Every night at midnight I get an e-mail from Scott Lay at ElectionTrack.com. Many of you may know Scott from around the Capitol or from the Community College circuit.

If you are interests in politics his daily e-mail at midnight will give you an idea of how money in moving around the state. Personally, I look at it every night before I go to bed.

The e-mail which is free — tells you all the contribution required to be reported in the 24 hour reporting cycle. You can sign up at www.electiontrack.com

The other night I was looking at my e-mall on my blackberry as I was walking upstairs and noticed that Forest City Residential was nice enough to give Jerry Brown $10,000. That was similar enough to the name of Forest City Residential West that is the company name for Kevin Ratner that serves on the Board of Directors of the California State Chamber of Commerce. He is one of the four people that signed the letter regarding pulling the ad off the air that was critical of the Attorney General.

What was great is that when I went to the Board of Directors for Forest City I found that seven of them… Read More

OC Sheriff Sandra Hutchens was appointed to her post, but it looks like the voters will keep her there. Our new Voice of OC/Probolsky Research Poll shows the Sheriff winning with a 2-1 lead.

There are a lot of undecided voters at this point. Voters are generally uninterested in who the Sheriff is unless he/she is under federal investigation or something more dramatic. As long as they feel safe and a deputy comes when you call 911 – the incumbent is probably going to win.

Hutchens is on top among all the major demographic groups like all parties, men and women and age groups. Challengers Bill Hunt, a former deputy is running along with Craig Hunter, Anaheim Deputy Chief are trailing.

Someone needs to come in with big money to change this outcome.

The article about the poll can be found here. The full report can be found here.… Read More

When Republican voters in San Diego County open their June sample ballots in the next few weeks, most will see something new — a color GOP fundraising appeal in the middle of the other usual black and white pages, touting the party’s locally supported candidates and positions on ballot measures.

When San Diego Democrats glance at their versions of the sample ballot, they obviously won’t see the Republican advertisement. Yet, they also won’t see one of their own.

A little known and perhaps long forgotten 1970s-adopted section of the California Elections coderequires every county Registrar of Voters to provide to each party committee the space for a letter or insert of solicitation in the June voter pamphlet. This year local Republicans submitted an advertisement, then yesterday successfully fended off a legal challenge over its contents in Superior Court.

**There is more – click the link**… Read More

Congratulations California taxpayers! Today is Tax Freedom Day in California. That means Californians have worked well over three months of the year—from January 1 to April 14 —before they have earned enough money to pay this year’s tax obligations at the federal, state and local levels (according to data compiled by the National Tax Foundation).

That’s a slight improvement over last year when Californians achieved Tax Freedom Day on April 20 – or 110 days into the year.

(Nationally, Californians work longer than taxpayers in all but seven states to reach Tax Freedom Day).

And now the bad news: It’s highly likely that we reached this “achievement” through the federal stimulus package, which created artificial tax reductions.

But what the heck! Celebrate today – for next year and many years after you will work hard to pay off the money the government borrowed from you last year.… Read More

When Republican voters in San Diego County open their June sample ballots in the next few weeks, most will see something new — a color GOP fundraising appeal in the middle of the other usual black and white pages, touting the party’s locally supported candidates and positions on ballot measures.

When San Diego Democrats glance at their versions of the sample ballot, they obviously won’t see the Republican advertisement. Yet, they also won’t see one of their own.

A little known and perhaps long forgotten 1970s-adopted section of the California Elections coderequires every county Registrar of Voters to provide to each party committee the space for a letter or insert of solicitation in the June voter pamphlet. This year local Republicans submitted an advertisement, then yesterday successfully fended off a legal challenge over its contents in Superior Court.

As only the Republicans will have such a sample ballot letter during the primary election, this is — to slightly paraphrase the words Vice President Joe Biden utilizes to describe… Read More

Last night “Republican” State Senator Abel Maldonado was hanging out with Democrat Senator Rod Wright. A number of us who saw them thought out loud that between the two, Wright is fundamentally more conservative.… Read More

Between TiVos of American Idol and Dancing With the Stars arranged by my lovely wife tonight, I did manage to grab the laptop and see that Republican Assemblyman Bill Emmerson had about 40% of the vote in the special election for the Inland Empire’s 37th State Senate district being held today. The vote included absentees and a small group of precincts as of about 9:45 pm. Republican challenger Russ Bogh had about 22%. I did some lawyering for Emmerson in the campaign. Looks like he will be the winner.… Read More

I am not trying to pick on former Congressman and ersatz United States Senator Tom Campbell, but he is the first candidate for a Republican nomination for statewide office to send out an e-mail touting the endorsement of a newspaper editorial board for his candidacy. In this case, the San Jose Mercury news published an editorial, Campbell is the best GOP candidate for U.S. Senate.

To all Republican voters, I would say, without any hesitation: you should be very cautious if not downright skeptical of candidates who are endorsed by main stream media newspaper editorial boards. The reason for this is that with rare exceptions (a shout-out to the O.C. Register and the San Diego U.T.), these editorial boards are packed with liberals who probably feel that the People’s Park in Berkeley should be the state’s political epicenter.

Every election cycle, these Editorial Board members who I’m sure overwhelmingly vote for whatever liberal is on their general election ballot (be it a Democrat, or maybe their local Green Party nominee) put… Read More