Who does a California conservative support for President?

The top tier of candidates — John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani — must all overcome varying amounts of suspicion from the GOP base. The second tier of candidates — Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Jim Gilmore — have to make a credible case that they can win. Without a natural candidate around which to rally, conservatives are forced to decide which of the front-runners they can trust. The developments so far have been fascinating to watch.

My former boss McCain was the insurgent when I worked for him in 1999 and 2000, when he was anethema to a party establishment had flocked to then-Governor Bush. Eight years later, though, McCain is now the establishment candidate, using his strong support of Bush on terror and Iraq to develop an organizational and endorsement infrastructure that early front-runners have historically used to ward off challengers. Watching this year from the sidelines, it’s been… Read More

The razor sharp close count in the recount in the results of the special election to fill the Orange County First Supervisorial seat vacated by Lou Correa when he was sworn into the Senate continues to slowly move along. This is the race where the top two vote gettings, Janet and Trung Ngyuen (no relation), ended up with just a seven vote margin between them, tilted in Trung’s direction. For most of last week and continuing into today, there has been a relatively agonizing recount taking place. The best place to read all of the latest on this is over at Matt Cunningham’s OC Blog/Red County website.

That said, below is a video courtesy of our friends at the OC Register’s Total Buzz Blog, where reporter Peggy Lowe has been down at the Registrar. It would appear that their video camera caught Trung Nguyen’s top legal beagle, Attorney Michael Schroder, telling NBC4 reporter Vikki Vargas the latest details on why, despite an apparent shift in the lead from Trung to Janet, all of the ballots must be counted… … Read More

Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project, will be in Orange County Superior Court today, Department C-19, at 4:00 pm, seeking an ex parte order to try to win back control of the organization he founded in May of 2005. Gilchrist was thrown out of the organization as a Director and President in late January amid claims by other Directors that Gilchrist had bounced too many checks and was not properly managing the organization. Since then, the directors have conducted an audit and problems in the organization’s direct-mail fundraising program have surfaced, along with regulatory problems with the U.S. Postal Service and failure to file documents with the Internal Revenue Service and California Secretary of State.… Read More

The John McCain for President Exploratory Committee just dropped a press release into my inbox where they announce the endorsement of McCain’s look at the Presidency by four current and one former California State Legislator…

And they are (the envelope please)…

State Senator Jeff Denham, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, Assemblyman George Plescia, Assemblyman Van Tran, and retired State Senator Jim Nielsen.

If you want to make the McCain folks feel better for having gone through the trouble of producing an elaborate media release, complete with quotes from all of these GOPers, you can pull up the release via the link immediately below. **Also, with a h/t to FR friend and Roll Call reporter David Drucker, RC has the following California GOP Members of Congress endorsing candidates for President so far:… Read More

Orange County Superior Court Judge Randell Wilkinson "passed" on ordering the emergency relief Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, was seeking today to regain control of the website and other assets of Minuteman Project, Inc. Gilchrist had filed an "emergency" request to bar dissident directors, who have concerns about Gilchrist’s management,from controlling the Minuteman organization. The Judge heard arguments from both competing sides about which directors control the organization and decided rather than making an immediate ruling as requested by Gilchrist, to take the matter "under submission." There is no indication of exactly when the Judge will issue a ruling in the case.

Your author represented the dissident directors in court today.… Read More

I am not even sure how to preface this video of news coverage last Friday of a speech made in Seattle by John McCain.. So I won’t. It’s worth 23 seconds of your time. To be honest, I haven’t really felt like McCain has been pandering to the right (especially with his ‘global-warming-love-fest’ visit with Arnold Schwarzengger last week) — but apparently if he has, it may have been disengenuous? I guess the good news is that his appearance on increasing regulations to fight greenhouse gas emissions may have just been McCain ‘sucking up’ to the left-wing of the GOP?

Can you say, "Open mouth — insert foot?" … Read More

The Empire Strikes Back

Democratic and Republican insiders unveiled their latest attempt to undermine California’s 17-year-old term limits law. Gale Kaufman, who has worked with California teacher unions, and Matthew Dowd, a strategist for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign last year, revealed the initiative in a conference call this month.

To the amusement of reporters, the two strategists insisted their plan, which would have to be approved by voters early next year, actually improves term limits. "We believe it’s a good strengthening of term limits," Ms. Kaufman said, because the proposal would limit legislators to 12 years of total service in the legislature, rather than the 14 years… Read More

On a party line vote, again, the Assembly Appropriations Committee pushed the early presidential primary to our floor, wherethe Assemblywill probably take it up Thursday and send it off to the Governor’s desk. Appropriations Vice-Chair Mimi Walters offered amendments to ensure this bill had language to guarantee reimbursement tocounties up to $88 million that this extra election will cost…the amendment was denied on a party line vote as well. Counties will have to rely on "trust us" intent language in the bill. I’m sure our county sheriff’s, libraries, and mental health departmentswill be happy to reduce their budgets to pay forwhat is really aterm limit extension election. More to come….… Read More