It’s never too early to start pushing out news about the goings-on for the many races shaping up for the 2010 primaries.  As a matter of fact, let this be a notice to any out there who are running to be sure to keep FR looping in on your progress.  We’ll report lots of stuff here that may be too “inside baseball” for other publications.

Last year, I never got around to penning an intended column noting the impressive success of Gilliard, Blanning, Wysocki & Associates in terms of seeing ALL of their clients win their races.  I won’t list them all here, as that would be a bit gratuitous, though GBWA has a release up here. 

That said, we always say here that every election year has two parts, the first half, which is actually the preceding year, and then the year in which the election is being held.  So we are well into the 2010 election “year” and Dave Gilliard (pictured above) has already picked up two impressive clients.

SENATE DISTRICT 4
In the 4th State Senate District, which encompasses what we refer to as the “North State” (to the surprise of our SoCal readers, there are a few people living north of Sacramento, if you can believe it).  Senator Sam Aanestad is “termed out” next year, and so this will be an open seat.  As Capitol insiders have been very aware for a long time now, this race will be a slug-fest between two former Assemblymembers each of who represented about half of this rural district – Rick Keene and Doug LaMalfa (yes, the very same Doug LaMalfa who is a member of the FlashReport blog team – you’ll recognize his photo, with his signature cowboy hat!).   

Last week LaMalfa made a significant change in his professional campaign management, announcing that he has retained Gilliard to oversee his Senate run.  LaMalfa, for his Assembly campaigns, had used the firm JohnsonClark. 

Keene’s consultant is the venerable Jim Nygren, who is one of the best in the business, and also had a very good year in 2008.  Keene held a press conference last week to announce he is running.  I would call it a news conference – but that really wasn’t news.

We’ll look forward to the next fifteen months, and watching this one play out!  The drama is enhanced by the fact that LaMalfa’s replacement in the Assembly, Jim Nielson, is backing LaMalfa, and Keene’s replacement, Dan Logue, is backing Keene!

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 70
Orange County is pretty familiar territory for Gilliard.  His many clients in the county include Supervisor Pat Bates, Congressmen Ed Royce, Dana Rohrabacher, and John Campbell, State Senator Mimi Walters and Assemblymembers Mike Duvall, Jim Silva, Jeff Miller and Diane Harkey (invariably I just left someone out).

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is moving up and out of the 70th – he is running for the GOP nomination for United States Senate, for the honor of taking on incumbent Barbara Boxer.  This GOP seat takes in OC cities such as Irvine, Newport Beach, Aliso Viejo, Lake Forest and Tustin.  While this is fertile GOP territory, so far the only candidate who has formally thrown his hat into the ring is conservative Tustin Councilman Jerry Amante, who last week announced his candidacy (and in doing so, announced the support of State Senator Mimi Walters).  I have known Jerry for many years, and he will be a very formidable candidate for this seat.

While I am sure that Amante is hoping to “clear the field” it is likely this will not be the case.  As such, it will be Gilliard’s job to ensure that he gets at least one more vote that anyone else who runs!

In closing, again, candidate campaigns for 2010 should definitely put us on the “FYI” list.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.