When I moved to the Bay Area in 2000, I was amused to have Governor Moonbeam as my mayor. At election time, I was suprised to find myself voting for the guy because Jerry Brown actually was the more mainstream of the two candidates (that’s mainstream for the Bay Area–both candidates loudly proclaimed their vegetarianism during the 2002 race).

With Brown termed out of office, it looked like City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente was going to be elected Oakland’s new mayor in 2006. De La Fuente has been madly holding neighborhood coffee klatches around the city and many people I know, even the few Republicans around here, have given him good marks after meeting him. The multiple rape charges against his grown son do pose a problem, but it is likely that voters may not hold the father accountable for the son’s sins.

But De La Fuente’s easy mayoral race got tougher when former… Read More

My day-job is in media relations for the Sheriff’s Department in Orange County. I was working very late last night at our county’s Emergency Operations Center as we are battling some large wildfires in the eastern canyons of our county. Hence the late update of the homepage this morning.

You can read more about the fires here.

That said, I don’t have time to pen a commentary today, though I will give a quick ‘shout out’ to Republican State Senator Bob Dutton. He and I were speaking recently, and he was expressing his extreme frustration with the proposal to hike by $1 and hour the minimum wage mandate on California businesses. After our discussion, he sent me a column he has written on the subject, which is featured on the… Read More

Got you with my headline.

This post isn’t about the global chess match between Kevin McCarthy and Fabian Nunez to pick up Assembly seats. It’s about Placer County Supervisor Ted Gaines — he will walk into termed out Assemblyman Tim Leslie’s (pictured at right) Assembly seat this November.

For those not familiar with the district, the 4th Assembly District includes, Roseville, Rocklin, South Lake Tahoe, Auburn, Lincoln, Markleeville, Placerville and Loomis.

With Registration at 47 Republican to 31 Democrat, this is a safe Republican seat and so far Gaines has been able to keep his GOP primary field clear. He’s done it by securing the big endorsements early from Congressmen Doolittle and Lungren and the the overlapping State Senator Dave Cox. Gaines’ hired fundraiser extraordinaire Wendy Warfield to help him raise money and he raked it in last year —… Read More

Well known is LA Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa’s attempt to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. His ambition is shown by his response to the State of the Union.That is not enough.

The La Mayor has four appointments on the all-powerful, semi-public Metropolitan Water District. If you want to control water politics control the MWD. The Mayor campaign to choose Democratic Assemblyman and lobbyist Richard Katz to head the agency is making waves. Read about it here.or is this really linked to Katz, Anonio trying to help a aplan to takewater from the Mojave Desert. See it here. Will the rest of the MWD board resist?… Read More

I’d like to see a debate between Mark Leno and Pete Wilson. Not on the subject of Jessica’s Law, which will be decided in November when California voters pass a ballot initiative that, reasonably, separates child molestors from children. No, the debate I’d like to see is a larger one on government spending priorities that is not going to be settled anytime soon.

In today’s Los Angeles Times, Leno tells George Skelton that the peculiarly named Assembly Public Safety Committee that he chairs is not too liberal. Rather, his committee "kills ‘a lot of bad bills’ that are just too costly." He goes on to say that: ""The percentage of our general fund spending on corrections is out of control. Growing, growing, growing. After all, we’re dealing with a Legislature that refuses ever, ever to raise a tax."

So Leno is a fiscal conservative, which is heartening. Except that it is completely and totally at odds with his voting record since the day he arrived in the state… Read More

Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee introduced legislation that would strengthen punishment for patients at Atascadero State Hospital (ASH) who escape or attack their healthcare workers. According to an article in this morning’s San Luis Obispo Tribune, last year there were 393 acts of aggression toward staff, 26 of which resulted in serious injury. At a hospital where recruiting quality healthcare professionals is already a challenge, the threat of attack with little to no consequence is hardly helpful.

A similar measure in 2002, proposed by then Assemblyman Maldonado would have made it illegal for those housed in state hospitals to escape. The bill died in Public Safety committee as a result of pressure from patient’s rights advocacy groups who contend that the bill unfairly punishes the mentally ill housed at ASH.

As the laws are currently written it is lawful for those committed at ASH to escape as they are technically “patients” and not “prisoners—“even if the patient is a sexually violent predator.… Read More

Today if you are driving around the sleepy town of San Luis Obispo, you may hear an ad on the radio that concerns you. You’ll hear that one of your local officials, State Senator Abel Maldonado, has introduced a job-killing state mandate to employers, requiring them to raise employee salaries.

You probably would shake your head, since all of the things you have read about your Senator make it sound like this is the last thing he would do.

Nevetheless, Republican Senator Abel Maldonado has introduced legislation to increase the state’s minimum wage by a dollar, and the California Republican Assembly is calling him on it. Starting today, the CRA has purchased radio ads on four stations throughout Maldonado’s sprawling Central Coast District.

How all of this plays out in Maldonado’s bid for State Controller is not certain. But it is certainly controversial to reach over to the platform of the State Democrat Party for a major piece of his … Read More

It seems as though every day, it is getting harder and harder to read the tea leaves and keep track of the changing dynamics of the special election in the 50th Congressional, to replace the disgraced and resigned Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who infamously admitted his guilt in taking over $2 million in compensation for doling out government contracts.

It is the backdrop of this being ground-zero for an electorate betrayed by their Congressman that makes the drama so intense. There is a dynamic here that has never existed in a California Congressional special election before…

I have told a number of people that because of the pricy real estate values in much of this coastal San Diego district, there are literally tens of thousands of potential candidates one mortgage away from self-funding a race. Well, today there is a new Republican candidate jumping into the race, and he won’t have to mortgage any of his (multiple) houses, including the one in Rancho Santa Fe that he, his wife, and their five children call home.

… Read More