Much has been whispered about and written about in passing about the fact that Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby had a sexual harassment complaint filed against him by a county employee. The matter went to court where a lot of — explicit — testimony was made on the record. The very abbreviated version is that a trial court judge found that there was some merit to the allegations however an appellate court disagreed. Ultimately the matter was settled, and as Norby is quick to point out, with no payments of taxpayer funds being paid out.

That said, expect to see a lot about this matter given the circumstances that led to the vacancy in this Assembly seat.

In what is a harbinger of what will be one of the most negative and entertaining special elections in recent memory, Linda Ackerman has dropped a mail piece that hit today hitting Norby on this issue.

In an earlier post I indicated that it was likely that the negative attacks on Norby would come from independent expenditures (rumors abound that Sacramento third-house folks are working on one). But I was wrong. This is probably an indicator that if such an independent effort is… Read More

I am not even going to waste a lot of time on this blog post. Lisa V. over at the Contra Costa Times Blog reports that earlier today it was announced that the Bay Area Council is going to dump $2 million into qualifying the measures to create a Constitutional Convention for California, if approved by the voters.

Let me make this crystal clear for the Bay Area Council and all others out there who think this might be a good idea.

Are you holding on to your chair? Here comes the truth…

California’s Public Employee Unions will try to coopt and control the convention process. If unsuccessful, they will use their vast resources to obliterate whatever that convention brings back to the voters for approval.

Instead of sinking millions into this fool’s errand, the Bay Area Council should join with those already looking at a paycheck protection measure. Until the pervasive financial influence of the public employee unions is terminated, the road to comprehensive reform of California government is impassable.… Read More

FlashReport Reader:

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Western Conservative Political Action Conference (Western CPAC), I am pleased to announce that we have just confirmed that Andrew Breitbart of Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, and BigGovernment.com has confirmed that he will be giving opening comments on a star-studded political technology panel that I will be hosting this Saturday. "This Saturday," you ask??!! YES, WESTERN CPAC WILL BE TAKING PLACE THIS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY RIGHT IN THE HEART OF ORANGE COUNTY CALIFORNIA. If you haven’t already, you should check out our website here which is chock-full of information on the event.… Read More

Gavin Newsom wants to lower the 2/3 vote threshold so bad that he mentions it not once but twice in his first campaign web-commercial…

… Read More

SacBee’s Capitol Alert is reporting that the size of a "comprehensive water solution" package is well over nine billion (with a b) bucks. That is a lot of money – and a lot of borrowing.

There are a lot of water-related policy aspects at play, and not being a water policy expert, I will leave that to others to sort through.

But I do have some concerns about the size of the package in terms of raw dollars. It seems vastly expensive. I guess the first question would be how much of that package is made up of lease revenue bonds that SHOULD come to a vote of the people but often don’t. The embarrassing approval of those prison-bonds without voter approval comes to mind. There’s been plenty of time since then to put them to a vote of the people for ratification — but, I digress…

To keep me and those taxpayer advocates that I know from opposing the "comprehensive water solution" on amount-of-spending grounds, there is a very simple test that must be applied: 1. HOW MUCH INFRASTRUCTURE DO WE NEED TO BUILD?

We need… Read More

Look who TMZ caught driving with a cell phone to her ear!

Nice.… Read More

Good work from our College Republicans:

For the second time in the past month our state’s youngest activists traveled to the Bay Area to help Republican businessman David Harmer in his effort to defeat Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi for the Congressional seat vacated by Ellen Tauscher. After energizing speeches by Harmer and CRP Vice-Chairman Tom Del Beccaro, on Saturday morning just over 40 College Republicans from across California joined a dozen Young Republicans to spend their weekend walking door-to-door and making phone calls for Harmer. To show his gratitude for their hard work Tom Del Beccaro invited the groups to his home for dinner after the walk.… Read More

I just got off of the phone with Tim Whitacre, the Campaign Manager of the Anthony Adams Recall. FR readers will recall that in February Adams was one of six Republican legislators who crossed party lines and voted with every Democrat in the legislature to smack Californian’s with well over $16 BILLION in higher sales, income and car taxes, as well as a cutting the child tax credit.

Shortly after that vote, an effort was started to try and gather enough signatures to force one of these legislators to a recall vote — that legislator is Adams. Although it requires just under 36,000 signatures to force Adams into a recall election, Whitacre told me that with turn-ins today at the Registrar of Voters offices in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, the advocates for recalling Adams collected and have turned in a staggering 61,593 signatures.

Political veterans know that a percentage of those signatures will be invalid. But since the campaign was checking signatures gathered against the voter registration rolls, Whitacre assured me that there is a 100% likelihood that this recall will qualify with many, many thousands of signatures over the… Read More