Poochigian will need to prove his mettle…twice…

Up until this point, Republicans have been able to sit back and enjoy the beginning volleys in the battle between former Governor-turned-Oakland-Mayor-wanna-be- Attorney-General Jerry Brown and up-and-coming-Demo-Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, as they duke it out to become the Democrat nominee for State Attorney General.

Well respected State Senator Chuck Poochigian from Fresno has been enjoying a clear field, raising over $2 million dollars in a show of strength as a candidate. He has been traveling up and down the state, working hard to court grassroots activists and donors alike.

Today in an interview on KPCC radio, Pierre Prosper, who has been serving since 2001 as a war-crimes prosecutor in… Read More

I won’t pretend to have as much background as Mr. Roe on the national ramifications of California’s redistricting initiative. I have found him to be a reliable indicator of national impacts and trends. I’m actually more concerned, though, with the potential ramifications of the redistricting initiative right here in California.

One unpleasant scenario is the passage of redistricting and the failure of paycheck protection. In that case, the number of real legislative targets increases from, say for example, between 3 and 6 to between 10 and 15. GOP resources would probably stay about the same or increase a bit – enough for Republican Leadership to fully fund give or take half a dozen legislative targets. However, Democrat/Union resources, already grossly superior, could always be increased with additional member assessments which would allow them to compete with superior cash in all of the expanded target seats. The result of this uneven fight might well be to eliminate the Republican Assembly delegation’s “veto” power of budgets and other 2/3 votes.

My argument is not that we should not try to pass the redistricting… Read More

Last month, the California Republican Party held its semi-annual convention in Anaheim . By most measures, the convention was a tremendous success for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governor had not only well-timed his “I’m running for reelection” announcement (great news for a GOP that had already endorsed his bid for second term in advance) – but he also came into the convention having just promised to veto a prominent homosexual marriage bill, and at the convention luncheon, he announced his official support for Proposition 75, the Paycheck Protection Measure. Party Chairman Duf Sunheim and Vice Chairman Ron Nehring were very prominent at the convention (as they should be) as well, speaking to groups, at meal functions and at the general session.… Read More

This post rightly shouldbe called Gimme Shelter but that’s just too negative for this positive story…

I’mthinking of the refrain….Every Silver Lining has a Touch of Grey….of the Dead’s bittersweet hit because a very positive eventhappened to some folks who desperately need a sliver lining added to their lives.

Tried to blog via my pda from the homeless shelter I was invited to help at yesterday…couldn’t do it…I’m an idiot…but something very cool happened yesterday nonetheless and I’m sorry it had to wait till this morning to post it.

To be sure, nothing earth shattering like the content Fleischman blogged from that goofy Eagles concert he attended ( I almost quit knowing he likes the Eagles)… but hopefully somebody will find a take away point from this…I hope so…that’s my intent.

I spent the day with a neighbor of mine, a very conservative Texan… blue collar guy, had a tough go of… Read More

Yesterday, I almost coughed up my cereal as I saw, before my eyes, in black and white, that the Los Angeles Times in a Sunday Editorial endorsed the Paycheck Protection measure. Stranger things have happenned, I suppose — but not many!

Today’s featured story on the FlashReport home page is about a publisher from San Diego named James Holman. Holman publishes a thick (over 200 page) alternative weekly paper that goes to almost 200,000 recipients.

His ‘crusade’ is the passage of Proposition 73, the measure on the Special Election Ballot that would require that the parents of a minor seeking an abortion be notified 48 hours prior to a doctor ending the life of the child.

A close and dear friend wrote to me over the weekend, asking why I haven’t said more about Proposition 73 in the FlashReport. She was correct to call me… Read More

Orange County has its own measures on the ballot in November. The most politically charged is ‘D’ which would take Prop. 172 (the statewide half-cent sales tax for public safety) dollars currently allocated to the Sheriff and DA and send some of the new tax increment increases to the Fire Authority. Its a generally boring topic of little consequence. Unless there is a raging forest fire in which case we all want the firefighters to have what ever they need or if there is a kidnapping and we want the Sheriff to have the resources necessary to find the kid alive, or if Robert Blake decided to move to OC and not kill his wife again we would want the DA to have the money to hire expert witnesses.

Basically, on a regular day it really doesn’t matter, only I trust the elected Sheriff and the elected District Attorney and dare I say the elected five member board of supervisors over the appointed couple-dozen member Fire Authority board of directors who are hardly accountable to the public, to spend our… Read More

Lost among the hoopla over the University of Southern California’s 28-game winning streak is this little factoid: the last time the Trojans lost a game, Gray Davis was governor and not Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Trojans’ last loss occurred on September 27, 2003, at Berkeley. A week later, the Trojans began their current wining streak. Three days after that victory over Arizona State, Schwarzenegger won the recall vote. So either USC is Arnold’s good-luck charm, or vice versa.

With the President in California this week — and the governor not by his side — the question is whether Schwarzenegger supports the Administration.

The answer’s obvious: Arnold is pro-Bush. Reggie Bush, that is.… Read More

As I type, Howard Dean is in the Bay Area, preparing for a union-hall rally over in Hayward.

If I were running the no campaign against Schwarzenegger, I’d probably want Dean out here too. You know he’s good copy, so he’s guaranteed earned media today and tomorrow. Besides, labor’s going down hard on Nov. 8 unless it gets all the usual suspects to vote against the reform slate — that includes Deaniacs who walk a fine line between indifferent and incensed.

I highly recommend to the media that they approach Dean events the same as the Bob Newhart drinking game from my college days (you’d chug a beer every time someone on that sitcom said "hey, Bob").

So be on the lookout for these predictable rants:

1) Arnold is a buffer, Teutonic buffer version of Tom Delay;

2) There are almost as many letters in "reform" as there are in… Read More