In a spat I had with the Brown campaign, Carla Maranucci of the San Francisco Chronicle told me last month she would not publish substantial facts establishing I was not a “birther” unless I did something like resign as a member of an organization that has sued Obama to see his birth certificate. I told Marinucci and her boss that was McCarthyism and contrary to the Columbia University/New York Times published standards of journalist ethics. But they didn’t do anything about it, making them look like Jerry Brown flunkies to me. But now Marinucci can do something to prove she is not a Jerry Brown flunky, and to help respect the dignity of women who aspire to public service up and down the state. She can call on Jerry Brown to fire Sterling Clifford. Since Brown says he didn’t call Meg Whitman “a whore” on that telephone recording, it clearly must have been Sterling Clifford, his spokesman, whose most recent previous job was working as spokesman for a black female east coast mayor who was convicted of stealing public funds. Sterling “The Liar” Clifford surely was the man in the room yelling that Whitman is “a… Read More

To: Consultants, party organizations, and other interests backing specific candidates, either for pay or for the cause…

You should have checked out your candidate long before this. There are no better resources spent than doing a little internal background and faux opp research on your own potential standard bearer.

Bankrupties, messy family battles, criminal pasts, etc…spend the time to check it all out.

Oh, and make sure youfind out if they were ever witches, and stuff like that.… Read More

Few are aware that some 13% of likely California voters are Asian. That is a huge number. SurveyUSA released its comprehensive results on October 3.This November 2nd., the voting universe looks to be some 60% white, 6% black, 21% Latino with the remaining 13% Asian.

The growing Asian voting influence should be good news for Republicans. Generally, Asian householdshavehigher levels of income, higher education, greater home ownership, more intact families and strong religious affiliations. SurveyUSAshows that Carly isin the margin of error, but the pollreveals thatBoxer has some 46%Asian support over Carly’s 38%.

This is not a newRepublican dilemma.

We can learn from Van Tran. Six years ago he surprised Republicans by winning a hotly contested primary where his Republican opponent accused Van of being Vietnamese! Despite the racial pandering, Van won—largely because he appealed to white conservatives, conservative Latinos and pushed for a huge registration for VIetnamese. Presently, Vietnamese hold some 20% of the registrations in… Read More

The Fresno Bee, in a stunning development, has endorsed Carly Fiorina for US Senate. Read the editorial here.… Read More

This just in from longtime FR friend and senior advisor to the Whitman for Governor campaign Rob Stutzman…

Jerry Brown: Hypocrisy without limits by Rob Stutzman The attorney general of California has called Meg Whitman a “Nazi” and now a “whore.” He’s also insulted a former president of his own party. And that’s all just within the past few months. How many times is Jerry Brown going to have to keep apologizing for his erratic and offensive behavior? This latest incident, a despicable slur left on a voicemail, is not just an affront to Meg, one… Read More

State Senator Bob Dutton (pictured) just confirmed to me that this Monday he will officially assume the office of Senate Republican Leader. FlashReport readers will remember that we broke the news earlier this year that Dutton had been elected by his colleagues to this position, with an understanding that the current leader, Dennis Hollingsworth, and Dutton (close politically allies) would work out the timing for the transition.

The original transition plans called for Dutton to take over as Leader on September 1st. But when that date came around and it was apparently that while in negotiation, there was no state budget, both agreed that it was best to hold off on the transition until the passage of a budget, so as to not change chief negotiators mid-process.

I have known both… Read More

As part of our regular survey of CA voters we often ask questions that others do not. This time we asked about how voters feel about robo calls. No surprise, they hate them.

Please do not mistake my research for my own opinion though. I support the use of robo calls (although never in the practice of conducting legitamate research) for campaigns. They are cheap and especially in response to a late hit, they can be very effective.

However most voters say they don’t even listen to the calls.

Our poll, which can be found here shows that 82% of likely voters say they find the calls annoying and a full 66% say they never listen to them.

Not listening can be a missleading answer. If a call opens with "Hi, this is Meg Whitman…" and then the voter hangs up or deletes the message,at least the impression of Meg calling has been made whether they hear the rest of her message or not.

This leads to an important tactical edict for robo calls: Put the candidates names at the begining of the call. Even if you’ve got Bill Clinton calling for… Read More

It is an outrage and of supreme concern to me and to many other people that the legislature stands poised to vote on a budget today — and still the budget and its trailer bills have not been made public.

I know the broad strokes, as it were, as those have been released. But so much of this massive document is in its details. Doesn’t the public deserve to see and understand the details in a budget before it is adopted? Shouldn’t legislators have the benefit of feedback? The benefit of perspective from those a little further away from the negotiating table?

As an anecdotal example of the devil being in the details, I am fairy sure that this budget includes the "expansion of a fee" that amounts to smacking over two-thirds of seniors in nursing homes that are NOT on government assistance to the tune of $4600 or so every year. This is a harder hit on these seniors than the massive tax increases in last year’s budget. This little "nugget" is in hiding, has not been vetted and legislators should ask… Read More