**Update: A loyal FR reader just clued me in — apparently Dole is stepping down to be replaced by Nevada Senator John Ensign. A good sign as Ensign has shown his meddle – voting against the President’s medicare expansion plans. Excellent.** Not too long ago, I posted a short rant on this site about my contempt for United States Senator Lincoln Chafee ("R"-Rhode Island). I put his "R" in quotes because this registered Republican votes with Democrats so often that it is disingenuous for him to be registered in the party of Ronald Reagan. He famously brags about how he didn’t cast a vote for President Bush in his last election battle with uber-liberal John Kerry. He also voted against confirming Sam Alito to the United States Supreme Court. When I wrote about him… Read More

Other than providing a 400,000+ margin to Democratic candidates for LG and SOS, there were some other results of interest in Los Angeles County.

Candidate wise, Illegal alien councilman Sergio Calderon did win his water board seat. See here. LA GOP Leader Norm Ryan lost his re-election bid not to Frank Colonna who didn’t run. But he lost none the less. See here.A big upset was that Assemblyman Paul Koretz lost his bid for a water board seat.

Some passed.

In Santa Monica, Measure Y passed. This means that pot smoking is a lower police priority than cigarette smoking. See previous note on campaign here. The good news they passed a parcel tax to clean up beaches of everything but the homeless.

Los Angeles passed an illegal alien housing bond in Measure H and changed term… Read More

Larry McCarthy is the President of the California Taxpayers Association, and he has penned his thoughts on Tuesday’s election, and the message sent by California voters about tax increases…

Tuesday was a good day locally for San Bernardino County GOP and Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Postmus. First, he personally managed to unseat three-term incumbent County Assessor Don Williamson by a five-point margin in their runoff election contest. The Assessor’s is the second consecutive office Postmus has won by defeating an incumbent (he ousted Supervisor Kathy Davis in the year 2000).

The second reason Postmus is smiling today is because his Republican Central Committee’s endorsed local candidates and causes enjoyed a 73% win rate Tuesday night.

While the County only turned out 37 percent of its voters, which even though that number will rise somewhat is pretty dismal, it is similar to the turnout in neighboring Riverside County.

All of the state bonds were approved by the County’s voters, while Tom McClintock, Bruce McPherson, Tony Strickland and Steve Poizner all carried the County, along with Michelle Steele for Board of Equalization. Gov. Schwarzenegger carried the County with 61 percent.

Countywide in San Bernardino, parental notification was… Read More

This morning, newly re-elected California Republican Congressman John Doolittle already sent out a press release announcing his candidacy for re-election to House Leadership, to the position of Conference Secretary.

John Doolittle’s release is long in terms of listing all kinds of administrative things he has done to make the life of Republican Members of Congress easier — but is completely silent in the area where it counts: an analysis of the GOP defeat, what the role of the House Leadership (of which is a part) was in that defeat (or conversely if he feels that the House Leadership was not to blame, then what was to blame).

In light of the drubbing that we just took in the last elections, John Doolittle (Californian or not) and every member of the House Leadership team that wants to keep their job need to articulate publicly what went wrong, and what they think needs to happen in the next Congress to regain the majority, and what they would do if they had it.

The launching of helpful… Read More

Ward Connerly and his team have won the hotly contested campaign to end racial preferences in Michigan. With the help of our own FR alum, Joe Justin, Proposal 2 passed by a huge margin, 58%-42% Despite the pile-on opposition by politicians, labor unions, businesses and the education establishment, the voters saw clearly that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was a straightforward, fair measure that simply called on government to treat people equally, without regard to their race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. Ten years after California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative, Prop. 209, Michigan voters got it right and passed their own ban on racial and gender preferences. Congratulations, Ward,… Read More

Contesting an election that you have apparently lost by a handful of votes is one thing, but apparently former Assemblyman Steve Clute, who just lost his attempt to take out incumbent Republican Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia by a couple of percentage points, is apparently making the motions to start contesting the results of the election.

The outcome of this pouting-session is preordained — or is it? I have no clue about what the ‘politics’ are down at the Imperial County Registrar of Voters. Hopefully Secretary of State McPherson will dispatch some of his folks out to AD 80 to make sure that everything is handled on the up and up.… Read More

In a virtually improbable turn of events, Republican Cal Minor appears to have lost the Fresno County Sheriff’s race to Democrat Margaret Mims. Despite having the endorsements of Congressman Radanovich and Nunes, Assemblyman Villines, the Lincoln Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Deputy Sheriffs and Fresno Police Officers Association, Mims finished the evening with a slim 155 vote lead over Minor.

North Fresno precincts were a ghost town yesterday, with brutally low turnout fueled by: disgust with the Republican led Congress, last week’s Field Poll showing Chuck Poochigian losing by 21 points, and no real contested races for the Legislative seats. This low turnout is what evidently cost Cal Minor an election he should have won handily.

There will likely be a recount, but this one shouldn’t have been close. It appears Cal Minor has become yet another Republican election night casualty.… Read More