I am fond of telling people that you have to have a minimum amount of money to get your message out. You don’t have to have all the money, but enough. That amount needed has dropped dramatically. As of now pending the results of provisional ballots, Tim Donnelly leads Chris Lancaster by 40 votes in the 59th. Lancaster had the most money, endorsements and mail. He had the most baggage having been recalled for raising taxes in the early 90’s as councilman. Claremont City Councilman Corey Calaycay followed him in the balloting. And Hesperia School Board member Anthony Riley who had the endorsement of the Adams recall committee and much of the San Bernardino political establishment came in fourth. Came in fourth doesn’t quite explain it. Riley was supposed to win in the San Bernardino County portion of the district; there he came if fifth. He did better on the LA side of the hill. (Lancaster came in second … Read More

I’ve been waiting until after the election to post this special little picture I took with my iPhone on May 2 in San Francisco’s Chinatown at a shop on Grant Avenue. The shop had the usual collection of Chinese vases, furniture, silks and artifacts, but I noticed in a corner of the store a whole little section devoted to Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist party. Being a political junkie, I gravitated to the pile there of "Little Red Books" of Mao’s communist sayings, Mao pins, a couple of Mao statues, propaganda magazines, etc., and, low- and-behold, spotted two stacks of refrigerator magnets with U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama’s picture on them. You can see them in this picture, being marketed right next to the Chairman Mao pins. I wonder if the local Democrats in San Francisco pressured the store owners to give Obama equal time?

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Sadly I received my last piece of campaign mail today, Wednesday, the day after the polls closed, at my home in Dana Point. It was a Poizner piece mailed out under an Orange, Ca bulk mail permit. If someone from that campaign wants to contact me, I’ll send you a scan of the piece. The Dana Point post office is notoriously slow in processing and delivering “red tagged” political mail, which is entitled to First Class priority handling. But arriving a day after the election just adds insult to injury.… Read More

Tuesday night the Valley News in Riverside erroneously reported that County Supervisor Jeff Stone defeated Assemblyman Joel Anderson for the 36th Senate District seat, apparently because the reporter was only looking at the Riverside portion of the results.

A new story has now been posted, without a trace of the incorrect report or a correction.

Here is the first part of the story that was…and wasn’t…and now never existed:

Supervisor Stone declared winner in 36th Senate race Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 Issue 23, Volume 14

MURRIETA –… Read More

The "California Top Two Primary Act," known as Proposition 14, passed with surprising margins in counties across the state yesterday. The campaign for the proposition should be congratulating itself; many political observers did not see this big win coming for Prop. 14.

Under Prop. 14, voters can vote in the primary election for what used to be referred to as "partisan elections" for any candidate regardless of party affiliation of either the candidate or the voter. Candidates can even chose to not disclose their party affiliation on the ballot. For example, and admittedly at the extreme, if the Communist Party qualified as a political party in California and had a candidate running for Congress in say, Congressional District #9 (Berkeley), the candidate could chose to not disclose that significant political affiliation on the ballot.

Lawyers for both political parties will now be focusing on a legal challenge to Prop. 14. I think the fact that candidates can chose to remove information from the ballot about their party affiliation is a significant line of legal attack. It emasculates the political parties. Prop.… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…… Read More

I was very excited to see that my friend Janice Rutherford, currently Councilwoman in the City of Fontana and an aide to Acting Board of Equalization Member Barbara Alby (a for a looong time for Bill Leonard before that) had an awesome election night. Janice is running for San Bernardino County Supervisor — she’s taking on an incumbent, Paul Biane.

When all was said and done, Biane posted a dismal 34.27% of the vote in his re-election bid — this after spending more money, by far, than Janice or anyone else. Clearly Biane’s strategy was to try and "win it all" in June. Coming in right behind Biane was Janice, with 31.21% of the vote. Four other candidates divided up the rest of the vote.

So in the Fall, Biane and Rutherford will face on in a run-off. Conventional wisdom is that Rutherford is now the front-runner. First and foremost, it is unheard of for an incumbent Supervisor to end up in a run-off, but to perform so poorly is really embarrassing. Second… Read More

As is always the case after a major election, there is much more to write about than there is time to write! Look for more substantive analysis on specific races and such, but for this morning, I will take a stab at some overall analysis – all of which will be too brief in any one, but this is an overview, after all. I am not going to be pouring election numbers into this, you can get plenty of that elsewhere. Before I start my run down, I want to echo the praise extended by FR friend Aaron McLear to the Capitol Press Corps who all stepped up in their blogging and tweeting last night. Outstanding. Also a reminder – I am mostly looking at GOP races – someone else will take a closer look at the Dems…

OK, off to the races…

STATEWIDE RACES GOVERNOR: Congratulations to Meg Whitman, and to her (extensive) campaign team. Whitman posted a convincing win over rival Poizner. So much so that Whitman goes into the Summer with significant momentum. I wonder if her first commercials will be up…today?… Read More