Mill Valley man challenges Woolsey for Demo nomination

No partisan competition for Assembly, state Senate seats in March primary election

December 17, 2003

By LOIS PEARLMAN
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF

A Mill Valley business owner is running against six-term congresswoman Lynn Woolsey in the Petaluma area's only contested primary race for the March 2004 election.

Renn Alexander Vara, the man who would like to end Woolsey's winning streak in the 6th Congressional District, describes himself as a progressive Democrat who believes in working together with Republicans.

"You have to begin to realize you are the minority party in the House. You have to learn to walk into those rooms and work with those people," he said.

He criticized Woolsey -- whom he considers an ideological leftist -- for allegedly isolating herself from her Republican colleagues and losing out on funding allocations for local projects.

This will be only the second time that Woolsey has faced opposition in the primary since she was first elected in 1992. In the 2002 primary, Santa Rosa Mayor Mike Martini challenged Woolsey for the Democratic nomination, but lost to the incumbent by a 3-to-1 margin.

"It's time for a change," Vara said. "Our district owes the nation to send to Congress someone who's really going to be a leader and bring home the bacon. If we had nobody representing us for the last 10 years, we would have received the same amount of money. What's happened in the last 10 years is we're not in the rooms any more. You don't need to stand up on a park bench and start yelling at them (Republicans)," he said.

Still, he agrees with Woolsey on many of the issues, including opposing U.S. intervention in Iraq and supporting universal health care. He said he would like to propose a constitutional amendment that would guarantee all people in the U.S. our things -- food, clothing, housing and health care.

Vara lives in Marin County with his wife and two children. He grew up in the panhandle country of northern Florida, worked as a Capitol Hill staffer in Washington, D.C., and with homeless people in New York city, founded a communications firm in San Francisco with his wife.

He said he knew at 17 that he wanted to run for Congress, and decided that these were the experiences he needed to be able to do the job.

Candidates in all the other local primary races are running uncontested. Paul Erickson of Santa Rosa is running for the Republican congressional nomination in the 6th District.

In the 3rd state Senate District, incumbent John Burton, D-San Francisco, is vacating his seat due to term limits. Carole Migden, a former assemblywoman from San Francisco who currently serves on the state Board of Equalization, is unopposed for the Democratic party. Andrew Felder of Kentfield is running as a Republican and David Rhodes of San Francisco is the Libertarian candidate.

In the 6th Assembly District, two-term incumbent Joe Nation, D-San Rafael, is running for re-election. Caroline Patrick of Sausalito is the Republican candidate and Ian J. Holmes of San Francisco is running on the Peace and Freedom ticket.

(Contact Lois Pearlman at lpearlman@arguscourier.com)