Good morning FR readers! Wow, what a primary night. First and foremost, I want to extend a very big THANK YOU to FR’s frequent Guest Editor, Nick Romero, for getting up really early this morning to put together our comprehensive main page compendium of today’s political news stories! If you will recall, my ‘day job’ is working for Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona — a great conservative who was up for re-election yesterday. Well, we didn’t get the unofficial final results until after 3am, but my boss was re-elected to a new four year term over three opponents with 50.9% of the vote! Congratulations Sheriff Carona and to your entire campaign team! The immediate benefit to FR readers throughout the fall will be that I will be a bit less distracted since I won’t be worrying about a run-off for my boss, and will be able to put much more time into the website! Yeah! Anyways, I thought I would take a few minutes and make some general observations about election night:

Bay Area election results always remind me how much I am a fish out of water in this ridiculous part of the state. In the last hour, former Congressman Ron Dellums won the Oakland mayor’s race outright. Dellums got 50.2 percent of the vote to City Council President Ignacio DeLaFuente’s 33 percent. I was fooled by the number of DeLaFuente signs in my neighborhood, but the election results remind me once again how @%&$ liberal this city/region is. One friend said that her mother-in-law and friends were supporting Dellums because they thought his connections to the federal government would bring more money to Oakland. Like money is the problem here. But for liberals, it always boils down to more money. They never seem to question how the money is actually spent. For example, my fellow… Read More

Good morning FR readers! Wow, what a primary night. First and foremost, I want to extend a very big THANK YOU to FR’s frequent Guest Editor, Nick Romero, for getting up really early this morning to put together our comprehensive main page compendium of today’s political news stories! If you will recall, my ‘day job’ is working for Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona — a great conservative who was up for re-election yesterday. Well, we didn’t get the unofficial final results until after 3am, but my boss was re-elected to a new four year term over three opponents with 50.9% of the vote! Congratulations Sheriff Carona and to your entire campaign team! The immediate benefit to FR readers throughout the fall will be that I will be a bit less distracted since I won’t be worrying about a run-off for my boss, and will be able to put much more time into the website! Yeah! Anyways, I thought I would take a few minutes and make some general observations about election night:

One of my pet peeves with this business is that everybody’s an expert. The truth of the matter is that that having a bunch of money will always make you brilliant politically….1000 points ofTVbeatscable and 12 pieces of mail beats 5any day….but that alone doesn’t qualify anyone as an expert. I’ve railed on the so-called-revolutionaires who lost their way, but one guy never lost his way and truly deserves to be called an expert….Newt Gingrich. … Read More

Last night, Phil Angelides won his party’s nomination to face-off against the Governator this November. But typical of Steve Westly, he couldn’t quite find it in himself to concede defeat, and congratulate his primary opponent. Instead, Westly had this to say in his statement last night: "My friends, we’ve run a terrific campaign, and we’re going to be running a good campaign for another day or two it looks like. I’m here to tell you the LA Times has announced the race is too close to call. With roughly 30% of the vote in, bouncing back between three and three and a half percent, most of the counties we believe will be strongest remain – have yet to be counted."

I found this to be a hypocritical position as you need not look back too long ago to remember when Westly was singing a different tune. Westly narrowly defeated Tom McClintock for his current… Read More

Bilbray Heartens the GOP – WSJ’s Political Diary

Republicans can breathe a sigh of relief. With some 40,000 absentee ballots yet to be counted, moderate former GOP Congressman Brian Bilbray won a much-watched special election in San Diego yesterday. Mr. Bilbray won 50% of the vote to Democrat Francine Busby’s 45%. Should those numbers hold through the absentee count, it will mean that Ms. Busby won only the base Democratic vote in the district — John Kerry won 44% there in 2004.

What makes the Bilbray victory noteworthy is that he was a weak candidate, having won a divided GOP primary with only 15% of the vote and losing 5% of yesterday’s vote to right-wing third party candidates. Even the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, which spent an unheard-of $4.5 million on his behalf, noted this morning that Republicans… Read More

Since we don’t have a central coast blogger right now, I’m going to pick up the slack and report on Ventura County’s hotly contested Supervisorial race. The district includes the cities of Simi Valley and Moorepark. Republican Judy Mikels was the three term incumbant in this GOP dominant district. Mikels, who challanged Tom McClintock unsuccessfully in 2000 for State Senate, was seen as somewhat vulnerable because of her ties to unpopular local development projects and an ongoing rumor that she actually lived out of state. Populist Democrat Jim Dantona declared against her nearly a year ago and was rrunning a well funded aggresive campaign but the general feeling among many insiders was that party registration alone would probably save Mikels. Enter conservative Republican Peter Foy, who literally decided to run and filed on the deadline. Local media reported Foy as a ‘spoiler’ set up to run by local conservatives who disliked Mikels in order to make sure Dantona came in first in the run-off against Mikels. Most of the coverage treated him as a secondary candidate, with the big show being the increasingly bitter and savage Dantona… Read More

In a press release, which characterizes an NBC report which aired Wednesdayas "false," Congressman Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) issued the following statement in response to the report:

"I have never recommended a lobbyist to any constituent, contractor or anyone seeking federal funds. I have absolutely never told anyone to provide ‘stock options’ or any other sort of compensation to someone who is their advisor or lobbyist. To do so would be extremely unethical, and it goes entirely against all of my principles of good governing.

"It is outrageous and false to suggest that I might have supported a program in order to provide some illicit benefit for a friend. This technology was primarily supported by the two Congressmen who represented the area, and had been endorsed by top members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee – including the Democratic chairman. Although I was a junior minority member of the subcommittee at the time, I felt it was worthwhile to join in that support because the technology appeared to have promise.

"All of this information was provided to NBC in detail, and I am… Read More