Here's some tidbits from the campaign trail with 12 days out:
• CA-03: Bill Durston and Dan Lungren debated last night, and it was a predictable affair, says Randy Bayne:
Nothing new, no fireworks, no knockout punch, no excitement of any kind was reported by either MyMotherLode.com or the Stockton Record. Just what we already know - Durston wants us out of Iraq, doesn't like No Child Left Behind, and thinks the bailout is the wrong solution. Lungren supports the occupation, favors No Child Left Behind, and voted for the bailout.
If you're looking for change from eight years of down the toilet policy, and you don't want to continue flushing our future down the crapper - vote for Bill Durston.
If the registration stats cited by anecdotal reports are at all accurate, we're going to be very close to registration parity in this seat by Election Day. Lungren may be acting positive in public, but inside the campaign they must be terrified. They probably didn't expect Durston to run a credible campaign.
"Lincoln asked, 'If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one,'" McClintock said in a statement. "And calling a homosexual partnership a marriage doesn't make it one."
I'm pretty sure that means nothing at all, but California's Alan Keyes has had to distance himself from the comment. Meanwhile his much bigger problem is lacking the funds to run a proper campaign. He's now taken to relying on cheap robocalls, and Charlie Brown has immediately called on him to stop. Dirty trick robocalls that appeared to be coming from the Brown campaign were a major factor in John Doolittle's narrow re-election in 2006.
• CA-46: I didn't get a chance to post Debbie Cook's amazing closing statement at Tuesday's debate. Here it is.
The OC Register has a story on this race today. These "Challenger hopes to upset incumbent" stories have a familiar feel to them - the pose of surprise that the race is competitive, the quote from the shallow CW fountain like Allen Hoffenblum explaining why the incumbent is probably still safe, and the overall sense of shock, which would be natural if you weren't paying attention for the last 18 months, like, um, us.
• Assembly & Senate: Art Torres and Ron Nehring had a debate yesterday, and I think Torres needed to be prepped a little better. He claimed that Democrats could grab a 2/3 majority in the legislature but then couldn't come up with a simple list of what seats are in play. He should be reading more Calitics. Nehring replied with a lot of bunk and a little truth.
None of that adds up to 54 and 27, of course, and Nehring said Torres' boast "just doesn't pencil out."
He noted that Democratic efforts to oust Sen. Jeff Denham via recall failed miserably this year and the party ended up with no opponent to challenge Sen. Abel Maldonado in Santa Maria, a district believed to be winnable by a Democrat.
On the Assembly side, Nehring said, Republicans "have a great shot at holding on to" the 15th and "have a number of strategic advantages in the 78th (because) the Democrats have nominated the most liberal candidate (Marty Block) they possibly could."
In the 80th, the Democratic candidate (Manuel Perez) "is getting hammered on ... social issues which are important to many people in the Latino community," Nehring said.
"I don't know how can you be serious about trying to have a two-thirds vote in the Legislature," Nehring told Torres, "when you blow so many of these opportunities."
I'll go bottom to top on this. Manuel Perez is going to CRUSH Gary Jeandron, and if anyone's being hammered, it's the Republicans. The IE money is pretty one-sided in the state. Between that and the registration gains, it'll take more than just spin to dig your party out of its self-created hole, Mr. Nehring.
However, on one point I will agree with you. The Denham recall and Maldonado disaster have indeed stopped the potential forward momentum in the Senate. Of course, Torres couldn't say the plain truth - that Don Perata is among the worst leaders in recent Democratic Party history, and has completely set back the state in major ways by his blunders. He is an embarrassment.
It's a question that I've been contemplating and broaching in conversations since June 3 which was, to put it mildly, a disaster for Democrats of San Diego. In a Democratic majority city, the official mayoral nominee of the Democratic Party received 6.3% of the vote. The contested Democratic primary in the 50th Congressional District received in total just 70% of the votes that incumbent Rep. Brian Bilbray received running unopposed. In the 52rd district, Democratic candidates combined for 81% of the total received by Duncan Hunter Jr. himself in a four-way primary.
Not a single Democratic challenger to the Board of Supervisors reached 30% of the vote. One fresh face was added to the Unified School Board- running unopposed. Democrats could not force a runoff in all four City Council races or reach 50% in any, leaving a very real possibility that Dems will lose control of the nominally non-partisan Council in November. Dems in the race for City Attorney split the vote three ways, allowing Republican Jan Goldsmith to slide into pole position for the November runoff against incumbent Mike Aguirre who clocked in at under 29%. Heck, the Chair of the San Diego Democratic Party came in 7th in a vote-for-six race for Central Committee (and then won a DNC spot over the weekend). I could go on.
Each of these races on their own might be justified. But when it represents the entire strength that the San Diego Democratic Party can muster in the midst of a pro-Democratic tide across the country larger than anyone has seen in decades, it's cause for concern. So what happened? Washburn offers a few thoughts as do I:
One of the most glaring issues is money. As Washburn notes,
This is what conservative fiscal leadership looks like: a broke Republican state party. Grover Norquist's right hand man, Ron Nehring has been running the CRP into debt and the proverbial ground. Because he has been unsuccessful at fundraising a moderate with a big check book is trying to control the direction of the party. This is what happens when you rely on big donors and not an army of small contributors. They pwn you. SacBee:
The California Republican Party once again faces an identity crisis heading into its annual spring convention, and this time a major donor is calling on the party to become more inclusive.
Businessman Lawrence K. Dodge delayed writing a check to help the party pay off $3 million in debt and wrote a scathing analysis of the party in a private letter, raising concerns similar to those cited by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he said Republicans were "dying at the box office" last year.
The internal strife comes as state records show the party continues to suffer a decline in registration and carry a debt incurred to help Schwarzenegger win re-election in 2006.
Their governor created a "scheduling conflict" and will not be attending the convention. That is how highly he thinks of the direction of the organization. He took them to the cleaners actually. I am quite amused at the fact that he managed to convince them to dump a bunch of money into his race and then never actually helped them erase that debt. That must rub them something wicked.
The conservatives are not pleased with Dodge and give his platform the worst insult a Republican can throw at a fellow Republican.
In October I wrote an article for San Diego CityBeat called Down PERA-Scope which discussed the bumpy road being encountered by state GOP Chair Ron Nehring relative to the Dirty Tricks Initiative. In part, the article said
...many GOP activists, strategists and observers expressed concern over the impact of Nehring's two high-profile personnel problems on party fundraising. Later in the summer, these concerns were seemingly validated when Schwarzenegger was forced to help retire the state party's debt after rumors surfaced that it could barely cover operating costs.
Well, PERA is super-duper dead now and it looks like Nehring's tenure is continuing to be a problem for the donor base. Big time GOP donor Larry Dodge has called out Nehring
Among his complaints, Dodge says the party has not had an effective finance chairman-the key fundraiser-in place for more than a year. He suggests that party officers are squandering money without accountability. Major donors, he said, were promised a hand in the party's operations committee but "nothing has happened."
"The party needs professional management," he writes.
The whole article is like that, and it's pretty neat. Dodge is aligned with the Schwarzenegger/McCain outlook on things more than he gets down with the theocon vibe, but nevertheless it's time to bust out the popcorn if the donor base is rebelling against Nehring's stewardship of the state party. Nehring of course goes back like crack to to the 80s with Grover Norquist and used San Diego as the launching pad to his current state-level exploits. He literally administered the GOP playbook on how to turn an urban area Republican, so with any luck his failures mirror the fundamental failing of GOP urban strategy (such as it is).
Is it just me, or does "Nehring Republican" sound like an enticing electoral slur? Maybe it's just me. Unless McCain is the GOP nominee. Oh wait...
Among other sources, the AP reported yesterday on the many issues up for debate as Republicans consider overhauling their current platform. Schwarzenneger has lined up support from GOPers in the legislature to move away from divisive (and presumably NOT post-partisan) "values" issues like gun control, abortion and gay rights. Arnold is pushing for a more practical, Reagan-worship focus, hoping to distill things down to just low taxes, strong defense, and small government. And if you think those three items were intentionally ordered to contradict themselves, you're quite right.
Who knew that Marinucci's story a week ago on the hiring of Canadian Christopher Matthews to be the California Republican Party's deputy political director would lead to his colleague resigning and accusations of breaking the federal law? Here we are with yet another A1 story at the Chron. Today's story breaks the news that the CRP may have violated federal law by failing to demand to see Kamburowski's green card.
The California Republican Party has decided no American is qualified to take one of its most crucial positions -- state deputy political director -- and has hired a Canadian for the job through a coveted H-1B visa, a program favored by Silicon Valley tech firms that is under fire for displacing skilled American workers.
Christopher Matthews, 35, a Canadian citizen, has worked for the state GOP as a campaign consultant since 2004. But he recently was hired as full-time deputy political director, with responsibility for handling campaign operations and information technology for the country's largest state Republican Party operation, California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring confirmed in a telephone interview this week.
That's not all, look at the guy who hired him:
Matthews was hired by Michael Kamburowski, an Australian citizen who was hired this year as the state GOP's chief operations officer. But neither new official has experience in managing a political campaign in the nation's most populous state -- and as foreign citizens, neither is eligible to vote.
In fairness to the state GOP, I don't think any Americans really WANT to work for them.
You know, the Republican Party spiffed up their website, and honestly, it's a lot bettero. I mean, thank goodness, it doesn't have flying stars across the top. Good Work, CRP. I guess, but you can take the ugly stupid shit off the site design, but the ugly, stupid shit is still there in the text.
First, I'd point to this press release, entitled "100 Days of a Democrat Congress: 10 Bills Successfully Name Post Offices, Courthouses, Federal Properties." First, you'd expect somebody who works for the party that advocates English as the official language would, um, know how to use the language itself. "Democratic", Mr. Nehring.
Now, it seems that Rep. Ken Calvert missed the memo about post offices being such a horrible waste of time. Why? well, Mr. Calvert put out this press release three days later congratulating himself on, wait for it, yup, naming a post office. Wow, that timing is a killer.
One more thing, for all Mr. Nehring and his crew complain about the post office namings in the 110th Congress, would you like to take a stab at how many post office naming bills were introduced in the 109th Congress? Do you? Do you? Well, I'll tell you: 135. Yup. 135, or about one for every day and a half in session. Yup that's 135 post office bills in 239 days in session (shattering the previous low-water mark of 252 days in session).
So, I guess Mr. Nehring and Rep. Ken Calvert should get their facts straight before they start on the attack.
