The California College Republicans held their yearly convention this past weekend in Los Angeles. With just over 300 in attendance, it was one of the biggest such gatherings in years. Michael Antonopoulos, the current Chairman of the CCRs, was unanimously elected to a second term.… Read More

The Poizner for Governor campaign just released this memo from former Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte:

TO: Supporters FROM: Jim Brulte, Poizner Campaign Chair RE: Poizner Closing The Gap On Whitman DATE: April 23, 2010

*You Heard It Here First*

We are in the final stretch of the campaign and the polls are showing exactly what our campaign predicted.

We have said all along that as the voters begin to focus on the two candidates for Governor, the mile-wide and inch-deep support for Meg Whitman will begin to collapse and support for Conservative Republican Steve Poizner will begin to grow.

That is exactly what we see happening.You will recall the Whitman campaign recently touting public polls that showed Meg with a 49 point lead over Steve Poizner, but they have remained uncharacteristically silent about the recent SurveyUSA poll which shows that her lead has been slashed by more than 50%.

*The latest Survey*

USA public poll shows Meg Whitman's lead down to 22 points, while other private polls conducted throughout California show the race even closer.In reacting to the most recent Capitol Weekly poll, conducted… Read More

Steve Poizner has launched a new ad in his campaign for the GOP nomination for Governor. The ad is below and is part of a major statewide media buy. Below it is a link to the Whitman campaign’s "response" to the ad.

Whitman’s campaign responds here.… Read More

As we hit our 1000th Twitter follower today, ask yourself if YOU are following the FlashReport on Twitter. Since we don’t "work it" that is a whole lot of people that have signed up on their own! Twitter is, hands down, the quickest way to get news from us on California politics. You can check out (and sign up to received) our Twitter feed here.… Read More

The fine folks at the California Jobs Initiative, which seeks a vote of the people on whether to temporarily suspend the draconian regulations created by the passage of AB 32 until the economy improves, sent out a great Top Ten list earlier this week. I thought it worthy of sharing… Top Ten Reasons to Support the California Jobs Initiative (www.jobs2010ca.com) 10. AB 32 will put over a million California jobs at risk. With unemployment at 12.6% and 2.2 million already out of work, now is the worst possible time to knowingly endanger the jobs of a million more Californians. 9. According to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) jobs created by AB 32 will total less than one percent of all California jobs by… Read More

FlashReport friend and contributor Adam Probolsky reports that FR friend John Eastman is leading the race for the Republican nomination for Attorney General, albeit narrowly and with "Undecided" actually leading the pack. According for the Probolsky Poll, Eastman sits at 16.2%, with LA District Attorney Steve Cooley at 12.2% and State Senator Tom Harman at 10.5%. This poll is the latest evidence that the conservative revival taking place across the country – in response to the Obama/Reid/Pelosi attempt to radically reinvent American in their image – is just as strong in California. Because perhaps no other candidate in California has captured the fancy of the "Tea Party" movement than John Eastman. Now as a California Republican Party official, I cannot endorse in the race, but I can observe. And I observe that if there was ever a year when a… Read More

When handicapping legislative campaigns seven weeks out there are several factors to consider. You look at how well a candidate is known in the community (name id), resources available to the campaign (fundraising and volunteers), where the candidates stand on issues important to the district.

In Assembly District 29, currently held by Mike Villines, we have three Republican candidates that would all claim to be the leading candidates in the race. Of those three Dr. Linda Halderman has everything breaking her way right now.

Halderman is a surgeon that spent most of her career treating breast cancer patients. This makes for a compelling story that she has told on local conservative radio station KMJ dozens of times over the past few years. She has some name ID and a compelling and memorable story to tell.

Halderman entered this race in late January and started behind the two other candidates that have been running for much longer. At the last report she had been running for six weeks and raised… Read More

Striking Capistrano Unified School District teachers were ballyhooing today in south Orange County during my drive to Trader Joe’s this afternoon to pick up some chow for Ibo, our real German, German Shepherd.

The strikers looked neighborly enough, almost like a mall crowd, mostly changed into "smart casual" outfits after school for their afternoon of demonstrating. I got to thinking, and contacted Tony Beall, the Rancho Santa Margarita Councilman who has been defending the CUSD "reform" trustees in the labor dispute that pits a school administration that absolutely must control excessive spending and a teacher’s union that will not easily accept that their salaries need to be cut to do so.

Anyway, Tony provided me some URLs leading me to some data I was interested in seeing. I am not a statistician, but what I learned all on my own is that last year, around half of the teachers at CUSD made salaries of $82,245 or more. Since salaries start at around $48,000, and go to a little under $100,000, the labor problem at CUSD seemed pretty evident to me: the district is top-heavy with high salaried teachers. One… Read More