[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Doug Paul Davis

To illustrate how improbable Mariko Yamada's victory over Christopher Cabaldon was, let us recount a few key watermarks in the race.

Almost from the start, it seemed an uphill battle as Cabaldon had the audacity in January of 2007, weeks after Lois Wolk officially took office for her third and final term as Assemblywoman, there he stood in Yamada's home town with two of her colleagues, two members of the Davis City Council, two members of his own city council, and the Mayor of Woodland (and to boot Jeff Monroe was in uniform that day, but attended the event to show support for Cabaldon).

It seemed before Mariko Yamada even announced she was way behind and she never caught up (or so we thought).

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Doug Paul Davis
People's Vanguard of Davis

On Friday April 18, the Vanguard sat down and spoke with Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, candidate for the State Senate, 5th District. In November she will face Republican Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian. This is the final of a three-part interview. In this segment, the Assemblywoman discusses land use, housing, seniors, health insurance, and her legislative accomplishments and goals.

[For the earlier and extensive portion of this interview, see yesterday’s article, including Part 1: University workers, education, the delta, and transportation and Part 2: Transparency in government, flood protection, her record working in a bipartisan manner, and the needs of local government.]

How can the 5th Senate District balance the need for housing and jobs to accommodate huge projected growth with the need to preserve agricultural land and environmental protection?

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Doug Paul Davis

Now the fun has truly begun. The Davis Enterprise reported yesterday that Lois Wolk, Assemblywoman who currently represents Davis in the 8th Assembly District will run for the state senate. She is unopposed for the Democratic primary.

Her opponent will be fellow Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian--who also figures to run unopposed for the Republican nomination.

Now it is time to get serious for Wolk. Frankly I was appalled when I saw the campaign finance figures that came out of the recent reporting period. Lois Wolk has raised all of $140,831. What has she been doing for the last year and two months? Was she really expecting to be able to run for reelection to the Assembly by way of passage of Prop 93.

Her opponent has already raised $656,675 and a good chunk of that has come directly from the Republican Party--which means that they are targeting this race.

The Enterprise reports that Wolk has accepted campaign spending limits, but Aghazarian has not. That's actually misleading, what this really means is that Aghazarian has passed the limits already in the amount he can spend. The law provides for a candidate to amend that form at least twice during the course of the campaign, so as soon as the candidate passes the finance limit, they will simply file an amended statement.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Doug Paul Davis

Recently in the Davis Enterprise, John Mott-Smith had a provocative piece on the importance of keeping down food miles.

From our perspective there are actually two issues that important in food miles. First the distance that the food travels to stores. Second, the distance that we travel to stores to get the food.

In arguing for reduction in distance food is transported, Mr. Mott-Smith writes:

"Generally, locally grown food purchased in season is fresher, more healthful and requires less energy to produce and transport to market, and we should encourage stores and restaurants to provide food that is produced locally."

Second he argued for neighborhood grocery stores:

"How we get to the market to buy the food is also important. One of the best things we can do is walk or bike to the store. Of course, whether we can walk or bike to a store depends on whether there is a food store near where we live.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Doug Paul Davis

As I confess, the title of this article is not mine. It was in fact donated to me, the name has been erased to protect the guilty. Many would be in fact, surprised to hear the source of this title, particularly people on the Davis City Council itself.

The title comes from a debate that stems from the county general plan update proposals and well beyond that. The notion has come down from the county that the city of Davis opposes such growth proposals because this is a rich, white, elitist town. While in a number of ways, that is arguably true, I have argued against this point repeatedly because I think the center of the motivation against growth has been concerns about not only protecting agricultural land and open space, but also procedural points that the city of Davis and not the county use have land use authority on the city edge.