In another totally unsurprising outcome, the Field Poll has found what we all expected to be true: the US Senate race will be a close one. Boxer and her GOP challengers are essentially tied at this point, though who that challenger will be is still up in the air:

GOP Primary

March 2010 (January ’10)

Campbell 28 (30)

Fiorina 22 (25)

DeVore 9 (6)

Undecided 41 (39)

DeVore is still behind, but might be able to take some comfort from these numbers, as he’s the only one to show any improvement. Campbell has a lead, but it’s not large, and with 41% of Republicans still undecided, it’s anyone’s race.

General Election

March 2010 (January ’10)

Boxer 43 (48)

Campbell 44 (38)

Boxer 45 (50)

Fiorina 44 (35)

Boxer 45 (51)

DeVore 41 (34)

Boxer’s favorables are down from 48% in January to 38% in March, and unfavorables are up from 39% in January to 51% in March.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Boxer has been getting beaten up by the GOP candidates but has yet to launch her own response. And Boxer suffers, though no fault of her own, for being part of the failed Senate Democratic caucus.

Those numbers will change once the health care bill is done, which looks increasingly likely to happen this month. Not only will it help show Californians that the Senate Democrats can get things done and therefore boost Boxer’s ratings, it will help bring more voters into the “likely” voter camp.

In fact, that may well be what explains these results. The Field Poll talked to “likely voters,” a universe that has become much more Republican-friendly in recent months as the failure of President Obama and the Democratic Congress to deliver on its agenda frustrates the Democratic base and drives away the more infrequent voters. That alone could account for the shifting general election matchup numbers.

Once Democrats have racked up more accomplishments – the jobs bill passed yesterday, and when health care gets done, other issues can be tackled – then more of those voters will move back into the “likely” camp, and Boxer’s numbers will improve.

What this poll shows, then, is not just that Boxer will indeed have the close race she and her team have been expecting and planning to win for some time. It also shows that key to her re-election victory will be turning out Democrats to vote in November. Neither Campbell nor Fiorina can win unless a substantial number of California voters stay home in November.

Abstention, not apostasy, is the real challenge Boxer faces. If she can drive up turnout, she is still in the driver’s seat for November.

(Note: I’m the Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign)

They’re baaaaaack. The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of the leading anti-gay groups in the country and a key opponent of same-sex marriage, is again pushing out a bizarre video ad that distorts the truth.

In the fall of 2008 NOM produced an ad filled with fear about same sex marriage to motivate their base to support Prop 8. The ad, “The Gathering Storm”, told the lie that marriage equality somehow threatened individual freedoms.

NOM is back again with a new ad attacking Barbara Boxer for her support of marriage equality, and claiming that Tom Campbell supports it too. The ad also focuses on other political issues, showing that NOM is trying to branch out and become a multi-issue right-wing organization.

The ad, which is part of a $500,000 ad buy, makes a big mistake when it comes to Tom Campbell. As this KNBC video shows from just 2 weeks ago, he doesn’t believe marriage rights for same-sex couples are included in the U.S. Constitution, opposing the federal trial of Prop 8.

As NOM rolls out its new ad campaign, California progressives need to hold them accountable and push back against their bull. That’s why the Courage Campaign is going to produce and air a response ad of our own. We need your help to fund it.

Click here to help us quickly get our response ad on the air — and let NOM know we’re not going to let them keep peddling their crap to Californians.

Below is the email we sent to our members today on this subject.

Dear Robert —

Did you see the new TV ad from the National Organization for Marriage? Same crap, different year.

Yep, the same people who launched the now infamous gays-are-gonna-get-you “Gathering Storm” ad across America last year are at it again. And this time, NOM is expanding their attack on supporters of same-sex marriage to California politics, including Senator Barbara Boxer.

NOM just launched a $500,000 TV ad campaign in California called “Two Peas, Same Liberal Pod” in an attempt to “expose” Sen. Boxer and Republican candidate Tom Campbell as politicians who “support gay marriage and opposed Proposition 8.”

As California progressives know, Tom Campbell is no Barbara Boxer.

But what NOM won’t tell you is that Tom Campbell does NOT support putting Prop 8 on trial. In fact, Campbell came out against the Prop 8 federal trial on KNBC two weeks ago, saying he doesn’t believe marriage rights for same-sex couples are included in the U.S. Constitution.

This crap has got to stop. And we need your help to stop it. Please contribute $20 or more right now to help us get an ad on the air ASAP that pushes back on NOM’s bull and holds them accountable. DEADLINE: Friday, 5 p.m.:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/stopNOMnow

Using same-sex marriage as bait, NOM is trying to pull a fast one on Republicans in the Senate primary. And they are using Carly Fiorina’s “Demon Sheep” tactics to do it (as you may know, Fiorina released a bizarre ad a few weeks ago — portraying Campbell as a demonic sheep — that was widely reviled and mocked by people across the political spectrum).

According to the NOM email sent yesterday to their members across the country:

“The ad documents that Campbell and Boxer both support increasing income taxes on Californians, favor raising the gasoline tax, support gay marriage and opposed Proposition 8. The ad says, ‘It’s time for conservative leadership.'”

Actually, it’s time for progressive leadership. As much as NOM wants to fool people into thinking Boxer and Campbell are twins separated at birth, the truth is that Tom Campbell’s conservative politics are way out of line with a majority of Californians.

Same crap. Different year. Stand up with the Courage Campaign right now and contribute $20 or more to air an ad ASAP that holds NOM accountable for their bull. DEADLINE: Friday, 5 p.m.:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/stopNOMnow

NOM’s attacks remind us that to win battles on progressive fronts — whether it’s providing universal health care, funding our schools, or allowing all Californians to marry the person they love — we have to fight for progressive leadership in California.

As a multi-issue advocacy organization, the Courage Campaign is fighting on all of these fronts to create a more progressive California. But we can’t do it alone, especially against NOM. Please forward this message to your friends and help us spread the word.

Thank you again for standing up for progressive values in California.

Rick Jacobs

Chair, Courage Campaign

In a development that should not surprise anyone, the newest Field Poll shows Meg Whitman with a narrow lead over Jerry Brown in the general election matchup, and a massive lead over Steve Poizner:

GOP Primary

March 2010 (January ’10)

Whitman 63 (45)

Poizner 14 (17)

Undecided 23 (38)

General Election

March 2010 (January ’10, October ’09)

Whitman 46 (36, 29)

Brown 43 (46, 50)

Undecided 11 (18, 21)

Brown 49 (48, 50)

Poizner 32 (31, 25)

Undecided 19 (21, 25)

The crosstabs are even more interesting. Whitman gets 77% of Republicans but Brown only gets 69% of Democrats (with Whitman taking 20%). Independents now break 50-36 for Whitman. Whitman has opened up clear leads in Southern California (45-40 in LA County, 54-37 in the rest of the region) and the Central Valley (57-30) while Brown has strong leads in the Bay Area and the rest of Northern California. That’s an extremely ominous sign for Democrats, since the governorship cannot be won without taking LA County and running much better in the other SoCal counties and the Central Valley.

The only age group that currently supports Brown is us younger voters, with 18-29 year olds backing him 46-36. The other two groups support Whitman, with 40-64 year olds backing her 49-42, and even the older voters who are supposedly Brown’s base are deserting him for Whitman, 50-40.

Another ominous sign for Brown are his numbers broken down by racial/ethnic groups. Whitman not only has whites (50-41), but also Asians (55-33) and even has 42% of blacks to Brown’s 58%, though the sample size for both Asians and blacks are quite small. Brown still has strong support from Latinos, 54-25.

What explains all this? It’s not just Whitman’s ability to spend millions of her own money. California’s political landscape is littered with the bodies of those who thought they could just write checks and get themselves elected – Michael Huffington, Al Checchi, Steve Westly.

The difference with Whitman is she knows how to spend her money wisely. Her campaign team is an extremely knowledgeable and well-disciplined machine, full of people who are not only smart, but who know how to respond quickly to the public.

Last week proved the point. Whitman and her campaign spokeswoman Sarah Pompei looked like fools at the Union Pacific “press event” where Whitman refused to take questions. The key was Whitman’s response. After being hammered by the media for days, Whitman and Pompei unveiled a completely new – and much more effective – strategy at the CRP convention. Whitman met not just once but twice with the press on Friday, and got some very generous coverage out of a press corps that wanted to reward her for finally talking to them.

Whitman’s saturation bombing of TV airwaves in the state also appears to have been extremely effective. The ads, which do not once mention Whitman is a Republican, paint her as a moderate who wants to solve California’s problems and bring her successes at an iconic Silicon Valley company to state government. Whitman’s platform may be to the right of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, but in her communications to the public she comes off as a reasonable moderate.

Meanwhile, Jerry Brown’s campaign appears to once again be AWOL after having done a round of media interviews last month. Brown may be trying to hoard his cash while Poizner beats up on Whitman, but judging by Poizner’s nearly 50-point deficit, that doesn’t look too likely to produce results. Brown has to start doing more active campaigning – he can do so in a financially efficient way, but he has to start getting himself and his message out there to the public. The longer Whitman can do it herself, the more she will grow and consolidate her lead.

Brown needs to introduce himself to a new generation of voters and secure their current loyalties. He also needs to address the concerns of others in the Democratic base – particularly African Americans and Asian Americans – who are seemingly giving Whitman a close look.

Back in January I explained what Jerry Brown needed to do to win. I offered that not for my own amusement, but in the hopes that the Brown campaign would look at it and adopt some of its recommendations. So far they do not appear to have done so, for reasons that are entirely unclear to me.

As Meg Whitman rolls to the lead in the polls, California Democrats wonder and wait to see how Jerry Brown will respond. Democrats will work hard to try and elect Brown, but it’s going to be an uphill battle unless he does something to change the campaign. Whitman is a juggernaut who is running one of the most effective campaign operations we’ve seen in this state in a long time. Brown has to come up with something new with which to fight back.

UPDATE: Calbuzz has the Brown campaign’s response, from spokesman Sterling Clifford:

Meg Whitman has spent a year and $40 million running for governor and what that’s accomplished is that she’s in a virtual dead heat with Jerry Brown, who launched his campaign two weeks ago.

This morning the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research is out with a study that shows 1 in 4 Californians now lacks health insurance:

Nearly 2 million Californians lost their health insurance during 2008 and 2009 – years characterized by a deep recession and mass layoffs – bringing the total number of uninsured in the state to more than 8 million, according to new estimates from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

The number represents a 25 percent increase in the number of uninsured since 2007, when 6.4 million Californians lacked insurance, according to the authors of the new policy brief, Number of Uninsured Jumped to More Than Eight Million from 2007 to 2009. Today, nearly one-quarter of all adult Californians lack health insurance.

The study goes on to note that “working adults” have been hit the hardest by this, as they lost their employer-provided benefits when laid off and have had to choose between rent/mortgage and buying health insurance on the individual market. Not coincidentally, that’s the same market where health insurance companies like Anthem Blue Cross have been hitting customers with ridiculous, unaffordable rate increases.

The LA Times article on the report includes several stories of people who have faced significant costs to buying insurance and affording the health care they need merely to stay alive.

And of course, the other 75% of Californians who do have insurance often find it is not much of a shield against financial ruin or bad health. Many Californians are underinsured, and find that when a serious illness hits, their insurance doesn’t cover the full costs. Medical bankruptcy is still a very common situation, as is denial of necessary care, as is insurer “dumping” of patients by threatening to massively increase group premiums unless the sick individual is fired – and then unable to buy insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

As Congress works toward finalizing a health care bill this week that will go some way toward addressing these problems, though won’t eliminate them completely, we can expect California’s Republican candidates for statewide office to ramp up their attacks on the health care reform process. But it’s going to be very, very interesting indeed to hear how Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell justify the existing, failed, system that produces nothing more than bankruptcy and death.

UPDATE: CTA reports the number of pink slips is now 23,225. Original post begins here:

In 2009, 16,000 teachers and other public school employees lost their jobs. The devastating effect on the quality of education in this state is just beginning to be felt. Now we learn that insane policy of mass firings of teachers and school employees is going to be renewed, as 20,000 more have received pink slips this month:

Faced with another year of potentially deep budget cuts, California’s public schools have sent out 22,000 pink slips to teachers and school employees, according to the state’s superintendent.

“Our state budget crisis has forced districts to lay off thousands of teachers over the past few years,” said Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction. “The governor has proposed cutting another $2.4 billion from public education. While the education community opposes these cuts, our schools are forced to prepare for this potential outcome by issuing a massive wave of potential layoff notices.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office tried to spin this as not their fault, and even claimed the governor wasn’t making further cuts to K-12 budgets:

Still, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Aaron McLear, took umbrage with O’Connell’s characterization of the governor’s January budget proposal, noting that Schwarzenegger has proposed allocating the same amount of money for K-12 and community colleges as he did last year.

What McLear didn’t say is that because of the (senseless) expiration of federal stimulus funds, keeping K-12 budgets the same in 2010-11 as in 2009-10 is a de facto budget cut. Last March over 30,000 pink slips were issued, and it appears stimulus funds helped about half of those employees to get rehired for this current school year, most of whom were on 1-year temporary contracts. Without stimulus funds, and with a freeze in education spending, those teachers will get laid off for good this summer.

So far none of the gubernatorial candidates have addressed the destruction of our schools. Sure, Meg Whitman pledges to “fix education” but also pledges to blow an enormous hole in the state budget deficit with her tax cuts for the rich. How will she do both?

As Joe Garofoli points out, it might have something to do with her attack on public employee unions. Apparently she thinks teachers and other public workers, who make a middle-class living and retire with a decent though by no means generous pension, make too much money and should learn to do with less.

That’s not going to solve the problems of our schools. If teacher pay decreases, it will become even more difficult to keep qualified teachers in the classroom to provide the education students deserve.

But that seems to be Whitman’s approach, since she is on record as opposing new taxes. As California’s schools suffer, Meg Whitman is showing no sign of wanting to help reverse the trend.

Walking around at the California Republican Party convention in Santa Clara on Friday night, I could see signs that the GOP has renewed confidence going into 2010. But I also saw signs that this confidence is misplaced and frankly delusional. Although 2010 might be more favorable to California Republicans than most elections since 1994, the extreme right-wing nature of the party, their desire to undermine everything President Obama has done, and their insistence on attacking anyone who needs government assistance – especially if they aren’t white – combines to produce a set of candidates that should be outright unelectable, if California Democrats are able to run quality campaigns that motivate and mobilize their base.

One of the more telling moments at the convention was, as Brian noted, the chilly reception Abel Maldonado’s plea for genuine outreach to Latinos received. That has to be juxtaposed with the scene of both Meg Whitman and particularly Steve Poizner spending a lot of time bashing immigrants.

The immigrant-bashing shows that the California Republican Party is certainly nativist – but it is the hostility to Latino outreach that proves what we’ve all known: Republican immigrant-bashing is little more than Latino-bashing dressed up in seemingly more acceptable clothing. Anyone who’s spent time among conservative social circles in this state knows this to be true. Anti-immigrant sentiment is almost always linked to criticisms of Latino culture, values, or Latinos themselves.

Even though Republicans have generally failed to win elections in California on an immigrant-bashing platform ever since they used that sentiment to win a classically Pyrrhic victory in 1994, they appear set to try again in 2010.

Republican candidates also continued to spout far-right statements, including Carly Fiorina’s embrace of global warming denialism. Tom Campbell called President Obama’s policy of using the federal government to address the economic crisis “soft socialism”, which I’m sure all those enjoying extended unemployment benefits and COBRA coverage will be pleased to hear. In a state that voted for Obama by 20 points and still gives him strongly positive approval ratings, Campbell’s anti-Obama message is a truly bizarre way to try and win a statewide election.

All of five of the GOP candidates for governor and US Senate appeared to agree that the growth of the federal government was somehow a “problem.” This is part of their bid to win over the teabaggers, whose promised strong showing at the convention turned out to be a bust.

It’s also part of their overall political strategy of growing and solidifying corporate power and the position of the wealthy over everyone else, at the expense of everyone else. For Republicans that is entirely consistent with their attacks on immigrants and Latinos. Republicans believe anyone who receives government support of any kind is somehow deviant, a leech, and deserving only of scapegoating – unless of course that recipient is a large corporation or a wealthy individual, in which case it’s perfectly fine.

That’s not the mentality shared by most Californians, who support using government to provide aid to those who need it, especially in a recession. If and when the Congress finally gets around to passing a good health care bill, it will likely be popular in California. And though these Republican candidates will convince themselves that Scott Brown had the right idea and so they’ll oppose the bill, that’s not likely to play well in a state that has shown deep outrage over the unaffordable rate increases from the health insurance companies.

What the aptly-named CRP convention showed Californians is a party that is so far to the right that they’ve gone over the horizon of what is considered acceptable by the people of California. Deeply out of touch with both the needs and values of the people of this state, the Republican candidates are unapologetically selling an agenda that would have made even George W. Bush look less radical in a state that has shown nothing but hostility to such extremists over the last 14 years.

That doesn’t mean Democrats will win by default. Far from it. Because these Republicans have a truly staggering amount of money, they can afford to run campaigns that are bigger than their true base of support, and can afford to bombard California with their slick TV messages that generally mask the extremism they displayed over the weekend in Santa Clara.

Nor does it help that Democratic voters, especially the base and the Obama voters of 2008, are not enthusiastic or highly motivated right now. Fear of the right-wing will only do so much to get them to the polls. Democrats will need to not only point out how radical and out of touch their Republican opponents are, but offer a plausible positive vision for the future. Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown will have to show voters how they will deal with the institutional and political forces that blocked progressive change in 2009. And they will have to do intelligent, targeted outreach to the key elements of the Democratic base – including the Latino voters who were persistently insulted and derided by Republicans this weekend.

There’s no reason that 2010 has to resemble 1994, except in the deluded fantasies of the Republican convention-goers. As Ethan Rarick explained in the LA Times last week, California Democrats have a built-in advantage with the electorate. If both Boxer and Brown run strong campaigns that motivate and mobilize that advantage, they should be able to prevail in November.

At the California Republican Party convention in Santa Clara today, failed CEO Carly Fiorina launched another of her campaign’s ridiculous and, in this case, even offensive web video ads. This one portrays Barbara Boxer as a blimp (because she’s “full of hot air” – get it?!) terrorizing California from above.

The ad reaches new lows in both the pathetic and the bizarre. It is also deeply self-contradictory and a classic case of projection.

In the ad, Fiorina argues that Boxer is a “failure” because she’s only had 3 bills passed in 18 years. What isn’t stated is that for most of that time, Boxer served under either a Republican Senate (1995 to 2007) or a Republican president (2001 to 2009). Only in her first two years in the Senate, 1993 and 1994, and this last year, 2009, did she serve with a Democratic Congressional majority AND a Democratic president. While there, Boxer is poised to deliver health care reform and climate change legislation.

Apparently Fiorina thinks that’s bad. Is she afraid Boxer will rain down health insurance subsidies on the masses from her blimp?

The ad also mocks Boxer’s claim that climate change is one of the most serious national security crises America faces. By mocking that claim, Fiorina appears to be outing herself as a global warming denier. I’m sure that Central Valley farmers suffering from drought, residents made homeless by wildfire, and San Francisco Bay Area businesses concerned about rising sea levels have nothing to worry about.

There’s more nonsense in this ad, which has to be seen to be believed. The apparent thinking behind this ad is that to win the Republican nomination for US Senate, one has to prove they can lob the best insults at Barbara Boxer, rather than explain to Californians why right-wing economic policies will somehow work this time when they’ve failed every other time they’ve been attempted.

Once you’re done laughing, give some money to Barbara Boxer at ActBlue. As ridiculous as these ads are, Fiorina clearly has the money to keep putting these messages about Boxer out to the public, and that’s something to take very seriously.

Just as Meg Whitman’s “solution” to the unemployment crisis in California is to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs, her plans for the state budget crisis appear to center on making that deficit bigger.

At yesterday’s California Republican Party convention in Santa Clara, eMeg finally talked to the press. But what was more relevant than the fact that she talked to them was what she said. As KQED’s John Myers tweeted:

#CAgov candidate Whitman says in an interview that her “targeted” tax cuts would cost the #cabudget approx. $4 billion

Myers added that it sounded like an annual number, which shows just how reckless Whitman plans to be with state finances. At a time when California faces an annual $20 billion deficit for at least the next 3 years, it is absurd to be talking about blowing a bigger hole in state finances with a tax cut for the rich.

But Whitman doubled down on that reckless pledge, telling CRP attendees last night that she endorsed eliminating the capital gains tax entirely, a move that would do absolutely nothing to create jobs in California since it would merely benefit investors who derive income from global economic activity.

Whitman also defended her pledge to reduce the state workforce by 40,000. She claimed this was because the state workforce had increased by that number in the last 5 years, but failed to mention that was to restore the budget cuts made during the last recession.

Even then, the elimination of 40,000 jobs will do little to address the budget deficit. The average base pay for California state employees in 2008 was $63,815. Multiply that by 40,000 and you get $2,552,600,000. Just $2.5 billion, which would leave Whitman with another whopping $17.5 billion left to cut out of the budget, even before her new tax cuts are included in the figures.

That’s about the total amount the state spends on higher education and on prisons. Medi-Cal, IHSS, Cal-WORKS, and other important human services take up billions themselves. If Whitman wants to close the budget deficit with no new taxes – and even wants new tax cuts – she’s going to have to make massive cuts to those vital services that Californians want.

The real question then isn’t whether Meg Whitman will talk to reporters. Instead the question is how she really plans to close the budget gap. There’s at least $17 billion unaccounted for in her plans, and without new taxes – especially if there are new tax cuts – then the only answers will be to close down the public services that California needs in order to create jobs and function in a modern global economy.

Let’s hope reporters use their newfound access to Whitman to press her on her bad math and get answers as to what Whitman really is planning for this state.

Ending weeks of speculation, Gavin Newsom is going to announce his campaign for Lt. Governor tomorrow:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will announce Friday that he is running for lieutenant governor, people who have been contacted by him say….

Newsom has formed a fundraising committee for the run, and the first checks for his new statewide bid were reported Thursday. He reported receiving nearly $18,000 from three donors Thursday. He received $6,500 apiece from Mark and Susie Buell, owners of the Esprit clothing company and longtime backers. He also reported receiving $4,950 from Peter Ragone, his former press secretary.

So now we’ll have a 3-way race between Newsom, State Senator Dean Florez, and LA City Councilmember Janice Hahn. As you recall, Calitics interviewed Janice Hahn last November, and she made a very favorable and strong impression. We’ve also interviewed Gavin Newsom back when he was still a candidate for governor.

In many ways, this race will showcase the future leadership of California Democrats. The winner of the primary will go on to defeat Abel Maldonado and will be a top contender to be the next governor, whether they succeed Jerry Brown or (god forbid) Meg Whitman. It’s to the benefit of Democrats and progressives that this race be issue-oriented, and free of the unfortunate personal attacks that would undermine all the candidates involved.