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'Joe Blow' for governor

by Rachel Metz

David V. James is a Quaker, has no political experience and considers himself "down-to-earth" folk.

Far from the typical, slick candidate lobbying for the state's highest office, James is joining an increasing number of political outsiders seeking to be the state's next governor in the October recall election.

His campaign "helpers" include his two small dachshunds and he plans to run his entire campaign over the Internet.

"I represent a political outsider without financial commitments, with a strong reality base from Silicon Valley," he said.

James, a computer architect who has a daughter in college and a son entering his senior year at Gunn High School, is working to garner the 65 nomination signatures plus 10,000 signatures he needs in lieu of $3,500 to become an official candidate in the October election.

Candidates have until Aug. 9 to file for the election. They must be United States citizens, registered members of the party they're seeking election with (or not affiliated with any party for at least three months prior to announcing candidacy) and not have served two terms as governor since Nov. 6, 1990.

James is currently one of 32 gubernatorial candidates in Santa Clara County that have picked up nomination papers.

James said he thinks a lot of government problems are caused by bureaucracy and the "extreme difficulty of updating systems."

He would like to set up incentives to discourage legislators from overrunning budgets, as well as weekly lunches between citizens and the governor, and legislators and the governor.

"Also I would feel when there are difficult times my duty with the representatives would be to try to resolve the differences and stay up at night with them," he said.

He stressed his belief that there is a finite time during which an elected official can maintain a sense of integrity, and if elected he would step down after serving one term.

James thinks government would work more efficiently if officials determined the term they wanted to be in office and then moved on to another field of work after the term's end. James, 53, is a registered Democrat who has worked on networking standards for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

He is running his campaign through his Web site, www.recallgov.org, and said while his brothers and sisters support his bid for governor, his wife and children aren't as thrilled.

"Mostly because they realize the pain it would take to do the office," he said, soon adding, "We're all kind of down-to-earth folks, not trying to be too much in the public limelight."

James said his family gave him conditional approval - that is, if he garners the necessary votes, they're OK with his candidacy. As of Wednesday, James had received five votes since launching his Web site Tuesday. He guessed he has a 50-50 chance of getting the votes he needs.

"It'll be interesting to see what happens on the Internet," he said.

Rachel Metz can be e-mailed at rmetz@paweekly.com.

Where James stands on the issues

The Palo Alto Weekly asked James to state his views on a few hot topics.

On abortion: "I believe that only the woman should vote on issues of abortion ... and my belief is if that happened it would give them the right to choose."

On gay marriage: "From the state's perspective it's a serious financial contract which any two people should be allowed to enter. From a religious ethics point of view, it's for the individual churches to decide. California state responsibility is the obligation of the financial contract, not the enforcement of ethics or morality."

On medical marijuana: "I think that's a California state's rights issue and we've made the decision to stick by that."

On public school financing: "I think the possibility of taking a lot of money away from schools would be horrible" and "If we want to save money in the schools it should be a long-term plan, instead of short-term reactions because if you fire teachers one year after you went through great pain to hire teachers they're just going to move to another profession."