An Analysis of the 2014 Mid-Term Elections

Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/08/2014
10:00 am-11:30 am

Location
La Jolla Country Day School

Address
9490 Genesee Avenue
La Jolla
CA
92037

Saturday, November 8, 2014
The City Club of San Diego and La Jolla Country Day School Proudly Present:
An Analysis of the 2014 Mid-Term Elections
Featuring: Gene Cubbison, NBC 7/39; Laura Fink, political consultant and analyst; and Richard Reeves, former Chief Political Correspondent of The New York Times and Presidential Biographer

10:00 AM – Coffee and Croissant Reception and Program
Community Room – La Jolla Country Day School
9490 Genesee Avenue

Members and LJCDS Parents: $10, Non-members: $20
RSVP: 619-235-4041, or email: cityclubsd@gmail.com

Event Sponsor:
Joan and Irwin Jacobs

Gene Cubbison – Biographical Brief

Gene joined NBC 7 San Diego in 1983 after reporting stints at KFMB-TV (1979-1983), the San Diego Union (1977-79), San Diego Daily Transcript (1973-77), and San Diego Independent (1972-73).

Most recently Gene has been assigned to co-produce and host the local public affairs program, “Politically
Speaking”, airing Sunday mornings at 9:00 AM on NBC 7 San Diego.

His daily assignments generally focus on government, politics, civic issues, law and economics. Coverage has included one-on-one interviews with Presidents H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and Texas Gov. George W. Bush during his campaign for President; four national political conventions, three major earthquakes, two jetliner crashes, two Super Bowls, several catastrophic brush fires and floods, and massacres involving a San Diego grade school and a fast-food restaurant.

Also among Gene’s more memorable stories are a week-long pursuit of a fugitive financier who fled from San Diego to the Caribbean island of Montserrat, wound up arraigned in Miami, and spent a decade behind bars; and a local transit bus hijacking that ended with the hijacker surrendering at Cubbison’s feet.

Gene has been recognized with numerous awards including citations from the San Diego Press Club (incl. Harold Keen Award for Lifetime Contributions), Golden Mic/Southern California, Emmy/NATAS Pacific Southwest Chapter, San Diego County Bar Association, and Society of Professional Journalists/San Diego.

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication from Stanford University.

Gene and his wife Jan Hudson have two grown sons, Jeff and Chris.

Laura Fink – Biographical Brief

Ms. Fink is the founder of the San Diego-based consulting firm Fink & Hernandez Consulting, LLC, Laura assists political candidates and groups, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and labor unions with communications, civic engagement, and public policy endeavors. Her experience ranges from facilitating multi-million dollar campaigns for national political candidates to helping local nonprofit organizations with strategic planning.

She directs political and fundraising strategy for Congresswoman Susan Davis (D, CA-53), and has served as the
political director of the Congresswomanís 2008, 2010 and 2012 campaigns. Currently, Laura is working on the
Congresswoman’s 2014 campaign.

Her mark was made in politics, however, even before her tenure with Congresswoman Davis. Other roles include fiscal, fundraising, communications, and event responsibilities for prominent campaigns such as Hillary Clinton for President, Bob Filner for Congress (D, CA-51), Todd Gloria for City Council, and Marty Block for State Assembly.

Laura is also proud of the funding she helped to raise to propel Congressman Mike Arcuri (D, NY-24) to victory in a District previously held by Republicans for over 60 years.

In the nonprofit sector, Laura served as the Public Policy Consultant for San Diego Grantmakers, and developed
statewide public policy, outreach strategy, and communications collaterals that resulted in meetings and
collaborations between government constituents, foundations/grant makers, and nonprofit organizations. This
initiative continues to make a positive impact within the three grant-maker associations in California.

Prior to founding Fink & Hernandez Consulting and commencing her political career, Laura worked in technology and education. She graduated with distinction from Wellesley College after studying English Literature and Political Science.

Richard Reeves – Biographical Brief

Richard Reeves, Senior Lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern
California, is an author and syndicated columnist whose column has appeared in more than 100 newspapers since 1979. A new column also appears on Yahoo! News each Friday. He has received dozens of awards for his work in print, television and film.

Educated as a mechanical engineer, Richard Reeves began his career in journalism at the age of 23, founding the
Phillipsburg Free Press in Phillipsburg, N.J. He has been a correspondent for the Newark Evening News and the New York Herald Tribune and was the Chief Political Correspondent of The New York Times. He has also written for numerous other publications, becoming National Editor and Columnist for Esquire and New York Magazine along the way. Named a “literary lion” by the New York Public Library, Reeves has won a number of print journalism awards and has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and juror.

In 1975, Reeves published his first book, A Ford, not a Lincoln. His President Kennedy: Profile of Power is now
considered the authoritative work on the 35th president, has won several national awards and was named the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1993 by Time and Book of the Year by Washington Monthly.

Reeves has also worked extensively on television and in film. He was Chief Correspondent on “Frontline”. He has made six television films and won all of television’s major documentary awards: the Emmy for “Lights, Camera . . . Politics!” for ABC News; the Columbia-DuPont Award for “Struggle for Birmingham” for PBS; and the George Foster Peabody Award for “Red Star over Khyber” for PBS. He has also appeared in two feature films, “Dave” and “Seabiscuit”.

In 1998, he won the Carey McWilliams Award of the American Political Science Association for distinguished
contributions to the understanding of American politics. He was the Goldman Lecturer on American Civilization and Government at the Library of Congress that year; the lectures were published by Harvard University Press under the title What the People Know: Freedom and the Press.

In 2007, W.W. Norton published his biography – and re-creation of the experiments – of Ernest Rutherford, the Nobel prizewinning physicist, who was born on the frontier of New Zealand in 1871 and went on to become the greatest experimental scientist of his time, discovering the unimagined subatomic world we now know and then splitting the atom he first envisioned. In 2010, he published two books: “Daring Young Men” the story of the Berlin Airlift, published by Simon and Schuster, which became a New York Times bestseller and was named Best Book of the Year by the Christian Science Monitor and best history book of the year by the Book-of-the-Month club. “Portrait of Camelot: A thousand days in the Kennedy White House” was published by Abrams book at the end of the year. He is currently working on a book on the internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans by the United States government during World War II.

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