Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: The Governor’s Race, Taxes, 15% Doolittle lawyers up, CA-50 and Republican Extremism, McNerney Endorsements, Pombo’s owners, Field Poll Methodology, Campaign Finance Reform, Fake News.

Governor’s Race

• Bill Bradley puts up his take on the current state of the Democratic gubernatorial primary.
• ABC has the lowdown on the “New Majority”, a Republican big-business front group that has been in the news and the Republican blogs a lot lately. Looks like they may have been coordinating advertising, at least tacitly, with the Schwarzenegger campaign. This is a big no-no in election law, and is entirely unsurprising. See also Frank Russo.
• And in the “useless gestures” department, Governor Schwarzenegger comes out on tax day to encourage California’s working poor to take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit. (Fun fact: people who try to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit are audited at a higher rate than pretty much any other taxpayers.) Oh, and see also Frank Russo on the CBP’s awesome new report on who actually pays the taxes in California.
• Left-Over asks: “Will the real Arnold please stand up?“

15% Doolittle / CA-11

• To parrot a traditional Republican talking point: If 15% Doolittle doesn’t have anything to hide, why did he lawyer up?
• Nite Swimming thinks we should ask folks like UPS why they were so interested in contributing to 15% Doolittle, a congressman from a safe seat in a relatively rural district. Could it be that they thought he could “help them out” from his position on the Appropriations Committee?

CA-50

• Our own Words Have Power takes the North County Times to task for an attack on Francine Busby from a fake nonpartisan. Here’s a hint for all those reporters out there: “nonpartisan” means only “doesn’t publicly back specific candidates”. It doesn’t mean “doesn’t have an opinion”. That’s particularly true on the Republican side, as we find more and more Republican punditry and think-tankery depends on having their own facts.
• It looks like the RNC is backing Bilbray in both the special election runoff and the primary. Now that’s sticking a finger in the eye of the California Republicans. You know that our Republicans are extremists when they are at odds with the RNC.

Paid-Off Pombo / CA-04

• Progressive 11th reports that the SEIU, East Bay Young Dems, and DFA Tracy have all endorsed Jerry McNerny in the Democratic primary. One really does wonder if the Democratic leadership talked to anyone in the district before they started helping Filson out.
• Say No To Pombo reprints a McCloskey press release pointing out something I think most of us already know: Richard Pombo has been bought outright by special interests. (Or, for the property rights fundamentalists: “deeded in fee simple”.)
• Again from SNTP, a pretty good piece of political theater by Pombo in Their Pocket.

Everyfink Else

• Speak Out California has a great post up on the evidence showing the extremist takeover of the California Republican Party. A lot of talking heads (Cough! Dan Walters! Cough!) like to pretend that the Republicans and Democrats are both hostages of their extremists, but that’s pretty much hooey, and really requires that you throw away the last 30 years of actual history.
• Bill Bradley debates Mark DiCamillo on the Field Poll’s methodology. Before I decide who’s right, I want to know if DiCamillo is a MENSA member as well — I think that may be the determining factor.
• Fake News: it’s not just for Comedy Central.
• The Rest of Us are on the California Progress Report talking about campaign finance reform.
• Bradley on energy.

California Blog Roundup for this rainy Easter Sunday. Teasers: Prop 82 con and con, Field Poll results and spin, 15% Doolittle, CA-11, rabid Republicans, some news in the campaign for Governor, some global warming, some sound principles for infrastructure, and some miscellany.

Prop 82

• Governor Schwarzenegger swings from appearing moderate by backing Proposition 82 to appeasing his corporate backers by opposing. Again, I wonder what big business doesn’t like about a tax which falls solely on high-earning individuals… What could it be? What could it be?
• Bill Bradley reports that John Burton, liberal firebrand, comes out against Prop 82 because the guarantee of universal preschool subsidizes people who don’t need the subsidy. I’m sympathetic to this criticism — you put the money where it’s needed — but one of the things we’ve learned in the United States is that once you make something into a program for the least fortunate among us, it turns into a target for the least generous among us.

Field Poll Fun

• ABC has the headlines from the big 3 NorCal papers’ Field Poll articles on Schwarzenegger. I think they can be summed up as “lukewarm”. Also, here’s the Schwarzenegger vs. Angelides / Westly summary.
• ABC again on the lead that Steve Westly has purchased himself. They note that Mark DiCamillo thinks the lead is surprisingly large. I’m not surprised by DiCamillo’s spin on that; I’ve read some comments by DiCamillo in the past suggesting strongly that DiCamillo is not politically neutral, at least in his commentary.
• Frank Russo of the California Progress Report notes that the same Field Poll suggests that the anti-immigrant nativists are a definite minority in California.

Doolittle / CA-04

• Dump Doolittle notes that John “15%” Doolittle visited his district last week, but stuck to hand-picked audiences. Doolittle will also be at a photo-op with President Bush on Earth Day. Truth is stranger than fiction. I expect the audience there will be hand-picked as well — that’s par for the course with the modern Republican Party.
• Last, Dump Doolittle has a quick blurb on the FEC reports of 15% Doolittle and his Dem challengers. As one of the commenters notes, $287K raised by 15% Doolittle last quarter means that he put just over $43K in his own pocket.

Pombo / CA-11

• Progressive 11th notes that Richard Pombo will be receiving an award from Exxon on April 25, thanking him for his service.
• Say No To Pombo has a bit more information on the FEC filings of the major Dem candidates. For some fun inside baseball, make sure to read the comments. Apparently Filson’s financial director has been less than forthcoming about his relationship to the Filson campaign.

Campaign for Governor

• California Republicans: Nothing will ever satisfy them.
• I don’t know why Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t want to be seen with George Bush. After all, he’s surrounded himself with Bush Republicans.
• Frank Russo posts on the need for the candidates for Governor to address California’s structural deficit. Twice.
• Bill Bradley thinks it’s all a muddle.
• Schwarzenegger has “released” his 2002-04 tax returns. On Good Friday. By allowing reporters to go through the returns for a few hours in a closed room.

Environment

• The California Progress Report has a guest post by Craig Noble of the NRDC on the principles that should underpin an infrastructure program that would be sustainable over the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren — those for whom we hold the present in trust.
• ABC on the Schwarzenegger’s ineffective and politically weak middle position on Global Warming.
• Uneasy Rhetoric rips Daniel Weintraub for his schmibertarian global warming denial.

This ‘n’ That

• Apparently, thinking that a line-item veto is a bad idea makes one a rabid Bolshevik. No, seriously.
• At least these Republican spouses pay each other salaries, not commissions like 15% Doolittle. Did you know there were any meaningfully pro-choice Republicans left? Me neither. Mayor Sam’s Sister City tells us that one of them is term-limited out in AD-38, and reports on the race for his seat.
• From Brian Dennert Here: this is just funny.

OK, here’s the California Blog Roundup for today. Teasers: 5 House Districts to watch, a smidge more on CA-50, more fun with Brian Bilbray, wobbly Governor (and not the good kind of Wobbly), some endorsements from a couple groups, news of the funny and weird.

• AnthonySF at RemoveRepublicans puts together his top 5 hit list for House Districts in California. Now if he’d just add an RSS feed so it would be easier to integrate his work into our roundup reading.
• AnthonyLA at DailyKos has his own spin on what happened on Tuesday, as does our own CarlsbadDem. Also, Words Have Power, this brief pictorial history of Brian Bilbray.
• Alliance for a Better California points out the weakness and general wobbliness of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan for some kind of emission plan. In other news, neither Frank Russo nor Bill Bradley are impressed, though one criticizes on principle, one on tactics.
• Pombowatch catches Richard Pombo in what looks like a flat-out lie, or maybe if one were excessively generous, a flip-flop. It’s shocking, I know.
• We’ve got a couple sets of endorsements for June 6:
• California State Employee’s Association
• San Francisco Young Democrats (including some local candidates and measures)

• ABC takes Dan Walters to task for his smears of the CTA (apparently including making up his own facts.
• D-Day has news of the weird, and California Observer has what may be the funniest story about a Republican I’ve heard in a while.
• Oh, and Westly & Angelides for Prop 82, Schwarzenegger sells out Reiner by coming out against.

California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold & George: a visual history, California Progress Report, putting one’s money where one’s mouth is, a day of canvassing, the benefits of vagueness, lots of Doolittle and Pombo, and a bit of immigration.

This ‘n’ That

• The California Progress Report continues to be a great outlet for content from progressive groups in California. Here’s an article on TV competition. And two different pieces from the CNA on Clean Money: One, Two. And last, a piece on the California Compassionate Choices Act — who do you want making your decisions: you and people you love, or some religious extremists you’ve never met?
• Tom Hilton has some questions for anti-choice “moderate” Monika Rodman. I like this approach — make people deal with the legitimate consequences of their stated beliefs.
• Kaloogian supporters in CA-50 either “canvassed churchgoers” or “stuffed flyers under windshield wipers” in church parking lots on Sunday, says the discussion at SD Politics. I thought Sunday was a day of rest for the faithful, not a day of politicking. Must have been some other Bible I read.

Goobernatorial Race

• EmilyD of Daily Kos found a whole buncha pictures of Governor Schwarzenegger and President Bush together. No, Arnold’s not a Bush Republican. Pay no attention to these photos or his campaign team.
• Alliance for a Better California notes Arnold’s new ad, and says it ain’t surprising he’s running on his environmental record. It’s not bad (not awesome, either), and that’s about the only policy area where that’s true for the Governor.
• Bill Bradley ruminates on the Angelides and Westly ad strategies. And, he does some math resulting in an opinion that Angelides will have to raise taxes to do the things he wants to do. Westly, by comparison, simply hasn’t disclosed how he thinks he’ll pay for what he wants to do, so he dodges that bullet for now.

Doolittle, Do Less

• Dump Doolittle suggests that we should judge John Doolittle by the company he keeps. And, of course, he keeps company with his wife.
• Both Nite Swimming and Dump Doolittle report that John Doolittle posts at redstate.org (home of racist plagiarist Ben Domenech, among others). Doolitlle doesn’t, ah, acquit himself as admirably as one might hope.
• Last, Nite Swimming has a roundup of recent bad news for Doolittle.

Tell Me Pombo, Pombo, Pombo

• Say No To Pombo has an email interview with the three Democratic candidates for CA-11, asking them questions about the recent bankruptcy bill. Full o’ substance, and we like it.
• Richard Pombo, ever on the lookout for a handout, is “sponsoring” Medicare Part D seminars using industry front groups to explain the program. Of course, if the program weren’t such a train wreck, designed to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry, one wouldn’t need industry front groups to explain it. The thing would just work.
• Progressive 11th suggests that Richard Pombo should call the waaaahmbulance and stop blaming other people for reacting entirely appropriately to his badness.
• Pombowatch thinks that you can place a lot of the blame for the salmon closure squarely on Richard Pombo’s enviro-hating shoulders — he ignored the structural problems on the Klamath, and chose to externalize the effects to fishermen while he helped the farmers in his district. Oh, and then he blamed the Endangered Species Act.
• Defenders of Wildlife Action have a series of events, the first on April 15, 10.30 am, San Ramon Public Library for leafletting. Progressive 11th has a listing of other CA-11 events as well.

• ABC thinks about what I do of Schwarzenegger’s immigration op-ed — not much, because it says not much.
• Marc Cooper wants to blame the Senate Democrats for the failure of the half-baked compromise bill on immigration. D-Day explains why that’s ridiculous, even citing Orrin Hatch. Marc Cooper still blames the Democrats, and spins some implausible scenarios in which the immigration bill comes out of committee and doesn’t get completely perverted by floor amendments and conference committee. I kinda wonder if he’s been watching the way that Congress actually works under the Republicans.
• Cooper asks a good question here, though: “Where is the backlash?“
• The Citizens point out media bias in photo selection and cropping. Nifty.
• janinsanfran has photos from today’s immigration press event.

California Blog Roundup is on the flip. There’s a lot, as I’ve been busy with other things (mea maxima culpa). Teasers: Call to Action from Debra Bowen, Eric Roach, Busby campaign responds to NRCC ad buy, lots of CA-11, some CA-4, Schwarzenegger’s ratings and his campaign staff, clean money advances (slow boring through hard boards), more immigration, and a fun little potpourri of links at the end.

Call To Action

• Debra Bowen wants us to email Bruce McPherson to ask him to repeal the “exact match” regulations which are more restrictive than HAVA requires and are causing legitimate voter registrations to be rejected in unprecedented numbers. Yes, we know we need to work on our outreach to get those things here. A big shout out to Mary Scott O’Connor for saying our name in the comments at DKos! Thanks, MSOC.
• In vaguely related news, the California Teachers Association endorsed Bruce McPherson for Secretary of State instead of Senator Bowen. No, we don’t really know why.

CA-50

• Calitics Front-Pager Words Have Power is simply thrashing Eric Roach at his own shop. Why hasn’t Roach bothered to participate in politics before now? Why does Roach have to hire temp workers as “volunteers”?
• The Busby campaign responds to the NRCC attack ad buy in CA-50. The “scandal-plagued” lobbyist in the script is a member of the Keating 5 who gave Busby $500. So is John McCain. One might want to note as well that jailbird “bribe menu” Duke Cunningham gave more than half a million dollars to the NRCC. So they’re using his bribe money to attack Francine Busby for that. Satire is dead.

CA-11

• Say No to Pombo has a great explanation of how the California Democratic Party chooses an endorsement in a primary, in the context of explaining how Jerry McNerney almost got the supermajority necessary to get the tentative endorsement, despite armtwisting on Steve Filson’s behalf by Dem officeholders.
• SNTP again has an interesting discussion on the relative benefits of voting in the Democratic primary vs. voting for McCloskey in the Republican Primary, and the need for movement-building. It continues in the comments, so keep scrolling.
• Progressive 11th reprints Jerry McNerney’s press release: he raised over $50K in the first quarter of the year. If someone has the cash-on-hand numbers and the Filson fundraising info, that would be great — we’ll add them. Otherwise I’ll go dig up the reports.
• PomboWatch wonders if Pombo is using the House Resources Committee as some sort of personal vendetta against the environment.

CA-4

Doolittle keeps Abramoff money. Doolittle is the guy who bought little gold hammers to hand out in support of indicted felon Tom Delay. Doolittle: the Delay of Northern California.

Governor’s Race

• ABC finds an interesting Op-Ed from Ukiah, which argues that Schwarzenegger is in trouble: people just don’t think he’s doing a good job, pretty much based on the job he’s doing, not any easily blamable extrinsic factors.
• On that note, I like Frank Russo’s extraction of wisdom from the most recent poll. Schwarzenegger has 90% name recognition among poll respondents compared to half that for Angelides and less for Westly. And Schwarzenegger is neck-and-neck with two comparative unknowns.
• Frank Russo also catches this article profiling the Schwarzeneggger campaign team. They just hired Alex Castellanos, attack ad hitman from the Bush Campaign, and the creator of the infamous “White Hands” ad from the Jesse Helms 1990 campaign against a black opponent. We’ve discussed the kind of campaign Schwarzenegger is likely to run, based on the team he’s assembled and the McClintock partnership. It’s going to be vicious. More at ABC.
• Angelides comes out with the fiscally responsible and painfully obvious position that in order to have the schools our children deserve, we will actually have to pay for them. Daniel Weintraub was agitating for that a while back — I expect him to now punish Angelides for that honest and responsible position.
• Julia Rosen of Alliance for a Better California found both positive and negative things in Phil Angelides’ performance in the debate. She also penned (typed?) a think piece on momentum in the Democratic primary which is worth reading.

Reform

Don Perata supports AB 583, the clean money bill. Note that the current version is no longer just a display bill, but would have teeth. Time to really pay attention to this one.

Immigration

• Down With Tyranny starts a meditation with Dana Rohrbacher, swerves into punk rock, then back to Rohrbacher. Just go read it.
• People who read the right-wing blogs will have read about Josh Denhalter, the SoCal high school student who staged an anti-MECha protest. Turns out he had some support from the Minutemen and from Save Our State — just a smidge nativist. Everyone should know who the Minutemen are. I have to admit I didn’t know anything about Save Our State. I’m not sure I’m a better person for knowing. Here’s one example of their thinking. And one should read the interchange on their forums where Denhalter asks for support. It’s enlightening. I particularly like that his location is identified as “Third World Cesspool”. Don’t know if he chose that or it’s automatic in the Save Our State forums. Either way, it says a lot.

Everything Else

• John Drzal (recent Calitics diarist — we love you, man!) reports that Wally Herger (Republican CA-2) has a problem with consistency on civil liberties, and when candid, seems to think that “suspected terrorists have no rights”. That sounds jim-dandy as a bowlegged swaggering Marion Wayne sound bite, but it should scare most people. Herger clearly thinks he’s the one who gets to decide who’s an unperson. That’s un-American.
• BE for Change has a link to the webcast of the recent debate in the Lt. Governor’s Democratic primary.
• We’re still paying off Schwarzenegger’s Special Election — but the good news is that the state stiffed the counties!
• California Progress Report has an interesting piece by State Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Garden Grove) arguing that the oil companies have basically created a seller’s cartel in California.
• Tom Hilton of “If I Ran The Zoo” follows up on the “Battle Cry” convention in San Francisco last week, and the way it hoodwinked the Chron’s editorial board into thinking that it was just “religious” not “political”.

California News Roundup on the flip. Teasers: Peter Schrag on California, Pelosi profiled, Schwarzenegger profiled, voter registration, Dean, salmon, emissions regulation, insurance, and of course, lots of immigration.

Not Immigration

• Shorter Peter Schrag: California is just very confused. Discuss at the California Progress Report.
• The Chron has the first in a three-part profile of Nancy Pelosi. This installment, at least, is very pro-Pelosi, and pro-machine.
• The LA Times profiles Schwarzenegger. I don’t have any idea what to make of the profile, except that I’m sure I would never want to work for this guy.
• Voter registration is still hosed, requiring registrars to manually confirm hundreds and sometimes thousands of new registrations in time for the June primary (and in CA-50, by April 11).
• Ballot Watch Graphic from the SacBee on the race to replace Steve Westly as State Controller.
• Capitol Roundup from the Merc / CC Times, showing what they thought was important in state politics last week. Oddly, that doesn’t include the minimum wage bills under debate.
• Two different views on Howard Dean’s recent visit to the area: one from the AP, focusing on his statements on immigration, and one directly from the local reporter focusing on the Asian-American Democrats’ conference.
• California steps up with emissions regulations to try to slow global warming. Of course, business interests want it ignored handled at the federal level. The Bush Administration apparently agrees, and is attempting to override both the EPA and state regulations with adminstrative rulemaking by the Transportation Department. Federalism and deference to the legislative branch are core principles of the Republican Party. No, seriously. Stop laughing. Stop it.
• Great piece from the San Francisco Chronicle laying out the constituencies affected by Klamath River damming and water usage decisions, and why now is the time that perhaps past mistakes destroying the salmon fishery can be rectified.
• The Sacramento Bee reports on a privacy screwup by the California State Employment Development Department. Before all y’all anti-government types get twisted up, though, the EDD’s screwup pales beside corporate screwups.
• Last, one of my hobbyhorses: setting auto insurance rates based on driving record, not zip code.

Immigration

• Gregory Rodriguez’s LA Times Op-Ed provides some additional context on the issue of Mexican immigration. Seriously, this is a complicated question, and there’s going to be a lot of “more context” stuff.
• A SacBee piece “analyzing” the effect of the immigration discussion on the California gubernatorial race. And by “analyzing”, I mean turning mostly to political consultants for each major party to criticize the other side’s approach.
• A series of pieces from New America Media about the interaction between black Americans and immigrants. I might read them slightly out of chronological order: (1) Straight Reporting, (2) Earl Ofari Hutchison (3) The Black Commentator / Bruce Dixon, and (4) The Black Commentator / Bruce Dixon again.
• Everybody running for CA-11 against Richard Pombo is more sane on immigration than he is. One finds this article as well, profiling the more nativist of the Republicans in California’s U.S. Representatives. Frankly, my head just spins when I hear Republicans from the House talk about “rule of law”.
• New polling says that in California, immigration is a partisan issue. Nationwide, not so much.