Today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail has a California item: (two if you count the Quote of the Day below it):
The race to put a controversial measure on California’s ballot that would end the state’s "winner take all" allocation of its 55 Electoral College votes is back on. A group of Republican political consultants announced yesterday they will try to collect some 600,000 signatures by a November 13 filing deadline.
"Our budget is going to be whatever it takes to make the June ballot," said political strategist David Gilliard, who played a crucial role in getting the recall of then-Governor Gray Davis on the 2003 ballot. He will be aided by a campaign team that includes former Reagan political aide Ed Rollins and fundraiser Anne Dunsmore, who recently left as top honcho for Rudy Giuliani’s national fundraising effort.
The initiative has been called a "fair play" measure by its backers who want California to join Maine and Nebraska in divvying up its electoral votes according to the vote tally in each Congressional district. Others call it the "sore loser" initiative, noting Republicans never supported the concept when they used to carry California in national elections. "Republicans seem to be pursuing a strategy where they will lose at the polls and, along the way, define the GOP as the party of electoral fraudster," sneered Chris Lehane, a former Clinton White House aide who will lead the opposition to any ballot measure.
Many political analysts believe the measure is likely to fail given the onslaught of dollars that unions and other liberal groups will spend against it. "That’s all right," one supporter of the measure told me. "If it forces them to spend $50 million that normally would have gone to some other aspect of the campaign, then it’s worth it."
— John Fund
"The Ugly Moment of the Week goes to Rep. Pete Stark, the Fremont Democrat who has made a career out of minimalist accomplishment and optimal bombast… Does anyone think for a moment that Stark’s unseemly, personalized blast at Bush persuaded a single lawmaker to reconsider his or her vote?… Perhaps the surprise is that 24 percent of Americans are actually satisfied with Bush’s job performance and 11 percent are satisfied with the job Congress is doing" — a San Francisco Chronicle editorial blasting Bay Area Rep. Pete Stark for his comment during a House debate over expanding children’s health care subsidies that President Bush sends young men and women to their deaths in Iraq "for his own amusement."
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:00 am
An unsung hero of the Gray Davis recall is Orange County-based consultant
SCOTT TAYLOR.
The Davis forces thought they had check-mated signature gathering when
various statewide petitioning firms declined to get involved in the Recall.
No petition firms, no Recall, was the thinking.
But In a textbook example of thinking, “outside the Box”, Scott Taylor found
several petition experts who had retired from the business, and lured them
back for a ‘Farewell Tour” on behalf of the Rescue California group.
The plan worked beyond all expectations, and with a signature validity rate
that consistently exceeded 80%, almost unheard of in statewide efforts.
About 2/3 of all Reacll Davis signatures were gathered by this committee.
One veteran petitioner returned from his day at a Home Depot in disbelief
at what had happened. “I arrived at 9:00 a.m. and started setting up my
card table, and ‘recall Davis’ signs. When I turned around, over 50 voters
had alreay lined-up and were patiently waiting to sign the petition! ” He
could not believe the level of enthusiasm.
I worked in the Rescue California campaign, and the day we heard this
story, we just KNEW it would make the ballot.