It might be time for the Washington prognosticators to move CD47 from "leans Democratic" to "toss up."

A new poll of 400 likely voters in CD47 by the American Action Forum has Assemblyman Van Tran with 43% to 45% for Rep.Loretta Sanchez — well within the 4.9% margin of error.

It remains close even when you factor out the "leaners": Sanchez 42%, Van 40%.

There isn’t a lot of good news for Sanchez in this poll.

For example, in response to the question, "Do you think Loretta Sanchez deserves reelection as congresswoman, or do you think it is time to give someone else a chance?", only 35% said Loretta deserves… Read More

Lots of newspapers and publications are sending out questionnaires for candidates to fill out. That comes with this time of year. I get it.

Every one of these newspapers would immediately point out the conflict of a legislator that were to include a copy of a piece of legislation they had introduced with a third house fund raising request.

What I don’t understand is how a newspaper looking for answers to questions that will help enlighten their editorial process can possible include a "political advertising rate sheet" with those questions.

This is just wrong for the same reason that it would be wrong to include a copy of the vote on AB XXX with a fund raising request to a group concerned with AB XXX.… Read More

Check out my live-tweeting from the U.S. Senate debate…… Read More

Here at the press room at the Fiorina Boxer debate, I asked CalBuzz blogger Jerry Roberts to critique the food spread…

I will certainly say that the food spread here doesn’t come close to the one from the Orange County Whitman-Poizner debate. Here is the video critique from that night…

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America’s fifth largest county, San Diego, once more has a Republican plurality. In the last month or so the county has gone from a 4,850 Democrat advantage to a 891 Republican advantage. Cheers to San Diego County Republican Party Chairman Tony Krvaric and his team.… Read More

Here’s an inspiring story about an elementary school teacher who almost single-handedly turned a school’s math scores from dismal to great. Denise Maimone applied logic when she stealthily went into Georgetown Elementary School, located in a remote region of El Dorado County, and rejected the notion that every single 8th grader is somehow magically prepared for algebra, when in fact most aren’t. Instead, she parsed out those kids who were ill-prepared for the rigors of higher math and those who had the skills and brought the school’s math test scores up by 88 percentage points – the highest, by far, in the state. As a founder of a private Christian school, I have always supported and protected funding for education. It’s really a no-brainer to support the education of our future generation of kids. That being said, I don’t think California leaders achieveacademic greatness simply… Read More

Update:Apparently the OCBC did communicate their support for this bill to its proponents. We’re still waiting for the full story, but if there is an issue here, it would be internal to the OCBC, and not the fault of the social-engineers who want to ban plastic bags. As Drudge would say… developing…

630am – Original Post I penned a commentary on the defeat of AB 1998, the ban on plastic grocery bags, which you can see below this post. In my original draft, I hammered the Orange County Business Council pretty hard for supporting the bill. I made an assumption that because Senator Cedillo… Read More

The entire membership of the Assembly Republican Caucus in the California State Assembly yesterday signed a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger urging him and state Attorney General Jerry Brown to file a federal appeal of the Proposition 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, according to John C. Eastman, Director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and former Dean of Chapman University School of Law, who helped draft up a very articulate letter.

“This is a significant statement of principle coming from the entirety of the Assembly Republican Caucus,” Eastman said. “It reflects respect for the established rule of law that no matter one’s personal opinion, a validly enacted state initiative must be defended in the courts by the elected officials charged with this responsibility. The Governor and Attorney General have a constitutional duty to appeal the Prop 8 ruling, and it is high time for them to fulfill their oath of office in this regard.”

Proposition 8 was passed by over seven million voters in 2008, gaining 52% of the vote. Its constitutionality was upheld the California Supreme Court in… Read More