A couple days after the election, I was asked to speak at a forum on the 2006 election. Prior to my chat, a high ranking Republican applauded V’06 as the most effective in CA history and blamed GOP losses in CA on the "Democrat tide" that swept the country.

Although I try not to be contrary – I had to burst the bubble and let them know the Democrat tide was a myth – at least here in California.

Dems did not win Congress — the GOP gave it away. There was a national anti-Republican tide, fueled by the fact that GOPers in Congress had stopped being Republicans a few years ago.

Take San Jose where the Democrat’s chosen one – Cindy Chavez – was the prohibitive favorite for Mayor. But despite almost $1 million from the Labor/Democrat party and personal campaigning from the Demo’s grand Pooh-Bah Bill Clinton, she was soundly trounced by Chuck Reed. Reed was supported by Republicans – a fact the Chavez campaign shared with voters many times. (Disclosure: TABcommunications ran the Chamber of Commerce campaign that folks believe helped defeat Chavez and the labor candidates).

Democrat/Labor… Read More

Today the FlashReport is VERY pleased to be able to share with our readers that we have a new State Capitol Correspondent joining our team on the FR Blog — none other than retiring Assemblyman Ray Haynes! This is great news as Ray has been a strong conservative leader in the State Legislature since 1992, and has a true grasp and understanding of how to approach the challenging issues facing state government from the perspective of a strong constitutional conservative. Ray’s first post appears on the blog today, and we can all look forward to more insights from him as we go forward. Please join me in welcoming a true national conservative leader, Ray Haynes, to the FlashReport! Whatever else you read today, do not miss the "MUST READ" column, True Lies, by FR Bay Area Correspondent Bill Whalen, that is at the top of the main page today. This piece that Bill penned for the Weekly Standard online truly demonstrates his ability to pierce through all of the noise and get to the heart of the… Read More

Today the FlashReport is VERY pleased to be able to share with our readers that we have a new State Capitol Correspondent joining our team on the FR Blog — none other than retiring Assemblyman Ray Haynes! This is great news as Ray has been a strong conservative leader in the State Legislature since 1992, and has a true grasp and understanding of how to approach the challenging issues facing state government from the perspective of a strong constitutional conservative. Ray’s first post appears on the blog today, and we can all look forward to more insights from him as we go forward. Please join me in welcoming a true national conservative leader, Ray Haynes, to the FlashReport! Whatever else you read today, do not miss the "MUST READ" column, True Lies, by FR Bay Area Correspondent Bill Whalen, that is at the top of the main page today. This piece that Bill penned for the Weekly Standard online truly demonstrates his ability to pierce through all of the noise and get to the heart of the… Read More

With a shout out to GOP Board of Equalization Member Bill Leonard’s blog, we ‘lift’ (with encouragement to check out his blog) the following posted by Leonard today, which is worth reading and thinking about…

A state Democrat blog last week had this headline: “CDP Field Operation Defeats $20 Million GOP Elephant.” Indeed, as the above results show, statewide Republican candidates did not fare well. Yet the CRP and the Governor had touted this year’s Victory ’06 effort as the end-all, be-all of voter identification and activation. I had been excited about it. I saw what microtargeting accomplished for the President in Ohio two years ago and was eager to replicate that success in California. That excitement faded as results were tallied.

Accusations have been flying that the CRP’s Victory ’06 was actually Arnold ’06, Period. I have heard that the CRP’s phone banks… Read More

In the time honored post-election tradition, here are San Diego’s big winners and losers from the election (with absentee and provisional ballots still to count). For every winner, there is usually a loser, but I’ve tried to distinguish between which is which. I know its been two weeks since the election, but I got violently ill right after (the most vile flu you could ever imagine) and am only just recovering.

WINNER – CONGRESSMAN BRIAN BILBRAY (CD50). Three weeks out public and private tracking polls had Brian Bilbray (disclosure Coronado Communications client) winning or losing within the margin of error, and national trends weren’t getting any better. Democrat Francine Busby had actually saved hundreds of thousands of dollars from her failed June campaign, and was therefore actually able to outspend Bilbray. However, Bilbray ran a disciplined campaign – and probably the strongest and most effective ground campaign in his history – and ended up 54% – 43%. Furthermore Bilbray made great strides in repairing his GOP base, which had been divided by the earlier primary campaigns. A primary challenge to Bilbray, always a… Read More

Datamar has released a report showing the actual election results in several categories up against the last polling done by some of the majors. Interesting compilation for those who like to study this stuff, chew it up, regurgitate it, and spew it out…and probably dream about it as well.

I asked Datamar’s Raul Furlong to comment on the results. Here’s what he had to say:

The election is over and the votes have all been counted — well almost all, and it is time to ask how the pollsters did in testing the voters mood.

Modern political polling has become a big part of candidate and initiative campaigns measuring the sense of the voters and tracking throughout campaigns whether certain ads or messages are working and whether the electorate is coming together in support of a measure, or a candidate, or turning away.

Datamar has been successful in measuring most races. Our polling is based on the concept of keying on high-propensity voters, that is, voters that have consistently voted in past elections, and we expect, will continue to vote in future elections. Past behavior is indicative of future… Read More

From FR reader James Sills:

Late last night the Riverside Registrar of Voters FINALLY posted an add-on count of results. The new numbers show Bonnie Garcia has come from behind to beat Steve Clute in that county, reversing his earlier edge. Combined with Bonnie’s edge in Imperial, she’s now + 2,202 votes, district-wide.

Sounds to me like AD 80 goes to Garcia eliminating the only possible Dem pickup, and with the Dems preventing a GOP pickup in SD34, the partisan elections are over. Status quo in the State Legislature. Lots of new faces, but no new seats for either party. That said, the legislature is slightly less liberal with a small shift towards the center by Senate Democrats, and a heave-ho to the right for Assembly Republicans as all of the "open-primary babies" of 2000 term out.… Read More

I have gotten a few inquiries from folks who have seen that there are anonymous bloggers listed in our ‘blog pen’ to the left, or a fleeting post by "Blogger One" or some such title.

Rest assured that we are not converting to anonymous blogging – we are still proudly attributed-blogging only. But we are transitioning a whole group of new bloggers to the site, and they are listed as being anonymous while they test out the functionality of the site. Once they are comfortable on how to post up on the FR Blog, we will be "revealing" their identities. This morning we introduced one of the new contributors — FR Political Law Correspondent Jim Lacy…

Stay tuned for more… We remain committed to bringing you the very best perspective on California politics from the center-right to the very-right.… Read More