The following opinion piece by Scott Wilk was featured in today’s Santa Clarita Valley Signal:

In 1994, I had the honor of serving as chief of staff in the state Assembly.

After exhaustively interviewing applicants for a vacant staff position, I received a call from a friend asking me to interview some kid named Anthony.

When the lanky young man stepped into my office, his smile brightened the room. His enthusiasm was immediately contagious.

… Read More

… Read More

With the nearly $200 million campaign war being fought between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown and the shock and awe television barrage that has resulted, many Californians may not be paying attention to one of the most important elections in the state that could affect everyone’s pocket book and the actual security of your job.

The race is for the post of Insurance Commissioner. The Democratic candidate, Dave Jones, is one of the most—if not the most—liberal members in the State Legislature, and I’m talking about the all-time line ups. He has proposed one of the most extreme ideas for state-mandated health care in the country that makes the costs of Obamacare look like the equivalent of purchasing ice cream cones from Longs Drug Store. The LAO did a cost analysis on one of the single-payer health care takeovers co-sponsored by Jones, and the costs are staggering. State government would have been expanded by nearly two and one half times our current general fund spending AND we would have been saddled with an additional $42 billion annual spending deficit. Payroll taxes would have had to go up by an annual average of… Read More

Five days to go.Let’s face it, here are the only realistic scenarios:

1) You’re going to lose, and absolutely nothing you can feasibly do between now and next Tuesday is going to change that fact.

2) You’re going to win, and nothing your opponent does in the next five days will change that fact.

3) It’s close, and everything you do in the homestretch could have an impact on the outcome. Same for your opponent.

Hindsight in politics being the 20/20 thing that it is, you quite likely don’t know right now which one.So, that means you have to proceed as if it’s number three.

That means three words: Direct Voter Contact.

What are you doing to identify those voters that likely support you, and what are you doing to ensure they have already voted by mail or will vote on Tuesday?*

Simpler said than done, of course, but it really does just come down to that.

*Hint: Yard signs don’t achieve this goal. ###

All of Barry’s… Read More

Republicans are poised to pick up three U.S. House seats in California, which is a big deal since with our highly partisan gerrymandering, it is rare to see a party-flip in a single seat. This portends well for Carly Fiorina, if federal races in California are being caught up in this national sweep for the GOP. The next big “scandal” to rock California politics will be public awareness and repudiation of local part-time elected officials (city councils, school boards, water boards) who are cashing in on full-time employee benefits (Cadillac healthcare benefits or big cash payments to opt out of it, retirement benefits, and the like). In Assembly District 5, the California Medical Association is pumping big bucks into electing a liberal Democrat Doctor into what has been a long-time GOP seat. Apparently the priorities of the CMA are raising taxes, and increasing burdensome government regulation. Everyone has become obsessed with public opinion polling, trying to figure out who is going to win for an office based on each latest survey. I would remind you that the results of a survey are only as good as a … Read More

Here’s our press release from earlier today…We won’t let John Chiang hide from his record.

Thousand Oaks, CA – Today, John Chiang finally decided, six days before the election, to address the issue of placement agents at CalPERS under his watch on the Board of Administration. Those same placement agents have mired CalPERS in a never-ending bribery scandal. While John Chiang sat on the board of CalPERS, millions of dollars were paid to placement agents who acted as middlemen while the pension fund was driven into the ground. John Chiang allowed these middlemen to reap all the benefit while working Californians suffered.

“John Chiang’s people are on full spin over this,” said Strickland spokesman Michael Levoff. “Controller Chiang was in the room while millions of dollars traded hands, but didn’t think anything of it until the Wall Street Journal blew the cover off of the placement agent issue. They want to talk about a bill to clean up the mess, but before it was public, Chiang never said a… Read More

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation has just released a study that evaluates the respective campaign platforms of senate candidates Carly Fiorina and Barbara Boxer. Unsurprisingly, they found Carly’s campaign promises will be much better for taxpayers. “According to a line-by-line analysis from the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF), Boxer’s campaign platform, taken in its entirety, would increase annual federal spending by nearly $16 billion annually, while the agenda Fiorina outlined would reduce the federal budget by nearly $155 billion per year.” The study is broken down by candidate and each of their campaign promises, and has extensive citations. As the press release announcing the study states, it’s hard for voters to know the exact impact of candidate proposals regarding taxes and spending. Are the campaign promises even … Read More

Carla Marinucci complains in the San Francisco Chronicle that the Whitman campaign is charging reporters $2,000 to travel with the candidate. Heck, if that is the cost, Meg ought to charge Marinucci twice as much, $4,000, for the privilege. This is justified, firstly, by the fact that campaigns exist to reach out to voters, not Jerry Brown-flunky newspaper writers. (Notice I said “newspaper writers”. To be called a journalist one needs to have demonstrated ethical standards, well published by the Columbia University School of Journalism.) Traveling news media are a drag and a distraction on a candidate’s ability to communicate directly with voters in the final days of an election. They should pay their own freight, and not look to the people who make the political contributions to support them, instead, let the news media’s advertisers do that! Secondly, Marinucci should be charged extra to make up for printing all the garbage Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford, “The Liar” has spoon feed her. Now that would be fair!… Read More