Carmichael Lawyer and Teacher Bid to Unseat County Supervisor Incumbents

In a joint news conference on Wednesday, a Carmichael teacher and lawyer who support the movement announced their candidacies for seats on the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.

Their bids for elected political office could be the first such “pro-” campaigns in the state.

Jeff Kravitz, 50, who lives in Carmichael, will run against the current incumbent , to represent District 3. The district also includes Fair Oaks, Arden-Arcade, Cordova, North Highlands and Foothill Farms.

Married and a father of three, Kravitz is also a civil rights attorney in private practice and professor of constitutional law who has represented Occupy Sacramento activists arrested by city of Sacramento police for camping in Cesar Chavez Park during early morning hours.

Kravitz called for a county government that reaches out to small business instead of favoring large-scale, “pie-in-sky” projects of developers on the watch of county board members such as Peters. He pointed to the supervisors’ approval for the over-building of residential housing during the bubble years that has yielded a bitter fruit of abandoned and foreclosed homes and shuttered small businesses.    

Gary Blenner, 45, a U.S. government and history teacher at since 1994, will look to unseat incumbent Roberta MacGlashan, who represents District 4. The district includes Antelope, Orangevale, Rancho Murieta and Rio Linda/Elverta.

Blenner served on the Center Unified School District as a board member from 2006 to 2010.

According to Blenner and Kravitz, they are running to better represent the 99 percent of the population who they say are ill-served by politicians such as Peters and MacGlashan who cater to wealthy interests, the one percent of income earners grabbing the lion’s share of the economic pie and fueling a growing gap of social inequality.

Over the next few months before a June 5 non-partisan election, Blenner and Kravitz plan to hold a series of “99-percent” town hall meetings to hear from citizens as to how government can be more accountable to them. Sacramento county residents in District 3 and District 4 cast their votes for these supervisorial districts in presidential election years.

“Change will only come when we at the grassroots level stand up and demand it,” Blenner said.  “It’s not enough to occupy banks and parks:
it’s time to occupy governments. I am running not to punish success, but to
punish excess.”

Some might view Occupy Sacramento as an anti-government movement. But that perspective is off-track, according to Kravitz.

“It would be ironic if those involved in street demonstrations did not see that they need to get involved in the running of the government,” Kravitz said. “Government policy for corporate interests is what got us into this mess in the first place,” said Blenner.

For Blenner and Kravitz, government policies at the local level are precisely what regular people can and must address to improve the quality of their lives at work and away.

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For more information, visit www.KravitzforSupervisor.com
and phone (916) 996-9170; www.GaryBlennerforSupervisor
and phone (916) 717-0279.