allegedly address in his platform, like fiscal responsibility and budgetary solutions or environmental protections.
Here’s a post-mortem piece by Kelly Davis at CityBeat about the event:
Last night, CityBeat tried something new: “live blogging” from election central and the W Hotel (where the Democratic Party was camped out, due to a labor boycott of Golden Hall). It got a little chaotic at times, but it was fun and we plan to do it again in November. You can read through the archive here and I’ve included some highlights below:
* The conversation kicked off with a discussion about mail-in ballots—something that county Registrar of Voters Deborah Seiler prefers over in-person voting, arguing it could save the county millions of dollars. But, as Frank Gormlie from OB Rag pointed out about voting-by-mail: “It is easier but a friend of mine had mailed in her ballot only to find that she knew nothing about the controversies in the judges‘ race.”
There’s more : http://lastblogonearth.com/2010/06/09/election-post-mortem/