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

In another year, Carly Fiorina vs. Barbara Boxer would be one of the premier races in the country. This year, it’s not even the most watched race in California, an accolade that belongs right now to the Meg Whitman-Steve Poizner gubernatorial primary.

Ms. Fiorina, who dropped by the Journal last week, has struggled with name recognition and getting her message out. She acknowledged the experimental nature of her greatest publicity hits — her "demon sheep" Internet video, which was aimed at GOP rival Tom Campbell, and the balloon video aimed at Ms. Boxer. Both "served their purpose," she says. One message came through clearly enough: Ms. Fiorina is no fan of big-spending, big-taxing government.

Ms. Fiorina’s first hurdle is the June 8 GOP primary. Polls have her… Read More

This just in from longtime FR friend and Assemblyman Joel Anderson…

Republicans Act to Increase Jobs – Will Democrats? By Assemblyman Joel Anderson This week, the California State Assembly will have a chance to keep more jobs in California. Will the Legislature stand with you and me, or on the side of Arizona, Nevada, and Texas who are luring our entrepreneurs and employees across state lines? I introduced Assembly Bill 2278 to keep high technology business in California. High-paying jobs benefit our state and the skilled workers who do them keep California on the forefront of… Read More

This is May Revise week. For those of you who don’t spend your time being a budget wonk, the May revise is the part of the budget process where the bureaucrats finally put together the numbers from the revenues from last year’s tax returns (remember when you filed those returns last month, and sent money to that major taxasaurus, yeah, that thing that devours your money and gives back what you would usually expect from an animal that eats constantly). This week is when the bureaucrats and budget staff have to face the realities of the budget, and then try to lie to the legislators to get them to pass a budget out of balance. Of course, when a budget is out of balance, it is never because the government is taking in more money than it is spending. It is always because the tax consumers consume more than than the taxpayers pay.

This is also an election year, and there are a lot of Republicans running for office all over this state that voted for budgets in the past, created this current budget mess, and are now trying to hide their responsibility for the current budget crisis. This crisis was not created in the 2010-11 budget (this year’s… Read More

I complained here earlier this year about the Dana Point City Council’s vote to implement a new additional hotel tax and taxing district last year during the middle of a recession and at a time of the highest unemployment in recent state history. The city already imposed a 10% "transient occupancy tax" on top of the 8 3/4 % state sales tax. The new tax adds another $3 a night to a hotel bill. Republicans on the council who voted for it claimed the hotels themselves wanted the new tax. Then, after implementation of the new tax district, the biggest alleged supporter of the tax, the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort, bankrupted itself. I’m sure the new tax had nothing to do with the bankruptcy, but it was a sad poetic justice to the shaky justification offered by tax-raising Republican Lisa Bartlett and Joel Bishop for their votes.

But the Dana Point tax-raisers actions pale in comparison to what is going on in San Francisco. Tourism in San Francisco has been troubled since the 9/11 attacks. And I don’t see The City’s tourism recovering too quickly given the implementation of the 2006 "health" tax that has… Read More

There’s literally so much going on, it’s nearly impossible to know where to start. Nearly…

Unhand me, or I’ll send out a Press Release… The news resulting in the biggest political buzz over the last several days was an "incident" in the 40th Senate District Democratic primary race between Assemblymember Mary Salas and former Assemblyman Juan Vargas, with a cameo by Congressman Bob Filner.

Filner has been known toget a laugh in recent years whenhe walks on stage donning boxing gloves at the annual Congressional Delegation Luncheonput on by the San Diego Chamber. So, when he attended Friday morning’s press conference with Senate candidate Salasso the two could jointlycastigate their agreed-upon nemesis Vargas, someone should have told him to bring a couple of pairs for the campaign workers.

Apparent attempts by Vargas staffers to noisily gain a ringside seat to the presser resulted in a bit of a scuffle, it seems. A couple of hours later, Salas shot out a press release accusing the Vargas campaign of assault, as well as landing one of her people in the… Read More

Traditional Values’ Ben Lopez is on to something good.

Lopez is pushing legislation to enact a Ronald Reagan Day, on Reagan’s birthday February 6 of each year.

AB 2412… Read More

Assembly Republican Leader Martin Garrick just released his weekly radio address… The transcript is below, and below that is a player if you would prefer to listen to his remarks…

Hello, I’m Martin Garrick with this week’s radio address from the State Capitol. This week, I want to share with you a story that illustrates a problem that many job-creating businesses are having in California. A recent article in Forbes magazine highlighted the challenges faced by McAfee, a company that is a shining example of a California success story. McAfee is headquartered in Santa Clara and is a leader in the computer security software business. … Read More

A big chunk of the California Electorate say they don’t care if a candidate regularly uses marijuana on a recreational basis.

A new poll we conducted found that 40% of Primary Election votes don’t care about marijuana use among candidates and seven percent say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who smokes pot. That means that over 50% of voterswould beeither indifferent or more supportive of candidate if all they knew was that he or she did the drug.

There are some pretty big differences when you delve into the numbers. Republicans are less likely to support the pot smoker than Democrats, same for women v. men.

Check out the full report here (after you get some munchies of course).… Read More