Friday, November 7, 2025 at North Beach Restaurant: Da’Mayor, Willie Lewis Brown Jr

TIME CHANGE: URGENT. Da’Mayor, Willie Lewis Brown, Jr., will be Sac Sem’s guest on Friday, November 7.  Due to a scheduling conflict, Mayor Brown will arrive a bit before 11:30 a.m. and depart around 12:15 – 12:30 p.m.

Given the large crowd, Seminarians are urged to arrive by 11:15 a.m.

If this time change is impossible for you to meet and requires you to cancel, please immediately email Dennis Wheatley at dennis@triticum.com so that he can provide an accurate attendance county for the restaurant. If you can attend but due to a busy schedule need to leave early, e.g. before lunch is served, please inform Dennis.

Chair Greg Ryken will have the honor of introducing “the man who needs no introduction.” Speakers Chair Mike Fitzgerald arranged this program. Note: Reservations are now closed as this Friday’s seminar is “sold out.”

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RSVP TO ATTEND any upcoming seminar. To assist the North Beach Restaurant’s kitchen staff with planning for our Friday lunchtime meetings please notify Dennis Wheatley at dennis@triticum.com NO LATER THAN MID-DAY ON the WEDNESDAY BEFORE EVERY SEMINAR if you plan to attend and indicate if you’ll be bringing a guest. Dennis DOES NOT need to know you are not attending. Valet Parking: If there are less than (10) ten sign-ups, there will be no valet. To Register for Valet Parking contact Chair Greg Ryken at (415) 215-3775 or email him on the Wednesday before seminars at Greg@rykenlaw.com

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INVITATION: Seminarians are invited to attend a FREE lecture this Thursday, November 6 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the University of California at Berkely featuring James Carvell. The title: “Winning is Everything, Stupid.” Hosted by UC’s Jack Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research, the location is UC Berkely School of Law, Booth Auditorium 225 Law Building. To RSVP go to citrincenter@berkeley.edu

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UPCOMING SEMINARS:

California’s most prominent pollster as well as a Seminarian, Mark Dicamillo, https://igs.berkeley.edu/people/mark-dicamillo is our speaker on Friday, N0vember 14 at 12:15 p.m.

Representative Ro Khanna (D-Santa Clara County) was scheduled to be Sac Sem’s guest on Friday, November 21. That date is vacated. A new date hasn’t been set.

Our new speaker for Friday, November 21 is Isaac Stone Fish Stone, CEO and founder of Strategy Risks, a business intelligence firm which quantifies corporate exposure to China. They help companies and entities manage and reduce their China risk. The Columbia University grad is the author of America Second (Knopf, 2022), a book about Beijing's influence in the United States. Formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China: Previously he was previously Asia Editor at Foreign Policy Magazine, senior fellow at the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations, an on-air contributor to CBS, a contributing columnist to the Washington Post, and an international affairs analyst on PRI's The World. Mr. Fish will be introduced by Seminarian Sherri Ferris.

There will be no Seminar on Friday, November 28, the day after Thanksgiving a.k.a. Black Friday.

Friday, December 5 will see Assemblymember Chris Rogers as our speaker at the North Beach Restaurant. The past Santa Rosa mayor, a Democrat, represents the counties of Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, and Trinity in California's Assembly District 2.  https://a02.asmdc.org/biography

SAVE THE (NEW) DATE: Annual Sac Sem Christmas-Hanukkah-Holiday Party is set for Friday, December 12 at the North Beach Restaurant starting at Noon.  Details will soon follow. This will be the final seminar of 2025. The next seminar will be on Friday, January 9, 2026.

Due to Christmas being on Thursday, December 25, there will be no seminar on Friday, December 26, the day after Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day in Ireland most of Europe aka Boxing Day in the UK. Also, there’s no seminar on the day after New Year’s Day, Friday, January 2, 2026.

Our first speaker of the new year will be Josh Fryday, Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor https://joshfryday.com/ The date is Friday, January 9, 2026. The time is 12:15 p.m. A past mayor of the City of Novato and chair of the Governor's Office of Service and Community Engagement is a member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cabinet. The U.S. Navy veteran will be introduced by Seminarian and past State Assemblymember Dion Aroner.

John Kabateck, California Director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses https://www.nfib.com/california/ is our speaker on Friday, January 16. NFIB’s philosophy is that “Small businesses are not smaller versions of bigger businesses. They often have different difficulties in remaining solvent and policies that lump all business together often do more harm than good.” The Glendale native and USC grad attributes part of his success in working with people to having grown up in a Hollywood family. His mother was musical director for the Ernie Kovacs Show, and his father produced the Criswell Predicts TV program.

U.C. Berkeley Professor Eric Schickler will be our featured speaker on Friday, January 23rd. Professor Schickler is considered one of the foremost Congressional scholars. https://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/person/eric-schickler He’s currently completing a co-authored with Paul Pierson, “Madison Upside Down: The Rise of Nationalized Polarization and the Crisis of the American Constitutional Order.”

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OTHER THOUGHTS: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt