The latest from David Drucker over at Roll Call Newspaper…

As California officials on Wednesday moved one step closer to severing politicians’ ability to gerrymander themselves safe seats, a Democratic-affiliated 527 group is launching today with the intent of maximizing partisan gain in the 2012 redistricting process in states across the country. After it appeared the measure was dead, the California Senate Wednesday passed State Constitutional Amendment 3 with the requisite two-thirds majority. If approved in similar fashion by the state Assembly and ratified by voters, the amendment would remove from the Legislature the power to draw legislative and Congressional districts, granting that task instead to an 11-member independent commission. In a direct but unrelated counter-move, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal… Read More

The last famous San Diegan to announce his retirement, andthen announce his un-retirement, ended up winning a mayoral re-election, only to subsequently have to resign from office in some semblance of disgrace.

Future NFL Hall-of-Famer Junior Seau, please take a lesson from Dick Murphy.

From SignOnSanDiego:

"Three days after announcing his retirement from the National Football League, former Chargers linebacker Junior Seau could be on the verge of returning."

Read the story here. As a tribute to Joe Justin, someone please provide me a song title that describes thispolitics-mirrors-sports scenario.… Read More

SCA 3, the Senator AlanLowenthal bill to reform the way districts are drawn, passed off the Senate floor late yesterday, 27-11, with mostly Democrat no votes, and actually pretty strong Republican support. However, Assembly colleagues I talked to didn’t seem too excited about the quality of the package. We’ll find out more detailsabout it today….… Read More

Looks like ‘for sure’ no redistricting measure for November’s ballot. The Assembly did not take up SCA 3 which was passed out of the Senate yesterday. However, a gut-and-amend measure was attempted during today’s session to cause theenabling language to be ready to place the still unfinished SCA 3 on the November 2006ballot. This, as most Republican members sawit, was putting the "caboose in front of the engine" in that SCA 3 hadn’t really beenexamined by our members, let alone voted out. How can you vote out the enabling language to place landmark constitutional change on the ballot when the ink isn’t even dry on the Amendment itself, let alone having not read it? Kinda reminds me of how the bonds were handled. [oops, did I say that?]

The net effect is it won’t be on November 2006, but we can still hear the bill during the last 2 weeks of this session and ready a measure that can be taken up on ’08’s ballot…still plenty of time before 2010 census. We could’ve been working on this allthis year to achieve reform, as promised by those that helped defeat Prop 77,… Read More

This weekend Republicans will gather in the Century City district of Los Angeles for the California Republican Party’s Fall Convention (yeah, it’s a summer convention on this election year). GOP leaders and activists from around the state will take a weekend break from the contact-end of the sport of campaigning and come together to do networking, attend panel discussions, participate in workshops, hear speeches and all of that good stuff. As always, the Publisher of the FlashReport (yours truly) will be there to take part in the goings-on, notepad at the ready to take notes for our always-popular "Winners and Losers of the GOP Convention" issue that will come out next week, following the convention.

In the meantime, as we look forward to this weekend’s festivities, what are we likely to see? Well, based on my emails and phone calls, the most notable feature of the convention will be the sparseness of attendance. Many, many GOPers are not going to the event. Why is this? The reasons vary from logistical (the convention’s shift to the summer month of August means it now conflicts with many who are taking family vacations) to… Read More

This weekend Republicans will gather in the Century City district of Los Angeles for the California Republican Party’s Fall Convention (yeah, it’s a summer convention on this election year). GOP leaders and activists from around the state will take a weekend break from the contact-end of the sport of campaigning and come together to do networking, attend panel discussions, participate in workshops, hear speeches and all of that good stuff. As always, the Publisher of the FlashReport (yours truly) will be there to take part in the goings-on, notepad at the ready to take notes for our always-popular "Winners and Losers of the GOP Convention" issue that will come out next week, following the convention.

In the meantime, as we look forward to this weekend’s festivities, what are we likely to see? Well, based on my emails and phone calls, the most notable feature of the convention will be the sparseness of attendance. Many, many GOPers are not going to the event. Why is this? The reasons vary from logistical (the convention’s shift to the summer month of August means it now conflicts with many who are taking family vacations) to… Read More

From the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary:

Mel Who?

A parlor game among Republican activists in California for years has been to ask, "What would it take to convince Mel Gibson to run for statewide office as a Republican?" Given the success of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the box-office receipts of 2002’s "Passion of the Christ," interest in Mr. Gibson, a staunch conservative, has long been high. Last year, after Governor Schwarzenegger disappointed conservatives by tacking left on budget issues, California Republican Assembly head Mike Spence openly speculated about Mr. Gibson mounting a primary challenge to him.

That was then. Following Mr.… Read More

In Mel Brooks’ classic western comedy, Blazing Saddles , Brooks plays the corrupt western Governor William J. LePetomaine. When a report reaches him that a town faces a crisis, LePetomaine turns to his attorney general, Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) and exclaims, "We’ve got to do something to save our phony-baloney jobs!"

It appears the talks on legislators extending term limits are over for now. Good. Trying to slop something onto this year’s ballot would be very ugly and almost certainly defeated, as the voters would see through any sham cobbled together last minute, especially trying to fig leaf it behind redistricting reform. Reforming the corrupt redistricting methods we have will now have to wait, but sinceany reform likelywon’t take effect or be useduntil after the 2010 census, it’s OK on timeline.

This legislature can still try to get it right in an open process and put a quality reform package on the 2008 or even… Read More