Enjoy the calm before the political storm

I hope you can enjoy the holidays and the remainder of 2017. Savor the peace and quiet while you can, because 2018 promises to be a very noisy year.

We will start off the year with what likely will be a special election for Oxnard voters to decide if they want to recall the mayor and three councilmembers. Assuming the Ventura County Elections Division deems enough valid signatures were collected to trigger a special election, there will be four incumbents running campaigns to keep their jobs. There will also be a number of hopeful candidates vying to replace them. I have visions of the beautiful city of Oxnard being covered with campaign signs!

Almost simultaneously there will be campaigns leading up to the June primary election. (State legislation was passed in 2017 to move the primary election to March, but that doesn’t take effect until 2019.) More campaign signs! Fortunately, Oxnard will not be dealing with a supervisorial election in 2018, but the east portion of the County certainly will.

We can look forward to our summer and fall being filled with campaign rhetoric, promises, mud-slinging, and – yes – signs!

When Allan Zaremberg, President and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce, was in Oxnard on December 1, he had some interesting observations about the state and federal elections in 2018. Since Jerry Brown is termed out, there will be a lot of interest in the governor’s race. But where that interest comes from could impact federal House and Senate races.

Since California adopted the top-two primary, our ballots have contained many more names of Democrats. It’s no surprise since California is a blue state. Mr. Zaremberg explained that if there are multiple Republicans in the governor’s race going into the primary, it is likely that they will split the party vote and two Democrats will be on the November ballot. If that is the case, Republicans could lose interest in the November, which would affect the Congressional races, ultimately providing gains to the Democrats. Interesting…

November 2018 seems so far in the future right now, but there will be non-stop activity leading up to it. I can almost hear the sigh of relief when November 6 passes and the world becomes quite again.

We can count on a very busy and very noisy political season in 2018 with lots of those dreaded campaign signs!!!!

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