Daily Archives: May 24, 2006

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[From NCP] Dear Senator Migden

[Originally posted at NorCal Politics February 11, 2006]

As a progressive, and more importantly, one of your constituents, I’m begging you to stop it stop it STOP IT!  Stop what?  Stop this:

State Sen. Carole Migden hopes the next official state “thing” will be eminently quaffable with hints of black pepper and a certain jammy quality.

She’s thinking, of course, about mighty zinfandel, which she would like to name the official state wine.

But the San Francisco Democrat – whose district includes grape-growing Sonoma Valley – apparently did not consult Wine Country’s makers of chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and other varietals before introducing the legislation this week.

Seriously, of all of the things that you could be doing, how does the official state wine make the list?  Who cares?

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[From NCP] Richie Ross: An Argument Against Term Limits

[Originally posted at NorCal Politics February 10, 2006]

I’m not a huge fan of term limits.  I think they put too much power in the hands of staffers and consultants.  This article from Capitol Weekly shows exactly how much power California’s term limits concentrate in consultants, using Richie Ross as an example.  Some excerpts:

Ross, who once served as chief of staff to Willie Brown, the legendary wheeler-dealer who outmaneuvered opponents to rule the Legislature’s lower house for nearly 15 years, is running more candidates in open Democratic primaries this June than any other political consultant.

…

Alarcon has endorsed 21 different Assembly candidates this year, only seven of which are Ross clients–but he has not endorsed a single non-Ross candidate in a race that Ross has a client.

…

As term limits force a shuffle of new relative unknown candidates to Sacramento every two years, Assembly hopefuls are increasingly turning to top-shelf consultants like Ross or Gale Kaufman, who serves as Nuñez’s consultant, to provide instant legitimacy to their candidacy.

“To be taken seriously you have to have one of the brand name consultants doing the campaign,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a GOP consultant and publisher of the California Target Book that track legislative races. “If you don’t, you are perceived as having insufficient funding or as politically naïve.”

And because those consultants are often better known around Sacramento than the candidates themselves, labor groups and other large Democratic donors are sometimes more likely to open their wallet to clients of the leading consultants.

Sounds to me like we’ve swapped a set of politically-accountable incumbents for a set of entirely unaccountable incumbents, who operate invisible to the general public.

Tell me how that’s better, again?

Environment

[From NCP] Upcoming South Bay Land Use Battle

[Originally posted at NorCal Politics February 14, 2006]

This Mercury News Article outlines an upcoming measure to limit growth in Southern Santa Clara County:

The Sierra Club, Greenbelt Alliance, Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society and other members of the coalition — which already has $300,000 in the bank — must collect 36,040 signatures from registered county voters to qualify for the November ballot, something they and their opponents expect will happen.

The measure, which farmers and ranchers fear would drive down the value of their land, would affect nearly half of Santa Clara County’s 839,000 acres.

The complex proposal would essentially do two things. First, it would reduce the number of homes that could be built in unincorporated, rural areas along the east foothills of the Diablo Range from Milpitas to Gilroy, the Santa Cruz Mountains from Gilroy to Los Altos and east of Mount Hamilton. On lands zoned for ranching, for example, it would allow only one home per 160 acres, down from up to eight homes per 160 acres now.

It also would set limits for new development in those areas: curbing the amount of square footage that could be built per parcel, reducing building on ridgelines and banning building unless adequate water is available.

The article has an interesting mini-profile of the author of the measure and a standard set of he-said, she-said quotes.  The final quote of the article is interesting, though:

“Owners have been taking care of their land all these years knowing that at some point they’d be able to sell a piece or two and be able to retire on their land,” said [Jenny] Derry [executive director] of the [Santa Clara County] farm bureau. “We see it as a property rights issue.”

I’m incredibly sympathetic to the need to balance conservation, profitable use, and the traditional rural culture of America.  I’m not, however, sympathetic to painting a rentier’s desire to speculate for extraordinary profit as a “right”.

Land use is where the knives come out in local politics, so this is going to be interesting.  NorCal Politics will try to get sufficiently educated to be of use.

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[From NCP] Reaching Rural Californians

[Originally posted at NorCal Politics on February 15,2006]

I haven’t picked a dog in the Angelides-Westly primary fight.  I may not pick one publicly.  But I’m glad that Steve Westly is talking to the people out in Eastern California. One of the reasons that I wanted to start NorCal Politics is to try to bridge the city-suburb-agriculture-wilderness divides for progressives.

This post at Say No To Pombo really drives home why that’s important:

[C]onsider this. The Fish Sniffer has ~25,000 readers in the Valley. I would bet that most of the fish the Delta, or fish the mountain streams for trout. If someone is really upset about Pombo, you need reasons that get to people where they live and this is one for a population of sportsmen. If I were living in Lodi, or Brentwood, and I wanted to see Pombo gone, I would make sure that I visited all the little Marinas around…I might even leave a copy of the Fish Sniffer editorial.

The editorial in question rips into Pombo, and a host of other Republicans for their support of anti-conservation, anti-sportsman interests.  One might also consider this editorial from the same magazine, which goes after Pombo again, and throws Republicans John Doolittle and Devin Nunes onto the anti-sportsman list for good measure.

There is common ground for urban progressives and rural people, if each side is willing to listen.  The white noise of Republican smears and bogus “values” talk can be cut through, because the reality is that the Republicans don’t help very many people.

San Francisco

[From NCP] Initial Evaluation: SF Ranked Choice Balloting

[Originally posted at NorCal Politics on February 16, 2006]

I don’t have too much to add to this BeyondChron story on the first run at ranked choice balloting in San Francisco. The long and the short of it seems to be this:

  1. No need for expensive run-off elections (the last one cost the city $3M);
  2. Higher voter turnout; and
  3. Higher voter turnout in traditionally low-turnout neighborhoods and ethnicities.

There’s also a strong argument that IRV tends to select candidates who reflect the true preference of the electorate, as:

  1. There’s no penalty for truly voting your first choice first, which avoids the “don’t vote third party” problem; and
  2. If candidates are sufficiently extreme to reflect only a small core consituency, the system will settle on the more moderate candidates who represent the natural compromise candidates.

All of which means, of course, that it threatens both of the existing party establishments and the pundit class who make their living on complaining about the status quo while doing their best to maintain it.