Naturally when I am out of the country on vacation, we have one of the busiest days in California political news in a long, long time. It took me a long time to put together the main page this morning, which means less time to write up a commentary on the news. We’ll try it in bullet-point format today:

The lead column today is by California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson. Today marks the one-year anniversary of his appointment to this post by Governor Schwarzenegger, filling the vacancy left by the resignation of Democrat Kevin Shelley. Shelley had been elected to the post in 2002, but was forced out of office due to scandals. McPherson has really been doing a great job with the office – and has thoroughly ‘cleaned house’ from the previous administration. The culture of corruption has been replaced with a culture of hard work, and desire to bring the principles of representative government to every Californian. Please take a few minutes to read his column! Yesterday Rob Reiner finally called it quits from the Prop. 10 commission. In doing so, he may be attempted to shift the limelight away from the boatload of … Read More

I’m in LA today and have seen the Governor’s first ads, all positive, and very well done.

It’s a good start.

These are easy ads to produce, and its an appropriate time of the year to run them.

The real test will be how to respond to the union onslaught.

We will then see how much political talent there is in the shop.… Read More

So Rob Reiner decided to do Arnold Schwarzenegger a favor.

While it’s too early to tell how much damage the First 5 controversy has caused to Reiner’s campaign for Proposition 82, it is clear that it was causing Schwarzenegger all sorts of political problems within his own Republican party.

Now that Reiner has departed, the next step for the governor is to move to the forefront and aggressively lead the investigation into First 5’s activities.

If Reiner is correct and there was nothing illegal or inappropriate going on, Schwarzenegger still gets points for making sure that was the case. If there were improprieties, better for the governor to be the one leading the charge to uncover them.

Either way, it’s one big headache that Arnold doesn’t have to deal with anymore. But there’s still a terrific opportunity here for him to be the political outsider who promised to clean up the mess in Sacramento when he first ran for governor.… Read More

The good news is Rob Reiner has finally done the right thing and resigned as chairman of the California Children and Families Commission, colloquially known as the First 5 Commission. It would have been nice if Reiner was resigning because he knows it is wrong to use tax dollars to promote his universal government pre-school ballot initative, but the world is an imperfect place. We’ll have to content ourselves with a resignation letter equal parts self-pity, self-congratulation and moral obliviousness (probably penned by Reiner’s new smashmouth PR guru, Mark Fabiani).

The bad news is our Governor has replaced Reiner with a political clone (of Reiner, not Schwarzenegger) named Hector Ramirez, head Para Los Ninos (Spanish for — what else? — For The… Read More

While there is always lots of interesting political goings on in the Bay Area, I can’t help to read the daily stories on the Polk murder trial. While it doesn’t have the celebrity status of the OJ trial, the Polk trial is the most interesting legal drama in the country today. I’m sure that the writers for "Law and Order" and other TV legal shows have already got copy-cat scripts in the works.

The courtroom happenings are fascinating. For example, this week, the defendant—on trial for murdering her husband and who is acting as her own attorney—objected to something the prosecution said on the grounds of….hyperbole.

First, for some background. For those of you not familiar with the East Bay, Orinda is a small, affluent town on the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel from North Oakland. For many “crunchy” Berkeley/Oakland residents, they simply cannot stand to… Read More

It’s pretty much a given among politicos that even though the average person says they hate negative campaigning — and actually do — they are also influenced by it.

Similar with surveys. Most of us say polls means very little, but go off the deep end when they don’t reflect our candidates in a good light, and — alternatively — immediately crank out a press release when they do.

Datamar’s latest survey in the 50th C.D. has been the target of much criticism and comments the last few days. I’ll leave it for you to decide the merits of both the survey methods and the resulting arguments.

The SDPolitics Blog has been awash with commentary. Check it out here.

Perhaps the most succinct criticism of the Datamar survey, I received from GOP activist Warene Wall (in support of Bill Morrow):

Those who have been in grassroots politics for a long time have learned that polls can… Read More

It isn’t on the Governor’s website yet, but Arnold appointed another judge to the Los Angeles County Superior Court.Richard Goul is a decline to stater and worse from USC. I was told to be glad it wasn’t another Democrat as the Governor’s appointments run two to one on the Dem side. Hooray.

Here is the release since it wasn’t up yet.

Governor Schwarzenegger Appoints Richard Goul to Los Angeles County Superior Court Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced the appointment of Richard M. Goul to a judgeship in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Goul, 48, of Newport Beach, has served as a deputy district attorney with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office since 1989. He is currently deputy-in-charge of the sexual assault unit in the Long Beach branch … Read More

In general, the FlashReport as a publication doesn’t endorse candidates. There have been rare occasions, but right now I can’t even think of one. We did endorse John Shadegg in his run for Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. Shadegg didn’t win that election, but he really was never in the hunt – he joined late, as the conservative candidate for GOP leadership, and his candidacy shaped that debate.

The vast majority of the FlashReport’s many, many thousands of site visitors are not from Orange County, let alone from the 35th State Senate District, which hugs the coastline of one of California’s most populous, and Republican Counties. This coastal legislative seat, which stretches from Seal Beach on the Los Angeles border all of the way down to the southern-most end of the county, is the site of a special election. State Senator John Campbell was elected a few months ago to fill out the unexpired term of Congressman Christopher Cox, who was tapped by President Bush to serve as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

… Read More