More Local Coverage on CA-37

The LA Times covers the race today, although only to talk about the maneuvering to decide on the black candidate for the race. Hopefully as the field gets determined they'll focus on the positions of the candidates.

The LB Press-Telegram reports more on Schipske and on the entrance of Ed Wilson into the race. They give a couple graphs on his bio:

Wilson became the first African-American to be elected to Signal Hill's City Council, and he later became the city's first black mayor.

"People want someone they can get excited about," said Wilson, who served as Signal Hill's mayor twice, once in the late 1990s and again two years ago.

Wilson moved to Signal Hill from Long Beach in 1993. He lived in Long Beach from 1985 to 1992.

He earned his CPA while working as an auditor for the accounting firm KPMG. He earned his degree in accounting from USC in 1984.

"People want change in government," he said, adding, "I would point to Signal Hill as an example. We're seen as one of the most fiscally sound cities in the state of California because we look at long-term planning issues."

I'm thinking the public effort to "narrow the field" to produce the one black candidate is backfiring - it's not just that you now have three bigger-name black candidates in the race; you also have a topic the press is going to glom onto at the expense of coverage of the black candidates' actual campaigns.

The "black community fights amongst itself to determine candidate" topic is really juicy and easy to cover and there's a danger that this fight will get all the ink (or air time). Today's LA Times piece is likely going to be just the first of many examples of this. We can't forget that the election is going to be in less than a month and a half, and absentee voters will be getting their ballots ahead of that. There's really no time to waste on getting the message out, and I'm sure McDonald, Richardson and Wilson would rather not be competing with this juicy angle available to reporters so that they can get coverage that will actually help their campaigns.

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On the candidate front, the Press-Telegram breaks the news that LB councilwoman Suja Lowenthal is not going to run and that Richardson and Oropeza are the only Democrats to have officially filed.

Time's running short to file (I believe everything's got to be in on Monday), but I presume all these folks (Schipske, McDonald, Wilson) have everything lined up to file by the deadline.