All posts by jennifer poole

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McCain hires Schwarzenegger’s campaign manager

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(also posted as a Daily Kos diary)

The San Francisco Chronicle Politics Politics Blog reports this afternoon that Sen. John McCain has been the successful bidder for the services of one Steve Schmidt, former White House aide to Dick Cheney, who is known as “Karl Rove’s lieutenant.”

Schmidt, who will be “a senior advisor” for the McCain campaign, ran the Bush 2004 reelection campaign warroom, and was the point man for Bush on Judge Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court (the tears, remember the tears?)

But since January 2005, Schmidt has been employed as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign manager, and his successful “repositioning” of the GOP governor was noted far and wide in elite Republican circles. As the item recounts, and as was reported right after the election in the Sacramento Bee, a number of GOP presidential contenders were interested in hiring Schmidt. Chronicle Reporter Carla Marinucci names Rudi Giuliani and Mitt Romney, for two. I guess McCain bid the highest? Or Schmidt thinks he’s the most likely winner? Or?

Apparently McCain has also hired Schwarzenegger aide Matt David, “who ran Arnold’s take-no-prisoners, non-stop “war room” rapid response effort.” Both Schmidt and David will also remain on the Schwarzenegger payroll as advisors.

I posted a diary a while ago at dKos, “Schwarzenegger uses “executive order” to rewrite global warming law,” with more details/links about Schmidt et al. and how the Schwarzenegger campaign was run on fake populism, Big Lies, Big Money and “total control” of the media narrative.

As I said then:

IMO, this fake “green,” fake “bipartisan” and bought-and-paid-for campaign in California is a trial run for the political strategy for whichever “New!” “Modern!” “Green!” “not-George-Bush!” Republican candidate runs for President in 2008.

Well, I was wrong about “New!” and “Modern!” — I don’t think even Steve Schmidt could reposition McCain as New and Modern. And a “Green!” McCain? Nah. In fact, if I had to bet whether McCain would be the GOP candidate in 2008, I’d bet a strong “No”, but this makes me wonder, yes it does.

I know that a national election can’t be compared to California’s; I know that Democratic politicians nationally won’t roll over for McCain the way Democratic politicians rolled over for Schwarzenegger in California (we know that, right?); and I know that McCain isn’t Schwarzenegger (nobody’s Schwarzenegger, I guess).

And I also can’t imagine a scenario in the Presidential 2008 race where blogs like Daily Kos throw up their hands and abandon the field to the GOP, the way many did for the California governor’s race. I expect blogs supporting Democratic candidates to have even more of an effect in 2008 than in 2006.

But, I say: Watch Out! These assholes are Really Friggin Good at painting Up as Down, and Even Friggin Better at controlling and limiting the media narrative. They’re also really, really good at distancing their candidate from George W. Bush.

Uncategorized

guv losing votes over global warming law re-write

OK, well maybe it’s not a whole hell of a lot of votes yet, but check out Thursday’s SF Chronicle story, “CAMPAIGN 2006: Governor’s Race: Mark Leno rescues one Berkeley Dem’s vote for Angelides.”

http://www.sfgate.co…

and please note, despite the headline, the truth is the calls from SF Assemblyman Leno started giving Berkeley voter Mary Canavan “second thoughts” about voting for Schwarzenegger, sure, but it wasn’t until she read Mark Martin’s Chronicle story, “Núñez slams governor on emission law,” that she tipped to Angelides. Martin’s Tuesday story reported that Scharzenegger was to sign an executive order that day to re-write the global warming law he’d signed this summer to such international fanfare.

As Mary Canavan said:

“That was a page right out of the Bush playbook,” she said. “I realized that I might not be getting who I thought I was getting.”

Thank you Mary!

And here in my Daily Kos diary, “Schwarzenegger uses “executive order” to rewrite global warming law,” we’ve got one Democratic Schwarzenegger voter vowing he’ll now vote for Angelides, plus a couple more potentials.

http://www.dailykos….

So, it seems to me that the more on-the-fence Democrats find out about this executive power grab belying Schwarzenegger’s “green” and “bipartisan” masks — the more they’ll decide to go with Angelides instead.

here’s the Martin story, for those who haven’t seen it. It’s got an apparently angry Nunez saying:

“You can’t rewrite a law through executive order…. This is totally inconsistent with the intent of the law and with the way that it is written.”

here’s the lead here:

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and some environmental groups charged Monday that an executive order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sign today undermines an agreement the governor struck with Democrats on the state’s landmark global warming law.

Schwarzenegger will sign an order giving the secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency the duty of overseeing parts of the law’s implementation and emphasizes the development of a new market allowing companies to buy and sell greenhouse gas emissions credits.

Núñez said that the executive order gives more power to the executive branch than the law calls for and that the governor’s emphasis on a market-based approach to lowering greenhouse gas emissions ignored other aspects of the law. He suggested the governor was reinterpreting the law based on proposals he had suggested to lawmakers during negotiations over the legislation this year but that had been rejected by the Legislature.

http://www.sfgate.co…

And I also believe that if voters understood that the same corporate PR and White House “power team” that sold the country Bush and his Big Lies in 2004 is using the same techniques and strategies to sell the “repositioned” Schwarzenegger to Californians this time around — they’d start worrying that a vote for Schwarzenegger might well bring on the same kind of “buyer’s remorse” that plenty of Bush voters are feeling right now.

hopefully voters will understand this before the election! Let’s hope the Angelides campaign is pounding on this.

I’ll also post a link to an interesting Sacramento Bee story today, “In skilled political hands, Schwarzenegger campaign hums: Two key GOP operatives credited for reversing governor’s political fortunes.” Although with a far different take than my diary, the story is getting some of the same information out and definitely confirms what I believe about CA guv 2006 being a trial run for GOP Prez in 2008 — as far as “repositioned” GOP candidates and strategies go — because “repositioning” is clearly what the GOP needs.

As the Bee story reports:

But in Washington, potential candidates for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination have noticed the work [Schwarzenegger’s team has] done.

While Dowd is reportedly not interested in running another national campaign, Schmidt has emerged as one of the hottest young political consultants in the business and is drawing interest from several presidential contenders.

“They’d be crazy not to hire him,” said Ed Gillespie, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who has worked with Schmidt and Dowd.

http://www.sacbee.co…

Time to remind our CA friends and relations who Scharzenegger really is, and who he’s beholden to! Thursday’s Chronicle story is an easy one to send around to friends who aren’t such political junkies. It’s kind of a human interest type story, not too wonky, but definitely gets the point across.

and here’s the Angelides website, just in case anybody needs it.

http://www.angelides…

Don’t forget Howard Dean (Oct. 26, UCLA) and Barack Obama (Oct 27, USC) will be in California next week campaigning for Angelides. Can we get Al Gore back out here to give a spotlight to Schwarzenegger’s sneaky global warming move?

California

Counties left in lurch for special election costs?

(Minor edits for space and form – promoted by SFBrianCL)

This could be big — here’s a just-posted story from today’s Ukiah Daily Journal, “County loses out on $165,000 from state in election funds”.

Apparently AB 1634, a bill that would have reimbursed CA’s counties $39 million for the costs of Schwarzenegger’s failed special election back in November, never came out of committee, so it has failed.

this according to a report yesterday by Mendocino County’s savvy interim general manager Al Beltrami to the county board of supervisors.I don’t see any other news coverage of this (yet?)

The bill was reportedly put into suspense back in June by the state Senate Appropriations Committee, on the theory they’d pull it back out in August, then it never was pulled back out. Is the Legislature too busy raking in the cash at fundraisers to pay attention to the peoples’ business? same with Schwarzenegger?

this 8-1 alert from the CSAC, CA association of counties, urging members to contact the Legislature  in support of AB 1634, states: “Today, in the midst of the 2006-07 budget year, the Governor has assured CSAC that the $38.8 million appropriation in AB 1634 – which represents a more than $5 million in savings for the state over estimated costs – will be available.”

http://www.imakenews…

here’s a SacBee editorial from 8-13, “Editorial: State must repay counties for special election,” the only other item that results from a News search for AB 16634. This editorial suggests “many county officials” fear that Dems in the Legislature might vote to reject the funding to “punish” the governor, but in fact the move to rerefer the bill was unanimous, and committee members aren’t all Dems.

http://www.sacbee.co…

here’s leginfo link to the bill

http://www.leginfo.c…

you can find a list of each county’s expenses here:

http://www.leginfo.c…

the UDJ reporter Katie Mintz mentions that the cost of the recall election was born by local counties, too. but no details. anybody remember more about that?

If somebody could jazz this up, and edit it into shape — and possibly do some real reporting — this could be a good story.

for one thing, find out who the chair of the committee where the bill got buried is, and call their office to confirm the UDJ report and ask why this happened. also, possibly Schwarzenegger’s office already has some plan in place to live up to his promise?

I’m busy with work (shoulda gotten started an hour ago), so I’m posting what i’ve got, and I hope somebody agrees it’s got good potential. thanks!

here’s the lead of the UDJ story:

“A bill that would have boosted Mendocino County’s budget failed to deliver.

“Stuck in the Senate Appropriations Committee for too long, AB 1634 — which would have reimbursed counties for actual costs of the November 2005 special election — will not be able to provide its nearly $39 million of proposed payments to California’s 58 counties.

“Mendocino County was allotted $165,000 of that total, but will now begin its final budget hearings for the 2006/2007 fiscal year Friday without the added help.”