Tom, I don't think you carried Humboldt county, but you won big-time in my home county, Mendocino, thanks to the endorsement of the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I don't know who Gary Ramos is, but I'd like to ask you something. I vaugely remember reading, a few years ago, that the P&F party had been colonized by some outside faction with a strange agenda. Do you know anything about that? Are they still around? Is Gary Ramos one of /them/?
Yesterday, someone capped on the AVA's editor, Bruce Anderson, for his faux-machismo and his use of divise terms like "pwogwessive" (usually shortened to "pwog," which sounds better to me). I'd like to offer a brief and probably ill-advised defense: namely, that those words mean more in Mendocino county than they do elsewhere.
Mendocino, for those of you from the outside, is home to an enormous number of 60's refugees (did you see Christopher Hitchens' distinction, in this month's /Vanity Fair/, between "60's people" and "68ers"? Very helpful.), many of whom are prone to a fuzzy politics of spirituality and good vibes. Most of these same folk have become extremely well-to-do through the marijuana-fueled economy and its associated industries, and exhibit a weird hybrid politics-- somewhat related to the Hawken school of "green capitalism." These are the pwogs, and they deserve a label of their own.
I could go on, but I have to run. I'll just say that the AVA, though it gets even more flak from liberals and the left than it does from the right, is popular for the same reason that /Counterpunch/ and the /LBO/ are popular: it is well-written, with humor, insight, and no cant.
Hank Sims