In what will be great news for liberals far and wide, I will be leaving on vacation to Great Britain 
tomorrow morning to return just in time to celebrate America’s birthday on July 4th! The good news is that during my absence, the FlashReport will continue to bring you all of the latest and greatest news on California politics. Nicholas Romero, whom you have seen as a guest editor for this site has been promoted and is now the Managing Editor of the FlashReport. Nick will be editing the main page of the site for the next few weeks, as well as joining the FlashReport Weblog with his own observations and analysis. Congratulations, Nick!
I am also pleased to announce that many of our regular contributors from the Weblog have agreed to step up and make sure that this Daily Commentary page updated each and every day, starting with our Central Valley Correspondent, Mike Der Manouel, Jr., who will be posting on this page tomorrow.
I’ll still be monitoring my emails (somewhat irregularly) from my vacation. If you want to get a hold of Nick, you can write to him here.
Cheerio and all that!
See you in July!
Jon
P.S. Below is some analysis from me on the State Insurance Commissioner’s race!
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INSURANCE COMMISSIONER ’06
STEVE POIZNER – A STRONG OPPORTUNITY FOR THE GOP
Last election day, John Kraft received 617,443 votes. Who is John Kraft? No this isn’t a takeoff from my favorite Ayn Rand novel. John Kraft was a Democratic candidate for State Insurance Commissioner. Kraft received nearly a third of the votes for this office as a virtually unknown candidate who, according to the Secretary of State’s webpage, didn’t even raise the funds required to file a campaign report — which is like $1,000.
Well, the real story behind Kraft is not who is he — but rather, who he is not. You see, about 30% of Democrats who voted on election day cast their ballot for "Mr. Unknown" rather than vote for the Lieutenent Governor of California, Cruz Bustamante (pictured moping to the right).
Why does Bustamante have such high negative ratings with voters of his own political party? It could be a number of things. Perhaps the way he carried himself during the recall election? Or maybe it is that all it seems like he has talked about from his bully-pulpit since the recall is attempts to lose weight? Or maybe it is a protest from Democrats against seat-swapping, and one constitutional officeholder tries to ‘move’ to another office? It really doesn’t matter why they don’t like him, what matters is that Bustmante has a serious problem on his hands, one that puts him at a severe disadvantage to his Republican opponent before the general election campaign really even begins.
STEVE POIZNER, THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE
Steve Poizner (pcitured to the right) has matured into a great candidate for Insurance Commissioner. He had a rocky start as he entered into a primary with two long-time GOPers — one who enjoyed considerable grass-roots Republican support and the other who had the resume of having carried the torch for the GOP in this race four years ago against John Garamendi. Still Poizner was unfazed as he went toe-to-toe with his two primary opponents, stubbornly defending some past support of Democratic candidates, acknowledging that he should not have done this, and that it was a mistake. In the end, both challengers dropped out, primarily due to two reasons — they each lacked the financial resources to run a statewide down-ticket race and they also watched as the GOP leadership in elected office, over a period of months, endorsed Poizner’s candidacy.
**There is more – click the link**