Pelosi's opponent, Shirley Golub, says Pelosi has never had an opponent since she won her first race for congress 20 years ago.
But Golub has been pulling the top spot for weeks at ACTBLUE.COM, where bloggers supporting Democrats go to give campaign contributions. According to one source Golub is a lesbian who came "out" after divorcing her former husband.
Golub says she's received some spotty local media coverage, but just about no national coverage, even though the campaign involves the seat of the woman who is two heartbeats away from the presidency.
Shirley Golub is a former speech and language therapist, a realtor and entrepreneur who reports she got disgusted with Pelosi not ending the war or putting impeachment back on the table.
She's running to win in Pelosi's very liberal San Francisco district and with limited resources and what she estimates at less than one tenth the funding Pelosi has (Pelosi has been reported to be the House's top fundraiser) Golub says shes been getting a great response. "Some people bring up the point that she's speaker of the house, but I ask them what she's done for them. Nothing." BUt most people, she reports, agree with her that Pelosi has failed to stop the war, Pelosi has continued to fund the war and has kept impeachment of criminals Bush and Cheney off the table.
On actblue.com, Golub has raised just under $116,000, contributed by 2649 donors, while Pelosi has raised just under $5000, from 5 donors. But that's just money from the blogosphere. Golub says this has been the main source of her funding. FeCwatch.org reports that Pelosi has raised over $2 million for the 2008 race.
Using money raised as a criteria, as the mainstream media tend to do, Golub is no threat at all to Pelosi. But Golub reports she has a campaign team that has been hitting the streets and neighborhoods of San Francisco in California's district 8 and Golub has also taken some highly unusual approaches to get her word out. She's funded a play based on impeachment, that almost sold out the 500 seat theater it is running in.
And she's run an ad on Comcast-- an ad that Comcast first refused to run. After over 6000 people contacted contact, according to one Golub supporter, the giant cable company caved in and ran the ad, which featured a rubber chicken. Furthering the chicken angle of her opposition to Pelosi, Golub sent one of her volunteers to wear a chicken costume on the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C., explaining, "What I am hoping to accomplish with this is to demonstrate just how truly useless it is to send a chicken to Congress."
Golub's press release for the Chicken on the Capitol Steps event stated,
Golub concludes, "The people of San Francisco have a real choice on June 3. This is a two-person race for the Democratic nomination. By coming out to vote for me, we can have immediate policy change in Congress, and put our representatives on notice that any one of them can be removed for their cowardice at the next election. Pretending to represent the people and then taking impeachment off the table isn't just chicken, it's morally wrong. Of course, I wish no disrespect to our nation's poultry."
To date, the only high profile national coverage of Golub's candidacy and the race, which appears in google news, outside of press releases and blogs, have been articles in The Hill and OpEdNews.com, which featured an interview with her. Even local San Francisco daily newspapers do not show up in a google news search for articles on Golub.
The primary election will be held on Tuesday. It will be very strange if the primary campaign race for the House speaker's seat goes completely without any national or local mainstream media coverage. If Golub gets more than a tiny fraction of the vote, it should send a strong message to Pelosi that she's gone off track, in terms of meeting the needs and expectations of her constituents. But Golub insists, she's not in it to send a message. She's in the race to win.
