The CRP maynot have a bounty program, they may be in $4.6 million of debt, but they have a little cash and staff time to turn on it’s own members.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore has a proposal to change the way delegates are selected.

Today a letter arrived from Duf Sundheim, Ron Nehring and Tim Morgan opposing the change. Who paid for this mailing??? No doubt the CRP. As well an offical email and press release from CRP staff attacked the proposal.

Sundheim and company have every right to have their opinion. They should not be allowed to use CRP dollars to influence the decision. Of course this party has paid consultants from party coffers to run "proxy" drills to bottle up items they don’t like.

The CRP leaders worry about disunity and then shamelessly abuse CRP dollars to attack a members proposal. Let the members decide and the leaders implement.

Regardless of your view can’t we at least agree that CRP resources should not be spent attacking member proposals?

Devore’s Email follows:

Dear CRP Member,

By now… Read More

Lots of the political blogs today have been talking about Trung Nguyen’s landslide 7-vote lead/win over heartbreakingly-close 2nd place finisher Janet Nguyen.

What I haven’t seen yet is any of the major accolades that should go to Team Trung for pulling this off.

They were under funded. They had a candidate that didn’t start with the name id of others. They didn’t get the inside-baseball support, nor mountains of independent expenditure support from the unions.

What they did have was a great team that developed a fantastic plan. And they stuck to it. They campaigned extensively within the Vietnamese community, and yet didn’t cede votes in certain conservative blocks of the electorate – positioning Trung to grab some anti-illegal immigration votes and some anti-tax votes here and there amongst base Republican votes.

I guess some lesson can be taken from observing Trung’s race. Campaigns needn’t try to be all things to all people.

Lead Consultant Joe Giardiello deserves at least a park or something named… Read More

With aRepublican win in Tuesday’s OC Supe Contest, years worth of efforts from the Orange County Republican establishment paid their first big dividend: a Republican in the only seat the Democrats really have a reasonable shot at ever holding.

Millions of dollars and countless thousands of hours had been invested in registering new Republican voters, in signing up Permanent Absentee Voters, and in making what was once s solid Democrat seat, competitive again.

We’ve now hadanother day to absorb Trung Nguyen’s victory, and to come to the realization that there is a near statistical impossibility of Janet finding 8 votes to change the election outcome. Lots of attention is now turning to “the next step,” that being actually keeping the seat when it comes up in two years.

Surely, no split field will exist this time: it will be the epicenter of probably the most expensive Supervisor’s race in Orange County history. Another Vietnamese face to compliment Assemblyman Van Tran can only do great things for the Republican Party in Central County.

But wait. Not so fast.

Word spreading is that runner-up Janet Nguyen isn’t merely… Read More

You know you are at a pretty amazing event when the number of United States Military personnel in dress uniform make up a pretty big percentage of the crowd. Well, that was the case last night when my dad and I were the guests of Gala Chairman Brad Freeman for a dinner banquet for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation where President George Herbert Walker Bush was presented with the Foundation’s 2007 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, with nearly a thousand guests on hand in the main ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Former President Bush and Nancy Reagan were both escorted into the dinner, and later onto the stage, by a pair of very sharp looking Marine Sergeants. The Master of Ceremonies was none other than Merv Griffin, a Foundation Board Member, and at one time the owner of the hotel (for a moment there were flashbacks to an old Dean Martin Roast program as Griffen tossed a barb at veteran comedian Don Rickles, who was in attendance).

There was a … Read More

You know you are at a pretty amazing event when the number of United States Military personnel in dress uniform make up a pretty big percentage of the crowd. Well, that was the case last night when my dad and I were the guests of Gala Chairman Brad Freeman for a dinner banquet for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation where President George Herbert Walker Bush was presented with the Foundation’s 2007 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award, with nearly a thousand guests on hand in the main ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Former President Bush and Nancy Reagan were both escorted into the dinner, and later onto the stage, by a pair of very sharp looking Marine Sergeants. The Master of Ceremonies was none other than Merv Griffin, a Foundation Board Member, and at one time the owner of the hotel (for a moment there were flashbacks to an old Dean Martin Roast program as Griffen tossed a barb at veteran comedian Don Rickles, who was in attendance).

There was a … Read More

In case you missed it, the Sacramento Bee turned 150 on Saturday. The first edition, published February 3, 1857, marked a transition from the prior paper, the California American. In that first SacBee, founder James McClatchy wrote this gem:

They (the "conductors" of both papers) have too long seen the evils which have crept into all the party organizations of this State, not to feel fully aware of the dignity and the power of an independent position. In the Democratic party they have seen, too often, bad men supremely dominant, and using the party as an instrument for executing the most selfish of purposes, regardless of the honor of the State or the happiness of the people. They have seen the American organizations crushed beneath the weight of corruption which it was compelled to bear, in the persons of men who thrust themselves forward as the friends of reform, when they were in fact the most loathesome moral and political lepers, that ever tainted the atmosphere of the world with their presence. They have seen all parties more or less cursed with the influence… Read More

I’m on the fly right now — but two quick updates for FR readers. In the donnybrook for CRP Vice Chairman, candidate Jalene Forbis has DROPPED OUT, and she has told CRP members that she is backing rival Tom Bordonaro for Vice Chairman…

In the race for the Orange County Board of Supervisors 1st District, the victor appears to be Trung Nguyen who has a SEVEN vote lead over Janet Nguyen, based on the unofficial tally after the absentee and provisional ballots have been counted. Can you say, "Recount?"

We may hear more about what Janet Nguyen’s campaign is up to when FR blogger Adam Probolsky gets to a computer – he is part of Janet’s political kitchen cabinet…… Read More

No matter how the impending recount comes out in the final results of the Orange County special election to succeed Democrat Lou Correa on the Board of Supervisors, the winner is more than just Republican candidate Trung Nguyen, it is also Assemblyman Van Tran, who threw his formidable Orange County organization behind Trung to win this important victory for the Republican party. Van Tran has now demonstrated his very formidable clout in southern California politics. The odds were steep: Santa Ana Councilman Carlos Bustamante had the early support of key members of the prestigious Orange County Lincoln Club, and as predicted in this column many weeks in advance, the Lincoln Club endorsed Bustamante. ButBustamante finished a disappointing and distant 4th place in the race, with just a little over 16% of the vote. Democrat Tom Umberg was in the money, finishing third, and Garden Grove Councilmember Janet Nguyen is currently second but neck-and-neck with Trung. Janet had the advantage of the very capable Dave Gilliard as her consultant.

Whichever Nguyen is the ultimate elected official in this race, Van Tran has proven himself to be alocalpolitical power to… Read More