Running for Assembly the hard way

Dr. Larry Ozeran is not taking the road most traveled in his run for the state Assembly.

But Ozeran, who has a Yuba City general surgery practice, is not running a typical campaign.

Ozeran said he doesn't want or plan on accepting financial donations in his effort to become the representative of the 2nd Assembly District, which includes Sutter and Colusa counties. Instead, he wants donations of time and volunteering.

"The summary of it all is (we have) a Legislature that doesn't function as well as it could, in my opinion," Ozeran said. "That's due to partisan politics and special interest influences, and the solution to that in my view is to take away the partisanship and take away special interest influence and bring the people back into the solutions."

He took out in-lieu papers to run for governor during the 2003 recall election, ultimately choosing not to run.

But before he can become an Assembly candidate, he has to get his name on the ballot.

Because Ozeran is not running as a member of a political party, he has to qualify under provisions of the state elections code for non-party-affiliated candidates — collecting the signatures of at least 3 percent of the district's registered voters. In District 2, that's 6,726 signatures.

Ozeran has until July 24 to collect signatures in lieu of filing fees. The final deadline to get the signatures to the state Secretary of State's office is Aug. 8.

If he is unsuccessful in getting placed on the ballot, Ozeran said he and supporters would have to decide whether or not to be a write-in candidate, but he likely would.

"The only problem is it's extremely unlikely you would collect votes," he said.

And supporter participation is one of Ozeran's key campaign elements.

He's built a preliminary Web page, www.drozeran.com/2008, where people can get basic information about his campaign and download in-lieu petitions to gather signatures. He plans to expand the site in the future — using his own computer programming knowledge — to create a sort of social networking site to interact with campaign volunteers and potential voters.

Ozeran's campaign strategy is based off a Web site he built, PrinciplesForPolitics.org. On the site, Ozeran asked candidates for public office to run on platforms that include not accepting campaign donations, put their focus on promoting their personal principles instead of discussing specific issue platforms, and use those personal principles to consistently form their policies. He described it as "utilizing the collective wisdom of the community."

And he wants to do it by spending less than 2 percent of the $483,000 voluntary expenditure ceiling for Assembly primaries. His original goal was 1 percent, but he exceeded that purchasing advertising in the district's two largest newspapers, the Appeal-Democrat and the Redding Record Searchlight.

Already on the ballot are former state Sen. Jim Nielsen, winner of a four-man Republican primary, and Paul Singh of Live Oak, who was unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Ozeran sums up his odds of success by saying if voters want the concept to work enough, it will.

"I think there are a lot of people who would like to see this happen, but I have to see if there are enough people sufficiently motivated to make it happen," he said.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Robert LaHue at 749-4713 or rlahue@appealdemocrat.com