Jerry And Biscuits For Halloween – October 29, 2010

Dear HCDCC Members, Associate Members, and Friends of Humboldt Democrats,

Jerry Brown, our next governor, will be in Eureka for a Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) rally this Sunday morning, Oct. 31, 8-10 a.m. at the Samoa Cookhouse. We will be Jerry’s first stop on the final day of his campaign swing through the state. Debra Broner, our regional director for the California Democratic Party, made this happen.

As a part of the rally, the Brown campaign is hosting a breakfast for 150 people inside the banquet room at the Cookhouse where Jerry will be speaking.

The Brown campaign booked the Cookhouse for the rally before they contacted us and there wasn’t an opportunity to change the location.

This has become a bit of a challenge with the Brown campaign. As we all know, Humboldt County will easily turn out a lot more than 150 people. We will turn out hundreds and we have a plan to accommodate all our enthusiastic supporters.

The Brown campaign is absolutely insistent that we only hold reserved seats for half the room – 75 people. They don’t want this rally to be an insider event. They want to offer half the room to the public on the morning of the event, based on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The Democratic Central Committee and the Central Labor Council have agreed that in order to meet the requests of the Brown Campaign and to make this rally a more public event, we will give up the bulk of the seats we had originally asked to reserve for our members and make them available to the general public, per the Brown campaign’s wishes.

Per the Brown campaign’s instructions, there will be about 40 local elected officials, candidates, and assorted local leaders seated in the banquet room, plus 30 “GOTV VIPs.”

If you want to “earn” a seat in the banquet room with Jerry, please become a “GOTV VIP.”  This is what the Brown campaign is calling the people getting out the vote on Saturday. All you have to do is spend a minimum of six hours on Friday and/or Saturday putting out door hangers in Humboldt County.

Diana Berliner is coordinating the volunteers for this effort. To earn a GOTV VIP seat inside the banquet room, please email or call Diana at dberliner@humboldtdemocrats.org or 616-7370. Again, this will be limited to 30 people, and several people have already signed up and are working.

We also have some volunteer opportunities to help at the event setting up, doing crowd control, and various other duties. The Brown campaign asked us to provide 20 volunteers for this. Please email Phillis Seawright pseawright@humboldtdemocrats.org, to sign up for this. We already have about half this list filled.

This rally will not be limited to 150 people. We have already started a public relations campaign to ensure a large, enthusiastic turnout. The Cookhouse’s main dining room will serve as an overflow room. This room will accommodate another 150-200 people. It is right next to the banquet room where Jerry will be. It will be wired for sound and we will have at least three TVs in the room so the overflow crowd can watch and hear the action that is going right in the next room. Plus, we will be staging a large rally with people waving Jerry’s rally signs in the parking lot directly adjacent to the banquet room.

This will also be wired for sound so that people outside participating in the rally can hear Jerry speak.

We are anticipating having local supporters of Queen Meg and possibly even teabag groupies show up outside the building to counter-rally. We want to be sure Brown supporters outside substantially outnumber these misguided people. Members of the Central Labor Council have decided instead of using their reserved seats in the banquet room, they will participate in this rally.

If you don’t want to do GOTV or volunteer at the event, then please come and rally with us. We will have enough rally signs for everybody, and there will be coffee and homemade Cookhouse biscuits with butter & jam, compliments of the Humboldt Democratic Central Committee, for those in the overflow room and outside at the rally.

Please, come to the Samoa Cookhouse this Sunday morning in any capacity you can to demonstrate to Jerry Brown that Humboldt County is passionately behind him to be the next governor of California. Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro has told us that if we turn out a large, enthusiastic crowd for Jerry, it will help gain influence with the new governor in his effort to represent and protect the interests of the North Coast in Sacramento.