Support for Rocky

"America is already great, but we can make it greater." That appears to be the campaign slogan for San Diego businessman Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente II, who recently set up a website touting his candidacy for president of the United States. Some may consider it a prank or a hoax, but as San Diego has found out, he appears to have the extreme self-confidence to believe he can make it. On the website he is identified as "one of the most successful and prominent Hispanics of the world."

De La Fuente took over businesses run by his father and mother. For several decades, De La Fuente II has been active in ownership of car dealerships, real estate, and banking.

In 1993, De La Fuente II won a $56 million suit against the county and settled for $38 million. Then came a dispute over his Border Business Park that has bounced around like a ping-pong ball. In 2001, De La Fuente won a judgment against the City for more than $100 million. Later, Mike Aguirre, as city attorney, got the judgment reversed.

Source Link: http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2015/oct/03/ticker-roque-de-la-fuente-president-2016/#

If you’re voting in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, your choices on the ballot are Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley (who suspended his campaign) … and a guy named Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente.

So, who is that last guy?

De La Fuente, according to his campaign website, is a San Diego businessman and car dealership owner.

And he got on Michigan’s primary ballot the old fashioned way: gathering signatures.

See, when Michigan’s Secretary of State’s office decides which names to print on the primary ballot, they first look to see which candidates are being widely reported in the media. Then, state party chairs can submit candidates. After that, any additional candidates have to submit 12,000 valid signatures to get themselves on the primary ballot.

A picture of the De La Fuente family from the Rocky 2016 campaign website, feature Rocky, his wife, and their five children.

Until now, that had never actually happened, according to Fred Woodhams of the Secretary of State’s office.

But De La Fuente submitted more than 20,000 valid signatures.

His campaign didn't respond to multiple requests for an interview from Michigan Radio. But you can check out his YouTube channel here.

Source Link: http://michiganradio.org/post/who-rocky-de-la-fuente-and-why-he-presidential-primary-ballot#stream/0

De La Fuente, who also uses his Anglicized name, “Rocky,” is convinced Americans are not ready for another Clinton or Bush dynasty. But he reserves his harshest criticism for GOP front-runner Donald Trump.

De La Fuente accuses Trump of alienating Hispanics, Latinos, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans and women.

“I decided to run as a conservative Democrat, not looking left or right but going forward,” De La Fuente said in a phone interview.

When asked who his campaign manager is, he replied: “Me.”

He owns large tracts of land in Otay Mesa on the Mexican border, numerous commercial enterprises, including buildings in Cincinnati, Ohio and West Palm Beach, Fla., where he plans to open campaign offices. His headquarters here will be on Morehouse Drive near Qualcomm.

But, unlike Donald Trump, who is underwriting his own Oval Office bid, De La Fuente is running a grass-roots race, seeking a donation of $10 from 10 million Americans.

He plans to campaign primarily via social media: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other networking sites. His election web page: Rocky2016.com tells about him and former wife, Katayoun, and their five children.

De La Fuente’s slogan: “We the people need to take back our democracy.”

“I could not have done this four years ago and probably not four years from now,” he said. “The timing is right.”

Groups have been trying to affect election reform for decades and failed. Part of the problem is that neither of the parties in power will support it because it is in the People’s best interest rather than the parties’. The other part of the problem is that these groups often try to solve the problem for every single office.

The first issue will not go away until we begin to replace the career politicians who benefit from the status quo with individuals who truly want to serve our country (Term Limits anyone?).

When it comes to ballot access, the problem is obvious. We have allowed it to be controlled by the two major parties, and it is clear that they have crafted it to their advantage. They have also employed a “divide and concur” strategy by encouraging wildly different rules in each of the 50 states, 5 territories and the District of Columbia. As a result:

Parties have the discretion to decide who will be given ballot access automatically and who will not

For the unfortunate candidates who have to earn ballot access, each state has different requirements:

Discrimination is unbridled, not only in traditional categories of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, heritage, etc. but on a basis of who the parties “owe” for past service, who have connections to money or voting blocks, and who the parties can control

The “politically privileged” who receive automatic ballot access spend no time or money in this process, while those who are not treated equally are either entirely barred or must spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to gain access

What preliminary documentation has to be filed (and its form)

What the criteria is to secure the necessary delegates and/or electors

What the criteria is to secure valid signatures to fulfill petition requirements (i.e., who qualifies)

Where it needs to be filed

When it needs to be filed

How many are needed

What documentation has to be filed (and its form)

Where it needs to be filed

When it needs to be filed

How many are needed

When can signatures be gathered

What documentation has to be filed (and its form)

Where it needs to be filed

When it needs to be filed

Fifty-six different jurisdictions apply 56 different sets of rules; and deviation (no matter how minor) can disqualify a “non-privileged” candidate from qualifying in a primary or general election.

Then, many of the states apply “sore loser” laws to try to deny candidates from running as that standard bearer for different parties in different phases of the election. Unless you’re prepared to fight for ballot access, you will have lost the election before you even campaign.

The educational system of the United States of America is in a sorry state indeed. Currently, we rank 14th in the world in terms of the quality of education our children receive. The national illiteracy rate in this country is a staggering 14% – higher, it should be noted, than it was 250 years ago in the mid 18th century. This places our children at risk of a lower quality of life in the future, and it places our nation at risk of being uncompetitive in a tough global marketplace.

Much of the reason that we have come to this unacceptable state of events is because we have allowed competing forces to influence our educational system, despite the fact that some of these forces are more concerned with personal profit than the enrichment and well-being of students. Since the 1970s, average college tuitions have skyrocketed a meteoric 1000% or more, while the need for a college degree has increased right alone with it. As a result, vast numbers of young Americans have plunged themselves into crippling levels of debt as a means of acquiring their education, and all too often, are left unable to meet these financial obligations despite increased earning power.

We have a problem in basic education too, and it is a relic from dark chapters in our nation’s past. It is still difficult for children who happen to belong to an ethnic minority to gain access to educational facilities of the same quality and competence as enjoyed by the mainstream of society. We are failing these children, and we can do better.

What if we did that?

What if we concentrated our efforts on providing for the general welfare of our citizens and exercised our military capabilities only when necessary to provide for the common defense?

What money and resources could be redirected to address our internal issues?

What causalities could be averted?

How would the world view us if we didn’t try to impose our will on it?

Would we be safer, and would we be better able to address issues like poverty, illiteracy and health care that challenge us at home?

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ORLANDO, Florida, August 31, 2016 – Did you realize that the Democratic and Republican Parties, which essentially control state decision laws, have made a situation not just intended to block different gatherings from increasing any footing additionally to confine your decisions among the gatherings' own applicants? How about we take a gander at a couple of Supreme Court cases to comprehend the premise for this, and after that, I will impart my own experience to you.

• In Grovey v. Townsend, 295 U.S. 45 (1935) (a case managing), the Supreme Court held that political gatherings, as private association, can make their own particular guidelines. This maintained the Democratic Party of Texas' a guideline that built up "white's lone" essential decisions. Fortunately, this was upset in Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944), which held that states can't assign their power to manage primaries in a way that damages the constitution. Hence, the Democratic Party of Texas couldn't build up a principle that denies the Fourteenth Amendment privileges of Black, Hispanic and different minorities. Be that as it may, this exclusive constrained a gathering's watchfulness when any related principles abused protected rights.

• Then, in California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567 (2000), the Supreme Court decided that political gatherings are allowed to choose who gets the chance to make a choice in their essential races with the goal that they can direct a level of control over the which applicants are chosen to speak to the gatherings in the general race (i.e., they can lead shut primaries on the off chance that they do as such).

For those of you who think Citizens United was an awful choice, the mishandled understanding of these cases represents just as genuine a worry. Permit me to share the truth of my Democratic essential experience:

I was singularly denied poll access in states like Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. No reason was required and none was offered when my petitions for reexamination were summarily dismisses. I was informed that it was the State Party's entitlement to choose who might be incorporated on the state's poll.

Kindly note that applicants who had as of now dropped out of the race were incorporated on the tallies sometimes, and different people who were never running were incorporated too. No clarification was ever advertised.

These private cabin choices denied poll access in the primaries to hopefuls like Dr. Willie Wilson (in spite of the fact that Dr. Wilson got incorporated into South Carolina), which drastically affected our odds.

Why is this critical?

Dr. Wilson is an African American and I am a Hispanic American. While Smith v. Allwright killed the gatherings' capacity to rehearse racial segregation through the gatherings' biased voter access rules, it did nothing to secure against comparative separation through the gatherings' control of their applicant choice. I am not proposing that the Democratic Parties of such states were deliberately oppressing applicants like Dr. Wilson and me, but since there is no straightforwardness, there is not security against the potential for such segregation. I will proceed with the battle to permit underrepresented voting demographics inside our nation to see that they also can keep running for office and to serve as a motivation to future eras of those Americans.

Different states, similar to Michigan and North Carolina, routinely denied including my name on their tickets while allowing that benefit to the gathering's illuminating presences (e.g., Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley). Be that as it may, they offered an option way to picking up vote get to; regardless of how pretentious it was. While they allowed possibility to pick up poll access by means of the social occasion of marks, they likewise made complex decides that were intended to block anybody from effectively seeking after that course.

For instance, the Michigan statute required 12,832 marks to be gathered inside seven days. The law was set up in 1972, yet nobody had ever even endeavored picking up poll access by mark appeal in light of the fact that the obstacle was so high and made considerably more intricate concerning the standards representing what constituted a substantial mark. I submitted 20,166 marks and Michigan figured out how to ruin 3,696 of them. Tragically for the Democratic Party of Michigan, that left me with 16,470 legitimate marks; enough to qualify to be incorporated on the vote.

Truth be told, Michigan practically didn't get my mark petitions. The state statute gives hopefuls a to a great degree slender window inside which to present their petitions (actually around 15 minutes on a given day). The workplace was dim and a startled state worker saw our containers and asked what they were. When we advised her, she shouted, "Nobody's ever attempted to submit presidential petitions some time recently, so I was leaving early."