[UPDATE] The link to the LA Times’ results are here. In what I imagine are early absentee numbers, Prop. 98 is getting killed 62-38, while Prop. 99 is way up 67-33. I found some early Congressional numbers from LA County, too. Ed Chau is up in CA-42, Russ Warner in CA-26.
SD-23: Fran Pavley is up 60-39 over Lloyd Levine with 2% reporting.
SD-25: Mervyn Dymally up on Rod Wright 45-33 with 3% in.
AD-40: Bob Blumenfield up with Laurette Healey in second at this hour, Stuart Waldman in third, 2% in.
[UPDATE by Julia] Leno/Midgen/Nation is the one everyone seems to be obsessively refreshing, myself included. Here are the latest numbers.
This is funny (and Charlie Brown’s people confirmed this with me).
As Mike Spence just reported, Doug Ose failed to sign his ballot when he voted at the Placer County Registrar of Voters this morning. I was actually there with Rick Staats and we witnessed the whole episode. Here’s what happened when Ose realized he hadn’t signed his ballot. The election officials had to get a key to unlock and reopen the highly secured ballot box and retrieve his invalid ballot. In true elitist fashion he was unwilling to take responsibility for his incompetence, muttering under his breath “this is bull ****!”
Since when is ballot security bull ****?
Keep in mind that yesterday Ose had McNally Temple employee Richard Robinson call the Registrar’s office and ask to have someone there to “show Doug how to vote.” He needs to be shown how to vote? Guess he didn’t know how things work in Placer County because he has never voted here before. Maybe he thought we vote differently here in a conservative county.
Of course, there wasn’t such a foul-up with Red County’s hero Tom McClintock, because he’s not eligible to vote in the district at all. Rumor was he was flying down to Los Angeles on election day to cast his ballot. So basically, among the 3 major candidates in CA-04, only Charlie Brown actually knows how to vote there.
There actually are some things going on outside the primaries, here’s what’s piqued my interest the past few days:
• Matt Stoller has more on the Barbara Boxer/climate change bill debacle. What hurts the most is that she shut down any debate on the left flank, called progressive groups like Friends of the Earth “defeatists,” and pressed forward with a muddled bill that rewards polluting industries without doing the work necessary to provide pushback from the inevitable corporate-funded conservative narratives. I wish she’d just pull it before she causes lasting damage; we’d be in a much better position next year to get something legitimate passed.
• Here’s a very good profile in The Nation of almost-a-Congressional candidate Lawrence Lessig and his “Change Congress” movement. I’m kind of waiting for the innovative steps to get this done, but Lessig is a sharp guy. He’s giving the keynote address at Netroots Nation next month.
• There’s an LA Times exploration of the various health care-related bills moving through the legislature. They’re all fairly small-bore but I think they will improve the situation out here, by eliminating rescission, mandating that insurers spend 85% of premium revenue on treatment, and including more procedures in baseline coverage, like maternity. As long as we have the insurance system, we need to do what we can to make sure it’s not as thieving as possible.
• There’s a new Field Poll on Arnold and the legislature out today that is a cavalcade of bad news – the right track/wrong track numbers are 22/68, the Governor’s approval rating is down to 41%, and the legislature is at 30%. Californians don’t like their government right now. Some leadership might solve the problem.
• The salmon are dying in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta because of ammonia runoff from sewage treatment plants, and purifying the Delta could cost up to $1 billion.
• Here’s another personal story of how the foreclosure crisis is hurting individuals, this one in the Central Valley town of Merced. It’s impacting practically the entire economy of the town. Just another example of the mess we’re in from over-speculation and lax oversight of the financial industry.
(I’ll be posting some pictures at this flickr set. I also started a Flickr group if you want to add any photos. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Well, primary day is here. If you’re reading this and have an interest in California politics, GO VOTE if you haven’t already. Then, here’s a handy list of what to expect tonight and what signs to look for that would portend positive results for Democrats in November:
• What will turnout be like?: In the key districts where we have the opportunity to flip seats, I’m going to be looking at how energized the Democratic electorate is. Most of the Republican incumbents are running unopposed or with token competition, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. But if Congressional challengers like Bill Durston or Russ Warner or Charlie Brown or Debbie Cook can run up a big percentage of registered voters today, it’ll show their strength among their base of supporters. In addition, check the turnout in AD-80, AD-78, AD-10, AD-15, and SD-19. Those races have no incumbent running on either side, and all are currently in Republican hands. If more Democrats turn out, it’s a pretty good sign.
• The write-in and the recall: I don’t think anyone expects the recall of Jeff Denham to succeed, but given that there’s been virtually no spending on the “Yes” side since Don Perata short-circuited the process and “Yacht Dog” Democrats Cathleen Gagliani and Nicole Parra rushed to Denham’s side, it’ll be interesting to see just how much support the recall gets in this plurality-Democratic district. As for SD-15, Dennis Morris has made a furious rush to gather enough support to get the roughly 3,600 write-in votes needed to reach the November ballot. And we know that Abel Maldonado cross-filed with his own write-in campaign, so his dear Democratic mother had a chance to vote for him. Riiiight. If you’re in SD-15, PLEASE VOTE FOR DENNIS MORRIS.
• PDA’s strength: There are a lot of PDA (Progressive Democrats of America)-endorsed candidates throughout the state, but there’s little success expected from them. This needs to be a moment where the activist fervor needs to be channeled into electoral victory. I think the test case is CA-24, where Mary Pallant, a founding member of the LA chapter of PDA, is running for Congress against 2 rivals in the primary. Jill Martinez was the 2006 nominee and has some name recognition, but people in the Ventura County-area district I talked to cannot recall one mailer or robocall or piece of material sent by Martinez all year. Pallant has been doing a lot of voter contact, and in a low-turnout primary, she should be able to win the nomination if PDA really has any electoral muscle whatsoever. We’ll see.
• The primary is the general: There are plenty of seats in the legislature where this is the case. Obviously, Calitics has been focused on SD-03 in San Francisco, SD-23 in Santa Monica and points north, AD-40 in the San Fernando Valley, and AD-27 in the Santa Cruz region. But there are actually a dozen or so more as well, and many have gotten fairly nasty, some to general-election levels of nastiness. The Senate race between Rod Wright and Mervyn Dymally is one big example. Look at this ad:
• The kahuna primaries: For Congress, there’s the race in CA-04 between Tom McClintock and Doug Ose, which actually made The New York Times. What I’m hearing is that, despite Ose’s efforts to buy the seat, McClintock’s going to take this. There is also the AD-80 race with Greg Pettis, Manuel Perez, Rick Gonzales and Richard Gutierrez, which will be competitive between Perez and Pettis. And the LA County Board of Supervisors race between Bernard Parks and Mark Ridley-Thomas (I saw several Parks commercials last night). For many of these primaries, there isn’t any polling and it’s hard to know just where things will go.
We’ll have all of this for you tonight, so come on back.
We all knew this was inevitable, but now it’s official: the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage will appear on the November ballot.
An initiative that would again outlaw gay marriage in California has qualified for the November ballot, the Secretary of State announced Monday.
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen said a random check of signatures submitted by the measure’s sponsors showed that they had gathered enough names for it to be put to voters.
The measure, known as the California Marriage Protection Act, would amend the state constitution to “provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
If approved by a majority of voters on Nov. 4, the amendment would overturn the recent California Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the state. It is similar to gay marriage bans that have been adopted in 26 other states.
OK, fine. Bring it on. We’re going to win this thing. And the benefit will rebound on those Democrats who believe in equality and justice.
Starting today, the Senate is debating a standalone global warming bill for the first time in three years. This is a significant achievement in and of itself, and it’s worth praising Barbara Boxer for putting the issue front and center. However, the bill she is promoting, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, is not only insufficient to the challenge (which I could live with), but represents a trillion-dollar giveaway to polluters who would not have to pay for the right to spew greenhouse gases into the air, a position completely at odds with the positions of all of our top Presidential candidates.
Boxer has co-authored a bill with Bernie Sanders that is superior, and Ed Markey’s bill is a great improvement as well and would slap a license on major polluters that they would have to purchase at auction. This money would be invested in technological research and alternative energy sources, as well as offset price increases for consumers. Lieberman-Warner does none of this, and Sen. Boxer has shrugged her shoulders and said “this is the best we can do.”
Though Boxer has worked to strengthen the bill, she says it’s still not as strong as she’d like. “This represents a consensus document,” she said at a recent press conference. “It’s not everything that Sens. Lieberman, Warner, and Boxer want. It’s the best we could do.” During floor debate, she plans to push for stricter emission targets and a greater percentage of auctioned emission permits, and she has threatened to pull the bill if it’s weakened, as has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Many senators will be offering amendments, so attempts to water down the bill are sure to come, along with efforts to toughen it. Meanwhile, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate’s most notorious global-warming denier, will be trying to scuttle the bill altogether.
The sausage-making in the Senate is always painful, and surely the global warming deniers on the right and their corporate lobbyist buddies have in mind only the total stoppage of this bill. I’m open to concessions where necessary, but giving away pollution credits without an auction is to me non-negotiable. If you allow polluters to continue doing so for free it’s going to be next to impossible to get them to pay in the future. And this is completely out of line with what is sure to be the stated Democratic platform at the convention. There’s enough of a left-right split on climate change not to open up this other front on the left.
There are many dangers for this bill. A proposed amendment that would subsidize the nuclear power industry could be a deal-breaker on all sides. I understand the contention that the hour is getting late to make meaningful progress in reducing the effects of global climate change. The latest scientific assessment from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program notes, we are already seeing rising temperatures, more heat waves and droughts, and a global rise in sea level due to man-made contributions. But fixing the climate means fixing the climate, not a half-measure that rewards corporate America.
Absolutely huge news from out of CA-04. On the eve of the primary, with Tom McClintock and Doug Ose locked in a death struggle of a primary, spending over $4 million dollars because they think the nomination is a prelude to an easy walk to a victory in November and a seat in Congress, Charlie Brown’s campaign has released an internal poll showing him leading both Republicans.
The survey of 400 likely General Election voters was conducted by Pete Brodnitz of the Benenson Strategy Group on May 14th and 15th. The margin of error was +/- 4.9%.
Despite a $4 million advertising blitz by the GOP frontrunners, the poll shows Brown leading Ose 38% to 34%, and leading McClintock 42% to 40%.
The survey also showed a generic ballot between the Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress tied at 43%, with self identification of voters moving sharply away from the often cited voter registration statistics of the district.
“The numbers confirm that district four voters want real local leadership, and they want change,” Brown said. “No matter which career politician wins the GOP Primary on Tuesday night, this race will continue to offer a clear contrast between a partisan approach that has failed America , and a country first approach that leads by example to solve problems.”
It’s an internal poll, and internal polls are often favorable to those who release them. But Brodnitz is a solid pollster and there’s no reason to believe that Brown hasn’t benefited by staying out of the primary scrap, while cementing his excellent reputation among voters in the 4th District.
But more than that, the internals of the poll show that voters in this so-called “red” district are desperate for change and believe in Charlie’s ability to help bring it about. On the flip:
The right-track/wrong-track numbers in this poll are 18/70. That’s astounding for a district John Doolittle has represented for years. But the killer number is this: 37% of those polled self-identified as Republicans, and 35% as Democrats. In August of 2006, the numbers were 42% Republican and 27% Democratic. That’s an enormous swing in less than two years, and remember, Brown almost pulled off the upset in 2006 when the district was far more Republican. Brown’s net favorables are higher than any of his challengers as well.
In the generic ballot, Democrats lead Republicans among DTS voters 50-34. If that’s what to expect in this district in November, Brown’s going to win this thing. I know there are a lot of preconceived notions out there that this is Republican country and Brown faces an uphill battle, but one thing is very clear to me – there are NO MORE Republican districts left, and a strong Democrat can win anywhere in the country. And Charlie Brown is one of the strongest we’ve got.
• I thought I’d have time to put together a monthly roundup for May, but it never came together, and the primary is going to change those analyses a bit, so I’ll put something out after the primaries.
• I have to correct an error. On Saturday I wrote that Marta Jorgensen had dropped out of the race in CA-24. She had, but she recently got back into the race and is focusing on turning out new voters in Northern Santa Barbara County around Lompoc. This is a crucial effort to activate Hispanic voters who traditionally have not turned out, and I both salute Ms. Jorgensen for her efforts and apologize for the error. Hopefully she can visit Calitics and fill us in on that effort up in Lompoc.
• Doug Ose has loaned his campaign another $600,000 in the waning days before the GOP primary against Tom McClintock in CA-04. This primary now exceeds $4 million dollars, and it’s hard to spend that much in that district. McClintock pulled out of a debate earlier this week, and there was the Pete Wilson savaging as well. Reading the tea leaves, I don’t think Ose would make that extra investment if he wasn’t close to nailing this down, but I could be wrong.
“Lungren’s behavior is disgusting. He claims to be a leader in ethics reform, then he turns around and subverts House ethics rules. This is just one of many examples of Lungren’s hypocrisy […] The people of the 3rd Congressional District deserve better representation than a career politician like Dan Lungren who sells out to special interests. I’ve been caring for the people of our district for over 25 years as an emergency physician. I believe we have an emergency in our government. I’m running for Congress to help restore government of, by, and for the people.”
I like it. Durston is trying to put up a big number in the June 3 primary, despite running unopposed, to show his strength in this challenge.
• And it’s not primary-related, but I think we have the first ever Calitics mention in the LA Times in this story about Laura Richardson. Hey guys, you could have used my name, it’s right above the title….
UPDATE (by Brian): I have said before that some of the IEs have really angered me. It seems that at least a couple of these annoying IEs have something in common: EdVoice. Chris Cabaldon’s former lobbying organization employer has been quite busy this year. In SD-23, they have the cheezy “Carbon-neutral voting” mailers. In AD-8, EdVoice has gone all in for their former CEO, Cabaldon. Randy Bayne has the story on a negative mailer on Mariko Yamada for supporting vocational education for mentally retarded Californians. Not cool.
• Obviously everyone is going to be working hard for their causes and candidates, so it may be a little quiet around here. I’ll be out walking all day tomorrow. Oh, and don’t vote for the racist guy, Bill Johnson, as a Judge of the Superior Court (Office number 125) in LA County.
• Yesterday was the deadline for bills to get passed out of their chamber of origin, and the Assembly passed major subprime mortgage legislation, without help from Republicans (6 of them abstained despite being seated right in the chamber). This bill has some good homeowner assistance elements that will allow people to restructure their financing before foreclosure. A mortgage bill has also passed the State Senate, so some form of legislation will hopefully get to the governor post haste.
• One of the biggest problems with the housing crisis is that, as home sale prices lower, homeowners are reassessing their value and getting their property tax lowered, decreasing state revenue yet more.
• Sticking in the shiv before riding off into the sunset, Fabian Nuñez writes a puzzling op-ed in the Sacramento Bee approving of the Governor’s horrible idea to borrow against future lottery revenue. Considering that the only sustainable solution to the permanent crisis mode that we have in our budget is to reorganize the tax structure instead of constantly borrowing, I have no idea why any Democrat would veer so far off message and undermine the new Speaker’s ability to move forward. What’s more, lotteries are regressive taxes on the poor.
• One spot where there will be a lot of action on Tuesday is in Ventura County, where Democrats now outnumber Republicans and which could have contested elections in the Assembly, Senate and US Congress. However, the LA Times shows its political acumen by writing:
One of the more closely watched contests on Tuesday will be the Democratic primary in the 24th Congressional District. Insurance agent Mary Pallant of Oak Park; Marta Jorgensen, a Solvang educator; and Oxnard businesswoman Jill Martinez are running.
Marta Jorgensen quit the race over a month ago and endorsed Martinez. Way to go, LAT.
• Excellent news out of Los Angeles: there’s been a $1 million dollar settlement with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center for their dumping homeless patients on Skid Row. They will also be monitored by a US Attorney for five years. This unethical practice has reached a reasonable conclusion. Hollywood Presbyterian deserved punishment.
• Trying to get rid of marijuana grow houses in Arcata is like trying to get rid of the Pacific Ocean on the California coast.
The judges are bending over backwards to not do what they’ll eventually have to do – cap the prison population because the failed leadership in Sacramento can’t and won’t arrive at a solution. Today they granted another 30-day extension:
Acceding to pleas for more time, three federal judges agreed to give the state an additional 30 days to reach an agreement for reducing the overcrowded prison population and avoid a trial that could lead to a mass release of inmates.
If no agreement is reached, the judges said, the trial will begin in November.
So, to recap – the state had months and months to settle with the prison advocates seeking to end overcrowding. It didn’t happen, their “let’s build our way out of it” approach hasn’t led to the construction of one more bed, and they begged for time. The federal receiver asked for billions to make the prison health care system up to some sort of reasonable standard beyond what you’d find in a gulag, Senate Republicans killed the bond proposal and now this will either become another expenditure in the general fund or another reason for the judges to mass release. There is a way to admit nonviolent offenders into treatment programs and rehabilitation and work release but nobody wants to pay for it. And so the system is literally imploding on itself, because nobody will lift a finger to fix “ToughOnCrime” sentencing guidelines that are completely unsustainable and counter-productive.
