Ex-GOP star Schnur, running for state office, is over parties
For years, Dan Schnur was one of the stars of the California Republican Party, a nationally known strategist and chief spokesman for luminaries like presidential candidate John McCain and former Gov. Pete Wilson.
But when hundreds of California Republicans gather starting Friday at their state convention in Burlingame, Schnur will be nowhere in sight.
The former head of the state's Fair Political Practices Commission shocked the political establishment by abandoning his party to become an independent three years ago. Now he's running for secretary of state, hoping to be the first independent candidate ever elected to statewide office.
Schnur, 50, argues that secretary of state should be a nonpartisan position because it oversees voter registration, elections, campaign finance reporting and business licenses. But he says he had a larger goal in leaving the Republican Party - to clean up an election system awash in money.
"Fundraising has metastasized into a never-ending, pervasive arms race," said Schnur, who is on leave from his post as director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "And both parties are complicit in this out-of-control system."
full: http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Ex-GOP-star-Schnur-running-for-state-office-is-5316081.php