The Buzz: Two write-ins add color to monochromatic race (CD-48)

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Monday, October 3, 2005

The Buzz: Two write-ins add color to monochromatic race

The 48th District ballot is long on candidates but short on ethnic diversity.

By MARTIN WISCKOL
The Orange County Register

Tuesday's special election ballot is 17 candidates long, but one thing voters in the 48th Congressional District won't find is a Latino. Or an Asian. Or a black.

The district - which includes Irvine, Newport Beach and Dana Point among its cities - is 15 percent Latino and 13 percent Asian (and 1.4 percent black). But even those numbers leave it as the most Anglo congressional district in the county, and the ninth-whitest among the 53 districts in the state.

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Write-in candidate No. 1

There is one candidate of color - she just didn't make the ballot. Aliso Viejo real estate broker Delecia Holt, a black, came up short on qualifying signatures and so is not listed, but she is running a write-in campaign. The 43-year-old Republican says she has mailed a flier to 600,000 households in the districts - which would mean 200,000 more households than there are registered voters. Her Web site is extensive (www.voteholt.com).

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Write-in candidate No. 2

If you'd be happy to get one person back to work, you might consider the other write-in candidate. Republican Steven Wesley Blakesays he's received disability payments since 1994, when the trauma of his father's death left him emotionally unable to hold down a job. "This is God's will," the 44-year-old Santa Ana resident said of his candidacy. "I prayed about it for a year."

Blake is an admirer of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "He is my Moses," Blake said. "What he's doing is biblical." What, specifically? "He's tightening reins on the money, on the unions." Want more? He said he hoped to get some content on his Web site (stevenwblake4congress.com ) by the time this column appears.

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http://ocregister.com/ocregister//news/columns/article_699475.php