Down to his last piece of communications to supports, Phil Angelides is still deluding himself. In a final e-mail to supporters (h/t CA Observer), Angelides is still trying to tie Arnold Schwarzenegger to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

How exactly do you connect THOSE dots, Mr. "Four more years of Arnold Schwarzenegger means four more years of Bush/Cheney/Schwarzenegger policies in California" Angelides?

Literally the only thing that I can think of is that, to the end, Phil Angelides is only concerned about one thing – raising taxes. If that is the case, then I guess he is right — Bush and Schwarzenegger both share a commitment to opposing tax increases.

But that is about it. Ideologically, stylistically, or geographically, there is very little similarity between the two — except that they are both Republicans.

But then, all Democrats are not alike either. There are… Read More

There are a myriad of factors that go into why Republicans are at risk of losing both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. I will leave it to the likes of Charlie Cook, Michael Barone, and Bob Novak to go into all of that.

I will just chime in my ten cents, because it goes to just one facet – lack of enthusiasm from conservatives because, at some point, the Republican charge of the Hill to reduce the size and scope of the federal government was replaced with something evil – growth in government at the hands of Republicans. The President and the leadership of both the Senate and House get to take the blame.

At some point, it no longer became the size of government that was "the problem" – rather, it was who was in charge. For a long time now, many conservatives (myself included) have been dismayed at watching "Rome burn" with Republican hands on the torches.

I don’t have enough finger-energy as I pen this on my Blackberry to write about the repeated disappointments, though to use just a few recent examples – we can look at the inability of a Republican Congress to pass the… Read More

For those of you interested in following election results tonight, we’ll point you to three places on the web:

For those who want it easy, California Republican Party Vice-Chairman Ron Nehring has the ultimate one-stop shop for seeing Golden State returns.

The Secretary of State’s Election Results Webpage

CNN’s Election Central Results Page The DrudgeReport for the latest news and gossip.

Good luck tonight!… Read More

(Dade County, CA) — The news reports of last week that the SD County Registrar of Voters had not ordered enough mail ballots eliciteda kind of "color me surprised" response from many political watchers.

It’s nice that photocopied versions were sent to those requesting ballots. What you may have missed, however, is that the information on the estimated-to-be-returned 5,000 photocopied mail ballots will have to transferred by hand to official ballots, so they can be run through the opti-scan vote counters.

Say what?! That’s right, the results of every up- and down-ticket race, every local office, and every statewide and local ballot measure for about 5,000 ballots will have to be recorded by hand.

And we thought hanging chads were bad.

As far as day-of-voting, the SDUT is already reporting technical glitches with many electronic voting machines. The line was long, but things seemed fine when I hit my polling placeat 7:15 a.m.… Read More

We’re almost through the the FlashReport Campaign MVP’s for this general election cycle. But they are only getting better! We’ve already seen Arnold’s MVP awarded to Katie Levinson, Tom’s MVP to Stan Devereux, and Tony’s MVP to Paul Hegyi. Now we are going to recognize someone who has been a key player in the campaign of Chuck Poochigian for Attorney General! And MVP is….

The feistiest campaign waged by a down-ballot Republican has to be that of Senator Chuck Poochigian’s bid to be Attorney General. Facing two-term former Governor, 3-time former presidential candidate, former Secretary of State, former Democratic Party Chair and current Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, Poochigian has gained national media notice for the aggressiveness, creativity and hard-hitting nature of his underdog campaign.

The widely respected and likeable… Read More

I took some photos on my trusty Motorola RZR phone at the Irvine V6 Headquaters earlier during the Governor’s GOTV visit. Pardon some of the poor quality, it is a phone camera, after all…

Lot of television cameras were on hand to listen to the Governor this morning.

Councilwoman Christina Shea welcomes the Governor to Irvine!

The Governor talks to a Victory ’06 GOP Volunteer.… Read More

Sunday in San Bernardino County was, appropriately, a day of reflection. It started with the McTour bus visiting the Upland GOP Headquarters where Sen. Tom McClintock (pictured right) and Secretary of State Bruce McPherson thanked the volunteers who are helping make 60,000 calls in the county’s final push to get out the vote.

Then there was the memorial service in Devore for the five U.S. Forest Service firefighters who were killed by the Esperanza Fire last week. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger led a moving tribute, and later privately presented flags to the families of the fallen firemen. In the audience were thousands of firefighters, officials from throughout the region and other mourners paying their respects.

Later, back at the Headquarters, a few of us were reviewing some internal polling from the week, including one in which we tested the Governor’s county numbers. He was at 54 percent to Phil Angelides’ 28%. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger’s statewide numbers were showing him up 49% to 32% and climbing. The new… Read More

From the WSJ’s Best of the Web daily e-mail: Republicans’ Golden State

Democrats are supposed to do well in tomorrow’s election, but the New York Times reports from Los Angeles that one bright spot for the GOP is likely to be California, a state John Kerry carried by almost 10% of the vote: