Odd Couple

We have commented on the business of city council candidates Robin Haulman's and Sam Pedroza's signs sprouting up together all over town. Many people have been puzzled by this, but the "interlocking directorates" of the campaigns, to coin a phrase, make this much more than coincidental.

We posited that a common thread is the Democratic Club of Claremont. While this idea just came to us from our knowledge and experience, it didn't take long for a reader to give us reinforcement. Said reader snapped the picture below at last Sunday's Farmers' Market, about 8 a.m. It shows the Dem. Club table set up every Sunday morning on the corner of Second and Yale, in front of the Starbucks. Usually the table is loaded with flyers, tracts, broadsides, and brochures, but when this was taken just a few signs were out. Our reader was interested in the apparent candidate trifecta: Robin Haulman on the left, school board member Mary Caenepeel in the center (sign cut down) and Sam Pedroza on the right. (The Caenepeel sign was cannibalized to provide the handwritten identification, not visible, facing Starbuck's: Democratic Club of Claremont.)


We remember in 2009 when the Democratic Club provided the footsoldiers for councilmember Larry Schroeder's campaign, and that they consistently endorse whichever candidates for this non-partisan office are Democrats, Pedroza and Elderkin in 2007 for example. So our idea is--and we see nothing here to dissuade us--that Pedroza and Haulman jumped at the chance to have the Democratic Club folks place some of their signs. By our informal count, their sign efforts seem to be lagging, after all.

But why bother to ask people for permission for an act so righteous? Who could object?

Sam and Robin would be an odd couple in any other town, but in here in Claremont they are in the mainstream. Still odd, though.