From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…

California Dems Get Even Less Serious California Democratic leaders, frustrated by the refusal of Republican state legislators to go along with tax increases to close the state’s $15.4 billion deficit, are threatening to focus budget cuts on the districts that those Republicans represent.

“You don’t want to pay for government, well then, you get less of it,” Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg told reporters last week. Mr. Steinberg echoed comments made by Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who said that budget cuts should be targeted at the districts of lawmakers who oppose putting $11 billion in tax increases before the state’s voters in a referendum.

“When it comes to kids or the vulnerable, I wouldn’t want to make distinctions between who lives in a Democratic district and… Read More

– Last night voters in the 4th Assembly District elected Beth Gaines — Congratulations! Despite her healthy margin of victory, Democrats will invariably try to spin that Gaines should have won by a bigger number of votes, making the case that voters in that conservative district suddenly are sour on conservatives. The unspin is that Gaines just went through a nasty, negative campaign against a well financed Republican opponent who opted not to endorse Gaines when he lost.

– It appears likely that California Democrats will work to mitigate the negative impacts of Proposition 14 by having in place a system where local Democrat Committee Members will be able to endorse a candidate for partisan office (Congress, State Senate, State Assembly) going into the June elections. This will put Democrats at a strategic advantage to Republicans who adopted a very restrictive system that will likely lead to the GOP sitting out most races until after June. Since the new rules no longer guarantee that each party will have a candidate on the November ballot, this could be a big boost for Democrats.

– Apparently “nice” and… Read More

It was not particularly surprising to see Democrats in the State Senate yesterday vote to ratify six more State of California public employee union contracts. After all, to say that these unions are the largest special interest funding Democrat campaigns for statewide and legislative office would actually be kind of an understatement. The financial donations made to Democrats by the state’s public employee unions are off-the-charts in terms of generosity. As the late Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh said, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

Jesse Unruh

Shocking and disappointing, however, were the votes of two Senate Republicans to ratify all of these union contracts —… Read More

This is not a joke. The California Affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion chain demand parental consent. I know what you are thinking. Didn’t Planned Parenthood spend millions of dollars to stop several parental involvement laws for minors getting abortions?Didn’t Planned Parenthood support efforts to let kids from 12 on up make their own medical decisions about mental health and contraception? Doesn’t Planned Parenthood lobby against ANY effort to let parents know if their kid is getting an abortion?

The answer is of course yes to all those questions.

Planned Parenthood still believes that young girls can get abortions without ever informing their parents. Never mind the complications that can severely harm or even kill them. Let alone the fact they may never address the underlying issues that resulted in a 12 year old getting an abortion. See, today is Teen Capitol Day in Sacramento. Planned Parenthood is taking kids out of school to meet lawmakers and lobby on bills. Today AB 1306 by Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is being heard in health committee. It would require a flyer with … Read More

President Obama made the right call in approving the highly-surgical killing of master terrorist Osama Bin Laden at a compound in Pakistan, and he deserves credit for the successful mission. As Commander in Chief, he took a risk – both militarily and politically. Intelligence reports were reportedly initially far from conclusive when planning for the mission began last August. By last Friday the president felt he had enough intelligence to believe that Bin Laden was actually in the compound, and approved the mission.

As with any mission, success was far from certain, yet Obama gave the order. Good for him. Had it backfired, the news today (and for a longtime afterwards) would have been that Obama is an incompetent leader. We would have had a replay of Jimmy Carter’s disastrous April 1980 attempt to rescue 52 American hostages in Iran. In that failed mission, several helicopters crashed, no hostages were rescued and eight American servicemen lost their lives. The event played a major role in Carter’s defeat to Ronald Reagan later that year.

Instead, today we are celebrating the death of one of the most horrific terrorists in the history of civilization as a… Read More

Six weeks ago the California Republican Convention met to among other things debate rules changes pertaining to the endorsement process since passage of Proposition 14.

The media was relentless. Headlines featured words like “tension’ and “clash”. My favorite came from the lefty blog Calbuzz that asked “Will the Stalinistas strike a blow for authoritarianism?”

All this centered around the fight between two proposals that would let either the state board decide endorsements or a caucus of state and local central committee members. Both plans contained exceptions that specifically protected incumbents. Insiders choosing is the worst possible way to get the candidates we need and don’t get me started on incumbent protection. Ultimately, I wrote an alternative plan supported by Congressman Tom McClintock that rejected both approaches and would lead to pre-primary mail in balloting by Republicans was adopted. (The chairman is announcing something soon, so I won’t steal his thunder or hair gel on this one.) So … Read More

Add Rocky Chavez to the List in San Diego… Former Oceanside City Councilman Rocky Chavez is said to be mulling an open 2012 legislative seat in San Diego. Jim Sills has it first at San Diego Rostra yesterday:

“Friends and supporters are encouraging Rocky Chavez to seek one of SD County’s seats in 2012,” Sills writes. “The career US Marine served two terms on the city council, leaving in 2009 when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger first named him Undersecretary for Veterans Affairs, and then Acting Secretary the past six months, as Jerry Brown looked for a permanent successor.”

Which seat? As Sills notes, it depends on the upcoming state redistricting (and if Chavez plans to stick around Oceanside). The 74th Assembly (Martin Garrick leaving due to term limits), 75th Assembly (should Nathan Fletcher run for San Diego mayor) and 39th Senate (Chris Kehoe is termed out) could all be in play.

As I reported in February, … Read More

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times “Politi-Cal” politics blog carried a story by ace reporter Seema Mehta talking about how, at their convention this weekend, California Democrats are looking at changing their rules so that local caucuses of Democrat leaders can gather and endorse candidates for Congress and the State Legislature. Thanks to the “reforms” given to us with the passage of Proposition 14, political parties can no longer use the June election as a mechanism for their registered party members to hold a primary.

At the State GOP convention last month a coalition made up primarily of federal and state legislative leaders passed a plan that takes a much different course than the Democrats. Under the GOP’s new rules, it is a very restrictive process for the party to support a candidate before the June election (it takes a 2/3rds vote of every County Central Committee that overlaps a part of a district and then a 2/3rds vote of the State Party Board of Directors —trust me, very… Read More