Being that the districts are so gerrymandered, there are several open seats that are, for all intents and purposes, being decided in the primary.  One of these Assembly seats is the 41st District.  It is currently held by Fran Pavely, who is being termed out.  The fight to replace her is being contested by four decently funded candidates and a fifth (O’Brien) who is trying to run on a shoestring.  They are:

*  Julia Brownley
*  Barry Groverman
*  Kelly Hayes-Raitt
*  Jonathan Levey
*  Shawn Casey O’Brien

The Ventura County Star has published a nice little recap of the district:

If this were a war, there would be four fronts, forming a horseshoe around the Santa Monica Mountains. The army that can take one, fight to a draw in another and keep its casualties to a minimum in the other two will win.

In fact, it’s a political campaign. But the same battle strategies apply in the 41st Assembly District’s Democratic primary. … One front is Santa Monica-Malibu, home to about 30 percent of likely voters. Another is Oxnard-Port Hueneme, home to 20 percent. Along the Highway 101 corridor just south of the county line is the Agoura Hills-Westlake Village-Calabasas front, with 12 percent. Nearly all the rest are farther down the road on the Woodland Hills-Encino-Tarzana front.

Four distinct communities, five separate candidates. A variety of battle plans. (Ventura C-S 5/24/06) 

Pavley has endorsed Bronwley, but first brother-in-law Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver has endorsed Calabassas mayor Groverman.  This one should come down to the wire.  For more on this race, I would suggest keeping an eye on Tim Herdt’s blog at the County Star.

( – promoted by SFBrianCL)

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.

Statewide Races

• From ABC: Rasmussen shows Angelides & Westly each tie with Schwarzenegger, blame Schwarzenegger immigration waffling.
• Down With Tyranny writes a nice long piece on the Governor’s race, explaining both why Schwarzenegger is bad news and why he likes Angelides. He’s also got an interesting anecdote in the middle about his experience with Westly.
• Kos handicaps Governor’s races: not incredibly optimistic about the Dems’ chances in CA. Amusing side note: Bill Bradley calls Kos “hyperliberal” in referring to that post. Leaving aside the agenda that shows, calling Markos hyperliberal indicates a certain lack of familiarity with Markos and smacks of uncritical acceptance of Republican spin. Markos is hyperpartisan, but not so much hyperliberal. In fact, that is a point on which he’s taken a lot of grief.
• Down With Tyranny endorses Deborah Bowen in the Secretary of State Dem primary and the General. He’s also got a good explanation of why the Secretary of State is an important position.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

• 15% Doolittle is going to be championing single payer health insurance, including vision and dental coverage. No, I’m just kidding; that would reward the undeserving poor. He thinks that’s the sort of thing all of us already have.
• So of course, 15% Doolittle wants even more. See also Down With Tyranny for a bit more on 15% Doolittle’s sense of entitlement to his lobbyist lunches.
• Dump Doolittle has an awesome LTE up from the Auburn Journal. This guy’s cranky, and it’s excellent.
• Dump Doolittle reports that another CA-04 newspaper has endorsed Mike Holmes in the Republican Primary — this time it’s Gold Country Media, which runs several newspapers in 15% Doolittle’s District.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• The CA-11 Blog (a For-Filson production) has an interview with Steve Filson about Iraq. As before, I expect that Say No To Pombo will probably ask Jerry McNerney the same questions and will post the answers.
• Paid-For Pombo invites big oil into the people’s house. Not just metaphorically this time.
• Paid-For Pombo is also on the subpoena list in the investigation into Jack Abramoff’s lobbying bribery for favors for various wealthy investors in the Marianas. Pombo Watch has a press release from Pete McCloskey that outlines the issues pretty well.
• The list of contributors to Paid-For Pombo is astonishing: oil, pesticide, whalers, the trapping and fur industry. Has Pombo ever seen a wild thing he didn’t want plowed under, chopped down, shot dead, or paved over? Seriously, it’s as if he’s trying to get even with the whole planet for something he thinks it did to him.
• And in that vein, the SCCDP lets us know that Paid-For Pombo wants to drill in ANWR. Screw you Planet! Pombo’s going to get you for that hay fever!

Harman v. Winograd / CA-36

• Journeys with Jood is not stoked about Jane Harman. She is stoked about Marcy Winograd.
• So is Hoffmania, with a bonus of a commenter who reports (second-hand) about Jane Harman’s picture of herself with George W. Bush. Hoffmania also runs down (by way of the LA Times) the issues at stake between the two candidates.
• Last, skippy has several people’s experiences with Rep. Harman.

Immigration

• Ellen Dana Nagler on the immigration stories of two different families.
• janinsanfran points out that we’ve been down this silly English-only road before.

And…

• Terry Preston suggests that California apportion electoral votes by House district. It’s interesting, but kind of a crappy idea (sorry, Terry), because it requires that some other states which vote Republican and have a total of 57 electoral votes do the same thing. Ain’t gonna happen.
• The Exec Direc of the California League of Conservation Voters, guest-posting at California Progress Report, points out that some consistent supporters of conservation in the State Legislature are termed out, while others are running in the primaries. Their endorsements here.
• Spocko’s Brain thinks it got push-polled by Fiona Ma or an IE committee supporting her.
• Terry Preston notes that Prop 73 is rolling around again, as we’ve mentioned before. Yes, well, the singlemindedness of the wealthy men bankrolling the anti-choice movement in California is notable, isn’t it.
• Uneasy Rhetoric suggests that Sacramento should establish a local business incubator to encourage a unique local flavor and assist small business owners.
• Guest post at California Progress Report advocating the passage of AB 651, the Compassionate Choices Act. I’m wholeheartedly in favor of people being able to choose the time and means of their passing, having had to deal with this kind of thing myself.
• Randy Bayne: Fair Share Health Care rhymes, and may lead to universal health care, if played well.
• One voter at a time.
• Greg Dewar has the initial version of the his campaign mailer archive up and running.
• Pax Nortona has an interesting post up about the effect of hardship on character and by extension, politics. Turns out (as is often true) the reality is not the myth.
• Construction employment is down in absolute terms. Not so good, that.

The National Guard as border enforcement presents a very difficult issue for Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Does he play to the Right and send them down there?  Or does he play to the Left and reject the President’s request. Schwarzenegger is attempting to play to some sort of middle ground.  Of course, he is being helped a bit by the fact that the actual mission of the Guardsmen is totally unclear.  They won’t act as border patrol people, so what exactly are they going to do?  It at least gives him some room to wiggle for the time being.  Added to that is the fact that the federal government has yet to appropriate any money to pay for this guard service.  But ultimately, there will be some sort of reckoning here.  Either he sends them or he doesn’t.

But the governor continues to refuse embracing either side’s all-or-nothing approach. He has said he does not like the idea of sending Guard troops to the border, but he has also said he would consider doing so, if it were a temporary solution.

And therein lies his problem. The governor is getting toasted as a waffler who is either pandering to both conservatives and liberals, especially Latinos — or scared to rile either in an election year.(CC Times 5/21/06)

Immigration is such a challenging issue, for both Dems and Reps.  I’m not sure how a Democratic governor would deal with this issue either.  Would  it be a natural for Gray Davis to just reject it out of hand?  I doubt it.  But, Schwarzenegger’s waffling and lack of decisiveness is a problem.  He has yet to say anything of substance on the immigration issues of the day.  California’s governor should have some sort of position on these issues and provide leadership.  Shwarzenegger has not.

The good folks over at No On 82 are creating some very nice little ads featuring teachers, principals, and parents stating how Prop 82 would create a massive bureacracy, a “parent tax”, and generally be disastrous for the state b/c uh, rich people would be a little less rich…and uh… well, you get the jist.

The problem is: they are all fake.  Yup, all actors.  Those “teachers” that you’ll see, uh, maybe they taught a summer stock class.  From Matier and Ross:

Take, for example, the new ad opposing actor and director Rob Reiner’s universal preschool initiative, Proposition 82. It warns of a costly new bureaucracy and even the possibility of a “parent tax,” and features a school principal, teachers and kids.

They’re all actors. According to the call that went out from Ava Shevitt Casting in Santa Monica, these were the requirements:
***
Teacher: “Female/Asian, Caucasian, 40-45 … professional manner, warm & engaging, authoritative but gentle.”
***
Student: “Female, multi-ethnic, 13-15 … dark hair, appealing, warm & engaging, bright, adorable, thoughtful, insightful, poised, inspirational.”
***
California Teachers Association officials, who support the preschool initiative, aren’t amused by the fake school crew.  “Using actors to portray teachers is misleading and deceptive,” sniped Sandra Jackson, spokeswoman for the union. (SF Chron 5/21/06)

The fact that the No on 82 folks are stooping to using fake teacher is more than a little funny/ironic.  Can’t they find one teacher who doesn’t like 82?  Well perhaps not…

As an aside, check out that article for a funny Jerry Brown story. 

Moving to Dem on Dem ads and back to a subject I touched on earlier: SD-8’s bizarre ads.  Mike Nevin wants to appear again on these pages.  This time he tries to tie Yee to Schwarzenegger.  Well, ok, but then he takes a page out of “Girly-Man” Schwarzenegger’s book.  He puts a picture of Yee’s head onto a Hans and Franz picture with Ahnold. I think it’s funny that we get in a huff when Arnold uses this stuff, but then we do it to each other.  Meanwhile Lou Papan is running clean ads on TV and in mailers.

Here it is, click on the ads to make them bigger.

Mike Nevin’s Pump You Up Ad