Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Campbell

A little while ago, in the prosecution of my duties to the Spartan Daily, I had the opportunity to meet one of the Republican candidates for governor of California, Tom Campbell.

Campbell, for those who don’t know, has a long history in California politics. He served five terms in the House of Representatives, a few in the State Senate, and in 2004 was head of the state finance committee. Throughout his career, he’s maintained a reputation as a very strict fiscal conservative, the kind of person who pinched pennies until they bled.

And that’s how he’s marketing himself, as a take-no-guff  money-minder who’s going to clean up California following one of the worst budget disasters in its history.

And for a governor, that makes sense.

I don’t agree with everything Campbell proposes. As a middle-class CSU student who pays out the ass for his education, I’m elementally opposed to tuition hikes, for example. But you want someone with fiscal chops like Campbell’s holding the purse strings, and it probably will take the sort of radical changes he’s proposing to balance the state’s books again.

As a governor, Campbell makes sense.

As a governor.

As a candidate, Campbell is a bit of an odd fit for this election, and it really comes down to two words: gay marriage.

Campbell is a pro gay marriage Republican. Which might not normally be game-breaking, but it’s definitely a stumbling block when trying to mobilize a political base that’s rallied increasingly around social issues.

One need only look at the saga that was Propisition 8 last November. The passing of a constitutional ban on gay marriage in California was one of the few conservative victories in an election that saw the Democrats seize the presidency, tighten their grip on both the House and the Senate and take control of the bellwether state of Missouri. Even now the fires of the same-sex marriage debate aren’t entirely out, just smoldering, with ongoing protests and a court case set to be heard in January.

To further compound the issue, Gavin Newsom has his eyes on the Democratic nomination. Gay marriage is the San Francisco mayor’s signature issue. In fact, he’s so connected with it in a lot of people’s minds that anti-Newsom ads were a key part of the Yes on 8 campaign’s strategy — just look at the “whether you like it or not” TV spot, which came out at about the time polls started flip-flopping in favor of the ban.

Clearly, the Republicans are going to want to campaign hard on the gay marriage issue against Newsom. Even if he doesn’t get the Democratic nod, the fact that he’s in the running means its inevitable that it’ll become a centerpiece. By running as a pro-gay marriage Republican, Campbell loses access to what’s probably the best weapon in the Republican arsenal at this point.

Further, and I’m just speculating here, the party bosses probably know this. California isn’t a machine state so that alone wouldn’t make or break his candidacy, but for someone who’s already at a money disadvantage going up against the deep pockets of someone like  Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who’s also vying for a spot on the Republican ticket, it might be just enough of a barrier to fund raising to sink him.

Beyond that, Campbell doesn’t stand to pick up many votes on this issue if you compare him apples to apples against Newsom. If you’re the sort of voter who’d cast your ballot for a candidate solely based on their support of gay marriage, you’d choose the San Franciscan every time.

Campbell has some tough hurdles to cross on his way to the governor’s seat. He’s clearly counting on the economy to clear some of them for him. And maybe he’s right. Maybe voters do care enough about the economy to make the sort of political gamesmanship he’s severely handicapped in irrelevant. As he was quick to note at his speech, decline to state residents can vote in the Republican primary. Maybe that’ll be enough to get the nomination, at which point the party will get behind him whether they like it or not. (See what I did there?) Maybe there’s a hidden groundswell of centrist republicans I’ m not seeing.

Either way, he’s one to watch. The way Tom Campbell’s primary campaign goes might be an indicator of what we’ll see in the general election. Will social or economic concerns win out? Only time will tell.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog (Does this blog have regular readers?), you might have noticed that updates have been a bit… scarce. And while I suppose I don’t really have much excuse aside from general laziness, I have been very busy with other projects. One of which, a website for a new student  fashion publication called Helium Magazine, is finally finished to the point where I can start to focus on other things. (School, family life, sleep, personal hygene, etc.) So consequentially my blog might be a tad more active now.

Yay.

While the magazine is still very much an on-going project, with two fashion shows in the works and a first print issue to produce, my first responsibility as web editor has been accomplished. The site is up, and it looks good. A plan for posting has been established, and aside for a few hiccups, things seem to be running smoothly.

That being the case, I thought I’d take a little time to highlight the things I learned from this project so far, so that other people thinking of starting student publications can benefit. Building websites, and indeed launching media products, is a little bit above and beyond for most journalism students.  But it’s fun, gives you more creative control than you might find at what your school already offers, and it teaches you the sort of management and organization skills you need to get ahead once you leave school.  Besides, it’s great resume fodder.

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The author

Hi everyone,

After several weeks of work, two busted mice, and at least one 2 a.m., curled-fetal sob session, this personal blog is finally launched and ready to blog up the blogesphere with its bloggy bloggishness.

I thought I’d use the first post to introduce myself, my aims for the website, and all that other malarky. (Admittedly, this is primarilly because I find myself without something more serious to blog about). If you miss out on this post, don’t worry, most of this is covered in the ad copy in the “About” section.

My name is Jon Xavier, and I’m a journalism student trying to finish up his last year of school before the loans run out and
I’m forced to seek a lucrative career in panhandling.

I’m majoring in print journalism, primarily because it seemed like the best way to get a firm grounding in covering a story. It’s a decision I’ve not regretted, even as I find myself drawn to other, less obsolete forms of media. I still maintain that I’ve learned more in the past three years than I have in twelve years of previous schooling, even if the things I’ve been taught haven’t made me as marketable as say, someone with a degree in Classical Bavarian Folk Dancing.

I’m currently employed as a researcher at the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, a friendly, neighborhood business
news arm of media behemoth Advance Publications. I’m not going to talk about work much on this blog, most pressingly because what I do would probably not be very interesting to the average reader. Suffice it to say that I spend most of my day making phone calls, either asking people if I can send them a survey or asking other people why they haven’t filled out the survey I sent them.

In my spare time, I’ve also been working with Helium Magazine, a small start-up that aims to cover fashion and designers in the Silicon Valley and its immediate surroundings. My exact job title hasn’t been decided yet, since things are still very early in development, but I’ve been helping to develop a news-style website for the publication, as well as coaching the editorial staff about writing for the web.

Once the website goes live at the end of the month, I’m going to be editing web content and writing a fragrence blog for it, something that has the cologne nerd in me all a tingle. When, even farther down the line the print product launches hopefully I’ll have written a few things for that as well.

As far as this blog goes, the mandate’s a little less clear. I’ll be posting about things that interest me, so that’s probably going to be politics and current events, as well as a few sour-grapes-style rants on the current state of journalism. There might be the odd movie or play review, since those are easy to write and occasionally entertaining, which sort of lets me off the hook content-wise. There will almost assuredly be impenetrable references to ’80s pop culture. That, at the very least, is my promise to you, the reader.

Bottom line, I don’t know exactly what I want to do with this publishing platform I’ve crafted for myself, yet.

But I’m going to have fun time finding out.

Hopefully the readers, or at least the people who stumble across it in an unrelated google search, will too.