Today marks the 10^th Anniversary of the election of Republican Curt Pringle as Speaker of the California State Assembly. I should note that Curt appointed me to the Library of California Board, so if any of you have questions about the details of transaction based reimbursements on inter-library loans, please ask.

To every GOP leader back then, Curt and Jim Brulte– Thank you.

 

For those of us involved back then, it was a long fought road that involved recalling turncoat Republicans after the stunning election of 41 Republicans in the 1994 elections. Pointing out that electing someone with an R by his or her name isn’t good enough. There needs to be some party loyalty as three Republicans in succession sold out so they could be speaker for a day or worse leaving Democrat Willie Brown in charge.

 

Can a GOP majority happen again? Don’t bet the farm on it in 2006.

 

In 1994 Republicans benefited from the national trend electing a Republican Congress. Remember Bill Clinton had to admit that “era of Big Government was over.” and stopping Hillarycare? Statewide Prop. 187 energized voters to get to the polls.

 

In 2006, Republicans in Congress are now the cause of Big Government and some socialized medicine. Same for the state, where tomorrow we will hear how wonderful Big Government can be from a Governor with an R by his name. And of course Republicans won’t touch the immigration issue despite attempts by CRA and latter Ray Haynes to get initiatives on ballot.

 

Now to LA County. Back in 1994, Republicans held four seats in Los Angeles County that are now in Democratic hands. Even after redistricting some of these seats performed wonderfully. The combined Schwarzenegger/McClintock vote was in the 60’s etc…

 

So who is going to run in those seats this year? The answer is no one knows. In one seat Assembly leadership under Kevin McCarthy already botched the job. In the special election in the 53^rd Assembly District following the tragic death of Mike Gordon, they supported an unproven, untested, unknown candidate (Mary Ford) over the GOP nominee and local official (Greg Hill) they and others had spent over a million dollars building name identification and an organization for.

 

Now, I get emails asking who is going to run in some of these other seats from organizations that support candidates. The answer in no one knows, because no one is recruiting candidates for these races. From what I can tell the same is happening in other areas of the state as well.

 

So here is my message to the Gov. and McCarthy. You can’t have a GOP majority if we abandon our principles of smaller government. And you really can’t have a majority of you don’t run anybody for office. You have to try if even the odds are not in our favor.