The ultimate ranking guide to your legislators has arrived. The CRA Scorecard is out and about. The publisherordered me to giveeveryoneaccess to the rankings. There werenine lawmakers who received a perfect 100. The rest well… You’ll have to look.… Read More

**If you don’t read anything else today, don’t miss this article from Capitol Weekly. Purely insightful journalism from Shane Goldmacher, if I do say so!

GOP BOARD TO MEET WITH GOVERNOR Today the Board of Directors of the California Republican Party will meet in Sacramento. Usually the Governor sends a representative to these meetings — but today’s meeting will have the Governor participating in the meeting – which is appropriate – given that the reason for the meeting was the Governor’s hiring of a Democrat activists as his Chief of Staff. Republican volunteers around California are reeling from the news – dismayed that the Governor they toiled to elect in the recall election has brought one of Gray Davis’ top advisors back into the Executive Offices of the Governor.

So,… Read More

WHAT WILL THE GOVERNOR DO?? SPECIAL ELECTION TIMING…

Orange County and San Diego are looking to have special elections very soon. In San Diego, the Congressional seat belonging to the disgraceful Duke Cunningham is now wide open. It is safe GOP territory. Similarly, in Orange County, with John Campbell’s election to Congress, his State Senate seat is wide open – also a safe GOP seat.

The political low-down on these primaries has been, and will be talked about on this blog. But the purpose of this post is to talk about the fact that Governor Schwarzenegger has to choose when these special elections will take place. He does have some lattitude.

Election officials from both counties have asked to have these elections consolidated with the June primary, for a savings of many, many millions of dollars. If the Governor does this, then the primaries (which is the whole game for… Read More

Good call by the Gov (see my previous post).

SPECIAL ELECTION PROCLAMATION

BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

I, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim and order that a special election shall be held on the 6th day of June, 2006 within the 50th Congressional District of the State to fill the vacancy in the office of Member of Congress from said district arising from the resignation of office by Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

I also hereby proclaim and order that a special election shall be held on the 6th day of June, 2006 within the 35th Senate District of the State to fill the vacancy in the office of California State Senator from said district arising from the resignation of office by John Campbell.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 15th day of December, 2005.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Governor of California

###

(I posted via Blackberry, so pardon any messed up fromating)… Read More

What follows is the official statement put forth by State GOP Communications Director Karen Hanretty after the State Party Board meeting:

"The California Republican Party Board of Directors met today with Governor Schwarzenegger to have a frank and free flowing discussion about his recent appointment of Susan Kennedy as his new chief of staff.

The Board advised the governor on his appointment and in response to a question, he reaffirmed his support for his chief of staff as well as his life-long support for Republican principles.

The Board emphasized to the Governor the importance of remaining committed to his policies of not raising taxes, opposing drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants and expressed concern over proposed bonding in 2006."… Read More

Memo to all CRP Board Members: If you didn’t discuss specifically how the GOP is going to overcome the political agenda of nurses, teachers, firefighters, cops and firemen, you have wasted your time. I don’t care if Pat Buchanan or Pee Wee Herman is the chief of staff for the Governor, unless we begin to address tactical issues for winning statewide elections, its just hot air. Remember, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is, how to we win elections? Micromanaging the Governor’s staff selections isn’t a strategy.… Read More

My first attempt at online political activism follows. The Fresno Bee has quietly, without any fanfare, cancelled the weekly John Ellis political column and reassigned him to, of all areas, the federal courts "beat". I discovered this after I sent John an email earlier this week asking him if we was on vacation, as the column didn’t appear in the paper Saturday. He informed me that the column was no longer a part of the paper!

I want to be clear: he has not asked me to campaign for the column to reappear. But it is one of the top two reasons why I even take the paper, so its important to me and many political insiders across California.

The Ellis column was the most widely read and quoted column in the Bee. I’ve seen it excerpted in the Hotline, Rough & Tumble, Calpeek and the Flashreport dozens of times and on weblogs and political websites literally every week. The Bee evidently didn’t value (or even know) of this exposure. Worse, they don’t understand that the Central Valley and State need this column. It has existed since Editorial Page editor Jim Boren had it back in the 1980’s and 90’s and probably… Read More

If I were putting together a strategy for Arnold Schwarzenegger to employ that would attempt to calm the anger among Republican activists regarding his hiring of Susan Kennedy (which I am not), I would hire a Democrat to do something really extreme that reminded Republicans why Arnold is still their best option next year.

So I’m assuming that the Schwarzenegger team has put Democratic Assemblyman Paul Koretz on their payroll, and bribed him to propose legislation and hold high-profile hearings to push for a death penalty moratorium in California. Then the governor could spend the first few months of his re-election campaign fighting heroically to preserve the death penalty in the state, while Phil Angelides and Steve Westly looked for safe hiding places until their party’s primary was over.

But even for a principled opponent of capital punishment, and even for a legislature gerrymandered into safe districts, Koretz’s quote in this morning’s Los Angeles Times offers an excellent reminder on why competitive legislative elections would improve the quality of political debate in California. Defending his proposal, Koretz told… Read More