Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Wow!

One Endorsement, Three Acceptable Ratings

January's membership meeting attracted one of the largest crowds we've seen in years.

Over 130 members and a large group of guests were on hand as the Club began our officer selection process. Will Rodriguez-Kennedy was nominated for Club President; Ryan Trabucco was nominated for VP of Resource Development; Rocio Leon was nominated for Secretary and Joanne Climie was nominated for At-Large Board Member. Nominations will remain open and voting will take place during the Club's February meeting which will be on Monday, February 22nd - not the Club's usual 4th Thursday meeting.

Barbara Bry

When we scheduled the January meeting, we assumed we would be dealing with two competitive races - San Diego Council District 1 and City Attorney. But because Joe LaCava has withdrawn from the race, following a brief statement from Barbara Bry, the Club quickly and overwhelmingly endorsed her candidacy for San Diego City Council, District 1.

The quick and decisive nature of the City Council endorsement was more than made up for in our consideration of San Diego City Attorney. We heard statements and responses to our questions from four candidates and proceeded to balloting. Following our Standing Rules, when no candidate received 60% of the vote, we went into overtime balloting. Because we had so many members voting, we quickly moved through printed ballots, to the backs of handouts and finally to cut-up construction paper for ballots. Special thanks go to Councilmember David Alvarez and former Democratic Party Chair Maureen Steiner who helped to ensure that ballots were properly distributed to members in an efficient manner.

After four votes - and nearly 500 ballots cast, no candidate crossed the required threshold, so "No Endorsement" was declared. Following a motion, and consideration of several amendments to the motion. the Club declared Gil Cabrera, Rafael Castellanos, and Mara Elliott as Acceptable.

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San Diego Democrats for Equality

Invite You to Support Our Candidate for

District 3 San Diego City Council -

Chris Ward

Celebrate the opening of Chris Ward's campaign office and join other Club members and special guest walking for Chris on Saturday, February 13th. The campaign office is at 4535 30th Street #107, San Diego, CA 92116. Festivities begin

at 10 AM and conclude (following precinct walk) across the street at Fall Brewing.

See you there!

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Club Officer Elections

Recently, the Club changed our By-laws to allow for continuity of experience on the Club's executive board by mandating two year, staggered terms for officers. In January, we started the election process for officer elections for President, Vice-President for Resource Development, Secretary and At-Large Board Member.

Monday, February 22nd

Officer Elections

March

Installation of Officers

Nominations will be accepted from the floor at the February meeting.

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Celebrate 40+ Years of Activism by

Joining The Club

Much of the progressive change in San Diego and in our community can be traced directly or indirectly through the work of our San Diego Democrats for Equality members.

We're not finished and we need you to get the job done. If you've let your membership lapse, NOW would be a good time to renew. If you want to be a part of the change, join NOW. Our members make history. Join us.

The Club depends on membership dues to keep the lights on and promote our candidates and issues to the community. A large number of community members depend on our Voters Guide to help them make an intelligent choice when marking their ballots so your membership renewal is critical to ensure those Guides get into those hands. At the risk of sounding like a Public Television pledge drive, if you depend on our endorsements, Voters Guide, newsletters, social media posts and programs, you should be a member!

If your membership has lapsed or if you know your membership is soon to expire, please re-up now. You might also consider upgrading your membership to a higher level.

Because of a change in software by our credit card processor, you may have tried to join/renew your membership and found our webpage down. The problem has been corrected and the membership page is back in operation, so check it out.

Dems for Equality would like to thank Gail Mackler who renewed at the Sustaining level. We'd also like to thank Greg Bolian and Andrea Villa for renewing. Welcome back for another year.

You can find out more about the Club's membership levels and benefits online HERE. If you would prefer to use a check, send the check, made out to Democrats for Equality to:

San Diego Democrats for Equality

PO Box 33050

San Diego CA 92163

Note that in order to comply with Federal and State election laws, please include your full address where you are registered to vote and your job title/employer with your check. Telephone number and email address would be nice too!

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Like Us, Really Like Us

San Diego Democrats for Equality's Facebook page has been number 1 among County Democratic Clubs for a while now. Even so, we've got quite a few new members so we're putting this out again. Please Like Us! Facebook includes the number of likes on a page as part of their complex algorithm to decide if our posts should be widely distributed or not. If you like us now, more people will see our Voter's Guide in their timeline next year. Twitter has different rules, but the effect is the same. The more people who follow us on Twitter means more people seeing our Tweets.

If you are on Facebook or Twitter and you haven't already liked/followed us, please do it now

https://www.facebook.com/dems4equality

@SDDems4Equality

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Dems for Equality Endorsed Candidates 2016

President

Hillary Clinton

US Senate

Kamala Harris

Congress

CA-53 Susan Davis

CA-52 Scott Peters

California Senate

SD-39 Toni Atkins

California Assembly

AD-78 Todd Gloria

AD-79 Shirley Weber

Board of Supervisors

Dist 3 Dave Roberts

San Diego City Council

Dist 1 Barbara Bry

Dist 3 Chris Ward

Dist 7 Justin DeCesare

Dist 9 Georgette Gomez

SDUSD

Sub-Dist D Richard Barrera

Sub-Dist A John Lee Evans

Candidates Rated Acceptable

San Diego City Attorney

Gil Cabrera

Rafael Castellanos

Mara Elliott

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As we work toward a better future for our community and Country, take a couple minutes to remember what we've already done with a short history of the our accomplishments.