The Sacramento Bee wrote an article featuring MLYD Senator Paula Villescaz, which can be read here, or in full below. Paula is running for the 5th Democratic AD Committee, of which information can be found about here. You can help Paula, along with former MLYD President Tor Tarantola (2002-2004) win the seats if you are at least 18, a registered Democrat, and live within these bounds. All you have to do is show up to the AD Committee meeting today (Saturday, Jan 13th) @ 10am at the Fair Oaks Library, which is at: 11601 Fair Oaks Blvd in Fair Oaks. Supporters, Alumni, and Current Members please show up and support MLYD delegates. You have to join the AD committee, which is $5, but money should not be an issue (if you can’t pay just let them know).
Also, the weekend of Jan 19th thru 21st, Alumni and Current Members of MLYD will be going down to Orange County to help out in the Special Election for County Supervisor, get field training, and have fun. If you would like to come, or want more information, contact Eddie Kirby (edesw88@aol.com), former MLYD President (2004-2006), who is working on the campaign as an Organizer.
Blogger bloc seeks a shake-up
Liberal writers for political Web sites run for delegate seats in their bid to influence Democratic Party policies.
By Shane Goldmacher – Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 12:00 am PST Saturday, January 13, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3
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Paula Villescaz, 18, writes a blog posting Friday after returning home from Mira Loma High School. She worked last year for Charlie Brown’s unsuccessful challenge to Rep. John Doolittle and is running for a delegate seat in the state Democratic Party. Villescaz characterizes the state party as “old buddies” who get together to socialize. Sacramento Bee/Renée C. Byer
For Brian Leubitz, November’s elections stirred mixed emotions.
A devoted liberal, he was elated as Democrats were swept into power in Washington, D.C. But as a California blogger who spent much of 2006 cheering for Phil Angelides, the Democrat who was thumped by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the day was bittersweet.
So Leubitz, who goes by the name “SFBrianCL” on the Internet, and a growing coalition of bloggers on the left are organizing to try to ensure Democrats don’t lose out on the statehouse again.
This weekend, Leubitz — and some 30 of his online cohorts — are injecting themselves directly into the political process by running for election as Assembly district delegates to the California Democratic Party. They hope to translate the blogosphere into real political clout. Registered Democrats will elect 12 delegates in each of the 80 Assembly districts this weekend, according to the state party’s Web site.
Paula Villescaz, an 18-year-old student at Mira Loma High School, is one of the many posters to announce her candidacy on Leubitz’s Calitics Web page.
“The state party is largely composed of old buddies who get together to socialize every once in a while, with most meetings being poorly attended and little business getting done in them,” wrote Villescaz, who spent much of the last year working on Charlie Brown’s unsuccessful bid to unseat Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville. “This is why I hope to get a seat.”
At most, bloggers could fill 3 percent of the 960 state Democratic Party Assembly delegate seats. But win or lose, the cyber voices of liberals like Leubitz and Villescaz are starting to be heard.
The clearest measure of their success is their steadily increasing Web traffic.
“I started the site in August 2005, and back then I would get 90 hits a day,” recalls Leubitz. “In November, it peaked at 3,000.”
But there have been other, perhaps more tangible, signs of the rising influence of liberal blogs — or “netroots,” as they call themselves.
Frank Russo, who operates the California Progress Report, another liberal Web site, says he is now being booked as a pundit on traditional media outlets. He is a weekly guest on Bay Area talk radio and was an on-air analyst for KPIX, the Bay Area’s CBS affiliate, on election night.
“That wouldn’t have happened before I started my site,” says Russo, whose Web page has logged more than 200,000 visitors since its launch last March.
This week, the Assembly Democratic caucus is inviting a host of bloggers, including Leubitz and Russo, to talk to Democratic aides in the Capitol about how to get their bosses’ messages out in the blogosphere.
“Democrats have been behind the curve in utilizing new technology time and time again,” said Steve Maviglio, deputy chief of staff to Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, who set up the meeting. “It’s clear more people are getting their information off the Internet. I just want to bring everyone up to speed.”
Maviglio and a team of Democratic insiders launched a Web site of their own, the California Majority Report, last year.
Some on the left have even turned blogging into a paying job.
Julia Rosen, who posts on several sites, including Calitics, under the name “juls,” was recently hired to blog part-time for Working Californians, a union group, after more than a year of serving as blogger-in-chief for the Alliance for a Better California, the coalition that spearheaded the defeat of Schwarzenegger’s 2005 special-election agenda.
“It’s a dream position,” Rosen says “There are very, very few people nationally who are paid to blog.”
Inspired by the defeat of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in a Democratic primary last year, liberal Democratic bloggers in California are taking aim at a top target in the 2008 elections: Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, a Lieberman ally and chairwoman of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.
In criticizing Tauscher for voting to support the war in Iraq, they’ve found a powerful ally: Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who runs the Berkeley-founded DailyKos, the most popular liberal blog on the Internet.
Last month, Zúniga wrote, “We will have a candidate, and there will be a primary,” in Tauscher’s district.
Though they hope to “take back” the California Democratic Party as delegates this weekend, the blogger candidates are only a fraction of those organized by more traditional, grass-roots activists.
Darry Sragow, a Democratic political strategist, says California political blogs are still “in an incredibly early stage of development.”
“Whatever blogs were a year ago is not what they are now and is not what they will be a year from now,” Sragow said. “It is part of an evolutionary process that is beginning to mine the potential of this new medium.”
On the conservative end of the political spectrum, the FlashReport, published by former California Republican Party Executive Director Jon Fleischman, is well established in the blogosphere.
But Fleischman, a self-described ideologue, welcomes the success of liberal sites, even including them in his list of blogs.
“There is a battle over ideas and a battle over technology,” says Fleischman. “I welcome these people to the marketplace because they can help wake up politicians to the fact that the new media is significant and has an impact.”
About the writer:
- The Bee’s Shane Goldmacher can be reached at (916) 326-5544 or sgoldmacher@sacbee.com.
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