Last Friday I attended a lunch sponsored by the Southern California Public Affairs Association (of which I sit on the Board of) in Ontario. Orange County political attorney extraordinaire, Dana Reed, served as the Master of Ceremonies. The featured speaker was the esteemed Sacramento Bee Columnist and Blogger Dan Weintraub. While I don’t always agree with Weintraub, I do think he always brings an honest approach to the topic at hand.

After his recap of the special election (Governor Lost, Unions Won, and Governor in political trouble, yada,yada, yada) the topic turned to the future of print media. As we all know, newspaper circulation is plummeting throughout the nation. Weintraub adroitly pointed out that the newspaper publishers are still using Gutenberg technology in the age of Gates technology. Every morning more and more of us pour the cup of java and head for the computer rather then the porch to get out news. The advent of more powerful PDA’s will assure that this trend continues. Weintraub was one of the pioneering journalists to have a regular Blog and thus has great instinct on the future of news… Read More

I am stunned and saddened that my FR Blog colleague has left me — ME! — off his list of OC Power Brokers. Oh woe betide me! I was so looking forward to adding that testimonial to my promotional materials.… Read More

Those of us who live and work in the political scene are more likely to remember which of the board members on a random school district are up for re-election next year, than our mother’s birthday.

It is in that spirit that I launch the OC Power Broker Series and encourage my fellow FR contributors to do the same in their region. If you landed in Orange County and needed to get a quick lay of the land of government and politics and media or you needed help on a political/government related issue here is the beginning of the list of go to people (in no particular order).

1. Me. I say this not because I am the solutions to your problems/answer to your dreams, but I know one thing for sure–my limitations. Like most of the people listed below, I would never take on a project that was outside their sphere of expertise. Rather true power brokers know when to refer to the right talent.

2. Scott Baugh. As chairman of the… Read More

I’m embarrassed that Congressmen Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat from the Central Valley, would be able to get ‘ink’ in the newspaper attacking the Republican leaders of Congress for running up deficits and poor fiscal management.

"The Republican Party has abandoned fiscal conservatism and embraced a budget system with no accountability," he said. (The short article is linked on the FR main page.)

Why embarrassed? I’m embarrassed for the opportunity lost. That the Republican Party nationally has an elected GOP President and members of our Party hold a majority of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives, yet, there has been growth, not reduction, in federal spending in Washington.

The GOP watched and decried the Democrat controlled Congress who, for years, increased the size and scope of the federal bureaucracy. In 1994, after two years of Bill Clinton, the voters had enough of this irresponsibility, and put Congress in the hands of the GOP. I can understand, with Clinton in the White House for another six years, the challenges of trying to reduce spending (kind… Read More

Here in Orange County, Laguna Niguel Councilwoman Cassie DeYoung is attempting to turn a proposal to build a multi-bore traffic tunnel through the Santa Ana mountains into a re-incarnation of the anti-El Toro airport movement, and thus ride it into the 50th District Supervisor seat that will become vacant next year.

In recent weeks, she has sent out probably 250,000 pieces of mail to voters about the "Terrible Tunnel" asking them to clip and mail anti-tunnel petitons to the Orange/Riverside Major Investment Study Committee – the body studying the tunnel and other proposals to unclog the 91 Freeway. The DeYoung campaign claims around 3,500 voters did send in those petitons.

So it is a something of a defeat for the DeYoung campaign that the MIS Policy Commitee yesterday voted unanimously to move ahead with studying the tunnel. If the committee had dropped the tunnel from further consideration — as it did two other congestion relief proposals —… Read More

Rarely is there actually some exciting floor debate to watch on C-SPAN but Thursday and Friday were exceptions.

Thursday was the debate over the Deficit Reduction Act, a bill to reduce federal government spending by $50 billion. If you saw the debate around midnight, you saw Arkansas Democrat Marion Berry (no, not the former DC mayor) call Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling “Howdy Doody” and youthful Florida Republican Adam Putnam “boy.” That exchange led to a flurry of back-and-forth involving Rep. David Dreier who did receive some criticism for failing to call for Berry’s remarks to be stricken from the record.

But last night was something to behold. Republican leaders, who previously committed to bring Rep. Bill Thomas’s tax reconciliation bill to the floor withdrew the bill. Instead, they chose to call the bluff of Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha’s proposal for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, introduced… Read More

GOVERNOR & LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR SHOULD RUN AS TICKET The California State Constitution provides for the electorate to vote on the offices of Governor and Lieutenant Governor separately, each then being independently elected officials. Often times, this has led to our top two officeholders not only being from different political parties, but it has also resulted in their being virtually no professional relationship between these two top constitutional officeholders. Fresno Bee political writer and columnist John Ellis pens a column today illustrating the lack of relationship between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Cruz Bustamonte.

This is a tragic waste of what could be a key position in the state government. I often cite Florida as a state from which California could learn many things. In the Sunshine State, the candidate for Governor picks a Lieutenant Governor… Read More

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is getting married on November 26th — to his ex-wife! Apparently the two of them have been divorced for the past decade, but have been close as the parents of three children AP reports.

Guess who will be flying out to Maui to "give away the groom"? None other than former Assembly Speaker-turned-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

I don’t know what the wedding colors will be, or the song that the happy re-newlyweds will pick for their first dance — but I tell you one thing is for sure — wherever they hold that reception will be a union shop!… Read More