Though not here at the California Republican Party Convention, the campaign of Carly Fiorina for U.S. Senate is showing definate activity. They just announced endorsements from five former Chairmen of the CRP: John Herrington, Tirsi Del Junco, Bob Naylor, Frank Visco, and Mike Montogemery.

Marty Wilson, a senior strategist for the Fiorina campaign, announced to the Republican County Chairmen's Association that former CRP Executive Director and former RNC Regional Field Representative John Peschong would be heading up Fiorina's statewide political operations.

As we have mentioned before, Wilson's business partner, Beth Miller, will be handling campaign communications.

Wilson told County Chairmen that their campaign pollster will be the Tarrance Company and their media consultant will be Fred Davis.

Of course Fiorina's entry into the primary over a year after the entry of Assemblyman Chuck DeVore means she will be playing “catch up” on endorsements for quite some time — with DeVore having claimed the lionshare of elected GOP officeholders around the state…… Read More

Assemblyman Dan Logue just introduced his colleague, State Senator Sam Aanestad, to the CCA meeting. Aanestad is speaking right now, and making the case for why Republicans should choose him as our nominee for Lt. Governor.

FR reported earlier in the week that Aanestad had announced his candidacy. Aanestad touted the endorsement of Congressman Tom McClintock — and that of former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson.

Aanestad's late entry into this primary gives him a challenge shared by Carly Fiorina that I mentioned in the post below — his opponent, Senator Jeff Denham, has been endorsed by virtually the entire GOP universe of elected officials in California, such as they are.… Read More

I am on the road to Indian Wells where I will convene with fellow Republicans at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort. It’s a stunning location offering many amenities. But members of the California Republican Party have little time to play and instead must stay focused on outlining the party’s strategy and goals if we are to make inroads in 2010. California is in crisis. That’s not news to anyone. The GOP must move forward with plans to shift our great state’s economy from gasping on life support to one that is healthy, robust and thriving once again. Our goal is to make sure California voters put more Republican leaders in Constitutional offices and Legislative seats. The laws coming out of Sacramento simply don’t reflect the values that most Californians hold, and the GOP is in the position to bring positive change to the Golden State. To successfully achieve our goal, we must stay focused on important issues, such as creating jobs and strengthening the economy, as well as holding the line on taxation, addressing our water needs , and providing safe neighborhoods for our families. We must work as a unified team, not subsidiaries… Read More

Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is now addressing the CCA — his four major policy objectives to encourage job creation: tax cuts, reform labor laws, tort reform, reform labor laws and overhaul the state's regulatory system. Poizner was well received.… Read More

Now speaking to the Republican County Chairmen is Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who was introduced by ardent supporter State Senator Tony Strickland.

Whitman talked about her background, including her work for Mitt Romney which later in life let to her support of his for President. And of course she told her story of the growth of eBay on her watch.

Whitman spoke a lot about how California's over-regulation has been strangling job creation. She spoke about her call to suspend AB 32. She spoke about overspending and the need to eliminate 40k workers from the government payroll. She also touched on the need for reform of the education system.

Of course, I don't want to leave out that Whitman was accompanied by Senior Campaign strategist Jeff Randle.… Read More

State Senator Jeff Denham is clearly the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for Lt. Governor — he's been running for a while now and has built up money in the bank and a mega-sized endorsement list.

Denham talked about winning election to a Senate Seat gerrymandered to elect a Democrat. Denham talked about how, with the help of Republicans statewide, he crushed a cynical recall attempt against him funded by Sacramento Democrats.

Denham talked about the importance of a bold message from Republicans — drawing a clear distinction between our party and that of the Democrats.… Read More

Last week GOP Gubernatorial candidate got kudos from us here at the FlashReport for being the first candidate for the GOP nomination to sign the Americans for Tax Reform No New Taxes pledge. Poizner called on his opponents to sign it as well, and we said at the time that they should absolutely do this.

This morning I was told by FR friend Patrick Gleason over at Americans for Tax Reform that yesterday they had faxed into them a signed ATR Pledge form from Meg Whitman! Outstanding.

Tom Campbell, you are next… It’s time to stop calling for higher taxes, and instead make it clear that state government is too big and spends too much…… Read More

The Meg Whitman for Governor campaign is engaged in creating a professional "videography" of the entire campaign — a big endeavor which involves a lot of work. We see some of the work of these professional video folks when they roll our in-house videos here and there.

One can only hope that they were allowed to do video and audio taping of Whitman’s campaign team folks as they have been dealing with the results of an investigation undertaken by the Sacramento Bee, released today, that looks both at Whitman’s extremely poor voting record as well as the sparse and inconsistent statements coming from the Whitman campaign on the issue of Whitman’s past voting (or lack thereof) record. I just think it would be fascinating the see the back and forth that lead to this, her official statement (thus far) on this controversy:

MEG WHITMAN STATEMENT ON HER VOTING RECORD … Read More