You can blame Tony Strickland for Controller Campaign Manager Paul Hegyi for the brief 
commentary this morning. Paul, who hails from Sacramento was down in Sacramento (he is also Assemblyman Van Tran’s Chief of Staff). FR Managing Editor Nicholas Romero and I took Paul to see Bill Cosby perform at the Orange County Fair, and the evening went quite late from there. Paul was excited to share that early polling shows Strickland ahead of his opponent — which is a great place to start given the significant voter-registration advantage that Democrats enjoy over Republicans here in the Golden State. We’ll be spending a lot of time between now and November talking about the real potential in the State Controller’s race for a GOP win.
FR friend Martyn Hopper is the State Director of the National 
Federation of Independent Business for California. We actually met at a rally last year during the special election (it was one of those ‘bling bling’ Arnold rallies where the crowd is pumped up and the Governator rolls into the actual building via a cargo door in a big bus, with loud rock music playing – lots of fun!). Anyways, because of his position, Martyn has a unique perspective on the job performance of Governor Schwarzenegger because he sees California politics through a very unique prism — how do policies effect, positively or negatively, the climate for small business owners in California. This is important, of course, as small business owners account for a tremendous amount of the state’s economic activity. Martyn penned an exclusive column for the FlashReport which leads up the main page today.
**There is more – click the link**
July 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Nice to hear Paul is talking a brief vacation. I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer for him with the Strickland campaign, and he must be one of the most hard working folks in state politics. Managing a statewide campaign and cheif of staff insn’t easy.