My very first job in politics was for Bruce Herschensohn’s 1992 campaign for U. S. Senate. He embodied everything I believed in. He was also a good and kind and gentle man who to this day can articulate the conservative-small government principled position on any issue better than anyone I have ever heard or read.

Others have already written about how much Bruce has meant to them, but I feel compelled to write my own story and make sure we all remember that it is the dirty-work of Susan Kennedy that tanked Bruce’s chances in that pivotal election.

I won’t rehash the details, Jon Fleischman explains them well.

And I won’t even suggest that the dirty-tricks that Susan Kennedy (then executive director of the California Democratic Party) pulled were any worse than some tactics we see today.

But I keep coming back to why? Why the… Read More

Bill Leonard, one of the two Republican Members of the Board of Equalization, is well regarding throughout California. During his time on the Board, as well as many, many years preceding that as a member of both the State Senate and State Assembly, Leonard has earned a reputation for being smart, thoughtful and articulate Republican Leader. Today in his weekly e-mail, the Leonard Letter, the Board of Equalization Member had some very strong words on the Governor’s appointment of former Gray Davis’ Deputy Chief of Staff, Susan Davis, to head up his own staff:

So here I am…nice peaceful Sunday…hanging out with a friend… eating some cold pizza…drinking coffee and reading the Sacramento Bee (I don’t make this stuff up folks) and on comes the Rollins Band’s "What’s the matter, man" on her Sirius sattelite radio.

Rewind a few days…I’m having lunch with my back yard neighbor AG Block and the conversation obviously turns to politics…. Abramoff, DeLay, Congressman John Doolittle, and the Sacramento Bee’s complete silence on this political cold sore blemishing the face of our party. Always one to call em as he sees em…Blockfired off a note to the goofy Bee saying he’d just done a google on "John Doolittle and Abramoff" and of the 20,000 hits resulting…none were from The Bee. Block, a veteranjournalist, was blown away at how the Congressman’s hometown newspaper had missed this story.

As I read the Bee’s… Read More

My least favorite legislator—Senator Jackie Speier, a Democrat from the Bay Area—wants to change the lieutenant governor’s office from a “do-nothing” office into an activist office which has its hands in higher education and consumer issues. In fact, she thinks the lieutenant governor should be the "guardian of higher education in California.”

Everyone who runs for the lieutenant governor job wants to make it more important than it is. Frankly, to make it a more valuable job, we should run the governor and lieutenant governor on the same ticket…but that’s another topic. Mostly, what the state doesn’t need is Jackie Speier in… Read More

The early frontrunner for our “Geena Davis Is On Line One and She’s Steamed” award is Jackie Speier, the Bay Area state senator who’s running for Lieutenant Governor.

Interviewed by the Oakland Tribune, here’s how La Jackie spins why she’s not running for the job but, instead, the chump change that is lieutenant governor: “I don’t think the electorate in California is quite read for a woman governor.”

I’m sure Dianne Feinstein would agree. Or the junior senator from New York, who’s coming soon to the Bay Area to promote her presidential prospects.

Speier says she wants the duties of “loot-guv” to include being the “‘guardian of education’, the overseer of the State Senate, and an advocate for consumer protection.”

Someone should tell her it’s a short walk from “guardian” to “gourdian” — in this case, the gourdian knot that is Sacramento’s over-meddling in education.

At present, the Governor, the Legislature, the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of… Read More

Last week, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reached outside of his own political party, tapping former California Democrat Party Executive Director Susan Kennedy to be his new Chief of Staff. Kennedy has been serving the last couple of years as an appointee of recalled Governor Gray Davis to the Public Utilities Commission, taking that post after having served as Davis’ Deputy Chief of Staff. Kennedy’s bizarre connections made for unique post to the FR blog.

I’ve written about this appointment a few times, as well as a recap of a conversation I had with Governor Schwarzenegger here.

I can tell you that I continue to get a steady string of e-mails from folks were are quite upset over the appointment – now well over a thousand of them. It was… Read More

Former State Assemblyman Mike Briggs (R) is contemplating yet another political run, this time for his old City Council seat in Fresno, District 1. A brief background: Briggs served one term on the City Council before running for State Assembly in 1998, winning a contentious four way primary and then breezing through that fall’s general election. Briggs, in his first two years in the State Assembly, made a name for himself in working across the aisle in attempting to craft legislation to help his Central Valley District. Alas, in 2000, Briggs went a little too far. It was his disastrous vote on the 2000 State Budget that set the wheels in motion for California’s fiscal meltdown and massive deficits. Without his vote on that budget bill, California’s fiscal problems wouldn’t be nearly as severe as that are today. I estimate that his vote cost Californians somewhere north of $40 billion in principal and interest.

"Coincidently", a new Congressional District was created by the Democrats right over the top of his Assembly District, again, "coincidently" right after his collaboration with the Democrats on the budget. So, in… Read More

The last several days of discussion hiring have made it clear how tenuous the relationship between the Governor and the Republican grassroots was even before Susan Kennedy was hired. As I noted on my Wednesday posting, these ideological differences have existed from the very beginning of the recall campaign. Many conservatives chose to overlook their differences with Schwarzenegger because of their desire to get rid of Gray Davis, others decided that his positions on the car tax and drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants were enough to overshadow other areas of disagreement, and some were drawn in by the celebrity star power that Arnold radiated on the campaign trail. But whether it’s Kennedy, a tremendous bond measure proposal, or other issues, it’s clear that Republican conservative activists are angrier than they’ve been in over a decade.

So my question is: now what?

The business/lobbying community is supporting Kennedy’s hiring: they’ve been in the newspapers talking about her pro-business credentials all week. It would be one thing if the GOP ideological base and donor base were both furious with… Read More