• John Myers recaps the latest expenditure figures in the top legislative races. Unsuprisingly, the lone Senate race was the costliest race so far. Currently over $8.5 Million has been forked over for little ol' SD-19. The split between the two parties is pretty close on that one, but the biggest spender so far, according to the FPPC, is Californians for Jobs and Education. The Chamber of Commerce provides most of that money. In the Assembly, AD-80 is the most expensive race at almost $6 million. Manuel Perez is the preferred beneficiary of a bunch of that IE money, mostly from teachers and service employees.
• A coalition led by Change To Win has sent a letter to Arnold Schwarzenegger asking that he assign nonessential public employees to help at the polls on Election Day to facilitate the expected high turnout and long lines. You can read the letter, which is quite good, at the link.
• The Governor formed a commission to study the tax structure. The idea was first put forth by Speaker Karen Bass, but this commission better do its job in, well, how's a week sound? Now, hop to it.
• Some athletes not to idolize: Jeff Kent (Dodgers) gave $15K to Yes on 8, and Philip Rivers (Chargers) gave $10 K to Yes on 4.
As Brian hit earlier today, these are tough times for the California Yacht Party. There are competitive races in the state Legislature, in particular the Assembly, in over 30% of the seats currently held by Republicans. Democratic allies are obviously feeling excited about these races as well, as the independentexpenditures have jumped. Here's my list of the top races in order of likelihood of a flip:
ASSEMBLY:
1) AD-80. Manuel Perez (D) is poised for victory in this Palm Springs-area seat. The polls have shown double-digit leads. LIKELY DEM.
2) AD-78. Marty Block (D), the recipient of a lot of that largesse from the IE's, is not in an easy race with Republican John McCann (not McCain) by any stretch. The ads have been tough on both sides and the California Dental Association is unusually interested in knocking off Block. But it's a Democratic year and the top of the ticket should help him. LEAN DEM.
3) AD-15. The big news here is that Ed Chavez, the Republican mayor of Stockton, endorsed Joan Buchanan for this seat. Chavez is a moderate and a former Democrat, but an endorsement like this in one of the bigger cities in the district is helpful. Buchanan looks strong. LEAN DEM.
4) AD-10. Calitics Match candidate Alyson Huber has her very first ad on the air, attacking her opponent Jack Sieglock for being a "career politician." It's funny, too (although I think everyone has to stop with the I'm a Mac/I'm a PC parodies). The response from the Sieglock camp has been to call Huber a carpetbagger, but considering she's lived in the area and went to college there before transferring to Cornell, that hit doesn't make a lot of sense. Unions are spending big up here. I think this one goes late into Election Night. TOSS UP.
5) AD-26. Jack O'Connell just endorsed John Eisenhut, and the state Democratic Party obviously has some numbers it likes - they just poured $300,000 into the race. There's going to be a major flooding of the district with cash in the final week, and Eisenhut has a 5:1 cash-on-hand advantage. I really think this one is close, with Bill Berryhill slightly favored. SLIGHT LEAN REPUBLICAN.
6) AD-36. It really would be incredible to pull off this race. A Democrat has not represented Palmdale in this seat since 1974. But Linda Jones has a real chance to pull this off. Republican Steve Knight is an LAPD officer and he's still favored, but I'm hoping against hope. This is the tipping point race. LEAN REPUBLICAN.
7) AD-37. Ferial Masry's third try to unseat Audra Strickland (R) is getting a lot of residual help in this race from the hotly contested Senate contest in SD-19 between Tony Strickland. I don't see a lot of people voting for one Strickland and not the other, so it's even more helpful in this case. Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star thinks the race is tightening - he's seen Strickland release several mailers and the Democratic Party play a bit on Masry's behalf. Alberto Torrico and Karen Bass have been in the district. This is a sleeper. LEAN REPUBLICAN.
8) AD-02. The only reason this is up there is because the guy the Republicans put up may not live in the district.
A claim that Republican Assembly candidate Jim Nielsen doesn't live in the district in which he's running has apparently led the secretary of state's office to refer the case for prosecution.
Complainant Barry Clausen of Redding received a letter from the state office, dated Tuesday. The one-page notice says it has concluded its investigation against Nielsen and referred the case for prosecution to the state attorney general's office.
Going to the AG's office is pretty far down the road. Paul Singh might just back into this race. LIKELY REPUBLICAN.
9) AD-59. Anthony Adams is actually an incumbent, making this a more difficult battle. But Bill Postmus' explosion in San Bernardino county has soured the reputation of Republicans in the district, and Donald Williamson, the San Bernardino County assessor, has a decent profile. This is certainly on the far outside edge of being competitive. LIKELY REPUBLICAN.
10) AD-66. There's still the idea that Grey Frandsen can steal this seat for the Democrats, and while it's unlikely against incumbent Kevin Jeffries, The local Inland Empire paper has kept an eye on this race. It's not out of the realm of possibility. LIKELY REPUBLICAN.
AD-63 and AD-65 have potential as well, but this time I think they're SAFE.
SENATE:
1) SD-19. This is just an epic battle with loads of cash on both sides, mainly because it's the only seat worth playing in for the State Senate. The Ventura County Star endorsed Hannah-Beth Jackson over Tony Strickland, and she used some humor to mock Strickland's endless attack mailers. It's going to be a long night waiting for this one in Ventura and Santa Barbara County. TOSS-UP.
Neither campaign would release its polling numbers, but both acknowledged that the affluent, heavily Republican coastal district that has primed Rohrabacher for victories in excess of 20 points in every election for the last decade will not be quite as friendly to the GOP candidate this year.
General frustration with the Bush administration, which has overseen the rapid deterioration of the American economy, is one of the biggest factors in heralding the turnaround for Democrats, according to UCI political science professor Carole Uhlaner.
"Given the combination of a strong, well-known current official with good funding and the change in the national tide there's a chance that Rohrabacher could lose," Uhlaner said.
And our pal Todd Beeton of MyDD writes up the great event for Debbie I attended yesterday. But the pivotal moment of the campaign might be tomorrow at 11:15am. Dana Rohrabacher and Debbie Cook will debate for the only time in the campaign. We all know that when Crazy Dana opens his mouth, bad things happen for him. We've seen on a national level what can happen to candidates with loose lips and an extremist ideology - ask Michelle Bachmann. So we'll be monitoring the debate tomorrow.
• CA-03: For some reason, Bill Durston is taking very seriously the Sacramento Bee's endorsement of Dan Lungren. Through his outreach to supporters, the letters to the editor in the wake of the endorsement were entirely on Durston's side. I don't think these newspaper endorsements mean much, but it is something incumbents can use in their advertising, so it does have an impact. And frequently these local editorial boards are pushing a conservative agenda that is resistant to change.
Speaking of debates, Lungren and Durston also have one tomorrow. So there should be a lot of post-debate highlights to discuss.
• CA-04: I tend to think that this story, flagged by Dante over the weekend, is just devastating for Tom McClintock, so I'm going to post it again.
Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican in a Democratic-dominated state Legislature, is the only state lawmaker to fail to shepherd a single piece of legislation into law in the last two years.
Not that he seems to mind [...]
"I came to the conclusion a long time ago that minority legislators have a choice," said McClintock, who has served for 22 years in Sacramento. "One is to tinker at the margins and win very minor victories on unimportant matters and the other is to try to drive the public policy debate on major issues, sacrificing legislative victories for broader policy victories."
I think America has had just about enough of obstructionist ideologues with no interest in governing. If the Brown campaign plays this right, McClintock is toast. This invalidates his entire candidacy. It doesn't surprise me that wingnuts are trying to wrap social issues around Brown's neck to try and distract from this. But at a fundamental level, Tom McClintock is telling the voters of CA-04 that he won't lift a finger in Congress for them. Since the Democrats will retain the majority, McClintock as a Congressman would be a press release machine without even trying to pass legislation. It's not his job, he thinks.
That is a death rattle for McClintock.
• AD-15: If Dianne Feinstein is popular anywhere, it's out in districts in the Central Valley like AD-15, and so her endorsement of Joan Buchanan is notable, also because she's a habitually lazy campaigner and doesn't do much for Democratic candidates historically. She's also endorsed Fran Florez in AD-30 and John Eisenhut in AD-26. This is the region where her endorsement can have the most effect.
• AD-36: Here's a good piece from Dick Price about Linda Jones, the longshot candidate out in this district in the Antelope Valley. She is a special ed. teacher in Palmdale and a board of Trustees member, looking to become the first Democrat to represent this area since 1974. She sounds good to me:
Indeed, after putting up token opposition in recent races and losing by landslide margins, Democrats have finally leveled the playing field, narrowing the difference between Republican and Democratic registration to just 1.6%, according to the Jones campaign. Earlier this year, the Antelope Valley Press reported that 74% of new voters were registering as Democrats, compared to just 4% as Republicans, with the remaining registering as "decline to states."
The region's dramatic growth has not come without costs.
"Jobs here are either in aerospace or retail, so often people have to go into Los Angeles for work," Jones says. "A third of the people are commuting downtown-that's hard on people, their families, their marriages, their pocketbooks, their health."
In Sacramento, Jones would work for a "Green Jobs" initiative, diversifying the Antelope Valley workforce, for example, by fostering much-needed solar and wind power industries that would create good-paying local jobs so fewer people would have to undertake the brutal commute downtown.
It would be incredible to win this seat.
• AD-10: The Sac Bee thinks that the race between Alyson Huber and Jack Sieglock will come down to turnout:
The game-changer for Alyson Huber or Jack Sieglock could be voter turnout to cast presidential ballots, said Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of California Target Book, which handicaps legislative races.
"How they vote for Obama probably will be the most important factor," Hoffenblum said of 10th District residents, who tend to lean to the right - but by a dwindling margin.
The GOP's edge in registered voters has fallen the past four years from 6 percentage points to just 2, giving Democrats an outside chance of an Assembly upset if Obama's draw is decisively higher than McCain's, Hoffenblum said.
Well that's just devastating to Sieglock, because the excitement gap is much higher for Obama. Then again, he won't be doing a lot of GOTV in California, so Huber's going to need to run a strong operation of her own. The two candidates are even in fundraising, but Huber is getting major IE help.
• SD-19: The money is pouring into this race, as it's the only one contested on the Senate side. Tony Strickland has outraised Hannah-Beth Jackson by about $3 million to $2 million, but 53% of Strickland's take is from business PACs. Meanwhile, Strickland dropped an illegal mailer:
Tony Strickland has reached a new low in his dishonest campaign against Hannah-Beth Jackson. Yesterday, voters in the 19th District received a mailing from Strickland's campaign titled "Hannah-Beth Jackson's Economic Plan." Inside, the mailing contained Strickland's predictable false charges about Hannah-Beth Jackson and taxes.
The mailing was clearly designed to look like it was coming from Hannah-Beth Jackson's campaign.
There are two arguments against Prop. 11. One is that in 60% of the regions of the state, no amount of gerrymandering is going to create a competitive seat (and that's all this redistricting measure would accomplish - gerrymandering under another name). I live in Santa Monica. I have yet to get a legitimate answer about how to incorporate my 70-80% Democratic city into a contiguous region and make it competitive. You go South and there's Venice and the South Bay, and by the time you get to a Republican pocket the district is too large to include them. You go north and there's Malibu and the Palisades and blue cities up the coast. You go east and there's Los Angeles, with liberals everywhere. You go west and you're in the ocean.
The other argument is that the other 40% of the state actually has the potential for competition, and the district boundaries are indeed not constrictive. Demography is destiny but it is not static. People die, people are born, people achieve voting age. People move into cities, others move out. This demographic shift has been occurring for a while now, with the eastern counties moving back to the Democrats, and it's reaching a critical mass in 2008.
Until recently I considered the drive for a 2/3 majority in the Assembly and the Senate to be a two-year project, culminating with a new Democratic governor in 2010. That is still true in the Senate, thanks to Don Perata's bungling of races in SD-12 and SD-15. Honestly, he should be indicted for his failed leadership, forget the corruption. But in the Assembly, we absolutely have the chance to get a 2/3 majority, and everyone is starting to recognize that.
SACRAMENTO - The sliding economy and other factors are giving a lift to Democrats in key legislative races that are coming down to the wire, according to consultants working with those races.
In polls that ask whether likely voters would vote for a generic Democrat or Republican in five state Assembly districts with open seats, Democrats get the nod in all five.
What's more, in two seats held by Republicans - Assembly Districts 38 and 63 - a generic Democrat vs. Republican race is a dead heat, according to the consultants, who hosted a background briefing for reporters Tuesday.
That would be seven races, and six seats are needed for 2/3.
This has been increasingly clear over the past several months. Manuel Perez has been pulling away in his race in AD-80 against Gary Jeandron with his transformative message of social and economic justice. Marty Block has been outspending his opponent John McCann in AD-78 by over 8:1 in TV advertising, although McCann is benefiting from IEs, including, bizarrely enough, the California Dental Association. Between those two plurality-Democratic seats, and the competitive race in AD-15 with Joan Buchanan, 3 seats looked like a good haul.
The Antelope Valley, the vast open land between Los Angeles and San Bernadino counties typically isn't very hospitable territory for Democrats for the legislature. It's the home of the hard-right couple of George and Sharon Runners, who, between them, have occupied the 36th district Assembly seat for more than a decade. No Democrat has held the seat since 1974.
This year, things might be a little different. Democrats have nearly evened the registration gap, down to just a two percent GOP advantage compared to eight points just two years ago.
Enter Linda Jones, a Westside Union School District trustee and a Vice president of the Antelope Valley School Boards Association, who is making a hard run for the seat. She is taking on Palmdale City Council member Steve Knight, a former LA police officer.
Jones is no sacrificial lamb. She's been running full throttle for months, backed by labor, educators, and African-American groups. Knight, a former LA police officer, is a cookie-cutter Republican running on illegal immigration, a no tax pledge, and a strong opponent of gun control.
We can win that race. Eric Bauman tipped me off to it three months ago.
AD-37, with Ferial Masry running against Audra Strickland, is winnable too, especially if she gets a draft off of Hannah-Beth Jackson's overlapping State Senate race. And AD-63 is even on a generic ballot, according to Democratic consultants. And AD-66 could be a surprise on election night, thanks to a strong candidate in Grey Frandsen, a former employee of Russ Feingold. If you add that up, you're talking about 9 of the 32 Assembly seats held by Republicans in play, over 30%. So does that sound like gerrymandering to you? A progressive wave makes redistricting talk look ridiculous.
Alberto Torrico is giving the soft sell, but this is a great opportunity. It's a wave election, and every new voter that Obama turns out in California is a likely candidate to vote the Democratic ticket. Every new voter registered by a Congressional candidate might vote for a Democrat in the Senate and Assembly. And it's not as easy for Republicans to play defense in such an environment. They have the dismal national economic picture and the state budget crisis to contend with, and they're out of money.
If there was no excuse yesterday, there's REALLY no excuse now. This is the time. If the laws of the state government are designed to prevent change, if they force us to meet "unreachable" goals, then we reach them.
• CA-11: Apparently trying to win some kind of award for the worst attack website in history, Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report (a terribly designed website in its own right) has put together One Term Is Enough, in all of its way-too-large masthead, ridiculously-spare with no action items or columns, design out of Quark X-Press glory. Man, that's ugly. And I think the focus on Jerry McNerney's earmarks, given the summer of scandal that Dean Andal has lived through which is entirely about a construction contract with a community college (if he was in Congress, that would be, basically, an earmark), is kind of silly. Meanwhile, McNerney is up with his first ad of the cycle, focusing on his work on behalf of troops and veterans.
• AD-80: As soyinkafan noted, Manuel Perez and Gary Jeandron had a debate where Jeandron stated his support for a tax increase in Imperial County. That's not likely to help him with the conservative base, but clearly Jeandron understands that he has to move to left if he has any chance to win this seat. The Palm Springs Desert Sun has a debate report here.
• SD-19: Tony Strickland's latest endorsement is Erin Brockovich, of all people. However, this could be less of a reach across the aisle as it appears.
Ventura County Star columnist Timm Herdt got Strickland's Democratic opponent Hannah-Beth Jackson on the phone, who said she was "a little surprised" by Brockovich backing her opponent.
While Brockovich says she is a Democrat in the ad, she writes on her blog that she's ready to leave the party and become an independent.
"I am ready to turn because both parties are acting foolish and judgmental and attacking," she writes.
She also has kind words for GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
"I am proud to be a member of the same Strong Woman's Club that Sarah Palin is in." Brockovich writes.
• AD-15: As has been noted, Joan Buchanan released her first campaign ad of the cycle. Her opponent Abram Wilson responded with his own ad, also biographical in nature, and his campaign has questioned the Buchanan spot and her commitment to fiscal responsibility. I suppose signing a "no-tax" pledge is the height of responsibility, then.
• AD-30: We were all expecting it, and now Nicole Parra has officially endorsed Republican Danny Gilmore in the election to replace her. This is a family fight moved into the political sphere - the Parra-Florez feud is well-known.
Parra's support of Danny Gilmore angered Democratic Party leaders, but comes as no surprise because she has been praising Gilmore for months.
"I will endorse Danny Gilmore in the near future and I will campaign for him and do commercials," Parra said in an interview. Gilmore, a retired California Highway Patrol officer from Hanford, is running against Democrat Fran Florez, mother of state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, a longtime Parra rival.
• LA Board of Supes: Turns out that not only is Bernard Parks turning to Republicans to help him get elected over progressive State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, but for ten years he was a member of the American Independent Party (!).
According to voter registration forms certified by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder:
Bernard Parks left the Democratic Party and registered as an American Independent on February 12, 1992 - just in time to miss the opportunity to vote for President Bill Clinton.
He registered again as an American Independent on August 9, 1996.
President George Bush was elected in November 2000 - but Parks still wouldn't become a Democrat for nearly a year and a half.
Parks was fired as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department on April 9, 2002. Shortly thereafter, he began to prepare to run for Los Angeles City Council, and re-registered as a Democrat on May 30, 2002. Less than a year later, he was elected to the City Council.
That is very strange, especially for an African-American to sign up with a party which is the legacy of George Wallace.
Here is Part 3, the last part of my analysis of this fall's elections in California, which will cover the races for the U.S. House, State Senate, and State Assembly seats in Southern California, and summarize which races we need to win.
Here is Part 2, which covered the U.S. House, State Senate, and State Assembly races in Northern and Central California: http://calitics.com/showDiary....
Things are happening very quickly in the most hotly contested campaigns in California. Here's an update:
• CA-04: Watching himself falling behind in the race to replace John Doolittle, perennial candidate Tom McClintock decided to borrow one of his predeccesor's smear campaigns and release an ad claiming that Charlie Brown dishonored servicemen by appearing at an anti-war rally.
The idea that wearing a camouflage jacket constitutes being "in uniform" is ridiculous, and so is the idea that a retired military officer has no free speech rights. But the idea is to smear Charlie as some kind of radical leftist and anti-military, despite Brown's long record of supporting veterans and McClintock's longer record voting against them.
The ensuing press conference put on by the McClintock campaign was a wild affair.
SACRAMENTO - A press conference on congressional candidate Charlie Brown's actions in 2005 at the home of an anti-war display nearly descended into conflict itself, with disruptions before, during and after the event and a near-appearance by police officers [...]
But before the event even began, a handful of Brown supporters - accompanied by Brown's campaign manager, Todd Stenhouse - were asked to leave so that they wouldn't cause a disruption.
One man loudly protested that as a military veteran and the father of an active-duty U.S. soldier, he felt he could stay. "This is not Russia," he said.
McClintock campaign consultant John Feliz and Stenhouse eventually got the man to agree to leave, but not before security at the Hyatt hotel where the press conference took place made calls to Sacramento police to remove the man [...]
But a third man who was with the veterans pointed out that Brown was within his First Amendment right to do so, prompting Feliz to ask him to leave as well, while also saying Brown should re-enlist and face a court martial for his actions.
The man, who gave his name as Bret Sherlock, said afterward that he attended because he was tired of non-veterans like McClintock smearing veterans like Brown.
"Did he do anything illegal?" Sherlock said of Brown, adding that if anyone should be able to protest the war, it should be Brown, as both a veteran and a father of a soldier who has served four tours of duty in Iraq.
McClintock campaign spokesman Bill George said the video came from a "concerned citizen." Neither McClintock nor Brown appeared at the press conference.
After the press conference concluded, Stenhouse tried to give McClintock's campaign a pledge to join a Brown program that donates 5 percent of Brown's campaign contributions to nonprofit community groups that work with charities.
Feliz angrily took it and threw it down without looking at it.
They don't want to talk about issues. So McClintock tries to smear a decorated veteran to win an election. Typical.
The California Target Book released its August "hot sheet" listing potential competitive seats throughout the state legislature. Well, two can play at this game. Here are the competitive seats as I see them and a little precis about them:
State Senate
1. SD-19. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D) v. Tony Strickland (R). Sadly, thanks to Don Perata's bungling and undermining this is likely to be the only competitive race out of the 20 up for election in the state Senate. The good news is that it would be an absolute sea change to replace Tom McClintock with a true progressive like Hannah-Beth Jackson. With Ventura County's registration flipping to Democrats over the past year, Ronald Reagan country is no longer solidly red. Hannah-Beth has been actively courting voters at community events (there's a BBQ in honor of the "Gap" firefighters on Sunday) and she's wrapped up lots of endorsements. With this being the only competitive race, expect it to be costly, as both sides throw millions into capturing the seat. A win here would put us one seat away from a 2/3 majority in the Senate.
If you read the reader diaries column in April and May in this space, you would have noticed a somewhat antagonistic relationship between Greg Pettis supporters and Manuel Perez supporters during the Democratic primary for AD-80 in the Palm Springs area. It was probably more pronounced on the Interwebs, but I'm told from those in the district that there wasn't a whole lot of love there on the ground, either. Now, with the primary over, it appears that Democrats are coming together to take back the seat in the fall.
If Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can make peace, we anticipate Greg Pettis and Manuel Perez can, too.
An olive branch was extended between the former Democrat rivals last week when Richard Oberhaus - campaign manager of Pettis' failed bid in the 80th Assembly race - announced he was joining Perez's camp.
"He endorses the ideals that we all hope and dream will be implemented in Sacramento," Oberhaus said in an e-mail announcing his plans.
"I shall implement all the strategies that are necessary to make this seat turn from red to blue."
While Pettis hasn't publicly endorsed, this move by his campaign manager and, as the article notes, several of his volunteers suggest that Democrats district-wide are committed to working for victory.
By the way, with less than 100 days until the election I am going to start a "drive for 2/3" legislative roundup. I was talking with some leading Dems in LA County over the weekend and they told me about some off-the-radar Assembly possibilities, particularly in the Inland Empire region. Did you know that Democrats are now within 1,500 votes of making San Bernardino a Democratic county? Last year that was a 35,000-vote majority. We need to turn them out, of course, but with a favorable top of the ticket we're going to see some surprises in the Assembly (the Senate is a tougher nut to crack).
As you know, we need 6 seats in the Assembly to reach a 2/3 majority, and the latest news shows that one of those six is looking good.
I just got the results of an internal poll taken in AD-80 which shows Democrat Manuel Perez with an 11-point lead over Gary Jeandron in the seat currently held by Republican Bonnie Garcia.
AD-80: poll conducted June 10-12, 2008.
Sampling error is +/- 4.9%.
Manuel Perez: 47%
Gary Jeandron: 36%,
18% undecided.
The generic ballot tracks with the poll, as 49% desire a Democrat in the Assembly, to 36% for a Republican. The registration advantage is in the double digits as well, and the polling memo notes that almost 40% of DTS/Independents and nearly 20% of Republicans are Latino. Perez is the right fit for this district. And once bio material is presented, Perez' lead jumps to 52-39. Perez' name ID is higher in the district, too.
Best of all, Perez is a better Democrat, a transformational progressive who will be a real asset to the Assembly and not just a cog in the wheel.
This is not only good news for Perez, but Julie Bornstein as well. I fully expect Perez to have a strong grassroots operation throughout the district, and where that overlaps with CA-45, that means more Democrats coming out to vote.
Coachella, CA - Early this morning Manuel Perez declared victory in the Democratic primary in the 80th Assembly District. Perez won an overwhelming victory by building a strong multi-ethnic and diverse coalition in Riverside County and Imperial County.
"People power made the difference in this election," declared Democratic nominee Manuel Perez. "My message of hope and values resonated across both counties as voters yearned for new leadership, new energy and common values."
Progressives around the state could really learn from this guy. I met Manuel Perez almost a year ago and was really thrilled by the transformative nature of his candidacy, someone who understands the issues facing California but can also put together the progressive argument in a broad and powerful way. Plus he can reach out and help build a new generation of Hispanic leadership in the desert area that will leave its mark long after he's out of the picture. Mark my words, there's a leadership position in this guy's future, sooner rather than later.
The great thing is that the best chance we have for a pickup in November is not a Lou Correa-type Democrat but a real fighter for progressive values. You don't have to be afraid of your beliefs, you can speak to them and win. That's what Perez' victory signifies.
Periodically between now and the primaries on June 3, I'll be checking in with some brief election news.
• CA-04: Charlie Brown has released his first ad of the cycle. It's a bio spot, and it's a good one.
I would have liked to have seen some specifics about the veterans care challenge, but I understand that it's well-known inside the district so maybe the allusion to it was all that was necessary. Certainly he's taking an above-the-fray stance in the midst of the brutal primary on the other side. I like it.
• AD-80: I bet you didn't to see CNA and SEIU supporting the same candidate in virtually anything, especially at this sensitive time, but both of them have come out in favor of Manuel Perez, in addition to the California Medical Association PAC.
• At Election Track, you can follow contributions to all of California's candidates as we head to the primary.
• CA-08: Cindy Sheehan says she has $130,000 for her challenge to Nancy Pelosi, running as an independent.
• SD-03: Here's a Joe Nation ad (over the flip) focusing on the environment. Is this running anywhere?
This is actually a pretty important weekend for Congressional and legislative Democratic candidates across California. State party delegates will get together tonight and Saturday in pre-endorsement conferences to vote whether or not to endorse particular candidates for the June primary elections. There's been a lot of organizing to woo delegates into endorsing one candidate or another, even in races where there is no opponent. Every delegate gets one vote in Congressional districts, Senate districts and Assembly districts, based on where they live. These endorsements become the official Democratic Party endorsement if a candidate receives 70% of the vote (If a candidate gets between 50 and 70 percent, it goes to caucuses at the state party convention in two weeks). UPDATE: That's the short version; the long version is below.
And then their names get sent out on all Democratic mailers, and that's not a little thing. Endorsed party candidates are in a very strong position. It doesn't mean the voters won't have their say, but it's a big help. In fact, there's a credible argument to be made that the party shouldn't endorse one Democrat over another in a primary. But that's the system we have now.
Throughout the weekend, it'd be good to hear from those party officials and delegates with reports on who, if anyone, received endorsements in the various districts. I'm particularly interested in AD-80, AD-78, SD-03, and some of the Congressional seats with multiple candidates like CA-24 and CA-42, among others.
I am firmly committed to getting a 2/3 majority in both houses of the state Legislature by 2010. Fabian Nuñez believes that, in the Assembly, we can get halfway there by November.
Speaking at the Sacramento Press Club yesterday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez said Democrats should add three seats to their 48-32 majority in the California Assembly in November's elections.
Nunez made the prediction after new figures from the Secretary of State show a surge in Democratic registrations in all but two Assembly districts, including three held by incumbent Republicans who will be forced to leave office.
They include the desert/Riverside area seat held by Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, the San Diego seat of Assemblywoman Shirley Horton, and the Contra Costa/Sacramento Delta seat held by Assemblyman Guy Houston.
These are clearly the three seats to target. AD-80 (Garcia's seat) has some excellent candidates on the Democratic side, including Greg Pettis and the Hispanic Barack Obama, Manuel Perez. We have good candidates in AD-78 (Horton's old seat) and AD-15 (Houston's) as well - as those Caliticians in those districts can attest. Plus, we not only have registration advantages, but the advantage of a game-changing Democratic nominee at the top of the ticket (whether it's Obama or Clinton) that will bring new Democratic voters to the process. These three seats are prime opportunities, and there are other Assembly opportunities like Greg Aghazarian's seat (he's also termed out), and more in the Senate (Hannah Beth Jackson's bid in SD-19, the possible Jeff Denham recall, Abel Maldonado's SD-15).
However, I want to highlight this nugget about the way Assembly and Senate elections are managed in California.
If Democrats field strong candidates for these seats, we could be looking at a pickup of 2/3+ seats.
Each of the marquee races are expected to be $1 million+ contests. The new Assembly Speaker will be responsible for raising funds and overseeing the campaigns.
OK, here's the California blog roundup for today. There's no immigration in it; I'm going to save all of the immigration posts (and there are lots) for tomorrow, and combine them with those that people write in the evening. Teasers: Lots of California Democratic Party Convention, 15% Doolittle, CA-04, Paid-For Pombo, CA-11, Republican corruption, this & that.
