The media have focused this election season on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman, but three other candidates at the top of the state ballot say they deserve attention, too.
People walking by the Capitol's west steps around 1 p.m. today would have seen Green Party candidate Laura Wells, Libertarian Party hopeful Dale Ogden and Chelene Nightingale of the American Independent Party talking to about 10 people, most of them supporters and aides of the candidates. Wells, by the way, was the woman wearing the bright green top in the photo to the left.
A fourth candidate, Carlos Alvarez of the Peace and Freedom Party, had been scheduled to attend the news conference but his car broke down on the way to the airport in Southern California, the event's organizers said. The nonpartisan group Free & Equal, which works on election reform and ballot access issues, put on today's conference.
The three gubernatorial underdogs said all six people running for governor in this year's general election should be included in debates such as the two held last week in Davis and Fresno. Instead, those debates featured only Brown and Whitman.
"It's not impossible to run a debate with six people in it or eight people in it," said Ogden, an actuary from San Pedro. "It's been done, and it works."
Ogden said he had asked to be included in the Davis debate but received no response.
Wells, an Oakland-based financial systems consultant, said "the Titanic parties," meaning the Democrats and Republicans, were depressing voter turnout by offering people a narrow range of options.
Like the other candidates, she predicted possible extinction for minor parties if voter-passed Proposition 14 goes into effect and allows only the top two primary winners to compete in the general election regardless of party. A coalition of voters and minor-party advocates is challenging the law in court.
"I'm going for the boomerang effect, the backfire effect," Wells said, "where people get so sick of running into the iceberg, of what's happening here, that we position these (minor) parties as parties that can win and actually get into the top two."
Other than their criticism of the two-party system, the three candidates were far apart in what they would actually do if they became governor.
Ogden wants to shrink government by cutting state spending by at least half and eliminating licensing and regulatory agencies, while Wells wants to exempt businesses from Proposition 13's property tax restrictions and lower the vote threshold to a simple majority for raising taxes.
Nightingale supports Proposition 23, which would suspend the state's greenhouse gas law AB 32, and wants to cut salaries of the most highly paid state officials.
As today's event showed, campaigning as a minor party candidate is a lonely and poorly compensated affair in California.
Ogden said he's set up a campaign website and talked to some tea party groups, while Nightingale recently walked from Fresno to Sacramento to raise awareness of her candidacy. Wells has been the most visible of the three, including handing out leaflets at a recent UC Berkeley talk about the governor's race.
Yet the three candidates seemed undaunted despite the mismatch in resources and support.
"I think we the people, regardless of what our views are regarding social issues, we all agree on one thing," said Nightingale, a Palmdale-based small business owner. "And that's liberty for the people and free and equal elections for the people."
UPDATE: The minor party candidates will debate Oct. 28 at Sacramento State, said Free & Equal chairwoman Christina Tobin. Whitman and Brown have been invited.
PHOTO CREDIT: Minor party candidates speak to the press on Oct. 6 in Sacramento. They are, from left to right, Christina Tobin, the Libertarian candidate for secretary of state and chairwoman of the nonprofit group Free & Equal; Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Dale Ogden; American Independent Party gubernatorial candidate Chelene Nightingale; and Green Party gubernatorial candidate Laura Wells. (Hector Amezcua/ Sacramento Bee)
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