I’m in Washington, D.C. and just attended a briefing of American Conservative Union board members by national pollster Tony Fabrizio of Fabrizio, MacLaughlin, on his firm’s recent national in-depth survey of Republicans. This was a detailed and extensive study, involving 2,000 interviews in the polling sample, nationwide. It was not prepared for any candidate. The poll results are available on their site at: http://www.fabmac.com/releases.html.

Among the interesting findings of this survey, which tracked changing attitudes of Republicans, is the emergence of an identifiable new subgroup of Republican voters that Tony calls, "Dennis Miller Republicans." These types of Republicans have emerged in the last 10 years. They share a lot of the positions of "libertarian" Republicans, but they are not exactly libertarian. While Tony finds that libertarians in the Republican party (about 10% of them) remain essentially identifiable by their profound philosophical opposition to government authority, the Dennis Miller Republicans are ones who "just don’t like government,"… Read More

Night owls, the Assembly is going through the labor-intensive process of a ton of trailer bills to the main budget bill. The budget currently has 55 votes on the big board, one more than it needs to pass. But it is still "on call" which means that votes can change. This is done because the ‘deal’ will involve achieving 54 votes on all of these trailer bills, and you wouldn’t want to close the final budget vote until you pass the trailer bills concurrently. Once the trailers have all passed, and they lock int he final budget vote, we will bring you the intel on which GOPers voted for it. **Update 12:35am. A slight drama is playing out right now. Among the plethora of trailer bills is the health trailer bill, in which is funded, among many other things, an aweful lot of public funds for abortions. Like all trailer bills, it requires 54 votes. Right now, there are only 51 votes for it. … Read More

So in the wee hours, the DEMOCRAT budget passes, as does the controversial health trailer bill that contains the "poison pill" amongst other programs.

The budget, SB 77, required 54 votes (2/3) to pass the Assembly. One Democrat was absent which means seven GOP votes were needed for passage, and the following NINE Republicans voted for it: Adams, Aghazarian, Berryhill, Blakeslee, Emmerson, Horton, Keene, Niello, and Villines.

The Health Serves also required 54 votes, and it got 55. They were: Adams, Aghazarian, Berryhill, Blakeslee, Emmerson, Maze, Niello, and Villines went up on that.

Quick observations:

1) Due to the hard work of Mike Villines and his leadership team, this DEMOCRAT budget is better than it was before they insisted on some reforms. They should be recognized for some real impacts to take this from worse to bad. 2) Despite their best efforts, stepping back and looking at this DEMOCRAT budget, it is no where near what Republicans would have put forth if we had a majority. It is still a terrible fiscal plan for California. 3) This is demonstrated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Republican… Read More

Last night the California State Assembly passed a budget and sent it over to the Senate for their approval or rejection. The budget came out of the lower house with the support of all Democrats present, and slightly over the minimum number of Republican votes to get to the two-thirds required.

Let me start this commentary by reminding FR readers that like almost all of you, I am a far-away spectator to what goes on under the Capitol dome — I am in Southern California myself. Not being a denizen of the State Capitol, one tends to have a better perspective, I think, of the big picture. So from here, I can tell you that the passage of this budget out of the Assembly is nothing that should excite taxpayers, and certainly it is not good news for Republican Party leaders, donors and activists. The budget that was passed this morning was not support by over two-thirds of GOP legislators for a reason — it is a vastly inferior budget to one that would have been passed if there was a Republican majority in the… Read More

Last night the California State Assembly passed a budget and sent it over to the Senate for their approval or rejection. The budget came out of the lower house with the support of all Democrats present, and slightly over the minimum number of Republican votes to get to the two-thirds required.

Let me start this commentary by reminding FR readers that like almost all of you, I am a far-away spectator to what goes on under the Capitol dome — I am in Southern California myself. Not being a denizen of the State Capitol, one tends to have a better perspective, I think, of the big picture. So from here, I can tell you that the passage of this budget out of the Assembly is nothing that should excite taxpayers, and certainly it is not good news for Republican Party leaders, donors and activists. The budget that was passed this morning was not support by over two-thirds of GOP legislators for a reason — it is a vastly inferior budget to one that would have been passed if there was a Republican majority in… Read More

Former Democratic Assemblyman Ed Chavez has filed to run for the Mount San Antonio Community College District. Ed was term limited last year and his wife lost the Democratic Primary for the 57th Assembly District to Ed Hernandez.

Los Angeles Countyhas many off year elections. You can get info here.

There are three seats up. Two are held by Republicans, long time GOP volunteer Fred Chyr and Roseanne Bader, former Assemblyman’s Chuck Bader’s wife.

Does that mean he is ruling out a race for Gloria Romero’s seat?… Read More

OK, everyone ready for day two of "As State Government Grows"?

The big fat state budget (ok, it is a little less big and fat due to some negotiations) has been passed in the Assembly and transmitted over to the Senate, where it awaits action.

The big question is what will happen to it there. There has been some coverage of Senate President Don Perata grousing about provisions in the package that he doesn’t like. I don’t buy that for a minute. Can you say "posturing" — I can! Perata is an old hand at this game. He knows that passing out the existing Democrat-driven (GOP tinkered with) budget is a great deal for all of California’s special interests as it by and large maintains the status quo on how our state operates.

That said, as a shrewd negotiator will do, he HAS to be vocally critical of the plan from the left, in order to "do the dance" with Senate Republicans who have been saying the plan does not go far enough in terms of being fiscally prudent. Perata would like to choreograph this dance so that waiting at the center of the dance floor is the Assembly-passed bill.

Senate… Read More

I have been in meetings most of the day, and returned to a plethora of emails asking for updates on the budget kabuki dance.

The Senate took up the budget as passed over in the Assembly, which failed on a 25-14 vote with all of the GOP Senators voting no except Abel Maldonado who courageously…abstained? Of course, this bloated and fat budget needs 27 votes to pass.

Senate President Don Perata has now in Soviet style “locked down” the Senate, keeping the members there to “force” some sort of bill through.

In hearing the concerns of Senate Republicans, it is clear that they should be commended, as they are insisting on a better budget for Californians.

It will be interesting to see what happens. Assembly GOP Leader did a deal, figuring it was as good as it was going to get. This is not good enough for Dick Ackerman and his GOP Senators.

Perhaps when Don Perata eventually grows up and “frees” the Senators, the Senate and Assembly GOPers can go somewhere and come to an agreement. That said, I am in favor of whomever wants to hold out for the best deal for taxpayers.

It is… Read More