This mail piece dropped in the primary in Congressional District 19 where State Senator Jeff Denham, former Congressman Richard Pombo and former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson are duking it out to be the GOP standard bearer in this "safe" Republican Central Valley House seat, where incumbent George Radanovich is retiring… (click on the graphic to enlarge)… Read More

I think the only thing this political cycle that troubles me more than Republican candidates who tout the endorsements from editorial board of major newspapers (said editorial boards packed with liberals trying to mess in the Republican primary when virtually none of these editorial writers are Republicans) — are Republican candidates who are rolling out the endorsements of — public employee unions!

Seriously. I know that everyone likes it when I name names — but for the purposes of this blog post, I will refrain. But today alone I have received emails from two Republican candidates, campaigning as conservatives, bragging that they the choice of public employee unions.

In one case is the endorsement of the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association and in the other case it is the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, our state and local governments have been hit by a pension tsunami of epic proportions and the state’s public employee unions have been at the forefront of lobbying for unsustainable salaries and benefits — with no seeming regard of whether these… Read More

What do we know about Elena Kagan, Obama’s supreme court nominee?

Well, we know she wrote a few years ago that the First Amendment needed to be looked at again because she didn’t like the idea of people "throwing money into political campaigns" under its protection, or words to that affect.

We know Elena graduated from Harvard Law School, like Barack Hussein Obama. We know she taught at the University of Chicago, like BHO. We know BHO was the first black editor of Harvard Law Review and Elena was the first woman Dean of the Harvard Law School. We know Elena got drunk when a liberal female friend, Elizabeth Holtzman, lost the New York U.S. Senate election in 1980 according to the Daily Princetonian. (I did too the same night in 1980 when Reagan was elected President but likely for different and happier reasons). We know she grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a privileged community, perhaps not so much as the Upper East side, but the site of Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera that my wife and I hang out at every now and then, and the fictional scene of the… Read More

A little whiel ago, Assembly Republicans held a press conference in the Capitol at which they made two points extremely clear.

The seeds of overspending sewn by the liberals who control the legislature have grown into a large, unmanageable spending problem.

I won’t reinvent the wheel. Longtime friend Steve Greenhut, who heads up the Pacific Research Institute’s Cal Watchdog Team, was at the press conference and writes about it here.

We’ll bring you some video footage later on, or in the morning.… Read More

This is the time in an election that reality sets in for some candidates. Those candidates that have embraced the energizer bunny strategy of walking to hundreds of households or writing handwritten notes to Republicans in a district of 50,000 voters start to realize why fund raising is so important.

This past weekend lots of candidates were out walking door to door. They probably worked really hard to speak to 100 people at most. I am being generous at 100. They are doing this because they are working hard and are sincere in their desire to win the election. Meanwhile another candidate with more resources is communicating with tens of thousands of voters at a time in the mailbox, radio, television, and/or automated calls.

Last week at this time many of these elections in races with more than 10,000 voters were close. All of the candidates were unknown. Just one week later the candidates with the resources to communicate to the electorate are making huge strides in earning votes with absentee and election day voters.

To the energizer bunny candidate — It just doesn’t seem fair. They would do a much better job in… Read More

Been on the road all day… But check out this video — it’s a campaign commercial for a candidate in Pennsylvania. But it’s a priceless depiction of San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi… … Read More

Corey Gardner, the leading Republican candidate to take on Democrat Betsy Markey in Colorado (a top NRCC target), today launched a very clever website satirizing eBay, www.eBetsy.com. The site details the special interest money Markey has received.

Markey took out conservative firebrand Marilyn Musgrave, who served three terms in Congress, funded in large part by independent expenditures from billionaire heiress Pat Stryker. The district has 45,000 more Republicans than Democrats and Markey trails badly with unaffiliated voters. San Diegan Chris Hansen, a veteran manager, is running Gardner’s campaign.

Revolvis launched a similar strategy targeting first-term Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, who our client, San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson is facing in a rematch of 2008, highlighting Buchanan’s habit of abstaining from votes, www.wheresjoan.com.… Read More

Don Wagner, candidate for the 70th Assembly District, has prevailed in Westphal v. Wagner, a suit filed against Wagner and the South Orange County Community College Board of Trustees, to prevent theoffering of invocations at graduations, awards ceremonies, and other District functions.

The plaintiffs, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, sought an injunction but after months of discovery, including depostions from Wagner and other trustees, and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, the aetheists could not make their case that the District was violating the establishment clause of the Constitution. The court denied the motion and invocations can continue.

However, this case is not necessarily over. The aetheists may force this to trial and there is always a chance that Wagner et al could be defeated.

Bottom line, however, is that Wagner and the Board of Trustees stood against the effort to ban invocations andreligious freedom and the First Amendment prevailed.

* Don Wagner is a client of Revolvis… Read More