Dan Schnur does mention illegal immigration in his analysis of why the Governor won the recall and what enable him to reach out to more voters.

What he doesn’t mention is that the Governor had a chance to help get an initiative on the ballot that would have dealt with this issue. The Save Our License Initiativepromoted by CRA was in circulationuntil Feb. of this year.

It would have stopped licenses and other public benefits from going to illegal aliensexcept emergency medical and K-12 education.Despite great grassroots support, there wasn’t the money to qualify it.

The Governor’s consultants were all approached about this issue. They wouldn’t listen.Why? Because the Governor still talks of giving licenses to illegals under the "right" conditions.

Last month I saw a focus group of Democrats that voted for Arnold. In this key group they had turned on the Governor and his propositions. But, they were with us on illegal immigration.

HadArnold supported this on the ballot, the talk wouldn’t have been about Arnold destroying teachers and nurses , it would have been about… Read More

“Never has so much resulted in so little change.” Paul Pfingst, the former D.A. and now a local KUSI-TV news analyst, said it about the San Diego mayoral election, in which Democrat Donna Frye could barely muster a higher percentage (46%) than she did in the primary. Yet, the comment would about hit the mark for the statewide special election as well. Over $200 million spent, significantly more when everything is analyzed, and status quo has been achieved.

If someone is looking for the bright side, while grasping at straws, they could say that the statewide unions were forced to spend a third of that money to get exactly what they have now, nothing more. But, of course, nothing more is pretty much political control of the state.

It’s not over until it’s over, a great baseball philosopher once said. This one was over the day the election was called. Plenty of other pundits will get into an in-depth analysis of all the “whys”. Aside from money spent, low turnout, voter fatigue, mixed messages, another special election, yadda, yadda, yadda … lastly, Republicans had no… Read More

Orange County did as it always does, came through on the right side of just about every contest. See a .pdf run-down of the OC numbers here.

Chairman Scott Baugh is a clear winner tonight, having overseen an impressive county party run precinct operation. The OC GOP won each of the measures it endorsed, plus Steve Knoblock for San Clemente City Council (consultants Janice and Paul Glaab utilized well the county party endorsement there).

Measure D, a move by the firefighters to re-allocate some of the Prop. 172 monies from OC Sheriff and the DA to the OC Fire Authority lost big. The was a lot of wound licking and cheering in the respective two camps, this fight was the OC Sheriff’s Deputies Union with help from Sheriff Mike Carona and DA Rackauckas vs. the Firefighters Union with help from various local electeds who sit on the Fire Authority Board. The bottom-line analysis shows that if there is a pot of money, someone is… Read More

Funny how not standing for anything in particular until your consultant tells you what to stand for comes back to bite you–sooner than later.

Cassie DeYoung, a councilwoman in Laguna Niguel is running against former Assemblywoman Pat Bates for Orange County’s 5th Sup. Dist. Presumably at the urging of her consultants, she is pushing an anti-tunnel agenda. A tunnel proposal would link Orange County with the Inland Empire, reducing traffic and pollution on the 91 Freeway and spur economic opportunities between these growing communities.

What is funny and the reason I suggest hers is a consultant driven life, is that it turns out our handy local editorial writer for the Orange County Register, Steve Greenhut discovered that DeYoung voted FOR the tunnel, before she voted against it.

Greenhut writes yesterday in the Orange Punch Blog:

Cassie DeYoung voted to support tunnel in 2003… Read More

Next week I will be penning an entire column for the Capitol Weekly on where Republicans go from here, in light of the tragic results of yesterday’s election. Fortunately, this gives me a little time to contemplate the results, and what it all means. I’ll have the benefit of reading a lot of different points of view on this in the coming days – as a matter of fact, I’ve already read a lot of great stuff this morning (including from the FR bloggers).

One thing I will say is that when you get close to an effort — and I got very involved in trying my hardest to see these much-needed reforms get the approval of voters — you really built up a high level of respect for the people you work with — as months, becomes weeks, becomes days, and then the election is here. So I want to salute all of those hard working grassroots activists who walked precincts, emailed friends, made advocacy phone calls and who, like me, engaged in public speaking on behalf of these measures. Also a big thank you to all of the donors, big and small, that gave from the heart for these important measures.

In e-mailing… Read More

My friend Mike Spence is exactly right: a ballot measure that addressed policy reform in the area of illegal immigration could have been of huge help to the governor’s effort. But I should clarify a point on which we may have disagreed. I wasn’t simply arguing for photo opportunities with children, but rather finding a way to reassure swing voters that Schwarzenegger’s conservative principles are laced with centrist tendencies on some issues. That may not be necessary for either Mike or myself, but it’s the difference between 44 percent and 51 percent of the vote on Election Day.

Arnold was elected because he combined a commitment on conservative principles, which appealed to many Republicans, with more moderate stances on social and environmental issues, which attracted support from independents and moderate Democrats. We all knew during the recall campaign what type of governor we’d be getting: my point is not that Schwarzenegger should abandon his core conservative beliefs on economic, public safety, and immigration policy, not in the slightest. He should not attempt to “move to the center” in order to regain… Read More

Aloha from the Big Island here in Hawaii. As I take an opportunity to surf the web, while looking at the surf, I am reading various post-mortem thoughts on yesterday’s election results. FR friend, radio host and columnist Hugh Hewitt has an outstanding analysis that is laid out in the form of a letter to the Governor. I will excerpt the beginning here, and give you the link to the whole thing on his excellent website, below.

There is no such thing as a fusion candidate, no such thing as a bipartisan campaign or a non-partisan issue, and come election night, there are just two parties, one at the GOP HQ and one at the Dem HQ. There’s a winners’ party and a losers’ party. Last night you were speaking to the losers’ party.

I… Read More

No more guns. Given the dismal election results, the best thing on TV last night was when William Shatner’s character on Boston Legal, Denny Crane, shot a rapist and murderer of 13-year-old girl in both knee caps to get out of having to serve as his court-appointed lawyer.

I’m sure that the anti-gun folks in SF, who passed a poorly written, easily challenged gun ban last night, were horrified by this depiction of guns on television. The SF voters passed Proposition H, which bans the manufacture, distribution, sale and transfer of firearms and ammunition within San Francisco. It prohibits residents from possessing guns within city limits, unless they are required for professional reasons (cops, security guards,… Read More