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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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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