Nothing could spoil election night for volunteers who had donated time and money to send freshman Congressman Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) back to Washington D.C. for a second term.

McNerney delivered his victory speech just before midnight at an election party a few hours after Barack Obama’s Presidential win.  A crowd had stayed under the white tent in the parking lot of a union hall in Dublin to see McNerney’s moment of triumph, although Obama’s televised acceptance speech had ended and the caterers had packed up.

McNerney had led former State Assemblyman and Republican Dean Andal throughout the evening on the big television screen. In the end, the vote would turn out 55.4 percent McNerney, 44.6 percent Andal.

Democrats scored a double victory in the otherwise majority Republican 11th Congressional district stretching from the Central Valley to fringes of the East Bay to San Jose.  No Democratic Congressmember has held the seat at the same time a Democratic President has held the Oval office since 1976.

“(The voters) have responded…by making the message, that yes, they not only want me to go back, but they’ve elected Barack Obama for President of the United States,” McNerney said.

“They’ve elected many new (Democratic) members for House of Representatives and for the Senate. And we now have what it takes to get things done for the American people,” he said.  Democrats had gained enough seats to widen their majority over Republicans in both the House and the Senate.

Republican strategists had identified the district 11 election as a key race to take back.  Republican Richard Pombo, a seven-term incumbent, had held the position from 1993 to 2007 until his reputation was damaged over allegations over scandal and corruption.

McNerney, a Pleasanton resident, and an expert in wind energy, had no political experience prior to running for Congress.  He had lost to Pombo in 2004.

“I’d always thought he’d be a college professor,” said his wife Mary McNerney, referring to her husband’s doctorate in mathematics.   She said after 9-11, their son Michael had convinced him to run for Congress.

In the 2006 election, environmental groups backed McNerney with financial contributions and volunteers, favoring his background in renewable energy as an engineer of wind turbines.

Defenders of Wildlife member Beverly Berman had worked on McNerney’s campaign for the second time.  The first time was in 2006.

“I wanted to get rid of Pombo,” said the Danville resident. “He was one of the worst people we had in Congress,” she said, citing his record on environment and animal rights.  “I worked hard on the phones and whatever they wanted me to do.”

Democrat Claudia McCormick, 59, former Vice-Mayor of Dublin, said she had never seen such a big election party in the city, or with as many young people present.

“When we have parties, it’s usually older folks,” she said.  On election day she volunteered for McNerney’s campaign to drive precinct walkers because “they were too young to have driver’s licenses.”

One of the teenage volunteers was her grandaughter Ariel Welch, 17, a senior at Freedom High School in Oakley who was recruited for the McNerney campaign through her Government class.

“I started going every week and going door-to-door,” said Welch.  “Now I’m totally interested in politics.  I like how everyone comes together for one cause.”

As for meeting McNerney in person for the first time, she said, “He was really nice.  He wanted to shake everyone’s hand.”

Hollywood often stereotypes librarians as mousy women in horn-rimmed glasses who hide behind books. But the work of a librarian is not limited to searching databases and silencing noisy patrons. As mandated by the Young Adult Services Association (part of the American Library Association), an element of advocacy underlies the work that librarians do. For one Alameda County Librarian, she took the mandate of advocacy to heart to ensure that her patrons, the inmates of the Alameda Juvenile Detention Hall, were not disenfranchised during the 2008 Presidential Election.

As the Write-to-Read coordinator for the Alameda County juvenile justice program, Amy Cheney spends most of her days at the juvenile detention hall in San Leandro. Write-to-Read brings library services, programs and literacy to incarcerated youth. Because they are minors, these offenders were unable to comment for this report.

As the election approached, Cheney said that her job as a librarian was to provide these incarcerated youth with the voter registration forms and election information that would have been available to them at any public library in the free world.

“It wasn’t enough to just give them the registration forms,” she said, “I had to make sure their votes counted because if the registration process isn’t done correctly, they can’t vote.”

Cheney was targeting youth who would turn 18 by Election Day as well as those who were 18 and serving sentences for crimes they committed as a minor.

Cheney said she attended a voter registration program and began volunteering some of her personal time to ensure these youth were able to complete the often confusing registration and ballot-casting process.

Over a period of one month, Cheney said she managed to register every individual in the juvenile justice system who would be eligible to vote on Election Day — roughly 30 people. Of those 30, Cheney said all but ten were released before Election Day, and, she hopes, they received their ballots at home.

For those ten other inmates behind bars, Cheney said, the ballots were supposed to be mailed to them at the detention hall. With the election only two days away, the ballots had still not arrived.

“We had to find out where the ballots went. I asked the kids to call their parents to see if they had them. Then I took all the names and called the registrar of voters,” said Cheney.

Cheney said that the registrar’s office was unable to locate the registration forms without the registration numbers. As it happened, Cheney said she had made copies and given them to the local Wellstone Democratic Club for their records.

Larry Steinhart, who managed the voter registration efforts at the club, said that all registration information was entered into a database. Due to a glitch in the system, Steinhart had to manually search through thousands of entries, but was able to retrieve all but two of the form numbers.

Steinhart said he was happy to help but felt that Cheney was taking on a “Herculean” task. “I thought there was next to no chance that these kids would ever be able to vote from inside the institution. I thought she was out of her mind in a kind of Don Quixote manner, tilting at all the institutional windmills,” he said.

With registration numbers in hand, Cheney said she returned to the registrar’s office and was finally able to ensure that the names were in the system. She also made sure that official ballots were hand-delivered to the juvenile detention hall. Rather than risk the mail, she said that she physically delivered the ballots to the polling place on Election Day.

Cheney said the experience was frustrating. “What if you don’t have an advocate? It really irritates me. This might be human error, but could we not have a better system?” she said.

But Cheney said her effort was worth it. She said there was an overwhelming response to her educational efforts throughout the detention hall and the youth developed an interest in social and political issues that she had never witnessed before.

“Kids were wanting to register [to vote] who weren’t 18 and readership increased throughout the detention hall. I’ve never gotten anyone to read any book about a president. But everyone wanted to read [Barack] Obama’s book. People wanted to read Michael Moore’s ‘Election Guide.’ I even handed out a Nation magazine to a kid,” said Cheney.

Cheney was quick to assert that her efforts were bi-partisan and that she tried to fully explain the positions of the different political parties and both sides of each item on the ballots. She even provided the youth with contact information so they could do their own research in the detention hall’s library and when they were able to make phone calls.

That being said, Cheney said that many of the young offenders were immediately drawn to Barack Obama because they felt they were able to relate to him.

“I feel like they saw themselves [in him] and wanted to vote. It was great,” she said, adding,

“Obama is speaking in a way that youth can understand.  There’s an absolute connection to him, not just because he’s black but because of his circumstances. The fact that he didn’t know his father and was raised by a single mother; the kids in here can relate to that,” she said.

While Steinhart was never able to meet any of the youth, he said that Cheney’s work taught these juvenile offenders that they had an advocate who was willing to work on their behalf and that their voices matter.

“The voting opportunity which Amy provided was a teaching moment in individual exercise of choice and participation in the civic life of their country. Their voices in this election were equally as powerful as yours and mine, which is as it should be in a democracy,” said Steinhart.

Now that the election is over, Cheney said she is trying to make sure the youth understand that they need to re-register whenever they move, and they do so frequently.

Cheney said she continues to find ways to improve the Write-to-Read program, but hopes that with Obama as president, the youths will maintain an interest in current events and learning that many of them did not have before.

“I think his election is going to have a big impact on them and future generations,” she said.

The results of the highly contested fourth district congressional race between State Senator Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown remained too close to call as of Thursday and may face a recount.

Just around the corner from Brown’s campaign headquarters on Lincoln Street on Tuesday, his supporters gathered at the Roseville Opera House, a large hall downtown. Campaign signs, including “Republicans for Charlie Brown,” hang on the ballroom walls.

In a district where Republican voter registration exceeded Democratic by 15 percent, bipartisan support was critical for a successful campaign. Accordingly, the candidate, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, promoted the message “patriotism before partisanship.”

Brown ran in 2006 against U.S. Rep. John Doolittle and came within three percentage points of the Republican incumbent. Amidst a congressional lobbying scandal, Doolittle announced his retirement in January.

Campaign volunteer Kent Pollack, former assistant managing editor at the Sacramento Bee, shared estimates from pollsters hired by the Brown campaign. “We believe we’re up a little over two [percent].”

Spokesman Todd Stenhouse took the stage not long after Senator Barack Obama delivered his presidential acceptance speech. The atmosphere in the room was heady from the historic victory.

Stenhouse told the crowd, “The margin in the fourth district congressional race is 200 votes.” After a pause, he announced the narrow lead belonged to Brown. “It’s going to be a long night,” he said.

MSNBC, which had showed McClintock leading by a small margin, adjusted the candidates’ standing to a 50-50 tie. These numbers did not change as the night advanced.

Hundreds of supporters gathered in the ballroom. They shared homemade cupcakes and drank beer or coffee while watching the results come in. Many wore Obama t-shirts with Brown pins or vice versa.

Brown addressed the audience after ten o’clock. He said, “I think once all the votes get counted here, we’re all going to be very happy in the morning, but we might have to wait until morning for the final decision.”

Citrus Heights resident Joshua Steward, 28, did not vote for Obama, but supported Brown wholeheartedly. “I was sitting in my backyard, and [Brown] called me,” said Steward, a wheelchair-bound Iraqi War veteran. Steward helped with the campaign when he could and appeared in a commercial with the candidate.

Just before midnight, Brown went home with his wife and daughter. “The numbers are dead even,” he said. He added that he felt “very good” about the race and praised the “lots of good volunteers who’ve been hard at this.”

Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald, 41, was one of the last volunteers to leave. She lives in Davis, outside of Brown’s district, but said she believes in Brown. “He’s a very genuine candidate. That’s something I heard again and again from constituents.”

On Wednesday morning, the Sacramento Bee reported that McClintock led by less than 500 votes, but an unknown number of absentee and provisional ballots had yet to be counted.  Neither candidate had conceded.

Volunteers help Chinese voters with limited English skills.

By Guo Shipeng

A steady stream of Chinese residents cast their votes in several polling stations in Oakland’s Chinatown throughout Tuesday, many supporting Obama in line with the community’s long-time leaning toward the Democrats.

But a considerable amount of Chinatown voters cited traditional Chinese family values and voted for Prop 8 that would ban same-sex marriages, disappointing a group of campaigners against the proposition who stayed outside a polling place for a whole day to try to win over people.

“I’ve always voted for the Democratic Party. It has treated Chinese Americans well in the past,” said housewife Candy He, 50. “As an ethnic minority, we are most concerned about our children’s rights in education and employment.”

He said she strongly opposed gay marriage and had asked her three children, the youngest in 12th grade, to vote for Prop 8.

“They agreed a little grudgingly this time. I don’t know how they’ll vote in the future,” said He.

He accompanied a neighbor, a first-time voter who moved to the United States from China in 2000, to the small polling station in the hallway of the Lincoln Elementary School on the 11th Street.

The neighbor, a 50-year-old waitress who would only give her surname Zheng, said she voted for McCain and Prop 8.

“There is a Chinese saying: the older ginger is spicier. So I chose the more experienced one,” Zheng said. “I can’t accept same-sex marriages. It’s always one man, one woman in the Chinese society and after all the mankind has to reproduce.”

The divide on the contentious issue seemed to fall on generational lines.

Albert Fan, 18 and a freshman at the San Francisco State University, voted for Obama and against Prop 8.

“It’s equal rights. They were just allowed to get married fairly recently and now we are going to take the right back? It’s not fair,” Fan said after casting his ballot in the Lincoln Neighborhood Center.

His friend Alex Cheng, a 12th grader months away from 18, said he would have voted for Obama and against Prop 8 if he was able to.

Early voting and the concentration of at least four polling stations around the Chinatown area meant there was not much waiting in both the school and the neighborhood center.

Both stations had Chinese-speaking volunteers to help voters with limited English skills.

Lu Lisheng, 80, has helped in several elections. This time, he was one of the language volunteers in the Lincoln school.

“The procedures and Chinese instructions on the forms are confusing sometimes, so we just tell voters how to do it,” Lu said. “Five out ten voters need our help, but we’ll never tell them whom to vote for.”

Six volunteers from a San Francisco group against Prop 8, including an architect and a lawyer, manned the street corners near the Lincoln Neighborhood Center, handing out flyers and talking to people in the hope that they would vote against the proposition.

Emily Wages, a Mandarin-speaking immigration lawyer from San Francisco, campaigns against Prop 8 outside the Lincoln Neighborhood Center polling station.

Oakland City Council Member Jean Quan and her husband also spent several hours in the cold campaigning for the Democratic Party and against Prop 8.

Quan ran into a group of Chinese women supporting Prop 8 after dark.  When she challeged the group about their sources of funding, the Prop 8 supporters became emotional but things were short of a showdown.

“If you let them discriminate against gay people, then what keeps them from discriminating against Chinese, or women?” Quan said.

Multimedia by Mateen Kaul and Tyler Sipe

Fremont’s large American-Muslim population was united behind Democratic candidate Barack Obama for the presidential election. 

Muslim voters said they were backing Obama largely because they thought he would do a better job than Republican rival John McCain in tackling the country’s economic problems.

But they also felt President Obama would be better for their countries of origin, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the international community in general.

An older generation of Vietnamese Americans is leaning toward Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain–while their younger counterparts are favoring Barack Obama.

Among Asians in California, Vietnamese are most likely to support McCain, at 53 percent, according to the National Asian American Survey conducted by professors from three universities.

In Oakland, a city where 70 percent of voters are registered Democrats, older Vietnamese voters with first-hand experience of the war favor McCain while younger Vietnamese favor Obama.

Lu Le, 80, plans to vote for McCain in her first election ever.  On a recent Friday afternoon.  She was playing Bingo at the Vietnamese Community Center of the East Bay on International Boulevard.

“The Vietnamese voting for Obama never experienced harsh conditions under the Communist party that robbed and killed people,” she said, her brow furrowed.

Her vote will show appreciation to McCain for what he did during the war, she said.

Down the street at an Asian grocery store, Ly Vien, 62, a soldier who fought with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, said McCain is considered an ally in his community for fighting Communist Vietnamese forces during the war.

McCain fought in the war as a pilot and was captured, said Vien.  After returning to the U.S., McCain advocated for the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S., a plan under which Vien arrived 14 years ago.

But Loi Huynh, 23, said he planned to vote for the Democratic Presidential ticket.  He arrived 15 years ago and is now a student at Laney Community College.  He said his parents are also leaning towards Obama.

“It was up to them,” said Huynh said.  He hasn’t tried to influence them one way or another.  “Because they believe Obama can do more than McCain can.”

But not all young Vietnamese are Democrats.  Even though her peers are voting for Obama, student Thao Pham, 20, voted by mail for McCain.

“(My friends) said they voted for Obama because he will make the country better,” she said. “I heard my grandfather say McCain helped us during the war. I think that’s right.”

But Philip Nguyen, director of the Southeast Asian Community Center in San Francisco said McCain’s reputation as a war hero is not as important as the fact that he represents the Republican party.

“The notion among the older Vietnamese generation is the Republicans are more anti-Communist than Democrats,” he said.  During the 2004 Presidential election, they voted for Bush, even though the Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry, was a Vietnam war veteran.

Nguyen said, even though there are no reliable statistics, younger Vietnamese appear to support Obama.

Oakland resident and Republican Tran Tuan, 40, said he follows the views of the older generation.  But his children, ages 10 and 14–all too young to cast ballots–are leaning towards Obama, swayed by a city where almost everyone seems to be Democrat.

“All the teachers and everybody, they’re Democrats.  They brainwash the kids,” he said. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Thanks to An Nguyen of Oakland for Vietnamese translation.

See what’s on people’s minds in Berkeley with four days left until the election.

BERKELEY — It was standing room only at last week’s mayoral debate, and the audience heard from twice as many candidates’ perspectives than the event billed. Two write-in candidates, Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi and Zachary RunningWolf, joined Mayor Tom Bates and Shirley Dean on stage to discuss their positions on Berkeley issues. Over 100 people attended the debate, sponsored by The Berkeley Daily Planet and held at the West Berkeley Senior Center.

On the City of Berkeley’s website, the City Clerk’s section lists three official write-in candidates for mayor: Jacobs-Fantauzzi, RunningWolf and Richard Lorren Jolly. All filed Candidate Intention Statements and checked non-partisan.

The Green Party of Alameda County endorsed Jacobs-Fantauzzi, 32. Last week, the educator and community organizer said, “People are excited about [the campaign]. The hard thing is getting people to find out.” To spread the word he said he planned to speak on campus and at events.

This is not RunningWolf’s first mayoral campaign. He went up against Mayor Dean in 2006 and, according to election results, received nearly five percent of the vote. RunningWolf, 45, is a Native American elder known for his involvement with the UC Berkeley tree-sit that came to an end in September. On Monday morning he said, “I’m waking up for another 10-14 hour day. I’ve had to do incredible groundwork.”

Jolly, 20, is a senior at UC Berkeley majoring in political science and media studies. While the other write-in candidates have more traditional websites, Jolly created a Facebook group, Richard Jolly for Mayor 2008. He said a website is in the works. His focus is on campus, where he is “flyering and talking to people at parties.” He did not attend Monday’s debate.

Jacobs-Fantauzzi and RunningWolf arrived early and spoke to Daily Planet Executive Editor Becky O’Malley. During the sometimes tense exchange that followed, RunningWolf raised his voice and told O’Malley, “Your publication hasn’t even covered all the people who are running.”

She told him, “We do the best we can.”

Jacobs-Fantauzzi asserted, “We have the right to speak on issues just like anyone else.”

In the end, both Jacobs-Fantauzzi and RunningWolf took seats on stage beside Bates and Dean. In her introduction, O’Malley told the audience, “We have a couple of people who insisted on being added to the program at the last minute.” She apologized, as she said it would cut into time for questions.

During the debate, the write-in candidates shared their perspectives and told the audience what set them apart from the others. Jacobs-Fantauzzi said, “I don’t want to be a politician like other politicians.”

RunningWolf told the audience, “It’s going to take people like myself to stand up to UC Berkeley.”

Speaking before the debate, Fran Gibson, 63, said she had not yet decided between Bates and Dean, but “I’m going to decide tonight.” In terms of write-in candidates, she said, with hesitation, “There are some?”

On Tuesday morning, Gibson said, “I thought the write-in candidates helped line out the issues.” She said she had made up her mind, opting for “detailed, accessible, bright” Dean.

Dean, who server as mayor of Berkeley from 1994-2002, said the write-in candidates’ participation “certainly was fine with me.” She added, “I thought they raised some good and interesting points.” Citing requests for her yard signs as an example, she said she thought the debate went well.

Will Thomas, 29, said that he saw Bates and Dean as “two sides of the same coin.” He had already voted and wrote in Jacobs-Fantauzzi after reading his statement.

After watching the debate, he said the evening was affirming. “This is the type of person we need, it’s not the kid of person we’ll get.”