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November 22, Open Thread

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Ok, we’re going to try to get back into the habit of doing these.  Feel free to chat about whatever passes through your ears…

Links:

* Republicans are looking to take away $2B of stimulus money intended for California HSR in the next session.  Look for more on this here tomorrow.

* Steve Cooley beat Meg Whitman in absolute votes.  This isn’t much consolation, as he is running over 40,000 votes behind Kamala Harris, but it has to be something.  Typically there is a big dropoff after the top of the ticket, and this year is no exception. But Whitman did that poorly.  Cooley spent about $1.55/vote, while Whitman spent about $36.63.  Wow. That’s going to leave a mark of Grif’s inheritance.

*  Former Dept. of Finance director Mike Genest’s firm picked up two new hires: two long-time (and influential) Assembly budget staffers.

* Peter Schrag has a great column on gridlock and the two santa clause theory.

8 thoughts on “November 22, Open Thread”

  1. “American Recovery and Reinvestment Rescission Act” will not get past the Senate, In the event that It does, It will be Vetoed by President Obama, then It would need at least 2/3rds in both the House and the Senate for an override of said veto to become law, So this spoiled rotten Turkey corpse will never become law, Not on this planet. It’s going to be a good long two Years, Until the repugnican reprobates can be rooted out and replaced.

  2. The latest results from the official site have Kamala Harris (D) opening up her lead even more now with over 9.44 million ballots counted so far.

    Harris (D)   4,340,454 (46.0%)

    Cooley (R)   4,288,568 (45.5%)

    Allen (Green)  249,952  (2.7%)

    Hannan (Lib)   240,107  (2.5%)

    Templin (AIP)  166,124  (1.7%)

    Evans (P&F)    155,526  (1.6%)

    That’s almost a 52,000-vote lead, the largest margin it’s been so far for her, I think. This latest update came just minutes after a Fox11 report had her opening her lead to about 43,000 votes, so the afternoon update padded her lead by another 8,000 or so votes.

    There’s still about 300,000 ballots left to be counted, but since a majority of them are from counties Harris won, it’s looking highly unlikely that Cooley could overtake her now.  From Eric Garcetti’s Facebook post keeping track of this, Max Kanin had this Monday night update:

    According to the SOS website, Harris now leads Cooley by 51886 votes statewide. Cooley net gained 1467 votes in Madera County today (though the county has completed its count). Cooley net gained 2352 votes in Butte County (the county has completed its count). Cooley net gained 985 votes in Kern County (the county has completed its count). And Cooley gained 161 votes in Tulare County (the county has also completed its count). Harris net gained 494 votes in Santa Clara County (they’ve also completed their count). And Harris net gained 333 votes in Marin County (they’ve completed their count).

    Cooley net gained 691 votes in San Diego County today (they have just 2500 ballots left to count). Harris net gained 279 in Riverside County. Harris also net gained 938 in San Francisco today.

    No update from Ventura County today. I don’t want to make any Ventura County predictions because the last time I did so, it turned out they weren’t done counting. But I’d presume they’re finished.

    Now I am willing to bet $50 (and I’m not a betting man) that some high profile blogger or news outlet will report that Cooley has a great chance of overtaking Harris because far more remains left to be processed in Orange County than LA County with a sizeable chunk left to process in San Diego County. But this is not accurate at all. Orange County has finished its count. San Diego County has roughly 2500 ballots left to process.

    If Kanin is right about Orange County COMPLETELY having finished EVERYTHING, then yeah, there simply aren’t enough red counties for Cooley to make up enough ground to overtake Harris.

    What’s unclear, though, is if Cooley will actually concede when the final results must be certified on December 3rd.

    BTW, we’ve surpassed 10 million ballots being cast overall in California (remember, not everyone who cast a ballot voted in the Attorney General race, given how much more high-profile the Governor and Senate races were).  In the 2008 presidential election, 13,575,514 Californians voted for President (plus a few others who left it blank for whatever reason), so getting over 10 million back for a midterm election is pretty nice.

  3. enabled a home-grown city council member to win an upset over a well-funded political heavyweight.

    Jean Quan finished second (24%) in the first round of counting, but Don Perata also fell short of of a majority with 35%. In the subsequent rounds, Quan pulled ahead with second and third choice votes as the last place candidates were eliminated.

    The final count was a close 51%-49%, but I call this a victory for IRV.

    There was a good story on the PBS NewsHour about Oakland’s “Ranked Choice Ballot”, but I’d really like to see someone from Oakland (or at least the Bay Area) diary on this election.

    The NewsHour story is at:



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