CANDIDATE FOCUSES ON ARMENIAN CAUSES IN RACE
FOR STATE TREASURER

Jan Tucker, 38, has announced his candidacy for California State
Treasurer, running under the slogan, "Politics as unusual." With Tucker
staking a claim to innovative and courageous campaign issues, his
campaign is more than living up to his slogan.

Running on the California Peace and Freedom Party ticket, Tucker
faces no opposition in the June 7, 1994 primary election and has set his
focus on forcing the winners of the Democratic and Republican Party
primaries to either adopt his positions on the issues or explain why not
to the voters. In the Armenian community, many Armenian politicos are
predicting that the major party candidates will have a lot of explaining
to do.

According to Tara Petrossian, Western Regional Chairperson of the
Armenian American Action Committee (ARAMAC), who along with Tucker
founded the upstart (Armenian) Anti-Blockade Committee in March 1993,
"Tucker has pledged that if elected State Treasurer, he will be demanding
that the University of California divest itself of its 500,000 shares of
AMOCO stock and that the Teacher's pension fund divest the 1.8 million
shares it holds in UNOCAL, until and unless the blockade of Armenia is
lifted." AMOCO and UNOCAL are targets of a boycott and divestiture
campaign because of their involvement in the development of Azerbaijan's
Caspian Sea oil fields.

"When I first learned of the plight of Armenia," said Tucker, "I was
appalled at what I felt was a weak response on the part of existing
Armenian political organizations. In essence, one group wanted congress
to pass a resolution asking the Turks and Azeris to be nice to Armenia,
while another faction wanted congress to pass a resolution to politely
ask the Turks and Azeris to be nice to Armenia. Nobody respects that
kind response to an essentially desperate situation facing the kind of
deprivation that the blockade of Armenia is brought about. What they do
respect is when they get hit in the wallet, and that's why I conceived
the boycott and divestiture campaign as issues for the Armenian -
American political agenda."

Tucker has a long history of activism in political and social causes in
California. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the
California NOW (National Organization for Women) Legal Fund as has been
an active NOW member since 1979, serving on the board of one of the
largest and most well respected NOW chapters in the country for years.

A private investigator by trade, he is frequently written about for his
exploits in headline breaking cases and his reputation for taking on
seemingly impossible cases which then achieve spectacular results.

Having a background in criminal defense work, Tucker has also denounced
the continued incarceration of Hampig Sassounian, who is serving a prison
sentence for the alleged murder of a Turkish diplomat. Claiming that
"Sassounian didn't get a fair trial" and that "the only fair trial would
have been no trial at all," Tucker has called upon his party's candidates
to adopt a slogan and campaign to "Free Geronimo, Free Sassounian, Free
All Political Prisoners," referring to the government frame - up of
former Black Panther Party activist Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt which has been
widely exposed has having involved the withholding of exculpatory
evidence by the FBI which placed Pratt hundreds of miles away from the
scene of the murder that he was convicted of. Tucker says that his hope
is that such a campaign "can build a sense of solidarity between the
African American and Armenian American communities who both have been the
victims two of the great frauds in California judicial history."

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