SANTA CLARA COUNTY DEMOCRATIC CENTRAL COMMITTEE

 6:45 pm, County Building cafeteria, 70 W. Hedding St. San José

MINUTES FOR Thursday, November 6, 2003

 *************** No Refreshments provided by the 20th AD *****************

1.  CALL TO ORDER : The Call to Order was 7:25pm, after the Issues presentation on the Democratic Presidential Candidates Health Care Plans

2.  ROLL CALL

Absent: Ron Lind, Bill Ferguson, Francine Davis, Deepka Lalwani, Joe Pandit, Alex Kennet, Larry Carr, Greg Sellers, Dan Kenney, Craig Mann, Tony Alexander, Susan McKuhen, John Dutra, John Laird, Liz Figueroa, Anselmo Chavez, Anna Eshoo, Ruth Ashford, Frank Bosche, Carol Garvey, Jim Boynton

Excused: Bill and Cathy Dias, Thelma Spaziani, Sari Wisch for Byron Sher, Sandra Soto for Zoe Lofgren

Alternate: Brandon Sulser for Anna Song, Karen Brunton for Joe Simitian, Bill James for Sally Lieber, Drina Collins for Manny Diaz, Jim Brady for Rebecca Cohn, Sylvia Alvarez for Simon Salinas, Jon Kessler for John Vasconcellos, Christine Epres for Mike Honda,

3.  IDENTIFICATION OF VISITORS

Scott Rafferty, Betty Siemer, John Carcione (candidate for 21^st AD), Kelly Carcione, Katherine Engstrom, Todd Lehr (Jump Cutters Video Production), Carolyn Curtis (Silicon Valley for Dean), Preston Taylor (Assemblymember Joe Simitian), Bob Dhillon (American Sikh Democratic Club), Monica Henos (Supervisor Liz Kniss), Jonathan Padilla (Bellermine Young Democratic Club), Fred Fowler, Otto Lee, Sue D’Amico (Silicon Valley for Clark Campaign), Joseph DeAlejandro (coordinator, Silicon Valley for Clark), Peter O’Reilly, Mariel Caballero (from Congressmember Mike Honda’s office)

John Carcione, Candidate for 21^st AD, gave a brief presentation on the things he will advocate for if elected to office. For additional information, please visit his website at: www.carcioneforassembly.com.

4.  ADOPTION OF AGENDA

Sal Alvarez requested that we add the special legislature session under New Business

Moved to approve agenda as amended, second, carried

Motion to approve, second, carried

A.  Executive Board: Hope Cahan

We met on 10/21/03. We heard the Peace Action presentation By Nathan Britton, Northern California Representative for Peace Action. He discussed the background, endorsers, and platform. Additionally, we discussed the Call to Action Preparation, Budget for Call to Action Activities such as shirts, flags, pens, phone tree, and office supplies. We also discussed the State Convention presentation, club outreach, and the precinct call lists successes and ideas for next year.

B.  Chair: Steve Preminger

We need to fill the vacancy left from Liz’s resignation from Community Services and Voter Registration. We would like to bring Jim Brady in as the new representative.

A motion to confirm was made, seconded, and so moved.

Convention update: are working on having a reception at the Tech museum either Friday of Saturday and a presentation on Call to Action. We will need volunteers for this

C. Vice Chair: Drina Collins

See announcements

D.  Treasurer: Gap Kim

$221.17 in account

E.  Secretary:  Hope Cahan

Visitors, please sign pink sheet

F.  Community Services & Voter Registration: Jim Brady

Mall Weekend:

PYD/PDC did their shift at Stanford on Nov. 2^nd to outreach to registered voters before the election on 11/4

November 15th and 16^th

Sat: Oakridge: Asian-Pacific American Democratic Club:

Eastridge: Evergreen

Valley Fair: Santa Clara County Democratic Club

Sun: Oakridge: Evergreen

Eastridge: Silicon Valley Latino Democratic Forum

Valley Fair:

G.  Finance: Jim Thurber

We have been using a Visa/ Mastercard account for online donations and other expenses, but there is an expensive monthly charge and not very people have been using this service. So, we are changing to paypal because they do not have a monthly charge on top of the service charge.

H. Candidate Recruitment and Endorsement: Sari Wisch

Many of our endorsed candidates won

I.  Campaign Services: Phaedra Ellis Lamkins

No report

J.  Issues: Emy Thurber

Had a great presentation before the meeting on the Democratic Presidential Candidates Health Care positions. If people have ideas for future issues, please let her know

K. Political Outreach: Tom Cochran

Clubs please give reports at this time

L. Regional Directors: Madge Overhouse

Will talk about the Convention next month.

Pre-endorsement conferences will be on Dec. 14^th at the Labor Temple.

Need the chartered clubs to give her the names of their delegates. Each club gets one representative for every 20 members living in the AD. These names need to be in to Madge ASAP. For the candidates, they will be sent their papers from the State Party, must pay the $50 fee and fill out questioner about their campaign.

Clubs must ID the members of an AD (who fulfill the 20 per AD). These delegates attend the pre-endorsement conference and get to vote. They do not get to vote at the State Convention

Senate endorsement votes are a little different because districts are different. May mail in your ballot. (For convention, no vote by mail ballots)

No secret ballot votes here: all public

M. Democratic National Committee: Chris Stampolis

N.  Pro-Choice Coalition:  Claudia Shope

April 25^th in Washington DC: March for Choice. For those who cannot make it, they are taking donations.

Please write letters to the editor to keep the pressure on about this issue

O.  DTV Report:  Steve Chessin

Democratic Television Producer Steve Chessin reported that our October taping was with our own Call-to-Action Coordinator Hope

Cahan.

Our show in November will about Emerge, a political leadership training program for Democratic women in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We will be on San Jose AT&T Channel 15A November 6th and December 4^th with Hope Cahan, November 20th with Attorney General Lockyer, and December 18th and January 15th with Emerge.

We expect to be broadcasting on Morgan Hill Cable 19 by the end of this year. We are also working on getting onto Gilroy Channel 20.

We could still use more good Democrats on the crew. No prior video experience is necessary.

San Jose Channel 15A, 8:00pm every other Thursday (serves part of Cupertino)

(408-918-3200):

2003:

Nov 6 DTV 105 Hope Cahan

Nov 20 DTV 104 Hon. Bill Lockyer

Dec 4 DTV 105 Hope Cahan

Dec 18 DTV 106 Emerge

2004:

Jan 1 DTV 107 TBD-107

Jan 15 DTV 106 Emerge

Jan 29 DTV 107 TBD-107

P.  CDC Report:  David Wilkes

Q. Welfare Reform:  Sal Alvarez

20th AD committee:

21st AD Committee:

22nd AD Committee:

23rd AD Committee:

24th AD Committee:

28th AD Committee:

African-American Democratic Coalition:

Asian-Pacific American Democratic Club:

Clinton*Gore Action Network:

Democratic Action for Women Now (DAWN):

Evergreen Democratic Club at the Villages:

Voter Registration efforts in October at Eastridge yielded a total of 47, including 38 Dems, 2 Decline to State, and 1 Green. At Councilmember Cortese’s "Day in the Park", we registered 23, including 19 Democrats (3 of whom were converted Republicans). Islamists in the adjacent booth commented they were happy the booth was staffed by Democrats. They’d been fooled by Bush once, they said, but never again. We’ll be at it again at Eastridge on November 15^th and Oakridge on November 16^th.

Club membership continues to grow with close to 170 members. Discontent with national as well as state affairs, in addition to increased awareness of our club tough publicity in the Villages’ newspaper and hand-delivery of our newsletter to the homes of 930 registered Democrats in the Villages has helped.

Last Tuesday, we elected officers for 2004 at an election party, with a light dinner served to a great turnout. President, Bob Applebaum, Vice President, Norm Tarowsky, and Secretary Orpha Quadros were reelected, and our Treasurer and corresponding Secretary switched positions. Assemblymember Simon Salinas was the evening’s speaker.

We return to our regular afternoon meeting time for December’s meeting, with Professor Terry Christensen speaking on the recall election- how we got here and what we can look forward to. As has been our practice for several years, we are collecting donations to buy gifts for a family we adopt through InnVision, in addition to our usual monthly donations of usable household and clothing items to InnVision.

Mission City Democratic Club:

Peninsula Democratic Coalition:

Peninsula Young Democrats:

Santa Clara County Democratic Club: Alicia Lanier

Straight Talk TV Show on Public Access Stations

• Our next taping will be November 15. Topic: Brain injury & domestic violence.

 Holiday Party

Our annual holiday party and silent auction is coming up and you are all invited. Here

are the details so mark your calendars:

Thursday, December 11, 2003
5:30-9:30

  Fiorillo’s Restaurant
638 El Camino Real, Santa Clara

Next Meeting on Monday, Nov 17

You are all invited to our next meeting at Carrow’s on El Camino in Santa Clara. Dinner is at 6 and the program begins at 7. The speaker will be Jerry Pearson, from Stanford, about the John Kerry for President Campaign.

New officers elected at the last SCCDC meeting are:

Silicon Valley Latino Democratic Forum:

West Valley Democratic Club:

Call To Action Reports

8. NEW BUSINESS

November 8^th Call to Action

Welfare Reform report by Supervisor Jim Beall: Elouise Anderson is now on Arnold’s staff. She was on Pete Wilson’s staff in charge of welfare and her claim to fame was to kick as many people off of welfare as she could and lower the amount of welfare payments to those still on it. We will be fighting against her negative efforts. Economy, health care, education are the top three issues in Santa Clara County.

Special Session: repeal of workers comp is on the table: would increase workers comp by 12% (effects the benefits side). Additionally, the driver’s license bill repeal is on the table: the Latino caucus is working against this. Burton’s SB2 bill is also up for discussion during this session.

Vacancy in 23^rd AD due to death of Keith Garvey. Will ask the AD chair to look for qualified candidates to fill the vacancy.

9. ANNOUNCEMENTS

21^st AD will be providing refreshments

Acknowledge Andrea Lieberman and Otto Lee for their elections

Kucinich officially announced his campaign. Will be here this Sunday in Sunnyvale. His health care plan has a 7.5% tax on employers for health care, but really saves them money because they are now paying over 8%

Anne Mack: Dec. 8^th Mike Honda, Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, Senior town hall meeting at Sunnyvale Community Center at 9:00am-11

Carolyn Curtis from the Dean campaign announced: up to 5 meet ups in this County, over 1,000 people on local list (15 in March) free rally in San Francisco. He visited Google while here. House parties on Nov. 15^th (his mom will be on this call with him since it is his b-day)

Manny Diaz press conference on Wednesday to call attention to the process whereby the community was not invited to participate to be on the selection committee for Santa Clara University. Will work on developing a contract with the new President.

Jim Brady: All eight candidates for Sunnyvale came to their candidate hearing and 88 people attended. The topic was health care.

Jacquie: San Jose State meet up for Dean was at the new library: meeting rooms are free and very nice. One member was a lifelong Republican and is now determined to get rid of Bush

Joseph Delahondro, coordinator for Clark, announced that there will be a big fundraiser on December 17^th

Sue D’Amico: several moderate Republicans have joined the Clark campaign.

County Committee filing is between Nov. 10^th and Dec. 5^th

10. EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING

    The next Executive Board TBA

11. ADJOURNMENT 9:18