• A KPIX poll shows Jerry McNerney cruising in CA-11, up 52-41 over Dean Andal. What a golden boy. The D-Trip needs to bug out of this race and put the resources where they're needed, like CA-03, CA-46, CA-50 and CA-26.
• Alyson Huber received the endorsement of the Sacramento Bee in her AD-10 race. In other newspaper endorsements, the LA Times went with some guy named Barack Obama for President. This is their first endorsement in a general election in 30 years.
• The OC toll road agency, which has been pushing the San Onofre State Beach road for years because it would provide such an economic boost, now wants a billion dollar federal bailout because commuters are using their roads less. Roads are costly and no longer profitable. Transit, yes; more roads, no.
• Here's an interesting read from Amanda Marcotte on Prop. 4 and the new rhetoric taken up by the anti-choice forces.
• A reminder: Jim Dean will be in Southern California Sunday appearing with the campaigns of Debbie Cook (CA-46) and Bill Hedrick (CA-44).
8:30 AM: Breakfast fundraiser for Debbie Cook for Congress, $25. At the International Association of Machinists Union Hall, 5402 Bolsa Avenue, Huntington Beach, California 92649.
10 AM: Precinct walking and rally also at the International Association of Machinists Union Hall. For more info, call the Cook campaign at 714-842-6358.
6 PM: Fundraiser for Bill Hedrick with Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, $75. At the Historic El Adobe de Capistrano Restaurant, 31891 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675. Please RSVP to Karen Hinks at 714-848-9395 or khinks-at-verizon-dot-net.
UPDATE by Brian: one more for you. Lane Hudson has an open letter to DiFi on HuffPo challenging her to campaign against Prop 8 in the context of the upcoming Harvey Milk movie. Check it out.
Sunday's edition of the Stockton Record ran a story about the Jerry McNerney campaign's "tracker" of his opponent, Dean Andal. Now, as most of us know, "tracking" is the practice of bringing a videocamera to all of your opponent's public events in the hopes of getting ammunition--either in terms of a "macaca moment" or something as simple as contradictions in the message of a campaign.
Well, as the article points out, tracking is an inevitable and uncontroversial aspect of political campaigning:
I don't see the need for secrecy. But I did not observe any foul play, either. Neither did Brian Klunk, a political science professor at University of the Pacific.
"Campaigns have done 'oppositional research' just about forever," Klunk said. "There's a long lore of this."
Not a lot of controversy here...but Dean Andal doesn't see it that way. Maybe that's because Dean Andal is afraid of accountability and exposure. Regardless, here's what he had to say about tracking--from the very same article in the Stockton Record:
McNerney was tracked in 2007 as he campaigned, presumably by minions of his rival, Rep. Richard Pombo, possibly by other Republicans.
"I've actually told the few people we've hired, anybody who does that would be immediately terminated," Andal said. "Because I don't believe in it."
Now it's time to find out just how much Dean Andal means it.
Here's a video of Congressman McNerney entering the debate in Tracy on Oct. 11th for the CA-11 Congressional Debate.
At about 10 seconds in, you'll notice someone standing on the raised planter area with a videocamera. Seems innocuous enough. But who is that guy?
General: I suspended the monthly ratings because it was ridiculously time-consuming and better to get the information out more timely, but in case you're wondering, here is my impression of the top targets in California for the Congressional races as we stand with 22 days out. My considered opinion is that no incumbent Democrat is in trouble, including Jerry McNerney. As for the Republican-held seats:
1) CA-04: Lean Dem. Charlie Brown has been ahead in multiple polls and actually has a ground game, unlike Tom McClintock.
2) CA-03: Tilt Repub. Bill Durston's poll showing the race as a dead heat raised a lot of eyebrows. Unfortunately people discovered this race too late, but by Election Day I'll bet that the registration numbers are virtually tied and there will not be an immediate call. The smart money for progressives wanting to impact a race should go to Dr. Durston against Dan Lungren.
3) CA-46: Tilt Repub. Debbie Cook is replicating the Loretta Sanchez strategy of ground mobilization that she used to defeat B-1 Bob Dornan. We'll see if she can pull it off against Crazy Dana Rohrabacher.
4) CA-26: Tilt Repub. Russ Warner has been doing a decent enough job and there's a bit of outside support, but David Dreier has a wall of money.
5) CA-45: Lean Repub. This race has also been under the radar, but the district is either #1 or #2 in the COUNTRY for foreclosures, and affordable housing expert Julie Bornstein can stand to benefit from movement toward Democratic solutions on the economy in her race against Mary Bono Mack.
6) CA-50: Lean Repub. This is the permanent tease district in California, and despite Nick Leibham's efforts to shake up the race, I'm not seeing Brian Bilbray taken down right now, especially because he's likely to whip up populist support in his base with his vote against the bailout.
7) CA-52: Likely Repub. It was always going to be an uphill battle for Mike Lumpkin in his race against Duncan Hunter's son running for Duncan Hunter's old seat. I'd like to see better signs here, but I'm coming up empty.
I rate everything else as Safe Republican at the moment. I'll do a legislative targeting in the next campaign update. Now, to the news (on the flip):
I'm going to try and do these once a day. No promises!
• CA-04: In partial response to the kerfuffle from yesterday's deceitful attack ad, Charlie Brown released two radio spots and a TV ad today. His wife Jan Brown narrates the TV spot, which foregrounds Charlie and his son's military service. (Sorry, not embeddable)
The radio spots are both solid attacks on Venturian Candidate Tom McClintock. Two men, two paths contrasts Brown's service and leadership with McClintock's life in politics, and his record on veterans (including donating 5% of his campaign funds) with McClintock's (voting against veteran's funding). Vote is a humorous spot discussing how McClintock can't vote for himself because he won't move into the district. There's also a lot on McClintock's per diem expenses from the State Senate. "L.A. Tom" is the frame they're going with, and they ask, "if he won't vote for himself, why should we?"
• CA-11: State Senator Ellen Corbett and Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi sent a letter to women in Jerry McNerney's district urging them to reject right-wing extremist Dean Andal. His record on women's issues is really retrograde.
To the Women of Congressional District 11:
If you are anything like us, you want a representative in Washington that not only reflects your values, but who also respects you.
Dean Andal just doesn't qualify. In fact, Dean Andal's record on women's issues shows just how out of touch and extreme his views are.
In 1994, as a member of the State Assembly, Dean Andal opposed a common sense law that would have allowed women to wear pants in the workplace instead of being forced to wear skirts and dresses.
Andal also voted against requiring health insurance plans to cover cervical cancer screenings. He even voted against making sure that information about sexual harassment be included in mandatory workplace anti-discrimination posters.
Yet the most egregious affront to women he offered in his short term in the Assembly was his vote to restrict the definition of rape to exclude attacks where an incapacitated woman cannot resist.
And what's worse, Andal's was the only vote in the Assembly against expanding the definition. The only one.
Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, all women should be proud of the progress we have made. That's why it's so important that we don't send someone like Dean Andal to Congress. Someone with a record like Andal's can be counted on to turn back the clock on all we have achieved.
• LA Board of Supes: There's a runoff in this seat between Councilman Bernard Parks and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas. While Ridley-Thomas is a solid progressive who understands the fundamental dysfunction of state government and will fight for progressive values on the powerful Board of Supes, Bernard Parks has hired Republican fixer Steve Kinney to help him win the race. Parks, who has a business-friendly record on the City Council, is receiving help from BizFed, a PAC notorious for pushing the same agenda. The wingnuts at the Lincoln Club have reportedly offered him support as well. At least the choice is now clear to voters - one candidate on the side of the corporate vultures, the other on the side of the people.
• Misc. I should note that Chris Bowers' House race forecast is up, and among California races, he lists CA-04 as a tossup, CA-11 as Lean D, and CA-26 & CA-50 as Likely R. I think he's selling a couple races short, but that's a pretty good conservative estimate.
Before I get into this truth stretching, I've put 2 pictures here. Can you tell who is who? Because I'm pretty sure Dean Andal (right) and John Doolittle(left) are the same person. Seriously, it's quite possible that these two were separated at birth or something.
Andal's constultant, Ray McNally, then goes on to say what he meant to say was that he had better cash on hand. Richman then goes back to the Politicker reporter, who basically says, um, no, Andal said fundraising. Phew!
Anyway, Andal has raised about a million dollars, or so he claims, but CA-11 spans two media markets. And the Bay Area media market is pretty expensive, so Andal will need to do better than that if he hopes to take down an incumbent, even if that incumbent is freshman Jerry McNerney.
It's no secret that the Republicans hoped to blunt the Congressional pain by picking up at least a few seats, and their top target was right here in California. Jerry McNerney has focused on some bizarre priorities, but it's clear that Dean Andal would be a Tom Delay Republican in every sense of the word. Chief among those would be his corruption:
Dean Andal's Congressional campaign continues to be dogged by questions surrounding his role in negotiations for new community college branch campus. Andal's campaign has denied any wrongdoing, characterizing the issue as internal bickering on the board. (Capitol Weekly 9/4/08)
You know, Mr. Andal, most Congress critters wait until they actually get into office to face all these corruption charges. I mean, Reps. Jerry Lewis and Gary Miller could talk for hours about the subject.
With the corruption charges combined with his poor fundraising numbers, times are looking tough for Andal.
Greetings and welcome to the latest installment of the California House races roundup. We're just around 100 days to go until the election, and things are starting to take focus. There are about a half-dozen seats where Democratic challengers have an outside shot at dumping the incumbent, and another six on the watch list in case something spectacular occurs. One thing to note is that the Cook numbers are tied to the 2004 election, and given the demographic changes and cratering of the Republican brand I think they mean significantly less now - it'll be interesting to see how all these districts change in November.
We have plenty of new information to judge these races, including 2nd quarter fundraising reports, national ratings from Charlie Cook and Swing State Project, additional DCCC targets, and the appearance of many challengers at Netroots Nation. So this list is really about who I think has the best chance to retain or take over a seat, not necessarily who should (though that may come through in the writing). Here are some helpful bits of information that I used to help judge.
The activities of Dean Andal, the Republican nominee running against Jerry McNerney for Congress in CA-11, have come up in a grand jury investigation.
This week, the San Joaquin County Civil Grand Jury released its report investigating misconduct by the San Joaquin Delta College Board of Trustees. It found that the Board had "squandered millions of dollars in taxpayer money and breached open government laws by sharing closed-session information to developers outside regular meetings." Tracy Press The confidential information apparently disclosed illegally was given to Andal and his associate, big Republican contributor and Sacramento developer Gerry Kamilos.
It's hard to overstate how pathetic national Republicans have been so far this cycle. Some of their top challengers can't get on the ballot, and the leader of their campaign efforts in the Senate said recently that keeping the Democrats to a gain of eight seats would be a moral victory.
Now there's news about Dean Andal, one of the few challengers Republicans are counting on nationwide, the guy who's supposedly working hard to take down Rep. Jerry McNerney. Only he raised a paltry $11,000 in the pre-primary filing period, and now Congressional Republicans are worried that their golden boy is made of iron pyrite.
Dean Andal, recruited by the GOP with great fanfare to challenge freshman Rep. Jerry McNerney (D) in California's 11th district, is now coming under attack from Republicans in Washington, D.C., for running what they contend is a flawed campaign.
Andal, a former state Assemblyman, is facing increasing criticism for his fundraising and general campaign strategy, with the grumbling emanating from Republicans in the consulting and lobbying communities. Privately, Republicans on Capitol Hill are also expressing concern.
The handful of sources interviewed for this story on Tuesday declined to discuss their concerns on the record. But all are Washington, D.C.-based Republican strategists who had until recently been singing Andal's praises and are intimately familiar with the GOP-leaning 11th district.
"I think the fundamentals are there to pull this off," said one GOP operative. "But Andal still has to run a fundamentally sound race. He hasn't done that so far."
At least he's making all the right hires. Andal's top campaign strategist is Richard Temple. He was last seen as the top strategist to Doug "I Don't Know How To Use A Ballot" Ose, who got smoked in the 4th District primary by Tom McClintock after spending millions of his own personal fortune. Andal won't even have that kind of scratch to work with when he gets pounded in the fall.
This is my favorite quote:
Andal's critics insist that he is not doing enough to win, particularly in the current political environment.
"He's dialing it in," said a native Californian and Republican operative who is now based in D.C. "He's got the attitude of a Member of Congress. He doesn't have the attitude of a challenger fighting to get elected in his district."
Well, the votes are in, the matchups are set, and so I thought it was time for a baseline roundup of where I think the California House races stand as of now. The main pieces of information that are causing me to reset my expectations are the primary results, the April 1-May 15 fundraising numbers and the new registration numbers from the Secretary of State's office. You can track all three yourself:
Hank Shaw of the Stockton Record gives us the lowdown on the Republican Central Valley aristocracy who will be in attendance at the gala:
The new news is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be at the party, too, as will a who's who of local Reeps. Congressional candidate Dean Andal will be there, as will his employer Gerry Kamilos. Andal hopes to beat Rep. Jerry McNerney this year, and the man Jerry ousted -- former Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy -- is supposed to appear at casa de Spanos, too.
Getting this one in under the wire. On the last day of April, with just over a month to go until the June primaries, and six months to go until Election Day, there's a lot going on all over the state in the Congressional races. Of the 19 seats in California currently held by Republicans, 17 will be contested in the fall, and some strongly so. And we now have a full 34 Democrats with the election of Jackie Speier early in the month, and only one of them is a serious challenge. We also have the first quarter of 2008 fundraising numbers, which will raise some eyebrows. You can track these races yourself with the 2008 Race Tracker wiki.
A note: I'm mainly getting my numbers on cash-on-hand competitiveness from the Swing State Project. Fundraising information comes from the FEC.
Welcome back to the California House races roundup for March. The races are coming into focus, with new challengers entering the fray before the March 7 deadline, and some actual campaigning between candidates (shocking!). And with the DCCC looking at four races in the state, California will certainly be a battleground in Congress in November.
We also know with a fair degree of certainty that Jackie Speier will be the next Representative in CA-12, after Lawrence Lessig declined to run. The initial primary is April 8 and Speier is heavily favored.
So that leaves just one Democratic seat in any degree of question, and I've decided to expand to write about 13 Republican-held seats that have varying degrees of challenges. Overall, Democrats are running in 18 of the 19 seats currently held by Republicans, and 52 of 53 seats overall. Only Kevin McCarthy in CA-22 (Bakersfield) is uncontested AFAIK. You can track these races yourself with the 2008 Race Tracker wiki.
A couple notes: I've changed the percentage of Democratic turnout in the February 5 primary statistics to reflect the final numbers from the Secretary of State's office. As you'll see, six of the thirteen Republican-held seats mentioned had majority Democratic turnout. Very encouraging. Also, I've noted where applicable which challengers have endorsed the Responsible Plan to End The War In Iraq. My hope is that eventually every candidate will do so; it will absolutely help them in their campaigns to show some leadership and offer a comprehensive strategy to end the war and change our conversation around national security.
Perhaps to nobody's surprise, right wing attack ads are up, running and dishonest in CA-11 against Rep. Jerry McNerney. I'm certainly not going to embed it, but you can head here if you want to check it out. Basically, it accuses House Democrats of enabling terrorists because they stood up to President Bush on FISA.
Our new boogeyman is a newly-formed PAC called Defense of Democracies. The ad is running all over the country, in both generic and targeted form. Who exactly is Defense of Democracies you ask?
Defense of Democracies is a spinoff of a bipartisan anti-terrorist foundation of the same name that had included Democrats until the ads began running. Former member Donna Brazile, who worked for former President Clinton, said in a statement that the organization "has morphed into a radical right-wing organization that is doing the dirty work for the Bush administration and congressional Republicans."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer and former GOP vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp are among the members of the organization's board of directors.
The group running the ads is led by a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
Factcheck.org got to refute everything that's wrong with the ad which is...well...actually everything in the ad. Starts off by saying FISA expired. Not true. Says the House refused to vote. Except it voted and passed FISA in November. Says the government's ability to fight terrorism has been crippled. Except the current law runs through August, so nothing's changed.
But reality isn't the sort of thing that Republicans are likely to let get in the way of trying to scare the crap out of people. At the very least, it's good to know that, if the right-wingers are leading off with this, it probably means they don't have a single credible issue to run on. Good luck with that one Dean Andal.
I've been a really, really bad blogger and have stopped my Congressional House Roundup. So here's a mini-one. I've dug up the totals for 2007 fundraising in the top races in the state, and they're a little interesting. Here are the numbers from the key races.
CA-11:
Jerry McNerney raised $1.065 million in 2007, has $760,000 cash on hand
Dean Andal raised $535,000, has $471,000 CoH
CA-04:
Charlie Brown raised $506,000, has $383,000 CoH I was looking at Q3 numbers. Brown has raised $692,000, and has $483,000 CoH. Big numbers for a non-incumbent.
Eric Egland raised $141,000, has $79,000 CoH
There are no fundraising numbers yet for the new challengers who have entered the race on the Republican side, including former State Sen. Rico Oller and former US Rep. Doug Ose. By the way, Ose has donated to Doolittle's legal defense fund, along with Minority Leader John Boehner. Reformers, all of them!
CA-26:
David Dreier raised $599,000, has $1.96 million CoH
Russ Warner raised $380,000, has $240,000 CoH
Hoyt Hilsman raised $114,000, has $10,550 CoH
Obviously, Dreier is sitting on a goldmine.
CA-50:
Brian Bilbray raised $419,000, has $262,000 CoH
Nick Leibham raised $211,000, has $188,000 CoH
Very encouraging.
Others to note:
Mary Bono (CA-45) only has a paltry $219,000 CoH. Her potential opponents Julie Bornstein, David Hunsicker and Paul Clay got in too late to register any money in this quarter (sometimes the FEC shows residual candidates who have run in previous years, so I'm not certain they're running.)
Mike Lumpkin, the Democrat in CA-52 trying to take Duncan Hunter's open seat, raised $78,000 in 2007 and has $43,000 CoH.
There's some real data in the form of third-quarter fundraising numbers to pore over, and events in Washington and at home have served to focus on some of our Congressional candidates here in California. Plus, believe it or not, we're only about a year out from Election Day. Let's take a look at the top ten races.
As usual, I'm going to rank them in order of most possible pickup, including their number from the last roundup. I'm also, as usual, including the "Boxer number." Basically, seeing how Boxer fared in her 2004 re-election against Bill Jones in a particular district is a decent indicator of how partisan it is. If I put "57," that means Boxer received 57% of the vote. Anything over 50, obviously, is good. (over)
OK, I'm getting this in just under the wire. Time for the House roundup for September. There are a little over 13 months until Election Day, and with the end of the 3rd quarter on Sunday (donate), this election is really not that far away. In fact, CQ Politics has put out their initial assessment of the House landscape. It's favorable for Democrats, but predictably, there are only two California seats on that radar: CA-04 and CA-11. But there have been a lot of developments in the other races throughout the state as well.
I'm going to rank them in order of most possible pickup, including their number from the last roundup. I'm also, as usual, including the "Boxer number." Basically, seeing how Boxer fared in her 2004 re-election against Bill Jones in a particular district is a decent indicator of how partisan it is. If I put "57," that means Boxer received 57% of the vote. Anything over 50, obviously, is good. (over)
(Righting a bit of a wrong here. This should have been frontpaged when it first appeared; not everything is or should be about the day-to-day slugfest. - promoted by jsw)
For lack of a nail, the shoe was lost;
for lack of a shoe, the horse was lost;
for lack of a horse, the rider was lost;
for lack of a rider, the message was lost;
for lack of a message, the battle was lost;
for lack of a battle, the war was lost;
for lack of a war, the kingdom was lost.
Northern California Democrats have been hearing a lot lately about how the CDP is targeting two of our most important races, CA-11 and AD-15. Both of these districts have historically elected Republicans, with CA-11 holding a 5.5% Republican registration advantage and AD-15 recently dwindling to a 2% Republican advantage. Now that the AD-15 seat is turning over due to term limits, the CDP is hoping to pick up a new Democratic Assembly seat while protecting the sole Congressional gain that California Democrats made in 2006.
Unfortunately, the Democratic definition of "targeting" seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to catnapping. Take, for example, the City of San Ramon elections for mayor and City Council that were scheduled for this November.
As is true in most locales, San Ramon's city offices are considered non-partisan. Yet in San Ramon, the mayor and the entire City Council are all Republicans, despite the fact that city-wide Democratic registration stands at 9,988 compared to 10,589 Republicans, with a pool of 6,033 DTS voters.
So exactly what happened to San Ramon's November 2007 election? Well, there's not going to be an election. That's because when the August 10 filing deadline rolled around, nobody had filed to run for mayor against the Republican incumbent; nobody had filed to run for City Council against the Republican incumbents. With nobody challenging them at the polls, the three incumbents were appointed to new terms on August 20.
Unfortunately, the Democratic definition of "targeting" seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to catnapping. Take, for example, the City of San Ramon elections for mayor and City Council that were scheduled for this November.