Candidate for
United States Representative; District 6

More Biographical Information for Mike Halliwell

Candidate for United States Representative; District 6

The important part of my biography is from the official launch of my candidacy on December 30, 2005 when I took out my in lieu petitions (to allow me to substitute signatures for my filing fee) until its demise in the June 6, 2006 primary election. Because the Registrar of Voters refused to count signatures by registered Democrats in the 6th CD, I became a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary to prove that Democrats could indeed vote for me (the only criterion of eligibility to sign in lieu petitions for major party candidates) and I continue as a write-in in the general election to show that any registered voter in the 6th CD can vote for me (as would have been the case if I had won my primary, as I tried to explain to the Registrar). By fencing off Democrats with a "no poaching" rule in the in lieu signature collection process, the Registrar's adamant refusal to obey the law made it impossible for a Republican to demonstrate that he can win, and thereby destroyed my ability to raise more than a tiny fraction of the campaign contributions available to an entrenched incumbent. Registrars in the state of Mississippi followed a similarly intransigent policy with respect to signing up Black voters prior to 1965, and enabled Barry Goldwater (who had the support of only 6% of black voters) to win 87% of the votes cast in a state where the voting age population in 1964 was 40% black. When the old Soviet Union existed Ronald Reagan used to joke that someone broke into Communist Party headquarters and stole the results of next year's elections. All incumbent Democrats participated in a "backroom" deal wherein the results of California's congressional elections were similarly preordained in 2002. As a result Steven Horn, the strongest defender of civil rights for minorities in the California delegation (and the former president of my University) had his district shattered into six pieces to allow an Anglo Democrat incumbent in Burbank to have Hispanics moved out of his district and for Horn's district to be replaced by one for displaced Hispanics (to provide a seat in Congress for the sister of Loretta Sanchez, to minimize the antagonism of this vital voting bloc toward the Democratic Party, which wants to be able to take them for granted, while providing only a minimal opportunity for them to "elect the candidates of their choice" as provided by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.)

I might still have had some chance in 2006 if there had been adequate press coverage of my campaign. E-mail me at halliwel@csulb.edu for press releases on any topic mentioned in the Political Philosophy Section.