The first competitive San Diego County Sheriff’s race since 1994 enters its primary leg withthree hopefuls to appear on the ballot. As well, a challenge has been filed over one candidate’s chosenballot description.

The pool of anticipated competitors narrowed from four on Friday, when perennial candidate Bruce Ruff dropped his bidin passive fashion, simply not filing any nominating paperwork by the deadline after he campaigned for several months.

The three remaining candidates each have law enforcement experience. Obviously, they want to tout their respective backgrounds. Thus, their chosen ballot designations…

Jim Duffy – San Diego County Sheriff Lieutenant

Bill Gore – San Diego County Sheriff, Appointed

Jay La Suer – Retired Undersheriff, San Diego

Watchers of these types of things (hacks like me) know the general rules for this all important designation (the last and sometimes only thing many voters will truly note about each candidate prior to voting)…

-Three words max, unless it’s… Read More

Judging from reports the CRP convention this weekend has been a very interesting one. I’m a member, appointed by Congressman Darrell Issa, and I usually attend. But this weekend’s GOP convention conflicted with the annual National Audition Grand Finals of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. I was really looking forward to seeing Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner in Santa Clara, but as donors we were invited to the Auditions. I opted for music over politics, a rare such decision, and hopefully Jon Fleischman will have inserted my picture at the Met with Audition’s host, famous mezzo soprano Marilyn Horne, taken about 45 minutes ago, to prove I actually was doing something else of meaning this weekend. For those interested, PBS stations in California will be airing a documentary film tonight about the 2007 Auditions, a good cool down after a busy GOP event.… Read More

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I’m penning this brief blog entry while here at the California Republican Party convention. At the luncheon today, U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, in conjunction with her speech, will be unveiling a new web video. Her last campaign video — "Demonsheep" as it has been dubbed — went "viral" with the better part of a million hits on You Tube alone.

This blog post is set to go live at 12:45, when the campaign has given me a green light to share the video with FR readers….

So…

Here it is! (If the video doesn’t play, it may be a little early. They will allow views in conjunction with the live debute here at convention.)

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From today’s WSJ Political Diary E-mail…… Read More

Today Carla Marinucci is running a blog piece on the venerable San Francisco Chronicle Politics Blog entitled, Carly Fiorina a "lifelong Republican" — but not in voter records. The basic assertion in the piece is that Fiorina is on record, multiple times, calling herself a "Lifelong Republican" — and the Chronicle dug up Fiorina’s voter registration form, showing that in 1997 when she was living in Morristown, New Jersey, Fiorina was apparently registered as an "unaffiliated" voter.

I contacted Julie Soderlund with the Fiorina campaign. Julie says that time in New Jersey, voter did not register to vote by political party. Rather a voter selects a partisan ballot when they vote. She provided Fiorina’s voter registration card from New Jersey, which is attached below.

Already vetting, but worth reminding readers is that Fiorina has already done a mea culpa round for having a spotty voting record in the past, which apparently included this period of time.

I did… Read More

Yesterday the Meg Whitman for Governor campaign announced their new Students for Meg organization. The head of this new group is Chason Bullock, who is a senior at California State University, San Marcos. What follows is a column by Chason, and below that a web video created by the Whitman campaign highlighting many student leaders supporting her candidacy…

Why Students Support Meg Chason Bullock Students are rallying to elect Meg Whitman to be the next Governor of California. They share Meg’s focus on three… Read More

*FR Exclusive* "CA Forward" Legislative Proposals Seek GOP Votes To Eliminate Taxpayer Protections By Assembly Republican Leader Martin Garrick This morning in a Capitol press conference, legislative Democrats and the political reform group California Forward announced bill proposals to weaken long-standing taxpayer protections. While there are parts of this proposal that might take legislative reforms a step forward, the package would send California… Read More