UPDATE: The Senate just passed the Immigration bill.  That should make things around Sacto a little more exciting. 

Vicente Fox is in Sacramento this afternoon and evening.  He will give a speech to a joint session of the legislature, which will appear on the CalChannel.  He will also meet with legislative leaders and the governor.  During yesterday’s press conference that I attended, Speaker Nunez stressed the economic connections between California and Mexico.  The Speaker seemed genuinely excited about continuing the dialog between California and Mexico.

Nunez called immigration the “800 pound gorilla in the room” but stressed that he would not “challenge” the President directly, at least in public.  He suggested that he would pressure Fox to put his money where his mouth is: economic reform.  Nunez stressed that most of the people who illegaly enter the U.S. don’t do it out of choice, but out of necessity.  They can’t afford to feed themselves.  Schwarzenegger, for his part, has been brushing off suggestions that he should “stand up” to Pres. Fox about the immigration issue.  I’m not really sure what the wingnuts want Fox to do.  Do they want him to station his own troops at his Northern border?  Would we tolerate that if the situation was reversed?  I think not.  What Fox can do is concentrate on improving the economic situation in Mexico such that the citizens won’t have a reason to make a run for the border.

For more on the run-up to the visit, check out John Myers’ post at Capitol Notes.

The text of the speech can be found at the California Progress Report.  As for what the President actually said, well it’s unsuprisingly banal.  But, he congratulates the Senate for passing a reasonable bill, and commits his country to four points:

Today historic vote is a monumental step forward but we recognize that there is more debate ahead, so I want to reiterate the commitment of my government:

1. To respect the sovereign right of the United States to enforce its laws and protect its border and its citizens.

2. To continue to expand jobs, economic growth and social opportunities so migration is no longer a necessity.

3. To develop and enforce migration laws and policy with full respect for human rights and the safety of citizens on both sides of the border and to fighting all forms of human smuggling and trafficking.

4. To adjust Mexico’s migration policy to safeguard our borders under the principle of shared responsibility.

It’s a start.  And hopefully a reasonable bill will come out of the conference committee so that we can assure that North America’s immigration issues will not harm our overall relationship.  Mexico is the largest trading partner of our state, and it is in our own best interest to ensure that we have solid relations with Mexico City.

Being that the districts are so gerrymandered, there are several open seats that are, for all intents and purposes, being decided in the primary.  One of these Assembly seats is the 41st District.  It is currently held by Fran Pavely, who is being termed out.  The fight to replace her is being contested by four decently funded candidates and a fifth (O’Brien) who is trying to run on a shoestring.  They are:

*  Julia Brownley
*  Barry Groverman
*  Kelly Hayes-Raitt
*  Jonathan Levey
*  Shawn Casey O’Brien

The Ventura County Star has published a nice little recap of the district:

If this were a war, there would be four fronts, forming a horseshoe around the Santa Monica Mountains. The army that can take one, fight to a draw in another and keep its casualties to a minimum in the other two will win.

In fact, it’s a political campaign. But the same battle strategies apply in the 41st Assembly District’s Democratic primary. … One front is Santa Monica-Malibu, home to about 30 percent of likely voters. Another is Oxnard-Port Hueneme, home to 20 percent. Along the Highway 101 corridor just south of the county line is the Agoura Hills-Westlake Village-Calabasas front, with 12 percent. Nearly all the rest are farther down the road on the Woodland Hills-Encino-Tarzana front.

Four distinct communities, five separate candidates. A variety of battle plans. (Ventura C-S 5/24/06) 

Pavley has endorsed Bronwley, but first brother-in-law Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver has endorsed Calabassas mayor Groverman.  This one should come down to the wire.  For more on this race, I would suggest keeping an eye on Tim Herdt’s blog at the County Star.

( – promoted by SFBrianCL)

The PPIC released their May statewide survey this morning. I obeyed the embargo, publishing this diary at 12:15am.  The local NBC affilliate in San Diego  did not.  Bad MSM, Bad!  The funny thing is that if you look at the page you notice that they updated it at 6pm, but apparently still didn’t feel obliged to pull it down due to the big message on the email and the fact that you had to enter a password to get to the PDF. 

The poll has Angelides pulling ahead of Westley, but within the margin of error:

Angelides and Westly are locked in a statistical dead heat among Democratic primary likely voters (35% to 32%). Angelides has made the largest gains in the past month – up from 20 percent in April compared to Westly’s 26 percent. Still, the situation is highly volatile because large number of Democratic primary voters (33%) are undecided or would choose someone else. Who are these undecided voters? Women. They are more likely than men (37% to 28%) to say they are undecided. “Since women outnumber men in the Democratic electorate, undecided women will be pivotal in determining the winner in this primary election,” says Baldassare. Currently, men favor Angelides by a wide margin (43% Angelides vs. 29% Westly) and women favor Westly by a narrower margin (35% Westly vs. 28% Angelides).

This confirms what several other recent polls have been saying: the race between the two Dem candidates is too close to call. The recent polls have the two candidates trending in opposite directions.  Not particularly suprising though, as  Westly was getting a huge boost from his increased name ID due to the massive ad campaign he was running.  The new negative ads that the two are running in abundance seem to have brought Westly back to the pack a little bit.

On the potential matchups with Schwarzenegger, both of them are now a dead heat.  For Angelides, this is a huge swing.  In the March PPIC poll,  Schwarzenegger had a 41-29 lead on him.  However, Westly had a sizable lead in the March poll at 39-31.  He must be disappointed with his recent performance.  One of his main arguments for being the Dem nominee has been that he is more electable.  All of the recent polls have him in a similar situation to Angelides.  For a more complete listing of previous polling data, check out Calitics poll headquarters  your one-stop shop for all of those exciting California polls. From PPIC:

But regardless of who wins the June Democratic primary, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appears to be headed for a close race come fall. The race is a toss-up in hypothetical contests between Schwarzenegger and Angelides (38% each) and Schwarzenegger and Westly (36% each). The governor’s comparative advantage over Angelides and Westly – namely, his name ID – is also his weakness: Most voters know him, but they are as likely to have an unfavorable view of him (47%) as a favorable one (45%). Angelides and Westly have the reverse problem: They have far lower unfavorable ratings than Schwarzenegger (26% Angelides, 19% Westly) but they are also unknown to much of the electorate (45% Angelides, 50% Westly). “Independent voters – who know little about these Democratic candidates today but who will cast the swing votes in November – are getting their first exposure to them through more frequent and more negative paid advertising in the run up to the primary,” says Baldassare.

This just underscores the need to keep the campaigns positive.  Both candidates would be good nominees and great governors.  The only concern now is that all this negative crap will deliver damaged goods for the general.

The National Guard as border enforcement presents a very difficult issue for Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Does he play to the Right and send them down there?  Or does he play to the Left and reject the President’s request. Schwarzenegger is attempting to play to some sort of middle ground.  Of course, he is being helped a bit by the fact that the actual mission of the Guardsmen is totally unclear.  They won’t act as border patrol people, so what exactly are they going to do?  It at least gives him some room to wiggle for the time being.  Added to that is the fact that the federal government has yet to appropriate any money to pay for this guard service.  But ultimately, there will be some sort of reckoning here.  Either he sends them or he doesn’t.

But the governor continues to refuse embracing either side’s all-or-nothing approach. He has said he does not like the idea of sending Guard troops to the border, but he has also said he would consider doing so, if it were a temporary solution.

And therein lies his problem. The governor is getting toasted as a waffler who is either pandering to both conservatives and liberals, especially Latinos — or scared to rile either in an election year.(CC Times 5/21/06)

Immigration is such a challenging issue, for both Dems and Reps.  I’m not sure how a Democratic governor would deal with this issue either.  Would  it be a natural for Gray Davis to just reject it out of hand?  I doubt it.  But, Schwarzenegger’s waffling and lack of decisiveness is a problem.  He has yet to say anything of substance on the immigration issues of the day.  California’s governor should have some sort of position on these issues and provide leadership.  Shwarzenegger has not.

The good folks over at No On 82 are creating some very nice little ads featuring teachers, principals, and parents stating how Prop 82 would create a massive bureacracy, a “parent tax”, and generally be disastrous for the state b/c uh, rich people would be a little less rich…and uh… well, you get the jist.

The problem is: they are all fake.  Yup, all actors.  Those “teachers” that you’ll see, uh, maybe they taught a summer stock class.  From Matier and Ross:

Take, for example, the new ad opposing actor and director Rob Reiner’s universal preschool initiative, Proposition 82. It warns of a costly new bureaucracy and even the possibility of a “parent tax,” and features a school principal, teachers and kids.

They’re all actors. According to the call that went out from Ava Shevitt Casting in Santa Monica, these were the requirements:
***
Teacher: “Female/Asian, Caucasian, 40-45 … professional manner, warm & engaging, authoritative but gentle.”
***
Student: “Female, multi-ethnic, 13-15 … dark hair, appealing, warm & engaging, bright, adorable, thoughtful, insightful, poised, inspirational.”
***
California Teachers Association officials, who support the preschool initiative, aren’t amused by the fake school crew.  “Using actors to portray teachers is misleading and deceptive,” sniped Sandra Jackson, spokeswoman for the union. (SF Chron 5/21/06)

The fact that the No on 82 folks are stooping to using fake teacher is more than a little funny/ironic.  Can’t they find one teacher who doesn’t like 82?  Well perhaps not…

As an aside, check out that article for a funny Jerry Brown story. 

Moving to Dem on Dem ads and back to a subject I touched on earlier: SD-8’s bizarre ads.  Mike Nevin wants to appear again on these pages.  This time he tries to tie Yee to Schwarzenegger.  Well, ok, but then he takes a page out of “Girly-Man” Schwarzenegger’s book.  He puts a picture of Yee’s head onto a Hans and Franz picture with Ahnold. I think it’s funny that we get in a huff when Arnold uses this stuff, but then we do it to each other.  Meanwhile Lou Papan is running clean ads on TV and in mailers.

Here it is, click on the ads to make them bigger.

Mike Nevin’s Pump You Up Ad