The campaign trail of gubernatorial hopeful Steve Poizner took him last evening to South Orange County, where I call home. He had an event with local elected officials. It was so close that I had to swing by and check it out. There I saw Orange County Supervisor Pat Bates, and since Poiz’s campaign had announced her endorsement earlier in the day, I thought I’d whip out the Flip camera (it’s always with me in case of that "TMZ moment") — and have some fun.

A reminder — as an officer of the State GOP, I do not endorse in contested Republican primaries. So if you are a GOP candidate for statewide office, and you come into my turf, I may "Flip you on!"

… Read More

The Governor just introduced his 2010-2011 proposed State Budget. It’s big and fat and filled with a ton of details. If you are THAT FlashReport reader, thanks to Capitol Weekly a nearly-200 page document with a lot of details are available online here.

Linked below this post are three helpful documents. The first one is a succinct three-pager from the Governor’s office for the more "normal" non-wonkish types to get sense of the budget proposal. Also is a list of money that Governor wants from the federal government, arguing that our state pays more into the U.S. Treasury than we get back. Finally the Governor’s office created a one-pager concerning proposed education reforms.

Again, there is a LOT to digest here. Look for those controversial components of the proposal to get more attention here on the FlashReport and elsewhere.… Read More

[Cross-posted from RedCounty.com]

TheLiberalOC.com reports that Democratic businessman Phu Nguyen is getting into the 68th Assembly District race:

We recieved the following press announcement that may very well shake up the 68th Assembly District contest this year.

Successful small business owner Phu Nguyen announces bid for 68th Assembly District

You can read the rest of the entry here.… Read More

Ron Nehring, Chairman of the California Republican Party, has just sent us his thoughts on the new proposed budget. We’ve formatted it as a column which you can read by clicking here.… Read More

In the State of the State address yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger talked about using tax incentives on the purchase of green technologies as a means of creating jobs. This is not simply a theoretical notion. The fact is, there are several initiatives throughout the U.S. that could make this piece of the Governor’s plan a reality, and the President and CEO of two of them will be my guest on Go Green Radio tomorrow.

Robbie Diamond is the President & CEO of Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) – www.secureenergy.org – , and the Electrification Coalition – www.electrificationcoalition.org -, both nonpartisan, not-for-profit groups of business four star military leaders committed to promoting policies and actions that facilitate the deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security dangers caused by our nation’s dependence on petroleum.

Among Robbie’s distinguished group of… Read More

*Note, this post has been updated to include a statement from Senator Walters (below). For those looking for responses to the State of the State Address from particular legislators, I provide links to releases with that information below.

I pulled the quotes from the other Republican women so that I can say we gave attention to all six. : Senator Mimi Walters, Laguna Niguel At a time when our state, and our nation, is suffering from a severe recession, it is critical that we implement policies that will encourage business to remain in California. The economic foundation of our state is… Read More

I just spoke with a longtime FR Blog reader who told me they had only discovered a couple of days ago that we feature original content on our main news aggregation page. Yes, almost every day we have original columns you won’t find anywhere else! Today we have an AFP-CA video and columns from Steve Poizner Sam Aanestad and Brian Nestande that you won’t want to miss.

So if you stop by the FR blog regularly – great! But at least once a day visit the main page, too!

LINK TO MAIN PAGE

Today John Perez, an ultra-liberal Democrat from Los Angeles, was elected Speaker of the Assembly. Good for him – and congratulations. That is a major achievement, especially for a freshman lawmaker. I know that Perez has the best interests of California at heart, even if his left wing ideology will guide him down the wrong path to make our state a better place for Californians to live, work and play.

As was tweeted by Anthony York at Capitol Weekly earlier in the week, and reported by Torey Van Oot on the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert blog this morning that Assembly Republicans will put forward their leader, Sam Blakeslee, for Speaker. They did so, and it made me, as a Republican, proud.

I have written that Republicans as a minority party should put forward their own candidates for leader for many years. I did so when Senator Steinberg was elected Senate President Pro-Tem, and I did so when Speakers Nunez, Bass and now Perez were elected.

Yes, every Assembly Republican knew that the outcome of the Speakership vote was preordained. So… Read More