Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Angelides, Westly, Schwarzenegger, Paid-For Pombo, Francine Busby, Winograd v. Harman, new David Dreier blog, CA-42, Prop 82, Jerry Lewis / CA-41, immigration, minimum wage, and the economy.
While Schwarzenegger is inching up, it's not great news for the Governator...or the Legislature:
The survey finds that there has been little change in overall voter evaluations of the job the governor and state legislature is doing. Currently, 46% disapprove of Schwarzenegger’s performance, while 41% approve, not much different from a 47% - 39% negative rating in April.
Voters remain even more critical of the legislature’s performance, with 51% disapproving and 26% approving. That’s not much different than the two to one negative to positive assessment it received in April.
Contributing to these poor evaluations is the fact that a majority of voters (57%) believes the state is seriously off on the wrong track, while just 32% feel it is moving in the right direction. This is a slightly more optimistic assessment than what was observed in April.(FieldPoll 6/5/06)
Typically a number under 50% approval is a cause for serious concern for the incumbent. Schwarzenegger has been languishing under 50% since June of last year. While it will take a lot of work on the part of the Dem nominee, Angelides or Westly, it is certainly a reasonable outcome. The matchups at this point still have a big name recognition factor in favor of the Governator. We'll see how that shifts after the campaign is in full swing.
As for the legislature, I think it's one of the "hate the legislature, love your legislator" things. There are few competitive races in either the Assembly or Senate. For info on interesting races, see Nathaniel, Burbank native's review of the Assembly Races and the Senate Races. Not a whole lot will change in the next session. Term limits will mean faces will change, but votes likely won't. There are one or two pickup opportunities for the Republicans, mainly in SoCal, but don't expect a lot of change.
But, the infrastructure bonds are fairing well...for now.
The results indicate that there is currently greater than two to one support (58% to 25%) for Proposition 1e, the $4.1 billion bond for disaster preparedness and flood protection.
By a similar margin (57% to 24%) voters also support a $19.9 billion proposal, Prop. 1b, called the “Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality and Port Security Bond Act.”
A smaller, but still substantial, plurality of voters (48% to 34%) are also inclined to support Prop. 1d, a $10.4 billion bond for “Kindergarten through University Public Education Facilities.”
However, there is less support for Prop. 1c, a $2.8 billion proposal for “Housing and Emergency Shelter,” with voters dividing 39% in favor and 38% opposed.
Boy, would it be the GOP's dream to get 1e and 1b passed without 1c and 1d, the school and housing related bonds. It's really what they wanted all along. The Housing bonds were a real sticking point in the negotiations all throughout. Many GOP arms had to be twisted to get that through the Assembly.
The interesting thing is that the California electorate tends to drift towards no as the elections get closer. I'm curious if that will happen here as well.
As the primary race for Governor comes to a close, online sources point to a potential swing of momentum in favor of Steve Westly. The first comes from the latest poll from Survey USA which has Angeledis up, but Westly closing in the final days.
In 1994, Michigan Senator Don Reigle announced his retirement in the wake of his role in the Keating 5 Scandal. The two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination to replace him were moderate Congressman Bob Carr and the progressive State Senator from Ann Arbor, Lana Pollack. Like many voters across the country, I was fed up with the arrogance of power that had been displayed in recent years by the House Democratic leadership, and my political instincts told me there was no way an incumbent Democrat Congressman was going to be elected to the Senate in this environment. So, with these matters in mind, I decided to back State Senator Pollack. Boy, was I in for a political education.
I've been getting some emails from several groups in support of one candidate or another. Mostly they are responses to the attack ads that have been airing recently.
On Angelides's ads: There was a big hulabaloo about Angelides trying to get money from Joe Cari. You can read the story at the LA Times.
On Westly's ads: The environmental groups are not happy about Westly's representation of Angelides' record on the environment. See more at Vote the Coast's website.
Look, look! Something positive to come out of the campaigns. But, well, it's not really coming out of the campaigns. But, be that it as it may, Phil Angelides, as the state treasurer, sent Barbara Boxer, a letter requesting her support for the Net Neutrality Bill. The money quote:
We cannot allow the next generation of entrepreneurs, artists, and civic groups to be slowed down by corporations erecting tollbooths on the Internet Superhighway. Continued innovation and access demand protection of Network Neutrality.
The full text of the letter is on the flip. I haven't heard anything from the Westly campaign, but I expect that he also supports Net Neutrality. In fact eBay CEO Meg Whitman sent out an email to members encouraging them to contact their representatives in favor of Net Neutrality. If anybody knows of something that would indicate Westly and/or Schwarzenegger's position, let me know.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. I'm having a hard time keeping up: more people are writing as the election approaches. Teasers: Angelides, Westly, Schwarzenegger, Bowen, Paid-For Pombo, Francine Busby, Winograd v. Harman, Props 81 and 82, Jerry Lewis / CA-41, discussion of various reforms,immigration, and recent legislative actions.
The Field Poll came out today. It shows Westly to have a 1 point lead over Angelides(35-34). This is, of course, well within the poll's margin of error. And given all the variability of the polls recently, it's hard to know what's going on at all. One thing is clear: voters are not sure what to think. 26% percent remains undecided a week away from the election. A little bit shocking given the expected high percentage of absentee voters.
Heading into the final weekend, the Democratic gubernatorial race between Steve Westly and Phil Angelides is a statistical dead heat, with a record number of voters still undecided, according to a new California Field Poll.
In the poll of likely voters for Tuesday's primary election, 35 percent supported Westly and 34 percent supported Angelides. Twenty-six percent of voters said they are undecided and another 5 percent said they'll vote for someone else.
The poll reflects an intense, contentious primary race between Westly, the state controller and a former eBay executive, and Angelides, the state treasurer and a former real estate developer. The primary has seen voters bombarded with negative advertisements in recent weeks, leaving many confused as to how to vote -- if they choose to vote at all.(SacBee 6/2/06)
Check out the SacBee article it has several good graphics for the poll. Particularly telling is that Angelides has seen his lead in female voters fall to 1 point, while Westly still has a 4 point lead in male voters.
The negative ads between these two clearly have affected the race. It is a shame that it has to come to this. The Democratic Party should really think about getting some new consultants for these campaigns in the future. The retreads of yore are hurting the party with these Dem on Dem attacks.
KQED's Forum, in an ongoing series on primary coverage, is focusing on the non-major Democrats today. In its first hour, Susan Rasky will be discussing the Democratic primary for governor. In the second hour, the program will focus on the CA-06 primary. Joe Nation and Lynn Woolsey are duking it out in a race I covered yesterday.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: The Enron convictions, Angelides, Westly, Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown, Paid-For Pombo, 15% Doolittle, the CAHSEE and California's rankings, immmigration, several interesting think posts, and more.
Vince Duffy, a former Gray Davis speechwriter, has a few thoughts on how to beat Arnold Schwarzenegger.
California Democrats should tie all of these Republican rascals, including the president himself, around Arnold's neck, from the primary through Election Day.
Pundits who say Democrats need a positive message miss the point. The message is that Democrats are not George W. Bush Republicans and Arnold is.
This year, that's more than enough.
It was, after all, Schwarzenegger who basked in the Bush glory at the Republican convention in 2004. To a nationwide audience, Schwarzenegger called Democrats liars and boasted that only Republicans can be tough on terrorists.
Even worse, it was Schwarzenegger who campaigned for President Bush in arguably the most important battleground state, Ohio, just days before Election Day in 2004 in front of 20,000 people.
That day, the governor said: "I'm here to pump you up to re-elect George W. Bush," and it was a success. Ohio went for Bush by a tiny margin. America re-elected the president and the Republican Congress.
Our task is to never let anyone forget that Schwarzenegger is responsible.(CapWeekly 5/25/06)
It's all stuff that's been said before, and I don't know if it's really enough. Yes, Arnold is a bad governor. Yes, he has ties with Bush (ie Dowd and Smith, former BushCo employees, now running his campaign), but it's not totally clear that it's enough against him. Unfortunately there's still going to be a group of people that will vote for Ahnold just because he's a movie star. Look, I was at the Capitol last week, and there were people queueing up to see him walk into the capitol. You think people were doing that for Davis? I think not.
I think tying Schwarzenegger to Bush will help. But only to a certain extent. The Dem nominee should also present the state with concrete ways that he is different than Arnold. There are plenty of ways to show that Arnold is not a moderate (such as that early veto announcment last week). We just need to make sure we can show that he is no moderate.
Kos let out one of his patented rants today. This one regards the state of our Governor's race:
So what do you do when your two gubernatorial aspirants, Steve Westley and Phil Angelides, let their primary battle degenerate into a disgusting, slimy pit of bullshit attack ads and surrogate whisper smear campaigns?
I quit. I hate them both. Someday, California Democrats will have the option to choose from candidates who inspire, not the Gray Davises, Cruz Bustamantes, and the two candidates currently stinking up the Democratic side of the ticket.
The sad thing is that we need a strong turnout for this race to help Francine Busby win in CA-50. But the way this is going, if I want to vomit and throw out my absentee ballot, I can't imagine what it's doing to less tuned-in and political Californians, especially in that district. (dKos 5/30/06)
So, first of all, one thing that you can say is that Kos is completely independent of his advertisers. Steve Westly has been running ads on Kos for a while now. In fact if you go the page I linked to you will find an ad for Westly right next to the rant about how he sucks. So, well, good for you Kos. On the other hand, I think his frustration is somewhat misplaced. I posted a comment, but well, you know those get lost. So, I thought I would talk about it a little here. Here are snippets of my comment:
The lack of funds (caused mostly by the ridiculous concept of homeowners paying a far larger share of property taxes than businesses) is hampering how we do business. The obvious result of the shortfalls on cash and the fact that a minority has a veto power leaves us with an ALMOST ungovernable state. Toss the initiative process in there and then you have a hulablaoo.
That being said, I have to disagree with Kos. Yes the race has turned ugly. I've been bitching about it for a while over at Calitics (mandatory plug here: We're a scoop community blog focused solely on California politics). The funny thing is that it started off really well. They were both going after Arnold. But then fricking "serpent-tongued" garry South had to start opening his mouth. He started with that "Positive campaign pledge" that made Westly look foolish because South was attacking Angelides at every turn. Angelides responded and the race to the bottom was on.
But there are some good, exciting politicians in California. Just look down the ballot: the Lt. Governor's race is great. Speier and Garamendi are both great candidates, and Figueroa...well she's exciting. Look past Governor Moonbeam and you'll see a lot more interesting people running. The Contorller's race has been a very well run race. Joe Dunn has run a great campaign focusing on his investigations of Enron, and John Chiang has run a fairly clean campaign as well.
Angelides and Westly are victims of the system that has developed in California. They let their consultants convince them that they needed to go negative. I don't think it will make a huge difference in the general, but it certainly won't help.
I think what I also need to include in that response is that these guys will be much better governors than Arnold. Yes, they have run poor campaigns for the last 3 months or so, but is that a reason to just give up? Hardly. I mean, didn't we all want to scream at Kerry sometimes in 2004 (say...the time when he didn't bother to release his military records to end the Swift Boat crap). Yet, we didn't give up on him. I think it's easier for people to give up on state races, perhaps because they don't feel like it's quite as important as the presidency or a Senate seat or something like that. But thinking that the states don't matter contributed to our downfall on the federal level. We are naive if we think that we can build a party without the states.
California is a leader in so many ways, and could be a leader in so many more ways. Schwarzenegger has been impeding California's leadership in the global community. It is not the time to abdicate our leadership or throw our hands in the air and just give up.
Well, I've voted in California's June primary. That's not really surprising: since I am ordinarily trying to get out somebody's vote, I always vote absentee. The last thing I usually have time to do on Election Day is vote. This time I really will be absent, out of the country.
So yesterday I pulled out the two huge paper ballots and did the deed. Here are some of my votes, local first, some with an explanation.
Phil Angelides has a 12 point lead in the latest S-USA poll. However, note that the previous S-USA (5/8/06) poll on the primary race had Angelides with an 10-point lead. So, this isn't much different. I'll update the Poll HQ.
As in almost every other poll that's shown up recently, Angelides has a substantial lead amongst men at 47-21. Unlike several other polls, this one shows him also having a lead amongst women. However, his lead amongst women has dropped from eight points (39-31) in the May 8 poll to six points (41-35).
Another interesting point is that the "Other" category is still getting 17% percent. I'm not sure if there is going to be a large write-in vote or if people are planning to vote for non-mainstream candidates. If that happens, that would be a sizable protest vote. What it means is a bit unclear.
And finally, the number of undecideds fell from 11 to 7. It looks like Democratic voters are firming up their opinions in the runup to the June election.
And just to make things more interesting, Julia at the Alliance points out that Angelides has not anted up for $1.5million and the Tsakopoulos clan has given a total of $8.7million for independent expenditures in support of Angelides. Of course, we all know that Westly has already ponied up over $20million of his own money. The LA Times points out that, "Angelides spent $20.6 million through May 20. Westly had spent $36.3 million as of that date."
Expect to see a lot more money flowing into and out of the campaigns in the next few weeks.
The PPIC released their May statewide survey this morning. I obeyed the embargo, publishing this diary at 12:15am. The local NBC affilliate in San Diego did not. Bad MSM, Bad! The funny thing is that if you look at the page you notice that they updated it at 6pm, but apparently still didn't feel obliged to pull it down due to the big message on the email and the fact that you had to enter a password to get to the PDF.
The poll has Angelides pulling ahead of Westley, but within the margin of error:
Angelides and Westly are locked in a statistical dead heat among Democratic primary likely voters (35% to 32%). Angelides has made the largest gains in the past month – up from 20 percent in April compared to Westly’s 26 percent. Still, the situation is highly volatile because large number of Democratic primary voters (33%) are undecided or would choose someone else. Who are these undecided voters? Women. They are more likely than men (37% to 28%) to say they are undecided. “Since women outnumber men in the Democratic electorate, undecided women will be pivotal in determining the winner in this primary election,” says Baldassare. Currently, men favor Angelides by a wide margin (43% Angelides vs. 29% Westly) and women favor Westly by a narrower margin (35% Westly vs. 28% Angelides).
This confirms what several other recent polls have been saying: the race between the two Dem candidates is too close to call. The recent polls have the two candidates trending in opposite directions. Not particularly suprising though, as Westly was getting a huge boost from his increased name ID due to the massive ad campaign he was running. The new negative ads that the two are running in abundance seem to have brought Westly back to the pack a little bit.
On the potential matchups with Schwarzenegger, both of them are now a dead heat. For Angelides, this is a huge swing. In the March PPIC poll, Schwarzenegger had a 41-29 lead on him. However, Westly had a sizable lead in the March poll at 39-31. He must be disappointed with his recent performance. One of his main arguments for being the Dem nominee has been that he is more electable. All of the recent polls have him in a similar situation to Angelides. For a more complete listing of previous polling data, check out Calitics poll headquarters your one-stop shop for all of those exciting California polls. From PPIC:
But regardless of who wins the June Democratic primary, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to be headed for a close race come fall. The race is a toss-up in hypothetical contests between Schwarzenegger and Angelides (38% each) and Schwarzenegger and Westly (36% each). The governor’s comparative advantage over Angelides and Westly – namely, his name ID – is also his weakness: Most voters know him, but they are as likely to have an unfavorable view of him (47%) as a favorable one (45%). Angelides and Westly have the reverse problem: They have far lower unfavorable ratings than Schwarzenegger (26% Angelides, 19% Westly) but they are also unknown to much of the electorate (45% Angelides, 50% Westly). “Independent voters – who know little about these Democratic candidates today but who will cast the swing votes in November – are getting their first exposure to them through more frequent and more negative paid advertising in the run up to the primary,” says Baldassare.
This just underscores the need to keep the campaigns positive. Both candidates would be good nominees and great governors. The only concern now is that all this negative crap will deliver damaged goods for the general.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers:Angelides, Westly and Schwarzenegger of course, Debra Bowen, Doolittle, Pombo, Filson, Harman, Winograd, immigration, a long list of other interesting items.
I've been adding some polls to the Calitics Poll Headquarters (it's on the left sidebar too). I've added Rasmussen and S-USA polls on the governor and the governor's race. Also, I put polls on CA-50 special election. I'll also be adding a lot more today and tomorrow.
Today's California Blog Roundup on the flip. Teasers: Schwarzenegger's steadfast commitment to saying whatever he thinks people want to hear, Westly & Angelides, immigration / mother tongues / National Guard, CA-04, CA-11, CA-50, other fun stuff.
(Westly gets a big boost in the major Democratic battle field. - promoted by SFBrianCL)
Today the SF Chronicle endorsed Steve Westly in the Democratic primary race for CA Governor:
What distinguishes Westly is his specificity and courage in taking on important, but politically thorny, issues that others in Sacramento would rather avoid. For example, he embraces a plan by Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley to reform the "three strikes" sentencing law so that the third strike is a violent felony. He advocates setting aside a portion of the state's surge in revenue to cover promised health-care benefits to retirees, a multibillion-dollar time bomb for the state if it is left unaddressed. He recognizes that the state's failed foster-care system is resulting in a "stunning" number of its emancipating youth becoming homeless or incarcerated. He supports reforms to take the drawing of legislative districts out of the hands of legislators. He has even taken on "Turbo Tax" maker Intuit in pushing for a streamlined income-tax process that would not require filling out a separate state return.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. I'm pressed for time, so it ain't as pretty as it normally is, but I've tried to sort things properly. No teasers, sorry.
