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Laird goes on offensive against Blakeslee

May 26, 2010

Sam Blakeslee By Dennis Eamon Young Photo

The special election to replace state Senator Abel Maldonado is heating up as Democrat John Laird launched a new series of television ads, attempting to link Republican Sam Blakeslee to big oil. [CalBuzz]

Laird, a former state Assemblyman from Santa Cruz, has TV ads telling voters in the district, “that even as an oil slick harms the Gulf Coast, politicians like former Exxon executive and current State Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee are saying, ‘Drill baby, drill.'”

Jerry Roberts, former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, writing in CalBuzz, says that Laird’s $350,000 media buy in Salinas, Santa Barbara and San Jose is likely to make offshore drilling a primary issue in the upcoming June 22 special election. Roberts, who was also editor of the Santa Barbara News press, calls Blakeslee, “the number one water carrier for the Tranquillon Ridge offshore oil drilling proposal.”

Roberts also brings to light Blakeslee’s work for Exxon as an oil executive, after getting his Ph.D. in geophysics, claiming the San Luis Obispo Republican joined Exxon’s Production Research in the Borehole Geophysics Group.

John Laird

Laird is expected to hammer Blakeslee on offshore oil and especially a controversial 2009 legislature tactic when the voting record of Assembly members on the PXP issue was suddenly expunged from the record. Critics accused Blakeslee, then serving as minority leader, of having the vote expunged, an accusation denied by Blakeslee.

For his part, Blakeslee has introduced his own new TV ad, pledging “to stop to fight the waste and turn California around.”

A new FM3 survey shows the race to be a dead heat–each candidate has about one third of the voters and the final one third remains undecided.


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Seems to me Laird’s money would be better spent getting out the vote in a district with a Dem majority. Why throw it at the media? Opps, sorry Karen

: \


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Well, let’s see what the choice is here?


One person who is running around hoping to gather some traction by yelling ‘the oil spills are coming!’…. and the other trying to balance the very few options left to a virtually bankrupt state.


The state will have to abandon many of it’s ethereal dreams when they are finally faced with political and economic survival because I think the voters are already getting there very fast… and it aint just the tea partiers!


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… ” Further, in an unanticipated move, Laird hurled with great force at Blakeslee his left Birkenstock.”


On a side note, isn’t local boy Bruce Gibson a geo-physicist with an oil industry background.


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… “Interviewed after the incident at the Falafel Hut take out window, Laird denied throwing his footwear, and instead asserted that the item was, in fact, a bean-filled hackey-sack” …


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… ” Laird was quick to add that the hackey sack contained only organic dried beans, and was sown of PETA-approved “nubuck leather” in an Indonesian shop that practices fair-trade wagery. Laird estimated the value of the hackey sack at $240.”


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Laird is a radical socialist. I lived in Santa Cruz when Laird was on the city council and mayor and then later in the Assembly. I was a newspaper reporter covering politics in the county. I realize a radical socialist is exactly what some voters want, but be on notice. It won’t take much digging into Laird’s record to see for yourself.


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Define your terms. Sounds like a two bit teabaggie slam to me, we’ve had more than enough of that junk.


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A political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. • policy or practice based on this theory. • (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.


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Good, Now we know that you can use a dictionary. I believe hotdog was requesting some specific examples, considering that you presented yourself as someone who had experience with Laird’s work.


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