Daily Archives: April 30, 2006

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CA-50 Will Roach Run?

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50th District Republican Eric Roach has returned from his visit with the lords of the right in Washington and now California conservatives eagerly await his decision. Will he run against Brian Bilbray in the 50th District Republican primary? Certainly, it’s not just conservatives who are hanging on Roach’s impending announcement. Roach’s entry into the primary will force Brian Bilbray to fight a two front war – one against Democrat Francine Busby in the run-off election to fill out the remainder of convicted Republican felon Randy “Duke” Cunningham and the other to fend off Roach in the Republican primary. Both battles to be fought simultaneously and decided on June 6.

Conservative blogger, Jon Fleischman was part of Roach’s entourage on his trip to DC. Roach, Fleischman and the geography challenged Howard Kaloogian visited the various gurus of the right, with Fleischman breathlessly reporting on each new encounter with the great oracles of conservatism – Grover Norquist, Paul Weyrich, and a host of other right wing members of the Republican congress of corruption.  No mention of any visits to Brent Wilkes’ “hospitality” suite.

Why does Roach need Grove Norquist’s permission to run?  Answer after the jump.

More to the point, this trip was designed to grease the skids for what in the end will be a Republican vs Republican cage match. If Roach’s primary candidacy results in a Busby victory in June, it will be considered as collateral damage by the conservatives. Their target is a conservative victory in November. If Roach beats Bilbray in the primary, then whether Bilbray wins or loses the run-off with Busby, his only alternative in November is to run a write-in campaign, which almost guarantees the seat to Busby. At that point, Bilbray will be under incredible pressure from the Republican Party to go back to his home in Virginia and resume his career as a lobbyist.

This is a high stakes game for Roach and the conservatives. If Roach wins the primary and then defeats Busby in November, it is validation for the movement conservatives. If Roach loses to Bilbray in the primary or if a three way race in November results in a Busby victory, the movement conservatives will be repudiated in a district they consider as safe as any in the country, a strong signal that the far right wing driven vision of the conservative movement may well be on the decline.

Upon their return, Fleischman strongly urged Roach to run.

…in terms of sending someone to Washington long-term in a conservative district (70% of the votes for GOP candidates in the special went to very conservative candidates in a 14-way donnybrook), we need Roach to run. Besides, I honestly believe that (now that I know how not-conservative Bilbray was in DC), Republicans will have a hard-time motivating to get to the polls without Roach on the ballot. We’ll see what Eric Roach decides — but I hope that he decides to run – both for the good of the party, and for the good of the conservative cause, which is already imperiled by too many Bilbray-clones in the House.

He’s right, the conservative cause needs Eric Roach to run.  What the movement conservatives can’t afford is for Roach to fail.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Blog Roundup

California Blog Roundup, 4/30/06

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Longish, as it’s been a while. More regular roundups will resume shortly. Teasers: Marc Cooper on the state of the Democratic Party, the horse race (meh), PPIC exposes some “and a pony” thinking on education, 15% Doolittle, Paid-For Pombo, the impending Roach / Bilbray primary in CA-50, electoral and finance reform, and last, miscellany.

This roundup does not include any posts from yesterday, as I was at the CDP Convention. I’ll try to post a supplement and a Convention after-action later today.

  • Marc Cooper has written a great article / blog post at LA Weekly concerning the schlerotic California Democratic Party and the extent to which the primary race for the Democratic gubernatorial candidacy is determined by ridiculous endorsement races, money tracking, all aided and abetted by the punditocracy and punditeriate more interested in color commentary on the horse race than actual issues.

  • And speaking of horse race crapola, we have the Westly complaint against Angelides lodged with the Fair Political Practices Commission. I have a hard time taking seriously the Westly campaign mouth noises about positive campaigning (including Westly’s prepared speech for the CDP convention) when they’re pulling this kind of stuff.

  • Frank Russo has a pretty good thumbnail of the recent PPIC poll on the most important issue for Californians: the state of our education system. Of particular interest, most likely voters want to increase funding for education, but they don’t really want to do what’s necessary to pay for it. And of course, Phil Angelides is willing to step up and challenge this “and a pony” kind of thinking that the Republicans exploit, for which he’ll no doubt be punished. See also Bill Bradley.

  • Alliance for a Better California points us to a pair of SacBee articles comparing the recent Angelides & Westly ads.

CA-04, CA-11, CA-50

Reform

Miscellany

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Angelides gets endorsement

So, as I mentioned last night, Angelides won the endorsement from the Democratic Party:

Angelides, long considered the favorite of party insiders, defeated state Controller Steve Westly, winning 67.2 percent of votes from delegates at the state Democratic Party Convention. He needed 60 percent to get the endorsement. Westly drew just 28.1 percent of the vote.(SacBee 4/30/06)

Now, being that I’m a blogger, I have liberties that traditional reporters don’t.  Mainly, I can spread rumors, totally unsubstantiated rumors at that.  So today’s totally unsubstantiated rumor was that somebody in Westly’s camp was considering mounting a challenge to the endorsement if it was close.  (Hey, Westly folks, you have no right of privacy if you are yelling on your cell phone on the street.) Fortunately for everybody, it looks like the vote wasn’t close enought to bring that possibility to fruition.  At least, I hope that is the case.  We certainly don’t need that kind of dissent in the ranks.

So, that part being said, I think Westly spun it as he should have:

But Westly tried to claim the underdog status, at least in Sacramento and at the Democratic convention.

“We’re in Mr. Angelides’ hometown,” Westly said in his press conference. “He’s been running for office all his life. He’s been state party chair. He’s been in the race long, long before I was.”

Look, it’s true, Angelides needed a win in something right now to slow Westly’s momentum.  While I understand it’s a dumb reason to choose a candidate, momentum can make the difference in a primary where there is an “Anybody but” attitude.  And it doesn’t take MENSA membership to realize that is exactly what we have on our hands right now.

So, while this might not give Angelides a big boost in the overall primary election, it helps him right now.  It gets him back to the issues, both clean and dirty, rather than the momentum of the electorate.

I just got back to SF, but Frank at CPR says that Angelides got the endorsement with 62.7% of the vote.  This is important only because Angelides needed momentum at this point.  He was struggling trying to deal with Westly momentum.  More stuff on this soon…