Our apologies for being a little quiet here on Calitics this weekend.  The convention has been a wee bit hectic for all of us. We’ll get you a more detailed recap soon,  but there were a few details that were worth sharing.

In the Insurance Commissioners race, Dave Jones was able to squeak out the endorsement.  It was certainly a dramatic race, with both campaigns doing a really good job of rallying support. But in the end, Dave Jones’ progressive base was simply too much for Hector de la Torre to overcome.  The endorsement won’t necessarily bring a big windfall, Chair Burton has said that they won’t be spending any money in primaries.  But, hey, Jones will now get that lower postage rate that everybody was seeking.  Of course, the cache of the Democratic Party endorsement will be quite powerful on the mail that we will likely be seeing coming out of Jones’ campaign very shortly.  I like both of these guys, but in the interest of full disclosure, I did end up voting for Dave Jones. Either will make a much better insurance commissioner than Steve Poizner, that’s for sure.

In the LG race, Gavin Newsom won the outright vote, but didn’t get the endorsement. I know the Hahn folks were trying to spin this as a win, but I just don’t get it.  Newsom had already declined to seek the endorsement a while back, and it was Janice Hahn’s campaign who forced the issue. If I recall correctly, the vote was about 57-43 52-42 in favor of Newsom. Which, considering Newsom’s past, is fairly respectable. But, again, I’m not entirely sure why we went through the process. Perhaps Garry South figured it would make Gavin work and might cause some sort of game-changing drama.  That clearly didn’t happen, and Hahn is still looking for some way of overcoming Newsom’s advantage in name ID.

On the Props, the resolutions committee went the right way on all the props, and we’ll approve them.  They supported Prop 15, the fair elections initiative, and Prop 13, a measure that would change the way seismic retrofits are taxed.  They opposed Prop 14 (“open” primaries), Prop 16 (PG&E Power Grab), and Prop 17 (Mercury Insurance power grab).

General session is about to start, and we’ll wrap up the festivities, approve reports of the committees, and perhaps get a chance to vote on a few endorsements. I know at least one campaign was trying to get signatures, but I don’t know what came of it.  A full recap to come soon.