Amid final vote counting, David Levitt has moved into 2nd place in San Francisco, in California's US Senate primary race.

Statewide it is clear the runner up will be party-endorsed Republican Elizabeth Emken, the best funded candidate after incumbent Senator Feinstein.

However in San Francisco, computer technologist Dr. David Levitt has received more votes than any Republican, third party candidate, or Democrat other than Senator Feinstein - more votes than any of her 22 other opponents, including much better funded and more experienced candidates.  Levitt has received more than 71,000 votes statewide.

"Throughout this primary race, Senator Feinstein has consistently refused to participate in debates or to answer questions posed by citizens and opponents in public forums and online, even on her own Facebook page and Twitter feed," explains Dr. Levitt.  "Instead she has been focussed on petitioning the Federal Election Commission in hope of obtaining an even greater financial advantage over her opponents.  This just one aspect of what is widely known as 'the corrupting influence of money in politics,' and it has been a shame to see Senator Feinstein continue to embrace it."

"The policy questions Senator Feinstein has refused to address are more urgent than ever - particularly when just last week, the New York Times, CIA experts and others confirmed that the drone and secrecy policies she has embraced as Intelligence Committee Chair are helping and even driving Al Qaeda recruiting efforts.  The Senator's secretive national security decisions are making America less safe.  Independent of any election process, millions of Americans need answers to those questions and changes to those policies," says Dr. Levitt.

Levitt has proposed alternative policies that can make Al Qaeda recruiting harder rather than easier.  These include:

• apologies and compensation, similar to Canada's apology, to Maher Arar, the innocent engineer whom the US rendered to Syria
• accountability for NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has overseen warrantless surveillance of thousands of Muslims in the New York area
• justice and transparency for abused Guantanamo prisoners who have never been found guilty of any terrorist activity

These alternatives to violence will exist long after the elections are over.

NOW: Get Out The Vote: David Levitt for US Senate

Join us in voting for David Alex Levitt, on your ballots in Tuesday's June 5th primary.

We're doing something extraordinary: using our elections to stand up for what Americans want, especially the people of California, when other Senate candidates and incumbents who should be representing us just won't do it.

We have detailed Issue statements, and a policy platform to invest in jobs, renewable infrastructure and education, amid fairer taxes - developed by over 100,000 people known as the Contract for the American Dream.  For the June 5th primary election campaign we're focussed on 3 issues:

End Afghanistan     End Prohibition      Medicare for All

• Rescue our soldiers from Afghanistan – where truth tellers like Lt. Col. Dan Davis conclude there is no achievable mission and not one more life should be lost in a war that isn't keeping us safer.
• End the prohibition of medical marijuana – and the ongoing destructive federal raids on California medical dispensaries.
• Expand Medicare to all Americans - provide not-for-profit universal single-payer insurance to younger, healthier people at even lower rates - the way most other civilized countries do.

Tell Friends about David Alex Levitt for Senate on our ballots

• On Facebook, we're over 5300 California voters with over 2 MILLION Friends.
• Many of us already voted by absentee ballot.  
• Half of California will vote on June 5th, primary day.
• And surveys say half of those voters haven't chosen a US Senate candidate -- that's 25% undecided.
• They also say no Republican has more than 4% support! 

David Levitt will be one of the two primary winners if this weekend and Monday we contact our 2 Million Friends -- mostly California voters -- to Vote Levitt on June 5th!

On Facebook:

• We've made sharing easy: share this link.  Follow the instructions at http://Levitt2012.org/goviral to Tag your California friends in a Facebook post about the campaign, so it will be seen on all their Facebook Walls.  Using tags that way, one post can appear on over 40 friends Walls.
• Like http://facebook.com/Levitt2012 so others know you're involved

On Twitter: Follow, Retweet and Reply at @Levitt2012
Include @Levitt2012 in Tweets that link articles on Afghanistan, CISPA, health care, prohibition, whistleblowers and freedom.

Favorite and Retweet such messages when you see them, tagging them @Levitt2012, and put them on your Facebook Wall.

Here's more on what David Levitt stands for, from this week's Brad Blog:

"Instead of wasting trillions on war and giving $7 trillion for too-big-to-fail banks to gamble with as we have the past 4 years, we need to invest in education, infrastructure, and 21st century energy jobs," Levitt says in defining his positions.

Those positions stand in stark contrast to Feinstein, whose husband, Richard Blum, made millions off the Iraq war. Feinstein supported the 2002 Iraq war resolution, warned Republicans not to oppose Bush's Iraq troop escalation in 2007, co-sponsored the USA PATRIOT Act, joined Republicans in voting to limit the scope of privacy protections in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and supported the Obama administration's troop escalation in Afghanistan.

Levitt, on the other hand, calls for an immediate end to the DOJ/IRS raids on CA medical marijuana clinics and for a single-payer Medicare-for-All healthcare system. He not only decries the fraudulent Wall Street schemes that led to the 2008 economic meltdown, but calls for specific solutions, including a break up of the big banks, prosecutions of bank and rating agency executives, restoration of Glass-Steagall, and "a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions by any bank that received bail outs or low interest Fed loans."

Back in 1998, Feinstein was amongst the group of Senate Democrats who opened the door to the Wall Street credit default swaps casino by voting to repeal Glass-Steagall, the Great Depression era banking reform that, for decades, had disallowed investment firms from gambling with the funds of private depositors held in commercial banks.

In an email exchange, Levitt, who says he admires Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), informed The BRAD BLOG that he not only opposes the infamous Citizens United decision but supports Vermont's proposed Constitutional Amendment which would end corporate personhood and establish that money does not equate to free speech under the First Amendment.

Should Levitt succeed in achieving the second highest primary vote totals in next week's CA primary election, this could potentially create a far more significant challenge to Feinstein than any that could be mustered by a Republican --- provided Levitt's substantive positions could cut through the cloud of paid-for political propaganda that only corporate money can buy.

Great News for Democrats
If you're a Democrat, fear not.  So is David Levitt.  And there's no danger of a spoiler, since Senator Feinstein has 10 times the support of any Republican in the primary.

In fact if Levitt places second, this will be the first US Senate race in California without a Republican since 1856 - and the first one with two Democrats in the November general election, ever!

For once, it's not a "lesser of two evils" choice between what we have now and something even worse.  We can vote for what we really want.

Feinstein Challenger Levitt Proposes Bold Soldier, Veteran Protections

U.S. Senate candidate David Levitt, on the ballot to represent California in the June 5th primary, is advocating unprecedented protections for U.S. soldiers and veterans, including whistleblower protection, immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, and guaranteed housing in vacant bank-owned homes, in answers to questions from the Veterans Democratic Club of Sacramento County.

The veterans’ questions show their concerns: about being asked to commit war crimes like waterboarding and torture; about the alarming rates of suicide and homelessness among veterans; and of course, about their repeated deployment to the unending Afghanistan war, the longest US war in history.  Incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein, an intelligence and military insider known for extreme secrecy, has declined to comment on Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis’s alarming February report, which documents that Americans are being lied to about our progress there.  Lt. Colonel Davis concludes there is now no achievable mission in Afghanistan, and that continuing to deploy our soldiers there shows reckless disregard for their lives.  But the Senator believes they must stay in Afghanistan through multiple ‘fighting seasons’ until at least 2014.  

“Senator Feinstein’s approach to soldiers and veterans has repeatedly put them in harm’s way without actually making Americans any safer,” says Levitt.  “In fact, our Senate consistently misled soldiers -- convincing more than two out of three volunteers that Iraq had illegal weapons or had something to do with the 9-11 attacks.  Too many Senators failed to point out that no Iraqis or Afghanis participated in 9-11 attacks.  Our troops need to face what really happened and hear our apologies before they can heal.  We owe it to them.”

“Our soldiers and veterans desperately need an advocate in the U.S. Senate from California,” says Levitt.  

Asked about veterans' priorities, Iraqi Freedom veteran and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Commissioner Dottie Guy starts with three current articles:

‘Send Immediate Help’ to Oakland’s VA, Say Bay Area Reps  - The Bay Citizen
Letter to veterans secretary cites "extreme disappointment" over decision not to overhaul troubled office, now with a backlog of 870,000 disability claims.

VA: Staff Errors Delay Veterans’ Benefits - The Bay Citizen
One in four disability decisions at Oakland office is wrong, official tells congressmen

Editorial: Backlog in VA benefit claims is shameful - The Sacramento Bee

At the campaign veterans page, Levitt also explains how veterans who need it can be guaranteed housing at no cost to taxpayers.  His campaign theme is ‘Innovating with the People’.

Levitt is eager to debate the other candidates on Afghanistan, veterans, whistleblowers and other topics.  For almost 12 years Senator Feinstein has declined to debate opponents.

Wealthy 20-year incumbent Feinstein and black ‘Rebuild the American Dream’ technologist Levitt are among 6 Democrats in a historic California Senate race, under new ‘top two’ primary rules that allow two Democrats to win the June primary, with no Republican on the November ballot.

Says Levitt 2012 campaign manager Sheila Harden, “As Senator Feinstein put it, ‘The Republicans decided not to run anyone in this race.'  That also means that for the first time in 20 years, a win by the Senator needn't keep a progressive Democrat off California’s November ballot.”

Who wants our troops out of Afghanistan by first thing next year?  (About 69% of us.)

Who wants Medicare for All - like the universal care in the other 35 civilized nations - instead of expensive for-profit insurance?  (59% of us.)

Who wants to end the federal War on Marijuana, that keeps more citizens in prison than China or Russia?  (Most of us.**)

If you do, you're like most Americans -- and most Californians.
But California Senator Dianne Feinstein, finishing her 20th year, doesn't want any of those things to happen.

I want all those things, and that's why I'm on the ballot for U.S. Senate to represent California.
I'm David Levitt.

Senator Feinstein has been the lead Senator to start those expensive wars, spend your tax dollars on them, and profit from them.  These days she's way out of touch with the People.
Fortunately, the people are in charge: there's an election coming.

And under California's new Top Two rule, both Levitt and Feinstein can win in the June primary.  Imagine two Democrats on the November ballot - instead of Republican Orly Taitz, who thinks the president's birth certificate proves he's a foreigner!

Support David Levitt now and we'll have a real choice in November:

• Will we continue today's costly, out of touch policies for another 6 years?
• Or will we stand up for not-for-profit health care, our soldiers coming home from Afghanistan, and an end to the costly, unpopular war on medical marijuana?

It's your choice.  Let's make it happen.

**Marijuana polling:

• 75% for medical marijuana  Rasmussen 8-09-2010
• 47% for full legalization, 10% undecided, 42% against: Rasmussen 3-29-2012 

Leaving Afghanistan in 2013 can save thousand of lives, millions of needless injuries, and trillions of dollars.

Most Americans want the US out of Afghanistan.  We live in a democracy, so let's make it happen.

The only problem: professional politicians who think they look Tough on Terror when they risk brave soldiers' and innocent civilians' lives in needless war.  They've spent trillions of our tax dollars on them already.  And it's a key reason we citizens need to take our government back.  

The invasion of Afghanistan has never made Americans any safer.

As with the Iraq war, the Congress and the White House cruelly exploited our anger and fear over the 9-11 attacks, and took violent action overseas that didn't catch the planners of 9-11 and hasn't made us any safer.

There were no Iraqis, no Afghanis, and no Taliban on any of the 9-11 flights. There were none involved in the planning -- which took place in Hamburg, Germany, not Afghanistan. Thanks to our corrupt Congress, most of the US troops who volunteered to fight didn't know this when they risked their lives.  Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, one of the most relentless advocates of Middle East wars and war spending in the US Senate, has been a leader in this negligence and deception.

The Taliban government of Afghanistan had no foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks; condemned them immediately; and offered to help prosecute Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan or in a third country if there was evidence he had a role.

The US president rejected the Taliban's offer answering, "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."

Almost a decade later -- after countless thousands of Afghanis and Americans had died in the longest war in US history, with still no US charge or indictment showing evidence of a bin Laden role in the 9-11 attacks -- bin Laden was located.  In a different country.

Meanwhile, all the US military attacks, drone strikes and illegal prisons have made Americans less safe. The handful of attempted terrorist attacks since 9-11, like the underwear and Times Square bombers and the Fort Hood attack, were carried out by Americans angry over the way Muslims have been mistreated in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -- and civilian deaths in our multiple Middle East wars.

This has been cruelest to the 9-11 families, and to US soldiers who risked their lives - believing war in Iraq and Afghanistan would bring the perpetrators of 9-11 to justice.  Instead, bin Laden got just what he said he wanted: a US nearly bankrupted by Middle East wars costing over a trillion dollars.  Over the past decade, this unaccountable US Congress has achieved bin Laden's dream – and tripled it.

That's just one reason the Democrats and Republicans who were complicit in starting these reckless wars won't end them now.  Instead of re-thinking it, they plan to stay in Afghanistan for years to come, regardless of what the American people want.
If we want to save those precious lives and those trillions of dollars, we need to replace those politicians in November.

We need an honest new group that can say, "Maybe refusing to cooperate wasn't the fastest way to catch bin Laden.  Maybe trying him in a third country in 2001 wasn't such a terrible idea.  And actually, when we're not distracted by Terror, we Americans think asking for the evidence is a good idea.  And probably bombing Afghani civilians and raiding their homes hasn't helped the cause of justice.  Probably we'd all be safer if our soldiers came back to our own country."

A cease fire and pull out from Afghanistan in 2013 can save thousand of lives, millions of needless injuries, and trillions of dollars.   We need those brave Americans and all that money back in the USA doing something much more worthwhile.

It all starts with replacing the advocates of these needless wars.  Let's replace Senator Dianne Feinstein with a new California Senator who didn't help start the Afghanistan war and is ready to end it.

Let's make it happen.