That’s Jerry Brown’s explanation for Jacques Barzaghi’s sexual harassment of an Oakland City Hall female employee during Brown’s tenure as mayor. Barzaghi was Brown’s longtime political aide, confidante and roommate who ended up leaving Brown’s employ and the country in 2004 after spousal abuse charges surfaced (sexual harassment charges just earned him a cut in pay).

Former Oakland City Hall employee Nereyda Lopez-Bowden, who says she was harassed by Barzaghi, held a press conference today in Sacramento with Sen. Chuck Poochigian. Lopez-Bowden contacted the campaign because she wanted to speak out after she was outraged by the Brown campaign’s claim that the Mayor handled the scandal "professionally." This was the first time… Read More

Yesterday I posted about a million dollar Independent Expenditure ad buy that the Indians had put togetherfor Tony Strickland, and about a ~$66,000 initial buy that some high-tech business folks had done for him.

Today, the other $934,000 of that buy came through.

Given his almost 1.5 : 1 advantage in slates, now $2 million in tv, Arnold’s coattails, and how close this race has been all along, Tony has to be considered the favorite coming down the stretch.… Read More

While Cruz Bustamante can’t seem to scrape togetherenough nickels to keep from having to continueto pullads off the air, Steve Poizner today went up with another newad – a good comparison spot highlighting some great newspaper quotes on the differences between the candidates.… Read More

The influential California Republican Lawyers Association has announced its endorsements for the retention votes for appellate judges. Judicial elections in California are often well below the radar screen and many voters have no idea who they are voting for. In fact, many people tell me that they often do not vote in judicial elections because they know so little about the judges on the ballot.

The CRLA endorsement list (below) is helpful because not only does it provide the CRLA’s weight to identifying judges worthy of Republican support but it provides the Governor who appointed the particular judge.

Here is the text of the CRLA press release and the endorsements:

CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN LAWYERS MAKE JUDICIAL RECOMMENDATIONS.

Dear Fellow Republican:

Every year Republican voters complain about the lack of information regarding Judges appearing on their ballots. In an attempt to provide Republican voters with the information they need, the California Republican Lawyers Association have prepared a list of Justices that we recommend.

It is important to point out that in preparing this list we have researched judicial opinions,… Read More

If you have been around the Capitol, you know Brian Johnston. He is the Western Director of the National Right to Life Committee and Executive Director of the California ProLife Council.

The last two days have been wild in Tennessee. And Brian was caught on film as one of the two Pro-lifers trying to attract attention to Democrat Harold Ford’s abortion position. Ford has a bad record but is portraying himself as pro-life. Controversy erupted when some people thought that Ford’s father called Brian and the director of Tennessee Right to Life a "cracker". It went nationwide. They claim now it was "tracker". You can see the story here and check out the video here.… Read More

Two things in Phil Angelides’s uninspiring resume jump out at me as he appears at hisgazillionth "Democrat Unity" event today with screaming presidential wannabe Howard Dean. One isthat Angelides just loves to hang out deep down with the labor unions’ pocket lint. And two, he has been repeatedly and inaccurately attacking Governor Schwarzenegger over public employees’ pensions. The latter is where Howard Dean comes in.

As governor of Vermont in 1995, Howard Dean pilferedseven million dollars from state pension funds –five million dollars from a teachers’ pension fund andtwo million dollars from a state employees’ fund. (Those are big numbers in a small northeastern state like Vermont.) Dean skirted having to pay for pensions and health benefits for state employees by capping thenumber of state employees and instead hiring contractors.And he used the money garnered by these maneuvers to help close the state’s budget deficit.

Phil Angelides holds Howard Dean up as an example of the kind of Governor he’d like to be. By… Read More

Over the next couple of weeks, the FlashReport will be profiling a few campaign MVP’s for our readers… When looking at all of the campaign operatives on the GOP side of the isle this cycle, a small group of notables rose to the surface, the first of which we are happy to recognize as our pick for Team Arnold MVP — and the winner is… Katie Levinson, the Communications Director for Californians for Schwarzenegger! Congratulations, Katie!

You can actually probably tell the day that Katie Levinson started with her important and central position with the Governor’s re-election campaign — that would be the day that someone turned "on" the power switch, and the Schwarzenegger Public Relations Machine has been operating at full speed ever since. Levinson is rather famously an import into the California political scene as a part of "Team Schmidt" — the young and energetic group of folks that worked with Schwarzenegger Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt… Read More

SURVEY ON CALIFORNIANS AND THE FUTURE

WHAT ELECTION? CANDIDATES SKIRT THE ISSUES, VOTERS TUNE OUT Voters remain skeptical about cost of bond measures; Majority want Democrats to control Congress, but also want third party