Late last week the Republican candidates for United States Senate — Tom Campbell, Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina — met face to face at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles for a televised debate. The debate was not aired live, but was broadcast yesterday. But since I assume that most FR readers were focused on celebrating Mothers day, I thought I would give you a chance to watch the debate at your convenience. ABC has it split into three parts, all of which are embedded below! Who won?

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This morning blogged about Senate Republican Leader Dennis Hollingsworth launching a government pension reform website — you can scroll further down the blog to read more on that.

I wanted to draw the attention of FR readers to Hollingsworth’s weekly radio address on the subject of needed pension reform. You can listen to it here, and read the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT You know your family or your business is in serious trouble when your debt is growing faster than your income. Unless you fix the problem, sooner or later you’ll go broke. California’s public employee retirement system is in this fix. … Read More

Curious about California’s broken pension system? Feel free to tip toe around the various solutions, formulas and learn more about the root cause at a new website. Senate GOP leader Dennis Hollingsworth announced the launch of a new web-site designed to become a clearinghouse of useful information that will allow everyone to get perspective on how much government employee unions are fleecing future generations. According to the Senate GOP leader, “Public pension obligations are a ticking time-bomb and many don’t fully understand how devastating these costs are to our state’s fiscal well being.” Agreed. Public employee unions are hurting the future of all Californian’s. That point can not be argued.

According to the press release… “…there are 9,111 retired California government workers who are receiving pensions over $100,000 and according to one recent study, California’s public retirement plans are under funded by more than a half trillion dollars ($536 billion) which equates to a staggering… Read More

I do a fair amount of Independent Expenditure work in California. Often times my clients make more resources available to shape a race than the candidates have available to them. You can thank the intersection of campaign finance reform and the 1st Amendment for that.

This time of year we are all waiting for the voting to start. During the next week we will see what sort of efforts third parties will make to elect or defeat candidates. That is why many of us are looking at the Secretary of State’s website each day for information about committees being formed and expenditures being reported.

So here is my rub.

If someone like me wants to help a campaign like yours — then meet me half way. I can’t call you. I can’t e-mail you. I won’t even return your calls or e-mails.

Most of the time I’m depending on your campaign website to guide me to where the race is going. I’m looking for pictures, themes, logos, examples of your mail, sources for quotes, all that stuff.

Two years ago a client wanted to help in an Assembly race. I could not find a good picture of the candidate anywhere. I had to… Read More

Thursday evening I had the opportunity to attend the taping of the U.S. Senate Republican primary debate. The hour-long debate will air on ABC affiliates throughout the state on Sunday, May 9th. As far as I know, this is the only scheduled television debate with all three candidates before the primary election on June 8th.

Held at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the debate was moderated by Los Angeles ABC anchor Mark Brown. Since readers can watch the debate themselves this weekend, I won’t go into detail about what took place. Although, I live tweeted the entire debate that evening. I will offer a few insights on the general response from the audience (mostly filled with campaign supporters for the respective campaigns), and share some of the feedback I encountered immediately following the debate.

Each of the candidates stuck to their strengths as they squared off. Tom Campbell, ever the professor, provided detailed policy answers to each question. I heard those around murmuring about how knowledgeable he is, and how he always comes across as an expert on technical policy issues.

Chuck DeVore… Read More

Apparently Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco (the former Assembly Republican Leader) is in the midst of a pretty serious re-election challenge from a conservative Superior Court Judge and former County Prosecutor Paul Zellerbach. Check out the message that Zellerbach is pushing out to voters — ouch!

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OK, having been "cast" by my friend and fellow FR blogger Jim Battin in previous JibJab online movie productions, it’s my turn to return the favor…

So we present to you The Empire Strikes Back starring…

As Han Solo — Supervisor John Benoit… As Princess Leia Organa — Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack… As Lando Calrissian — Gary Jeandron and… in his starring role… As Luke Skywalker — Jim Battin!

(Our apologies to Jim’s Coachella Valley neighbors for being cast in this feature, but if it goes viral, maybe there will be residuals!)

The link to the short movie is under this outstanding screen shot of it’s star…

LINK TO THE MOVIE… Read More

Yesterday former Alaska Governor and GOP Vice Presidential nominee turned national grassroots conservative phenomenon Sarah Palin endorsed the candidacy of Carly Fiorina for United States Senate.

This endorsement is a big boost to Fiorina’s candidacy amongst conservatives — and is a significant blow to the campaign of Chuck DeVore. Fiorina has been striving hard to make the case to voters that she is a conservative candidate — but there is no doubt that she is not as conservative as one of her opponents, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Of course, Tom Campbell completely occupies the moderate end of the GOP spectrum, based on his record on fiscal and social issues.

One of the key necessities of a DeVore primary victory is to paint Fiorina as more of a moderate, and there is no doubt that a Palin endorsement of Fiorina makes that task significantly more challenging.

The DeVore campaign did respond to Palin’s endorsement which you can check out… Read More