Questionnaire For Candidates For City Council: Fill & Download for Free

A lot of that depends on the election you are interested in. There is a lot of news about big, federal elections, like the Presidential election. For that, I would recommend Vox and FiveThirtyEight for “explainer” articles that provide a lot of background on the issues they are interested in.However, you are going to have a lot more influence in local elections. In addition, your local city council or school board will probably have a bigger direct impact on your daily life. For information on those elections, I would read your local newspaper and, if you have one, your local independent weekly magazine. They tend to have much more focus on local elections.Finally, check out Vote411.org to read questionnaires from local candidates.Good luck! And welcome to the US!

“As a member of the NRA, what do you feel people most misunderstand about the NRA and its members?”I think the biggest single misunderstanding people have is that they think we are all arch-Conservatives. In other words, that an NRA member is automatically anti-abortion, pro-big-business, anti-immigrant, and so on, and is an unshakable Republican voter.That certainly describes quite a few NRA members, but there are also plenty of us in every political category. We are united only by our shared hobby and the desire to keep it legal.In the old days, we prided ourselves on recommending Democrats whenever we honorably could. The NRA sends out policy position questionnaires to every candidate, down to city council races, and the policy questions pertain only to the gun issue. A Democrat can get an A rating as easily as anyone else, and in the old days we rated many Democrats as A or B. Sadly, the Democratic Party seems to be making gun prohibition a litmus test for their candidates. I would like people to understand that many of us vote for Republicans reluctantly, because we will not vote for anyone with less than a B rating. Which increasingly means that Democrats are out of the question.

Based on what I've read about the candidates in their PAN questionnaires (paneighborhoods.org) and what they've said at the City Hall Candidates Forum as well during some of their campaign kick-off events, I think everything Eric Rosenblum is saying is absolutely spot on.If I were to name the person most dedicated to more housing options in Palo Alto, that honor has to go to Wayne Douglass. He is running on a single issue: homelessness. He's a big proponent of not criminalizing homelessness (like tickets for sleeping outside or in a car) and he's obviously in favor of as much housing as we can possibly get in Palo Alto, especially affordable housing. Wayne's one of those guys that really puts Palo Altans at war over McMansions next door in perspective: we have much bigger problems here.If Wayne's enthusiasm for housing can be likened to the Empire State building, then for comparison, all the other candidates I'm going to describe now are going to be closer to five floors and under. The point I really want to get across is that the candidates other than Wayne are all really pretty conservative on housing. After the residentialists succeeded in putting to a vote last year the development of an affordable old folks home, everybody across the board hunkered down because clearly after that, it's hard to imagine a more sympathetic group of people to develop for.So with that said, the next person in line is probably Cory Wolbach. Cory is obviously MUCH much more measured than Wayne. He believes in specific area plans where communities can come together to decide their own futures. He wants to see R-1 (single family home) neighborhoods continue to be protected. He stands by the 50 ft height limit, and his major emphasis is on putting housing in very specific places: Downtown, California Ave, and El Camino - basically, next to services and transportation. He deserves the credit for really putting a spotlight on the jobs-housing imbalance in Palo Alto and underscoring just how serious that imbalance really is for us. Now, virtually all the other candidates also acknowledge and talk about that imbalance.I think AC comes next. He just sounds very reasonable, supports more housing, supports housing in specific locations next to transportation and services, and wants to see more affordable housing. AC's campaign hasn't been quite as vocal as some of the others, so it's hard to say much more. I think he's in the camp of people who get it, though.Greg Scharff and Nancy Shepherd come next. As incumbents, these guys have just been absolutely flogged by the residentialists, no matter what they do. They've been subjected to just the vilest and most impolite interactions for daring to allow buildings to be constructed that for whatever reason someone or other has a problem with. I think they try really hard to listen to the community and be responsive. Their records really indicate them trying to steer the council in the residents' direction in many ways. But I also think that they see the big picture and understand that "no growth" is not a viable option and that we should be spending our time figuring out how to manage growth instead. I think that if these guys saw more members of the community supporting them and encouraging them, then again, they would be responsive to what they perceive as the desires of the community.Karen Holman and Tom DuBois come next. They are part of a slate being sponsored by Palo Altans for Sensible Zoning (PASZ) - the same folks who made sure we didn't have an affordable old folks home in the neighborhood (that land will now be filled with more single family homes). They wear the "residentialist" banner proudly and are ostensibly (very) slow-growth candidates. They're not "no growth" and they're both, from what I can tell really thoughtful people. Even if I can't get behind their slow growth stance, I think they're really smart people who at least reside in the same reality as the rest of us.Lastly Lydia Kou and Eric Filseth. These guys are also part of the residentialist slate sponsored by PASZ. In contrast to Holman or DuBois, for me, these guys go into the category of people who don't reside in the same reality as the rest of us (or at least not my reality). Their commentary on growth and development has been downright hysterical with Kou calling it a "crisis" and Eric Filseth saying he's going to go fight ABAG requirements (which SEVERAL courts have now made clear is not possible without a new state law), because apparently being asked to zone for THREE times less housing than jobs is "unfair" to Palo Alto. He also tried to skirt the issue of sustainability by going off on the dirtiness of concrete (because individual houses aren't made of concrete? and neither are their cul de sacs, driveways, and highways?). He calls himself an environmentalist, but I know of no environmental organization in the world that supports suburban sprawl in lieu of smart growth - walkable neighborhoods and eliminating the need for driving where possible. Not only do these candidates not support more housing, I think that they fundamentally don't understand our reality or development best practices. I also have *special* feelings for a candidate (Filseth) that got rich off the tech sector here in Silicon Valley and is now taking steps to make it that much harder for younger generations to follow in his footsteps by lifting the drawbridge to Palo Alto. As an immigrant myself, I likewise have *special* feelings for an Asian woman who's basically saying "our community's full- no vacancy!" They both owe their happiness and success to Palo Alto's willingness to embrace them, and now that they're here, they want to take those opportunities away from others.As for Sea Reddy, Mark Weiss, and Fredrich - we just really haven't heard much from them during this campaign except that they put themselves squarely in the residentialist camp. They don't come across as serious candidates because they have not really answered questions substantively.