The guest speaker for the September General Meeting was Jimmy Camp, a campaign consultant, who has helped candidates including Janet Nguyen, Craig Huey, Bill Bloomfield, Gary DeLong, and Chuck Norwood. He concentrated his talk on the recent campaign by Andy Vidak for the State Senate District 16 seat in the Central Valley. This seat was vacated by Michael Rubio, who became a government affairs manager ($$$) for Big Oil Chevron. Rubio had hand picked Kern County Supervisor Leticia Perez, who was thought to be a shoe-in because of her Hispanic heritage in a district that was over 60 percent Hispanic and only 22 percent white. However, Andy was a Hanford cherry farmer who had grown up working side by side with Hispanic workers. He knew what it was like working in the hot, hot sun. Andy was fluent in Spanish and welcomed every opportunity to speak before a Spanish speaking crowd. Leticia, on the other hand, was not as fluent in Spanish and was relatively unknown to the populace.

Jimmy said that in most elections, door-to-door campaigning was assigned to volunteers. But his consulting group, GOCO (formed by Julie Griffiths, Joel Olsson, Jimmy Camp, and Paul Olson), decided to allocate more funding for person-to-person campaigning. So they spent money on paid walkers and enlisted volunteer walkers for this campaign. More importantly, they trained these walkers about Andy Vidak, so that they would be able to get his message across to the voters.

There were issues that were prominent in the race. On immigration reform, Andy favored the "path to citizenship." On Proposition 30, Andy was against raising sales and income taxes, and Leticia was for it. He was against the high speed rail system, which he called the "train to nowhere," and his opponent was for it. Perez, an attorney, had two other issues against her. She had to move into the district to run, and she had been elected to her county office only several months earlier. For the agrarian population, Andy was the right candidate.

In the July election, Andy Vidak won the seat by 51.9% to 48.1%. This seat had almost always been occupied by a Democrat. Jimmy likes to attribute the win to the fact that so many grassroots volunteers and paid campaigners talked to the voters about a great candidate.

After the talk, the Club turned to Club business. Soo Yoo was given an opportunity to speak to the Club members about her candidacy for the ABCUSD School Board. After she finished, it was announced to the Club that the Board had voted to endorse Soo Yoo in her campaign. A motion was made for the Club to endorse her. It was seconded and passed. Another motion was made, seconded, and passed to provide financial support for Soo Yoo's campaign.

CRC General Meeting July 9, 2013

The July General Meeting was our annual BBQ held at Cerritos Park East. Many Club members came to meet our guest speaker Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe and his wife Julie.

The pictures were taken by Candy Yee.

Noel Jaimes planned this event.

Nancy Crockett coordinated the food plans.

Bob Crockett was one of the two chefs.