My 6 Favorite Candidates for Senator From California

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Here in California it’s not hard to run for a Senate seat. It costs $3,480, which you can pay for in money or in signatures at the going rate of 34.8 cents per signature. This year, 34 people are competing for the seat opened up by Barbara Boxer’s retirement.

The favorite to win the Democratic nomination—and therefore become our future junior senator since the California Republican Party is a hopeless wreck—is Kamala Harris. But Harris is a serious politician, which means that her statement in the voting pamphlet is serious too. And boring. Others are far more interesting. Here are my favorite half dozen:

Massie Munroe
Finally, someone will put a stop to mind control slavery and saturate our job markets for five more centuries. Also: she’s a big Bernie Sanders fan.

AKINYEMI OLABODE AGBEDE
Rescue America!

PRESIDENT CRISTINA GRAPPO
I don’t know what she’s president of, but she’s mainstream Facebook.

JASON HANANIA
The robots are here, and one of them is running for the Senate. However, his campaign slogan is cryptic. Is Hanania a fan of 101 Dalmations? Is he promoting use of the lower case e? Is his brain constructed of mendelevium? Does he like driving from Los Angeles to Seattle?

HERBERT G. PETERS
Peters is apparently one of the few remaining admirers of Franklin Pierce, thanks to Pierce’s 1854 veto of a bill for the support of mentally ill indigents. Pierce issued his veto on the basis of states rights, which fit well with his support of slavery on the same grounds. Bygones.

LING LING SHI
We must fight the 10 giant chaos.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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