{"id":1758,"date":"2008-06-01T18:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-01T18:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-06-01T18:06:01","modified_gmt":"2008-06-01T18:06:01","slug":"why_im_not_voti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1758","title":{"rendered":"Why I’m Not Voting For Tim Goodrich For Torrance City Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

I live in Torrance, a suburb of Los Angeles where I moved thirteen years ago as a condition of getting custody of my older sons. It’s far more conservative than West Los Angeles where I grew up and worked, or than Venice where I’d lived before. It’s an interesting place to live, and the politics are very small-town – which is something I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing.<\/p>\n

We’re about to have a councilmatic election, and one dear friend of TG’s is running – Gavin Hachiya Wasserman – who we’re supporting because we know him and think he’s a good guy, even if a little more conservative than we are.<\/p>\n

I’d been looking at supporting other candidates, including Tim Goodrich<\/a>, a recent Torrance resident, veteran, and antiwar activist. <\/p>\n

Even though we disagree on the war and other issues, I’d been generally impressed by his other stances – on the environment, and schools – and had been looking for a progressive to support to see how we might leaven Torrance politics a bit.<\/p>\n

But today, I decided not to vote for him. Why? Because yesterday we just got an 11″ x 14″ mailer from him extolling his military service, veteran status, etc. – and absolutely silent on what his real politics and beliefs are. And I looked back at the mailers we’ve received (I collect them during election season) and realized that he’s fundamentally dissembling about who he is and what he believes in.<\/p>\n

Now I get why he’d do that.<\/p>\n

Torrance is the city where on Armed Forces Day, there’s a giant parade with tanks down Torrance Blvd in front of City Hall. Torrance is a city where – as recently as a decade ago – black people driving through had a remarkably high probability of being pulled over. Torrance is not Venice, trust me.<\/p>\n

And I understand why it’d be suicidal to come to Torrance and announce that you’re a fan of Che and Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden; but you know what – this kind of dissembling just leaves a damn bad taste in my mouth.<\/p>\n

Because I’d like to see a mix of liberal and conservative Councilmembers here. But I’d like evn more for the citizens who elect them to do it with their eyes open, and I’d like to elect a liberal who respects we voters enough – and believes in the power of liberal values enough – to think that they could tell us the truth about their beliefs and win based on their values.<\/p>\n

That’s not Tim Goodrich. And so I won’t be voting for Tim Goodrich when I send in my absentee ballot tonight.<\/p>\n

And I think that there’s a lesson there for other candidates as well. Tell us the truth about who you are – because if you don’t think we’ll vote for you if we know it, maybe we won’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On not voting for Tim Goodrich, stealth progressive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}