I hate to be flippant but I can’t help myself. I spent six years toiling on the State GOP Board as regional Vice Chairman and than Treasurer. During this time we "managed" the State GOP Convention messages and tried to come out of every convention with a positive spin. In reality, that process is of little consequence to election outcomes.

The last GOP candidate for Governor to have a pre-primary endorsement got absolutely slaughtered in the general election. What hurt him the most was the security of not having to answer to his GOP base during the general election when it seemed everyone knew he was going to lose except him. And while Dan Lungren has gone onto a good place in the Congress, he’s been made even better by having to go through a tough, tough primary in 2004. You don’t forget lessons like that if you are smart.

Whether or not the Governor has our endorsement pre primary is irrelevant to his chances of prevailing in November. Voters don’t care whether we endorse him and neither do most conservatives.What they care about are issues and whether their nominee is true… Read More

California is a very hard state in which to elect a Republican to statewide office. And by that, I mean ANY Republican. With occasional exceptions, we have seen Republicans of all stripes – conservative, moderate, liberal – lose at the polls to the most outrageously socialist Democrats. I can throw out Tom Campbell, Bill Jones, Matt Fong and Bruce Herschensohn (pictured) as examples of GOPers of all stripes who have lost – and these are just nominees for the United States Senate. We can debate the reasons for the losses, but I am just trying to illustrate that electing a Republican in California is a challenge. The fact that we have a Republican Governor in California is a great thing, and I don’t have to remind you of the convergence of amazing things that all took place to achieve this… Read More

Yesterday, the President of the United States transmitted to the United States Senate the nomination of Sandra Segal Ikuta to serve as a Judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Since January of 2004, Ikuta has been serving as a member of the Schwarzenegger Administration, as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel to the California Resources Agency.

Prior to being tapped by the Governor, Ikuta had been an attorney in the Los Angeles office of the prominent law firm of O’Melvany & Myers. In the past she had clerked for former United States Supreme Court Justice Sanda Day O’Conner, as well as for Judge Alex Kozinski on the 9th Circuit Court.

Ikuta is a Republican, and specializes in environmental law.… Read More

The nucleus of Governor Schwarzenegger’s re-election team is coming together. Here are some of the folks that are already (or are about to be) onboard to run the day-to-day operations of the re-elect, as confirmed by a source on the Governor’s re-election campaign:

As we have reported before, the Campaign Manager is Steve Schmidt. Schmidt comes back to California (where he worked on the Matt Fong campaign, among other efforts) straight from Washington, D.C., where he has been working closely with Vice President Dick Cheney. Most recently, Schmidt was the WH "jockey" in getting Justice Sam Alito through the Senate confirmation process. Also in major role with the campaign is strategist Matthew Dowd. Dowd has been a senior advisor to President Bush, and … Read More

Back by popular demand, we continue with the OC Power Brokers Series.

This time, Media.

What makes an OC Power Broker? Well it is a little different for a member of the media than for the previous groups (lawyers, and parts one and two). For a journalist it means: 1) they have wide spread relationships with people in government, politics, business and community, 2) they can be trusted implicitly, if you have a tip that can’t look like it came from you or if they call for background, you can be sure “off the record” has meaning with them, 3) they have the juice to get something published, they can stand up to… Read More

There has been speculation on various websites, and in huddled water-cooler conversation about whether Assembly Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy will be running for Congress this year, and if he does run, who would replace him, presuming that it wouldn’t be practical to campaign for Congress and toil statewide for Assembly Republicans. I haven’t spoken with Kevin about this yet (he’s hosting a retreat for his colleagues, so I’ll call him on this when that is over). But I think he has made it clear that he has an interest in running for Congress. So this debate is less centered around what will Kevin do, and is more about what will Bill Thomas do? Thomas, who has been representing the Kern County area in Congress for decades, is now 65 and was rumored to be strongly considering retirement this year. Thomas is the Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee (a position he used last year to earmark a massive amount of money for his district last year,… Read More

Yesterday the Governor made a few more key appointments that are worthy of being highlighted — two Republicans and a Democrat. Especially notable is first appointment listed below – that of Nicole Rice as a Deputy Appointments Secretary. The FR has heard great things about Rice, and, of course, these positions in the Appointments Unit have a lot of sway over many other future appointees into the administration.

The two Republicans:

Nicole Rice, 34, of Sacramento, has been appointed deputy appointments secretary for the Office of the Governor. Since 2004, she has served as public affairs representative for Southern California Edison. Prior to that, Rice was a legislative advocate for The Advocacy Group, now known as Strategic Council, from 2002 to 2004. She served as a consultant to the Assembly Republican Caucus from 2000 to 2002. Rice is a… Read More

At the direction of the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee, and following in the footsteps of the Santa Cruz City Council, the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors is poised to pass a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. Read the Matier-Ross column on this here or read the resolution for yourself by clicking here (Item #44).

Left-wing supervisor Chris Daly cheerfully told the Chronicle that he was “just being a good Democrat” by introducing the resolution. Look for other liberal cities to follow suit (the city council of … Read More