Ventura County Democratic Party

Welcome

Welcome to the official website for the Democratic Party of Ventura County. As Democrats, we are dedicated to making people’s lives better. Our vision is to restore an effective and efficient government that will respect your rights, count your votes, rebuild the economy, and restore accountability. Browse this site and get involved! We’re glad you found us, now we need you to JOIN us.

2009 Obama Presidential Inauguration Celebration Dinner

Join Democrats, Progressives and Independents to celebrate the historic election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States of America

Date:January 20 , 2009
Time: 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm
Location: My Florist Winecafe and Bakery
Address: 76 S. Oak St. Ventura, CA 93001-2702

During the Celebration we will broadcast President Obama’s Inauguration speech, as well as the parades and party coverage on a large screen. There will also be live music, dancing and some short speeches.

The dinner includes hors d’œuvres, full dinner with several entree options, dessert and a beverage – you may choose to eat at any time. There will be a no-host bar. There is room for 150 guests, so please order your tickets early as this will be a sold-out event.

Ticket Prices:

Members of Ventura County Democratic Clubs: $40

Non-Members: $50

Ticket and 2009 Club Membership: $55

Donate A Student Ticket: $30

Purchase Event Tickets Here

Semi-formal attire requested. But wear your dancin’ shoes!

Title:   41st Assembly District Delegate Election
Location:   Topanga Community House, 1440 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd, Topanga

Date:   Saturday, January 10, 2009
Registration Starts:   10:00 AM
Meeting Starts:   12:00 noon
Fee:   $5 per person

Link:   Pre-register at www.cadem.org

Description:   All Democrats registered before the close of registration for the Nov 2008 election (October 20) are invited to attend the 41st Assembly District Delegate Election meeting and vote between 10 AM and noon.  You may just vote and leave immediately if you choose.

DCCV member Jay Kapitz is the only Ventura County candidate running and that is a big disadvantage so he really needs your help.  You can vote if you were a registered Democrat in the November 2008 election and live in the 41st Assembly District.  The district is huge and includes the following:  Oak Park, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village (LA County part), Hidden Hills, Topanga, Oxnard (part), Port Hueneme, Calabasas, Malibu, Santa Monica, Pacific Palasades, Encino (part), Tarzana (part) and Woodland Hills (part).  Please forward this information to your friends who live in these areas.

Title: ACTION ALERT: Ventura County Board of Education meeting
Location: VCBOE offices 5100 Adolfo Road, Camarillo, CA
Description: Newly elected Ventura County Board of Education (VCBOE) President, M.L. Peterson, has long questioned the need for excessively expensive contract lobbyist services. These lobbyists were secured by prior VCBOE members. An agenda item on this week\’s VCBOE meeting will be the discussion and vote on whether to continue to pay $10,000 per month for these fruitless, and questionable services. For a complete overview of this issue please read the article located at:http://venturacountydemocrats.com/2008/10/15/lobbying-firms-paid-ventura-board-of-education/

It is important that Democrats, Progressives and Independents turn out in force to oppose these existing contracts and support our friend M.L. Peterson\’s position to discontinue these expenditures. The money can be redirected to much more valuable uses. If you can attend this event and voice your concerns, it will show the press, and local Republicans, that the Democratic Party stands solidly behind the new VCBOE Chairperson M.L. Peterson, who is a Democrat.
The VCBOE meeting at which this issue will be addressed, will be held on January 9, 2009 at 8:00 AM at the VCBOE offices. They are located at 5100 Adolfo Road, Camarillo, CA 93012, on the ground floor (first two doors.)

Directions:
From Ventura: 101 (south) to Santa Rosa/Pleasant Valley exit. Left on Santa Rosa/Pleasant Valley Road, Right on Adolfo.
From Thousand Oaks: 101 (north) to Santa Rosa/Pleasant Valley exit. Right on Santa Rosa/Pleasant Valley Road. Right on Adolfo.
Start Time: 8:00
Date: 2009-01-09
End Time: 10:00

The fourth annual Ventura Architectural Calendar for 2009 available in local stores.

The oversize 6×16″ panoramic calendar features local scenes from the last 100 years. Back by popular demand is the THEN & NOW theme with short histories about the locations and photos showing how they look today. This year’s calendar features 30 historic photographs of places like the Pierpont Pier, City Hall, the Ojai Post Office, Downtown Ventura, the Oxnard Sugar Factory, the Wagon Wheel and Community Presbyterian Church.

[This piece, written by Robert in Monterey over at Calitics (Robert goes by eugene at DailyKos and elsewhere), is one of the most important pieces of political blogging ever written on the California scene. It is cross-posted here in full with the permission of the author.

Full disclosure: thereisnospoon is my personal pseudonym at Dailykos.]

Today’s Paul Krugman column exploring the apparent end of Republican racial backlash politics has been getting some excellent commentary across the blogosphere, including friend of Calitics thereisnospoon’s excellent take at Daily Kos:

For the longest time, the progressive economic agenda was held hostage to vaguely economically progressive but socially retrograde racist Dixiecrats in the South. When truly progressive economics required that all our nation’s people have equal opportunity to share in the nation’s wealth, those erstwhile alliances became strained or broken. But today Democrats are no longer dependent on the likes of Zell Miller and his Dixiecratic friends to enact a progressive economic agenda. The Republicans have painted themselves into a corner as the Party of the South, and Democrats have largely cleaned our own house of the racists.

All that leaves for us is the question of whether enough of our Democratic officials will recover from their Battered Wife Syndrome and the reject the temptations of corporate corruption to truly herald the advent of a 2nd New Deal.

Krugman and spoon’s points are especially applicable to California, where the Republican politics of backlash was born and perfected. From Reagan’s 1966 campaign that took many white working class voters from Pat Brown and the Dems, to Howard Jarvis’ 1978 Prop 13 campaign to cut taxes he argued were being misspent on people of color, to Pete Wilson’s 1994 campaign won by scapegoating immigrants (also true of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2003 recall campaign, to a lesser extent) California Republican ideologies and political success have been built on exploiting white voters’ resentments. As both Krugman and spoon point out, the base wanted the Great Society undone, and the real power in the Republican Party wanted to undo the New Deal.

Click here for more…

Title: Ventura County Democratic Central Committee Meeting
Location: Cameron Center
Description: Regular meeting of Ventura County Democratic Party at The Cameron Center, 288 Greenmeadow Drive, Thousand Oaks
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2009-01-27
End Time: 21:00