• So the budget has been finally signed. Apparently the Governor blue-penciled $510 million in projects. Here are some specifics on what those blue pencils are – apparently a lot of cuts to seniors, which is real classy. I’ll have more on this tomorrow. (Dave)
• You may remember a lot of noise about a proposed toll road through the San Onofre State Beach. The California Coastal Commission rejected it, but supporters took the extraordinary step of calling on the Commerce Department to ram this through. There was a furious debate about this yesterday, with over 650 people packed into a public hearing in Del Mar, and over 150 speakers. Even if the Commerce Department rules in favor of the toll road, there would be more approvals needed, plus court cases, etc., so this would go on and on.
• Speaking of a pluralistic society, immigration is down. Apparently people don’t want to come to deal with our crappy economy. (B)
• Also unsurprisingly, homeownership rates are down. Case in point, San Diego. (B)
• The official response to the first No on Prop. 8, Equality for All campaign’s first ad is that the ad was “a blatant appeal to sympathy and emotion.” aka this is really effective and we don’t like it. Somewhere there is a little harp playing. (Julia)
• And finally, friend of the blog thereisnospoon appears in a new Microsoft ad where the company tries to recast their image as reflecting the spirit of the cutting edge. I’m assuming that spoon is a PC because he digs World of Warcraft and first-person shooters or something, because frankly I can’t see another reason.
UPDATE: One more item, a statement from DiFi on the terrible decision by the House Commerce committee to lift the offshore oil moratorium:
“I think it’s awful. This battle is not over. We will come back and fight another day – that’s for sure. I regret the House appropriations committee didn’t see fit to go with a better, more widely accepted alternative, which would have kept in place a moratorium 50 miles or more off shore. In my view, there were better options than this.”
• CA-11: Apparently trying to win some kind of award for the worst attack website in history, Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report (a terribly designed website in its own right) has put together One Term Is Enough, in all of its way-too-large masthead, ridiculously-spare with no action items or columns, design out of Quark X-Press glory. Man, that’s ugly. And I think the focus on Jerry McNerney’s earmarks, given the summer of scandal that Dean Andal has lived through which is entirely about a construction contract with a community college (if he was in Congress, that would be, basically, an earmark), is kind of silly. Meanwhile, McNerney is up with his first ad of the cycle, focusing on his work on behalf of troops and veterans.
• AD-80: As soyinkafan noted, Manuel Perez and Gary Jeandron had a debate where Jeandron stated his support for a tax increase in Imperial County. That’s not likely to help him with the conservative base, but clearly Jeandron understands that he has to move to left if he has any chance to win this seat. The Palm Springs Desert Sun has a debate report here.
• SD-19: Tony Strickland’s latest endorsement is Erin Brockovich, of all people. However, this could be less of a reach across the aisle as it appears.
Ventura County Star columnist Timm Herdt got Strickland’s Democratic opponent Hannah-Beth Jackson on the phone, who said she was “a little surprised” by Brockovich backing her opponent.
While Brockovich says she is a Democrat in the ad, she writes on her blog that she’s ready to leave the party and become an independent.
“I am ready to turn because both parties are acting foolish and judgmental and attacking,” she writes.
She also has kind words for GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
“I am proud to be a member of the same Strong Woman’s Club that Sarah Palin is in.” Brockovich writes.
• AD-15: As has been noted, Joan Buchanan released her first campaign ad of the cycle. Her opponent Abram Wilson responded with his own ad, also biographical in nature, and his campaign has questioned the Buchanan spot and her commitment to fiscal responsibility. I suppose signing a “no-tax” pledge is the height of responsibility, then.
• AD-30: We were all expecting it, and now Nicole Parra has officially endorsed Republican Danny Gilmore in the election to replace her. This is a family fight moved into the political sphere – the Parra-Florez feud is well-known.
Parra’s support of Danny Gilmore angered Democratic Party leaders, but comes as no surprise because she has been praising Gilmore for months.
“I will endorse Danny Gilmore in the near future and I will campaign for him and do commercials,” Parra said in an interview. Gilmore, a retired California Highway Patrol officer from Hanford, is running against Democrat Fran Florez, mother of state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, a longtime Parra rival.
• LA Board of Supes: Turns out that not only is Bernard Parks turning to Republicans to help him get elected over progressive State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, but for ten years he was a member of the American Independent Party (!).
According to voter registration forms certified by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder:
Bernard Parks left the Democratic Party and registered as an American Independent on February 12, 1992 – just in time to miss the opportunity to vote for President Bill Clinton.
He registered again as an American Independent on August 9, 1996.
President George Bush was elected in November 2000 – but Parks still wouldn’t become a Democrat for nearly a year and a half.
Parks was fired as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department on April 9, 2002. Shortly thereafter, he began to prepare to run for Los Angeles City Council, and re-registered as a Democrat on May 30, 2002. Less than a year later, he was elected to the City Council.
That is very strange, especially for an African-American to sign up with a party which is the legacy of George Wallace.
The big story today continues to be the Bush/Paulson bailout bill, which is now being debated on Capitol Hill. In calling my representatives yesterday, Rep. Waxman seemed very wary of giving away $700 billion dollars to the Treasury Dept. without oversight or judicial review. Sen. Boxer’s statement still buys into the “need for speed” that is accelerating this legislation in an effort to sneak through something very bad, but she does hit the real genesis of the crisis.
In addition, we must get to the root of the housing crisis and work to keep people in their homes through refinancing; if we don’t, housing prices will continue to freefall and we will still be in a mess.
In California, we have more foreclosures than any other state-in August more than 101,000 Californians received foreclosure notices and more than 33,000 lost their homes.
If the American taxpayers come to the rescue in this financial crisis, you have to provide assurances that they aren’t just taking on bad debt and further jeopardizing their future.
The housing crisis is the first mover here. Lenders and financial industry actors had an extreme need to get people into mortgages, no matter their income or ability to pay, and they sweet-talked them into teaser rates and ARMs with no money down and low opening monthly payments. The idea was to accumulate as many mortgages as possible to package them into mortgage-backed securities to sell overseas. It was a bad bet predicated on perpetual growth in the housing market, and when it crashed there was no flight to safety.
The most important protection for taxpayers comes with protection from the types of lending schemes we saw in the housing market, and that starts not just on Wall Street, but in the states. Aggressive regulation of the housing market in California will go very far to protect against such a crisis from happening again. The legislature passed AB1830 to address exactly this issue, and today Asm. Ted Lieu, the author of the bill, writes Governor Schwarzenegger urging him to sign it.
As you have said in advocating for budget reform, “Enough is enough!” Similarly, the past few years have shown the consequences of a system that failed to effectively regulate and reign in the out of control subprime mortgage industry. The laissez-faire policies previously advocated by much of the industry have turned out to be disastrous. As with budget reform, we need effective mortgage reforne. “Enough is enough!”
To much of the industry’s credit, many within the industry and Wall Street recognize that they need better regulation. That is why the following major industry institutions (collectively representing thousands of financial institutions) have all gone neutral on this bill and many of them have contacted your office asking you to sign this bill: The California Bankers Association, California Mortgage Bankers Association, California Independent Bankers, California Credit Union League, and the California Financial Services Association […]
AB 1830 provides consumer protections for subprime loans while maintaining access to credit and homeownership. This carefully crafted bill is the product of dozens and dozens of meetings and discussions with industry and consumer groups over an eight month period. Through our efforts to craft a balanced approach the leading organizations in the financial and banking industry have gone neutral on this bill. Although a minority of groups still oppose, such as the mortgage brokers and realtors, we have taken several of their suggestions and have worked hard to try to accommodate their concerns.
AB1830 would put mortgage brokers themselves on the hook for their predatory practices, imparting to them a fiduciary duty which would subject them to potential civil suits and loss of license were they not to put the economic interest of the borrower first. It would end the practice of yield spread premiums, which actually financially incentivized brokers to put borrowers into riskier and more costly mortgage options. It would prohibit steering prime borrowers into subprime loans, a common practice. It would ban “negative amortization” loans that would cost the borrower more for the loan even after their initial payments. It would increase enforcements, put caps on prepayment penalties, and go very far to prevent the kinds of abuses that led to this crisis in the credit markets.
It’s essential to the future of your stock portfolio as well as the future of the state’s economic picture to pass AB1830. The Governor should do so as soon as possible.
Democratic MEMBERS Meeting on Bailout Plan, TODAY, Room 2220, 2:30-3:30pm
From: The Honorable Brad Sherman
Date: 9/22/2008
Skeptical About the
Administration’s $700 Billion Bailout Plan?
Democratic Members Meeting
Room 2220
2:30-3:30 P.M.
Dear Democratic Colleague:
Are you skeptical about the $700 billion bailout bill? Let’s meet in Room 2220 on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 2:30 PM. Come to the first and perhaps only meeting of the Skeptics Caucus to discuss President Bush’s $700 billion bailout bill. Democratic Members and Senior Staff only.
Bring specific legislative proposals. I will be bringing legislative proposals to carry out the principles set forth in the letter below. If you have questions about this meeting, please contact me or my Legislative Director and Counsel, Gary Goldberg, at xyz.
Sincerely,
Brad Sherman
Member of Congress
I would expect this out of a Barbara Lee or Maxine Waters, but coming from Sherman, this means that rank and file Democrats are very wary of getting steamrolled by the Bush Administration and let a major chunk of the Federal treasury flow out of their control. Sherman is pretty middle-of-the-road as Democrats go, squarely in the mainstream of the party if not to the right of the mainstream, not a guy who’s out in front a lot and not (to my knowledge) a member of the Progressive Caucus. I’ve met him a couple times out here in California and he seemed OK, but not exactly the guy I’d expect to go to war with. If Sherman is marching (pardon the pun), there’s a very large skeptic’s caucus, I’d gather. And Sherman’s prescriptions for a better bill (available at the link) are really good.
“We must take action to keep our whole economy from collapsing. But if the plan by the Treasury which has leaked out today is genuine, then it’s unclear if the plan will work at all.
“Add in a massive transfer of authority to the executive branch, with no congressional oversight or judicial review, and this plan should be dead on arrival.
“Handing over taxpayer money to the government with no oversight is always a bad idea and it’s especially rotten given the current administration’s track record.”
And Rep. Hilda Solis, traveling with netroots favorite Annette Taddeo in South Florida, released a great statement as well, connecting this fiscal crisis to the effort to privatize Social Security:
“Three years ago, President Bush and rubberstamps in Congress like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen fought hard to privatize Social Security. From the floor of Congress, Ros-Lehtinen said that she “applauded the President for his strong leadership and vision” and that she wanted to “reform Social Security to include private accounts. Had George W. Bush and rubberstamps in Congress had their way, today’s financial crisis would be a full-blown emergency. Tens of millions of seniors around the country, including hundreds of thousands here in South Florida, would have lost their pensions overnight.”
It’s time for an “all-hands-on-deck” approach. Call your Representatives and tell them you don’t want to give a blank check for $700 billion dollars to the guys who messed up Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina.
Aside from calling for a Constitutional convention or a special election to eliminate the 2/3 requirement for budget and taxes, the best thing we can do is make the Yacht Party pay for putting our state in this position by defeating them at the ballot box. There are a number of seats that we have the ability to capture this year, when we will be helped by increased voter registration and expected increases in turnout thanks to the Obama campaign on the top of the ticket.
Much like the DCCC (House of Representatives) and the DSCC (Senate), there is an organization called the DLCC (Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee) that exists to elect Democrats in state legislatures all over the country. They are currently accepting submissions on races that they can inject money into in 2008 to make a difference. Obviously, achieving 2/3 in a bellweather state like California, giving us the ability to enact far-reaching legislation that will affect the whole country, should be atop the DLCC’s agenda.
So I invite everyone to write to the DLCC at this website and list some of the winnable seats here in California that they ought to attend to. Examples include:
AD-80 (Manuel Perez)
AD-10 (Alyson Huber)
AD-78 (Marty Block)
AD-15 (Joan Buchanan)
AD-26 (John Eisenhut)
SD-19 (Hannah-Beth Jackson)
We’ll be coming out shortly with the Calitics editorial board recommended list of candidates shortly, but getting on the DLCC’s radar screen would be pretty critical as well. So go to the DLCC action page and write in some of these candidates. Thanks.
…I should mention that you can nominate multiple candidates at the site, so, you know, do that. Write in all of them!
We’re all still choking on the speed and enormity of the trillion-dollar bailout about to be given to executives on Wall Street instead of to homeowners who got snookered into teaser rates and ARMs. It’s important to note that there is another way on this. Faced with a collapse of the financial markets in the 1930s, the solution was not seen in paying off the investor class for the bad decisions they’ve made, but paying workers to produce and create, and building up the backbone of the economy again, allowing prosperity to trickle up instead of down. We are at another crossroads across the nation and in California, and yet the answer is so clear. We have an imminent fight to mitigate the effects of global warming, and whoever solves this puzzle will not only save the world trillions in collateral damage from the disastrous fallout, but make a tidy profit besides. In fact, as a recent study has shown, the effort here in California will unquestionably improve the long-term prospects for the economy.
Costly as it may seem, California’s mandate to cut climate-altering exhausts from vehicles and industry by nearly one-third in the next 12 years actually will boost the economy, a state analysis released Wednesday predicts.
The improvements in fuel and energy efficiency and extra clean-technology jobs needed to achieve the required 30 percent emissions reduction would result in a net household savings of $400 to $500 a year and a net 0.2 percent or $4 billion gain in the total annual output of goods and services, according to the report.
The view that says we have to freeze short-term cash outlays to stop the catastrophic effects of climate change ought to be discredited on this of all days as reductivist and shortsighted. The cost of the kinds of damage you would see from a sustained rise in global temperature is so astronomical that investing in green technology is incredibly efficient in the long run. And it’s a jobs program to boot:
Most sectors of the economy, including transportation and warehousing, agriculture, forestry, manufacturing and construction, would by 2020 see moderate increases in employment and production as a result of investing in the more expensive but efficient building designs, lighting, vehicles and equipment, the study said.
The major exception would be the electric power companies that would experience about 16 percent less production and about 14 percent fewer jobs.
Which of course would be more than offset by the increase in jobs in the same sector through solar and wind and biomass and tidal and geothermal production.
The financial mess puts into stark relief the need for a long-view approach to the economic future. Investments that seem unaffordable now hold massive potential in just a few short years. We have to be bold and become the center for green jobs in the United States and around the world. In uncertain times, it’s the only way to secure California’s future.
CapAlert sez it’s all over, and it’s marginally better, actually:
Legislative leaders said today that they have reached a deal on the long overdue state budget that will satisfy demands made by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Republican governor has said he would veto the $104.3 billion plan lawmakers passed this week. He demanded that a proposed rainy day fund to help the state though bad economic times be tightened to prevent its balance from being depleted in good times.
And he said lawmakers must remove a maneuver, worth $1.6 billion, that would have increased the amount of withholding tax paid by personal income taxpayers.
Republican leaders and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata emerged from a meeting this afternoon saying they had agreed to the governor’s demands. They have proposed making up the lost revenue by increasing penalties on corporations that underpay taxes. The leaders also agreed to lower the amount of the state’s reserve fund from $1.2 billion to $800 million. Under the proposal, corporations who underpay their taxes by $1 million or more would see penalties rise from 10 percent to 20 percent. The deal also assumes a cancellation of a proposed tax amnesty program.
A mixed bag here. I think the rainy-day fund is kind of silly, and the worst part of this is that Schwarzenegger will now get to wield his blue pencil on the budget (last year he struck funding to treat mentally ill homeless people, you recall. How moderate!). But eliminating the interest-free loan all of us taxpayers were going to give to the state against our will is a good thing, especially in return for increasing penalties on corporate tax cheats. The withholding gambit wasn’t going to pass the override, because Republican leaders wouldn’t have gone along (they somehow snuck it into a party-line vote the first time around).
Of course, that isn’t a reliable form of income. And there are still plenty of gimmicks inside this budget. And, the $8 billion dollar chunk that could be siphoned off by judicial mandate to rescue prison health care has yet to be dealt with. So this end result is not exactly wonderful.
The pundits who gave Arnold a tongue bath over having the post-partisan postpartisan-ness to veto the budget ought to take a look at the finished product. It’s still a piece of garbage. And that’s by design in the dysfunctional budget system, where you practically are destined to come out with an illegal finished product.
The Bay Area Council, a group of high-level executives from around the state, has the right idea – it’s time for a Constitutional convention that can blow all of these contradictory and debilitating rules off the table and start anew.
A constitutional convention was used nearly a century ago to wrest California’s government from the hands of railroad barons. Today, some say it could help the state out of its current political dysfunction.
The Bay Area Council, which represents the chief executives of Google, Yahoo, Chevron, Wells Fargo and other major San Francisco Bay Area businesses, is leading the charge for a state constitutional convention to revamp state government.
“This year’s budget deadlock shows better than perhaps any other recent event that our state needs a constitutional convention to fix a governance system that is hopelessly broken,” Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, said in a statement.
Among some of the changes being proposed:
Adopt a two-year budget cycle.
California’s taxing and spending systems, along with its ties to local government spending.
Remove the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget in the Legislature.
The devil’s in the details, but the current system doesn’t work, and we end up suffering. There are dozens of teachers, health care workers, managers of clinics, public employees, and countless other groups who get hurt every summer by the late budget. The legislators aren’t currently allowed to do their job. Reform is desperately needed.
I’m going to try and do these once a day. No promises!
• CA-04: In partial response to the kerfuffle from yesterday’s deceitful attack ad, Charlie Brown released two radio spots and a TV ad today. His wife Jan Brown narrates the TV spot, which foregrounds Charlie and his son’s military service. (Sorry, not embeddable)
The radio spots are both solid attacks on Venturian Candidate Tom McClintock. Two men, two paths contrasts Brown’s service and leadership with McClintock’s life in politics, and his record on veterans (including donating 5% of his campaign funds) with McClintock’s (voting against veteran’s funding). Vote is a humorous spot discussing how McClintock can’t vote for himself because he won’t move into the district. There’s also a lot on McClintock’s per diem expenses from the State Senate. “L.A. Tom” is the frame they’re going with, and they ask, “if he won’t vote for himself, why should we?”
• CA-11: State Senator Ellen Corbett and Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi sent a letter to women in Jerry McNerney’s district urging them to reject right-wing extremist Dean Andal. His record on women’s issues is really retrograde.
To the Women of Congressional District 11:
If you are anything like us, you want a representative in Washington that not only reflects your values, but who also respects you.
Dean Andal just doesn’t qualify. In fact, Dean Andal’s record on women’s issues shows just how out of touch and extreme his views are.
In 1994, as a member of the State Assembly, Dean Andal opposed a common sense law that would have allowed women to wear pants in the workplace instead of being forced to wear skirts and dresses.
Andal also voted against requiring health insurance plans to cover cervical cancer screenings. He even voted against making sure that information about sexual harassment be included in mandatory workplace anti-discrimination posters.
Yet the most egregious affront to women he offered in his short term in the Assembly was his vote to restrict the definition of rape to exclude attacks where an incapacitated woman cannot resist.
And what’s worse, Andal’s was the only vote in the Assembly against expanding the definition. The only one.
Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, all women should be proud of the progress we have made. That’s why it’s so important that we don’t send someone like Dean Andal to Congress. Someone with a record like Andal’s can be counted on to turn back the clock on all we have achieved.
• LA Board of Supes: There’s a runoff in this seat between Councilman Bernard Parks and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas. While Ridley-Thomas is a solid progressive who understands the fundamental dysfunction of state government and will fight for progressive values on the powerful Board of Supes, Bernard Parks has hired Republican fixer Steve Kinney to help him win the race. Parks, who has a business-friendly record on the City Council, is receiving help from BizFed, a PAC notorious for pushing the same agenda. The wingnuts at the Lincoln Club have reportedly offered him support as well. At least the choice is now clear to voters – one candidate on the side of the corporate vultures, the other on the side of the people.
• Misc. I should note that Chris Bowers’ House race forecast is up, and among California races, he lists CA-04 as a tossup, CA-11 as Lean D, and CA-26 & CA-50 as Likely R. I think he’s selling a couple races short, but that’s a pretty good conservative estimate.
Maybe it’s all the endorsements, or that the anti-equality side has thus far been confined to right-wing zealots and religious forces trying to impose their doctrine on the state, but Proposition 8’s chances of passage are getting worse.
Opposition to a California ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage is mounting following Attorney General Jerry Brown’s move to change the language on the initiative, according to a Field Poll released today.
The poll found that just 38 percent of likely voters support the measure, while 55 percent intend to vote no. That compares with 42 percent in support and 51 percent opposed in July.
Brown amended the Proposition 8 summary language after the state Supreme Court’s decision on May 15 to overturn California’s previous ban on same-sex marriage.
The pollsters found the amended language played a role in that growing opposition, especially among the 30 percent of likely voters interviewed who had never heard of Prop. 8.
Those voters were much more likely to oppose the measure when read Brown’s wording (58 percent against it and 30 percent for it) than those in the same category who were read the old version of Prop. 8 (42 percent against and 37 percent for it), according to the Field Poll.
Yes, how dare that Jerry Brown put into print what the initiative would actually do, which is eliminate the right granted by the state for same-sex couples to marry. The Yes on 8 folks are whining that Brown “interfered” with the election, when actually, words with meaning did.
You can get the internals of the poll here. The initiative is running weak among DTS voters (56-28 against) and young voters (58-31 against). Hispanics are against it 51-36, which actually is not as solid as whites (55-39 against). And the key stat to me is that among divorced or separated voters, Prop. 8 fails 65-33. That makes perfect sense; those who have lived through a bad marriage have less illusions about how equality would ruin its sanctity.
The way I would view this is the way that California initiative watchers commonly view the “Pro” side of the argument. You have to start out 55% or higher before the negative ads kick in. Right now the Yes on 8 folks are outraising the No side 3:2, mostly with out-of-state checks. They’re going to blanket the state with ads and so we should not let our guard down.
Things are happening very quickly in the most hotly contested campaigns in California. Here’s an update:
• CA-04: Watching himself falling behind in the race to replace John Doolittle, perennial candidate Tom McClintock decided to borrow one of his predeccesor’s smear campaigns and release an ad claiming that Charlie Brown dishonored servicemen by appearing at an anti-war rally.
The idea that wearing a camouflage jacket constitutes being “in uniform” is ridiculous, and so is the idea that a retired military officer has no free speech rights. But the idea is to smear Charlie as some kind of radical leftist and anti-military, despite Brown’s long record of supporting veterans and McClintock’s longer record voting against them.
The ensuing press conference put on by the McClintock campaign was a wild affair.
SACRAMENTO – A press conference on congressional candidate Charlie Brown’s actions in 2005 at the home of an anti-war display nearly descended into conflict itself, with disruptions before, during and after the event and a near-appearance by police officers […]
But before the event even began, a handful of Brown supporters – accompanied by Brown’s campaign manager, Todd Stenhouse – were asked to leave so that they wouldn’t cause a disruption.
One man loudly protested that as a military veteran and the father of an active-duty U.S. soldier, he felt he could stay. “This is not Russia,” he said.
McClintock campaign consultant John Feliz and Stenhouse eventually got the man to agree to leave, but not before security at the Hyatt hotel where the press conference took place made calls to Sacramento police to remove the man […]
But a third man who was with the veterans pointed out that Brown was within his First Amendment right to do so, prompting Feliz to ask him to leave as well, while also saying Brown should re-enlist and face a court martial for his actions.
The man, who gave his name as Bret Sherlock, said afterward that he attended because he was tired of non-veterans like McClintock smearing veterans like Brown.
“Did he do anything illegal?” Sherlock said of Brown, adding that if anyone should be able to protest the war, it should be Brown, as both a veteran and a father of a soldier who has served four tours of duty in Iraq.
McClintock campaign spokesman Bill George said the video came from a “concerned citizen.” Neither McClintock nor Brown appeared at the press conference.
After the press conference concluded, Stenhouse tried to give McClintock’s campaign a pledge to join a Brown program that donates 5 percent of Brown’s campaign contributions to nonprofit community groups that work with charities.
Feliz angrily took it and threw it down without looking at it.
They don’t want to talk about issues. So McClintock tries to smear a decorated veteran to win an election. Typical.
More on the flip…
• CA-11: We’ve talked before about Dean Andal’s embarrassing fall from Congressional contender to also-ran, but it’s just getting worse and worse. The questions over Andal’s role in a botched construction project at a local community college have continued, and he’s also been caught lying about his claim that he’s raised more money than any Congressional challenger in the country. Now his mailers are hitting mailboxes throughout the district, and they’ve been revealed as lies.
What it says: “Instead of taking action to fix America’s energy crisis, ruling Democrats shut down Congress this month (August) for a five-week vacation – with Democratic Congressman Jerry McNerney casting the deciding vote to adjourn.”
Is it true? No. The vote was 213-212 in favor of adjournment. Under Andal’s argument, all 213 members of Congress who voted in favor of the annual summer break were the “deciding vote.”
Besides, party leaders don’t let freshmen decide anything.
It’s almost sad how bad Andal is doing. The NRCC isn’t even spending in the district.
• CA-50: The latest registration numbers for the district are in, and while Republicans continue to hold an 11-point lead, the trend is in Democrats’ favor. Republicans are also perilously close to the 40% registration line, under which it becomes harder for them to win, as more independent voters lean Democratic. I don’t know if Paris Hilton ads and chicken suits will get it done for Nick Leibham, whose campaign is clearly just trying to get in the headlines. But there are lines of attack on Bilbray, particularly over his single-minded focus on immigration and not the pocketbook issues that affect people’s lives, though Bilbray is enough of a nut to say that the two are functionally equivalent.
• CA-26: There’s another smear campaign going on in this race, where David Dreier and the NRCC are trying to hold onto this seat by dredging up old news about Russ Warner and old tax liens and business license payments. These are incidents from as far back as 1992, and Warner’s business license has since been reinstated. It’s a pretty negative mailer considering that Dreier sounds so confident about victory. Warner is now out with his own mailer highlighting Dreier’s many ties to special interests (like the $200,000 he’s received from oil and gas companies). The fact that Dreier and Bush agree 94% of the time makes an appearance as well. The fact that this race is getting so nasty so early suggests that Dreier has seen some polling that has him worried. Maybe it’s because the Inland Empire is gradually turning blue and Dreier’s days of easy campaigns are numbered. Enough of the district is in the IE for that to matter.
• AD-80: Manuel Perez has snagged the endorsement of the Sierra Club. They also have an ad up on the air, which is notable for an Assembly candidate.
