Orange County Superior Court Judge Randell Wilkinson "passed" on ordering the emergency relief Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, was seeking today to regain control of the website and other assets of Minuteman Project, Inc. Gilchrist had filed an "emergency" request to bar dissident directors, who have concerns about Gilchrist’s management,from controlling the Minuteman organization. The Judge heard arguments from both competing sides about which directors control the organization and decided rather than making an immediate ruling as requested by Gilchrist, to take the matter "under submission." There is no indication of exactly when the Judge will issue a ruling in the case.

Your author represented the dissident directors in court today.… Read More

Rising California GOP political consultant and Flashreport friend Mike Richman has been named the Rookie of the Year by the American Association of Political Consultants for 2007 in recognition of his tremendous work in helping direct Michelle Steel’s successful campaign for a seat on the California Board of Equalization last election cycle. Richman managed Michelle Steel’s race in a very competitive Republican primary.

Mike Richman works now as deputy political director for Sacramento, California-based consultancy JohnsonClark Associates. In addition to guiding Michelle Steel to a win, Mike Richman also assisted in the primary victories of Assemblymembers Anthony Adams and Kevin Jeffries. Nearly a year ago, Flashreport correspondent Phil Paule said of Richman: “Richman is destined to be one of the great political operatives of the next 20 years in California politics. He is bright, very… Read More

On a party line vote, again, the Assembly Appropriations Committee pushed the early presidential primary to our floor, wherethe Assemblywill probably take it up Thursday and send it off to the Governor’s desk. Appropriations Vice-Chair Mimi Walters offered amendments to ensure this bill had language to guarantee reimbursement tocounties up to $88 million that this extra election will cost…the amendment was denied on a party line vote as well. Counties will have to rely on "trust us" intent language in the bill. I’m sure our county sheriff’s, libraries, and mental health departmentswill be happy to reduce their budgets to pay forwhat is really aterm limit extension election. More to come….… Read More

The Empire Strikes Back

Democratic and Republican insiders unveiled their latest attempt to undermine California’s 17-year-old term limits law. Gale Kaufman, who has worked with California teacher unions, and Matthew Dowd, a strategist for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign last year, revealed the initiative in a conference call this month.

To the amusement of reporters, the two strategists insisted their plan, which would have to be approved by voters early next year, actually improves term limits. "We believe it’s a good strengthening of term limits," Ms. Kaufman said, because the proposal would limit legislators to 12 years of total service in the legislature, rather than the 14 years… Read More

Well, sort of. It looks like the Long Beach City Council’s attempt to dictate to hotels what kind of union deals they must sign will be put to a vote of the people. The plan denies workers the right to vote. Today, the hotels will submit the signatures needed for a referendum. See here.Previous FR Post can be seen here.… Read More

Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project, will be in Orange County Superior Court today, Department C-19, at 4:00 pm, seeking an ex parte order to try to win back control of the organization he founded in May of 2005. Gilchrist was thrown out of the organization as a Director and President in late January amid claims by other Directors that Gilchrist had bounced too many checks and was not properly managing the organization. Since then, the directors have conducted an audit and problems in the organization’s direct-mail fundraising program have surfaced, along with regulatory problems with the U.S. Postal Service and failure to file documents with the Internal Revenue Service and California Secretary of State.… Read More

I am not even sure how to preface this video of news coverage last Friday of a speech made in Seattle by John McCain.. So I won’t. It’s worth 23 seconds of your time. To be honest, I haven’t really felt like McCain has been pandering to the right (especially with his ‘global-warming-love-fest’ visit with Arnold Schwarzengger last week) — but apparently if he has, it may have been disengenuous? I guess the good news is that his appearance on increasing regulations to fight greenhouse gas emissions may have just been McCain ‘sucking up’ to the left-wing of the GOP?

Can you say, "Open mouth — insert foot?" … Read More

The John McCain for President Exploratory Committee just dropped a press release into my inbox where they announce the endorsement of McCain’s look at the Presidency by four current and one former California State Legislator…

And they are (the envelope please)…

State Senator Jeff Denham, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, Assemblyman George Plescia, Assemblyman Van Tran, and retired State Senator Jim Nielsen.

If you want to make the McCain folks feel better for having gone through the trouble of producing an elaborate media release, complete with quotes from all of these GOPers, you can pull up the release via the link immediately below. **Also, with a h/t to FR friend and Roll Call reporter David Drucker, RC has the following California GOP Members of Congress endorsing candidates for President so far:… Read More