The Capitol Weekly reports, in an article about dimming GOP prospects, that Dana Rohrabacher is in a world of trouble.

The third contest is in the 46th Congressional District in Orange County, where incumbent Republican Dana Rohrabacher faces Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook.

According to GOP sources, internal polling shows the difference between Rohrabacher and Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, to be within the margin of error, although Rohrabacher has heavily outspent Cook.   Hoffenblum believes Rohrabacher faces “possibly the strongest Democrat to run against him since the current district lines were drawn in 2001.”

I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Rohrabacher has heavily outspent Cook.  He only spent a paltry $38,000 in the third quarter, though that may be ramping up now.  I don’t think the NRCC is going to have a lot of money to help him either, though they’re making noises about it.

The strapped National Republican Congressional Committee, which at the end of August had $14 million in the bank, compared with $54 million for the Democrats, last week took out an $8 million loan to fund races in the final days of the campaigns. With scant resources, the fight for dollars is intense.  

GOP insiders believe some funds may flow to Rohrabacher in the 46th C.D., but that money for any of the others is problematic. Democrats declined to say whether Cook would get last-minute cash from national Democrats.

Calitics Match candidate Debbie Cook is a better Democrat.  She supports the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, quality health care for every American, and a post-carbon economy with green energy pushing out the dirty fuels of the past.  She would be an amazing legislator.  This can be done.  She needs your support.  Donate here.  I will be down in the district over the weekend to get a report.

And don’t just believe me about all this, check out theCook Political Report.

Here’s yet more evidence that the Dems are poised for huge gains in Congress: The Cook Report has released a new set of updated rankings on 25 House races — and all 25 are shifts in the Dems’ direction.

CA-03 Dan Lungren (R) – Solid Republican to Likely Republican

CA-04 OPEN, Doolittle (R) – Likely Republican to Lean Republican

CA-46 Dana Rohrabacher (R) – Solid Republican to Likely Republican

CA-50 Brian Bilbray (R) – Solid Republican to Lean Republican

That’s right, Charlie Brown, Nick Leibham and Bill Durston are looking very impressive.  And Charlie Cook is being very conservative with these picks.  We have the momentum, now we have to go out there and pull it off.

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This year,  We are holding Charlie’s Football

Gentle Readers, volunteers, and fans of one of the most beautiful districts in the nation, CA- 04, this one’s for you.  You walked, you talked, you called, you organized, you typed, you wrote, you attended, you spoke, you applauded,  you got up in the morning and you did it all again. And again.

You saw what was wrong, you wanted to make it right, and that meant you had to pick it up.  You couldn’t let the the Charlie Brown down. And that meant volunteering.  It makes a difference.  (more over the fold)

He doesn’t look too happy, does he ?  McClintock’s 3rd Quarter fling from Oct 15 shows his campaign is broke and in debt.    Charlie Brown (D) and Tom McClintock(R, seated)  in Oroville on Oct 2, 2008.  

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Our District:

In 2006, the White House threw a life preserver to the last Republican in Congress who could have implicated George Bush in the Jack Abramoff scandal.  

In 2008, they tried to run a Fox Faux News and White House and Move America Forward guy in the Republican Primary, and the Republicans said no.

They tried to run an old retread from another district, who helped impeach Clinton, and the Republicans said no.  They tried running an ex state senator with enough baggage to fill a 18 wheeler, and the Republicans said no.  They tried running a Libertarian Ron Paulian Republican named Terbolizard, and the Republicans said no. Then they brought in the Republican Icon from a district 400 miles away in Southern California, who was terming out of state office.  And the Republicans said…..  yes.  We’ll take that one.  

Fox News and MAF,  Literally Looking Over His Shoulder, March 2008, Auburn

Because these fools don’t deserve any better.    

And a few of you worried, but you don’t win by worrying. You just get up, and you get ready, and you go out there, and you do it again, because all of you know somebody who is in a world of hurt right now, and these people are depending on us.  People who are hungry. And can’t afford to buy food. People who were downsized. People who lost their jobs. People who lost their houses. Or their rental place.  People who are sick.  People who can’t afford medicine. People who served their country overseas, but they got hurt.  People who are wondering what happens next.

So you looked that Republican Icon in the eye, and you said NOT THIS TIME. NOT HERE. NOT NOW.  ENOUGH.  We need a local Representative. We have to do this.  We can’t rely on the pundits or the experts.  We have a huge task ahead of us.

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Volunteers for Charlie Brown, April 26 Day of Action

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And now we’re in that home stretch.  Today is October 16.   We have 19 days to get this done.

And we cannot get complacent.   You saw the title.  Tom McClintock, the Republican Icon, is broke. He has more debt than cash on hand.    http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…  

By my rough estimate, only about 5% of his itemized individual donations come from inside the district on this latest FEC filing.  Schedule of upcoming events on his webpage today. None.    http://www.tommcclintock.com/e…

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 Will work for per Diem.

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Charlie Brown, the Democratic candidate for CA- 04,  is not broke.  And he’s busy meeting and talking to people.  http://www.charliebrownforcong…    Considering the district demographics, and the tough economic times, and the fact that he’s supported by so many individual donors instead of Big Money Interest PACs, it’s a miracle.

This does not mean it’s over.   Those out of state corporate interests are going to throw the kitchen sink AND the garbage disposal at us.  This is a BIG district geographically, and it’s so important because the mountains on the west side catch the winter snows and then that snow feeds us in the summer, literally. Water flows down to the areas of population and commerce to the State Capitol and to the Bay area and her port cities.  Where the water goes affects all of us.  And it effects all living things, plants and animals.  We cannot kill the delta without killing both the city and the fish and wildlife and farmland that depend on it having an inflow of fresh water.

When Charlie Brown first started running for Congress, he was running as a reformer against the corruption of the Republican Party.  He led by example and by hard work.  There wasn’t a lot of fancy rhetoric. You don’t get stuff done in the military by pointing fingers, bringing up wedge issues to try to divide people and make them mad at each other,  and hiring lobbyists to tell you you’re wonderful.  You define the problem, pick a solution, improvise if necessary, and just do it.  Charlie Brown wanted accountability in government, so he decided to run for office.  Just by the act of running, he forced the current Congressman to come out of Washington DC and interact with the district he was supposed to be representing.  Just by running, he helped other Democrats get elected, because the 50- state strategy works.  We stood there in the Opera House in Roseville in November 2006 and screamed ourselves silly every time an election return came back showing another Democrat had taken the lead, even if they were from out of state. I remember telling another kossack that Pombo was going down. She didn’t believe me at first.  I remember coming up the stairs at one point, taking one glance at the screen, and seeing the total number of House seats hit the magic number to guarantee a Democratic majority.  I knew right then we had changed things, no matter what the final count was for us.

This is what Dr Bill Durston     http://www.durstonforcongress….     (CA- 03, Lungren ,R) and Jeff Morris   http://www.jeffmorrisforcongre…  (CA-02, Herger, R) are doing for us now, by taking on these other Republican incumbents. And they actually do have a chance of winning. That’s what is so incredible.

In our district, the incumbent decided not to run against him again, after he won by only 3 percentage points.  They brought in the ringer. If you have read my past series of diaries, you can see that the ghost of Doolittle is still haunting Tom McClintock.  They may not have appeared together on stage anywhere, but McClintock took John Doolittle’s old playbook of hate politics, the one with the yellow highlights drawn over the talking points of creating fear and loathing, and tucked it under his pillow at night.  But even worse, he took his campaign financial technique of deficit spending, and he thought the lobbyists would come through for him, just like they kept coming through for John Doolittle.  And it seemed to work, at first. He forgot one thing.

Even John Doolittle has better people skills than Tom McClintock.   I hate saying that, but it seems to be true.  Look at him, he’s not in jail yet. That took some serious talent on his part.  

But Charlie Brown is still going to need our help to finish this task he started, of changing how we interact with government.  

As I said, the entrenched Republican establishment is going to throw the kitchen sink AND garbage disposal at us. They are using organizations with non profit tax status to push these horrible wedge issue propositions at the voters as hard as they can.  There has been a lot of ugly subtext going on under the surface.  

We need grace.  We need patience.  We need grit.  Because we can’t let up now.  And we need to run ads.  And these propositions have extraordinary amounts of lobbyist money supporting them.  They give it to the state assembly and state assembly accounts, and the state candidates go crazy paying for all these alleged non profits affiliated with politicians and consultants to run advertisements and slate mailers and the radio and the television and the blogger letters to the editor comment sections. That’s why I wrote about McClintock’s account yesterday.  http://www.dailykos.com/story/…  “Dear Treasurer” (McClintock’s)        People don’t see that.  They don’t see they’re being used.   They’re sincere, but this election is not about those issues.    And McClintock’s other campaigns have had a history of getting very large last minute donations.  Don’t take anything for granted.

It’s about the economy.  And the economy went into the drainpipe because George W. Bush didn’t learn a damn thing at college because he was too busy partying, and all of his life, when he screwed up, somebody related to the family bailed him out.  He thought our nation should be run like any other business.  But he has no business sense.  Screw up? Oh well ! Start a war, borrow some cash, take another mortgage, sow the seeds of fear and divisiveness. Terror alert.  Drown a city, blow away another.  Problems? Go shopping. No money? Too bad. You should have been a Republican.

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Summer 2008 in Lincoln. Get your free list of foreclosures here.

Enough.

Enough.

Enough.

This district is NOT going to send another Southern CA carpetbagger to Washington DC who is just using us as a mailing address with snowmelt.  We are going to send somebody who cares about the district because this is his home and these are his neighbors. And that person is Charlie Brown.

Now you know what we need to do.  Stay on the real issues. Volunteer.  http://www.charliebrownforcong…   Donate. https://www.charliebrownforcon…   http://www.actblue.com/entity/…     Talk. Walk.  Write.  Whatever.  Don’t give in to the temptation to be dragged into the muck.  The Republicans are frantic at this point.  They can’t see the future.  We can.  It’s going to be okay. A little rough, but okay.  Hang in there. Now let’s get out there and bring this one home.

Here is the historical trend for statewide registration numbers for the two incumbent parties (Source here):



Notice the downward trend in Republican registration over the last 25 years?  Me too.  Why could that be?  Why ever could that be?

Here’s part of the reason:



That is, of course, from the website of the Sacramento County Republican Party.

And today’s Republican Party fun:



That is from the October newsletter of the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated, apparently reproduced from a bunch of email forwards that are going around in conservative circles.

This is the Republican Party, that through its own actions, has marginalized itself in California, losing registered voters and legislative seats.  

But Proposition 11 gives the Republicans equal weight with the Democrats in drawing legislative districts, power that the Republicans themselves have decided they don’t want, because (as we see above) the Republicans themselves, with all of the advantages they had as an incumbent party, have chosen to become extremists, out of step with mainstream Californians.  

If the Republicans want more power in the State (other than the extortionist veto right they have over our fiscal health, thanks to gerrymandered budget and tax requirements), they should reform themselves.  It is not the responsibility of all of the rest of us to give the “party of personal responsibility” a helping hand just because they’ve chosen to make themselves profoundly unappetizing to the voters of California.

I should note that I would favor actual reforms that allow for actual competition for voters — public financing, multi-representative districts, and instant runoff voting would all be interesting and might create actual competition, not just between the two incumbent parties and their power brokers, but against the two incumbent parties and their power brokers.  But Proposition 11 is fake reform.  It is designed to set up districts that are “competitive” between the two incumbent parties, where one of those parties simply hasn’t earned that right.  

Much as we’ve seen on a national level, the California Republican Party is leaving its candidates on the side of the road and playing pure defense this cycle:

Democratic and Republican sources have informed CMR that the GOP has pulled the plug on future ads for Assemblymember Greg Aghazarian’s bid to replace termed out Democratic Senator Mike Machado in California’s 5th Senate District. Aghazarian’s Democratic opponent, Assemblymember Lois Wolk, is up around 20 points in internal polling, so Republicans have decided to cut their losses.

This means that there will be no more than 15 Republican Senators (and probably less) and no more than 32 Republican Assemblymembers (and probably a lot less).  They will not pick up a single seat at the state level.

Unless you think they can still win in AD-30, where an intra-party feud has left drama queen Yacht Dog Democrat Nicole Parra to endorse the Republican in the race between Danny Gilmore and Democrat Fran Florez.  Florez’ response ad to Parra’s endorsement is hilarious, check it out at the link.

The truth is that while AD-30 is competitive, it’s not a likely pick-up.  And the CRP had better get in the habit of cutting losses; a couple assembly seats are lost causes for them, too.

California’s Inland Empire newspaper, the Press Enterprise is reporting on a recent newsletter that was sent out by the Chaffey Community Republican Women Federated. In that newsletter, the Republican Women speculated about what life would be like under a Barack Obama presidency.

The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps — instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of “Obama Bucks” — a phony $10 bill featuring Obama’s face on a donkey’s body, labeled “United States Food Stamps.”

The GOP newsletter, which was sent to about 200 members and associates of the group by e-mail and regular mail last week, is drawing harsh criticism from members of the political group, elected leaders, party officials and others as racist.

I dunno. What do you think?

The group’s president, Diane Fedele… said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”  […]

“I didn’t see it the way that it’s being taken. I never connected,” she said. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.”

She said she also wasn’t trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: “Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on???? Food Stamps, what else!”

Of course, this latest outrage comes on the heels of the revelation earlier in the week that the Sacramento County Republican Central Committee had material on their official website that linked Barack Obama to Osama Bin Laden and encouraged readers to “Waterboard Barack Obama”.

The California state GOP keeps backpedaling and apologizing, but it’s clear that the McCain/Palin campaign has dabbled in the dark arts and unleashed demons that they can no longer control. They MUST be held accountable.

Cross posted on Daily Kos

Sunday’s edition of the Stockton Record ran a story about the Jerry McNerney campaign’s “tracker” of his opponent, Dean Andal.  Now, as most of us know, “tracking” is the practice of bringing a videocamera to all of your opponent’s public events in the hopes of getting ammunition–either in terms of a “macaca moment” or something as simple as contradictions in the message of a campaign.

Well, as the article points out, tracking is an inevitable and uncontroversial aspect of political campaigning:

I don’t see the need for secrecy. But I did not observe any foul play, either. Neither did Brian Klunk, a political science professor at University of the Pacific.

“Campaigns have done ‘oppositional research’ just about forever,” Klunk said. “There’s a long lore of this.”

Not a lot of controversy here…but Dean Andal doesn’t see it that way.  Maybe that’s because Dean Andal is afraid of accountability and exposure.  Regardless, here’s what he had to say about tracking–from the very same article in the Stockton Record:

McNerney was tracked in 2007 as he campaigned, presumably by minions of his rival, Rep. Richard Pombo, possibly by other Republicans.

“I’ve actually told the few people we’ve hired, anybody who does that would be immediately terminated,” Andal said. “Because I don’t believe in it.”

Now it’s time to find out just how much Dean Andal means it.

Here’s a video of Congressman McNerney entering the debate in Tracy on Oct. 11th for the CA-11 Congressional Debate.

At about 10 seconds in, you’ll notice someone standing on the raised planter area with a videocamera.  Seems innocuous enough.  But who is that guy?

Here’s a still-shot that allow us to get a better look:

So who is that?  Honestly, it looks a little bit like John Franklin, longtime Republican campaign consultant and current campaign manager of Citizens for Andal.  Here’s John’s LinkedIn profile, and here’s his website gallery, which contains some more pictures of him.

So, it’s time for John Franklin and Dean Andal to answer some questions.  Is that indeed John Franklin tracking Jerry McNerney, and if so, will Dean Andal replace him as his campaign manager for the final home stretch of the campaign?

(Cross-posted at Living in the O.)

I’m getting fed up with the Bay Area mainstream media. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but all of them have completely missed the boat on what the Rebecca Kaplan vs. Kerry Hamill race for Oakland at-large city council is really about.

Over the past week, the Chronicle, East Bay Express, and Bay Guardian have all depicted this race in essentially the same way, as the progressive outsider vs. the Perata-machine backed candidate. I understand that this makes a nice, simple story that fits into a few hundred or thousand words and doesn’t require the reporter to do much investigative work, but that’s not what the race is about.

So I wanted to make something clear – I am voting FOR Rebecca Kaplan, and not against Kerry Hamill or for that matter, against Don Perata or his political machine. I actually have no problem with Kerry Hamill. I think she cares a lot about Oakland and would make a fine city council member – I don’t think the city would crumble (anymore than it already has) under her watch.

But unfortunately for Kerry, she’s not just running against a decent opponent. She’s running against one of the most intelligent, committed and creative people I’ve ever known.

As Max mentioned over at Future Oakland, Rebecca Kaplan is the type of person that literally carries the Oakland budget around with her. Rebecca’s the type of person that remembers everything – don’t be surprised if you hear her cite a traffic study from 2002 while discussing transit issues. Rebecca’s the type of person who is eager to not only do her job as a council member but also who looks forward to sitting on various regional transportation boards, where Oakland theoretically holds much power, but where our current representatives have been uninterested in wielding this power.

Rebecca Kaplan is exactly the type of person I want to serve me and the rest of Oakland on the city council.

And I’m not the only one. I would be surprised if any Oakland candidate has ever received support from such a wide variety of groups and individuals. Rebecca is endorsed by the Central Labor Council and several unions, but she is also endorsed by business groups, including OakPAC, the Oakland Builders Alliance, and the East Bay Small Business Council PAC. She’s endorsed by the Democratic Party, Sierra Club, California Nurses Association, and several local reverends, AC Transit and BART Board directors. She’s even endorsed by the only Republican member of the Alameda County of Supervisors as well as the two most liberal supervisors.

So when Robert Gammon argued that somehow Rebecca Kaplan would be owned by the groups that have endorsed her, I honestly just laughed. Please, tell me how all of these groups, that often vehemently disagree with each other on key issues, will own her?

They won’t.

But the reason I’m not voting for Kerry Hamill is not because I’m worried that she’ll do whatever Perata tells her to do. So I was frustrated that the SF Bay Guardian spent the first half of their endorsement of Rebecca raising the specter of the Perata machine. Honestly, there’s no need to do this. Rebecca Kaplan holds her own, and I have a hard time imagining a candidate I would choose over her.

So don’t believe what the mainstream media tells you. Do your own research, or even better, stop by the Kaplan headquarters at 1915 Broadway and take a look at the diverse and enthusiastic group of volunteers phoning for Rebecca.

And on November 4th, go out and vote for Rebecca Kaplan, and not against Kerry Hamill.

You know the funny thing about the whole ACORN controversy? I mean besides the fact that this isn’t voter fraud and only effects a few perceptions and not any real votes. The funny thing is that this is the same kind of stuff that happens all the time with registration drives.  In fact, it happened with Republicans right here in California.  From David Markland’s Faultline:

While John McCain supporters attempt to draw connections between Barack Obama and ACORN in the wake of the thousands of bogus voter registrations submitted by the organization, California Republicans have failed to remind the media that just two years ago a group the San Bernadino GOP hired to register voters was also investigated for fraud.

The LA Times had a story back in 2006 chronicling the incident. Basically, the San Bernardino GOP hired a firm to register voters, and many of the 3,000 or so forms were missing important information, were obviously fake, or otherwise troublesome.

But, look at Obama! He associates with bad people that John McCain would never associate with…or something like that.

I will be on KRXA 540 AM at 8 this morning to discuss this and other California politics issues

In today’s column lambasting state politicians for the budget crisis George Skelton makes a rather startling and, to me, clearly inaccurate claim. After bashing Arnold and the legislature’s leaders for not calling an immediate special session to deal with the budget deficit he uses the situation to argue for Prop 11:

Predictably, the Capitol’s record 85-day tardiness in producing a state budget is not an issue in any competitive legislative race this fall.

That’s because — despite the national political drama, and rock-bottom public approval rating of the Legislature — there are very few competitive legislative races. Blame the Legislature’s gerrymandering of districts to make them safe for incumbents and their parties. No incumbent is in a tight race. No lawmaker is being held accountable for legislative fiscal irresponsibility.

It’s an argument for Proposition 11, a ballot measure sponsored by good government groups that would take redistricting away from the Legislature and hand it to an independent commission.

That is simply not true. California is FULL of competitive legislative races this fall. Look at the assembly, where as David Dayen explained yesterday there are competitive seats all over the place. You’ve got Alyson Huber in AD-10, Joan Buchanan in AD-15, John Eisenhut in AD-26, Fran Florez in AD-30, Ferial Masry in AD-37, Marty Block in AD-78, and Manuel Perez in AD-80 all with a very good chance of winning seats currently held by Republicans or in a competitive race with Republicans.

Linda Jones in AD-36 is running a competitive race and in AD-38 and AD-63 a polls show a tie between Republicans and Democrats in voter preferences. The race for SD-19 is competitive between Hannah-Beth Jackson and Tony Strickland. Here on the Central Coast Abel Maldonado feels the need to blanket the airwaves with TV and radio ads even though he faces independent and underfunded challenger Jim Fitzgerald. Ginny Mayer and Gary Pritchard are likely seeing a boost in their own fortunes in Orange County senate races.

I don’t know how George Skelton can claim that there are no competitive legislative races this year. It is an untrue statement and he’s doing his readers a disservice by saying there aren’t any. He’s so fixated on Prop 11, a pointless reform in search of a problem, that he is blind to the political earthquake that’s about to take place.

Skelton is also wrong that the budget isn’t an issue in these races. True, it does not seem to dominate the campaigns, but it is instead enfolded into a broader public unease with Republicans when it comes to the economy. California’s economy badly needs stimulus and increased government spending, not slash-and-burn like Republicans propose. Barack Obama at last night’s debate dramatically undercut Republican demands for across the board spending cuts, pointing out that’s not what you do in a severe recession, and Californians are smart enough to connect that to our own Republican caucus.

California voters understand full well what is responsible for the budget crisis. Skelton wants us to believe it’s because all legislators regardless of party are either incompetent or scared to face the truth. Never mind the fact that it is foolish to hold a special session while you’re trying to sell revenue anticipation notes – Californians are demonstrating that they clearly understand this is the Republicans’ fault.

By forcing a three month budget delay and demanding spending cuts at the worst possible time, Republicans have shown to Californians that they are irresponsible and not to be trusted with power over California’s basic services and with its tax revenue.

Prop. 11 is a sideshow. It’s time for California’s media to pay attention to the main event – numerous competitive elections across the state that will put 2/3 in our grasp. Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Skelton?!