While candidates for state and federal office have until July 15 to announce their fundraising totals to the FEC, we’re starting to see some of the numbers trickle out.  And this is a pretty good one.  Steve Pougnet, the openly gay mayor of Palm Springs, husband and father of two, reportedly raised over $200,000 in the second quarter.  He claimed to have outraised his opponent, incumbent Mary Bono Mack, although the Republican has not yet released her numbers.

$200,000 is a better quarter than almost all Democratic challengers achieved at any point in the last Congressional cycle until the final fundraising quarter.  It’s particularly impressive this far out of the race.

With Bono Mack facing heat from her right flank over her vote for the Waxman-Markey energy bill, she may not have the kind of national backing she could need.  Bono Mack has performed impressively in this seat throughout her career and she remains heavily favored, but Pougnet will have a chance in a district that went 52-47 for Barack Obama in 2008.

An exceedingly strange story out of the San Diego area.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that a fundraiser for Francine Busby, who previously ran for the deeply-Republican Fiftieth District (editor’s note: it’s not that deeply Republican, Obama won here 51-47) and came close to winning in the 2006 special election and subsequent regular election, was raided by sheriffs after an unnamed neighbor made a noise complaint. Busby now calls it a “phony” noise complaint, and the article says that multiple neighbors said there was no great noise at all.

Here’s the twist: The fundraiser was hosted by a lesbian couple, and shortly before the sheriffs came a particular neighbor had shouted anti-gay slurs at the assembled crowd. “It was a quiet home reception, disrupted by a vulgar person shouting obscenities from behind the bushes,” Busby says.

As one neighbor told the paper: “We didn’t hear anything until the sheriff came, with eight patrol cars and a helicopter.”

The sheriff’s department claims that somebody kicked an officer. By the time it was over, multiple people were pepper-sprayed, one of the hostesses was arrested, and the whole neighborhood got to see quite a scene.

One of the officers defended the department’s conduct — turning the blame on the candidate: “The place got out of hand. If Francine Busby was there, why not take a leadership role, step up, and nip this thing in the bud?”

There’s more detail at this Daily Kos diary from arodb, who was there.  I like the part where the police department blames Francine Busby for their own failure to recognize that no noise violation was taking place inside the fundraiser.

I’m trying to get some more information from the campaign, will bring it when I have it.

UPDATE: TPMDC interviews Francine Busby about this incident, and basically, she singles out the homophobic heckler for creating the noise that brought the cops to the scene:

“You could hear his voice very clearly, it was loud. But as far as the actual words, I didn’t hear them,” Busby explained. “I heard my name, and obviously derogatory words. Other people heard profanity, and somebody heard something about gays, as well.” It should be noted that the event was hosted by a lesbian couple.

“The deputies were telling people that they were taking statements from, that the call came in about noise from a Democratic rally, or Democratic demonstration,” said Busby. In fact, she said, she had last spoken at about 8:30 p.m., and the police arrived an hour later when most of the attendees had left. “It was a nuisance-noise call, because there was no noise, and the fact that it was described as a Democratic rally or demonstration indicates to me that this person was calling for his own political motives.”

The LA Times reports that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department will open an investigation into the incident, particularly the use of pepper spray.

Don Perata has been cleared of wrongdoing in an ongoing corruption probe that lasted throughout the Bush Administration and was seen by many as politically motivated.

We have had many problems with Perata, mostly that his terrible leadership contributed to scaring Democrats out of challenging Abel Maldonado and botching the Jeff Denham recall.  If we had a real leader who actually sought to win elections instead of making friends or idle threats, and who was successful on both of those fronts, we would have a 2/3 majority in the State Senate today.  I’m very glad to have him out of the state legislature.  But by and large, corruption issues never made their way into our critique of Perata, and I for one am pleased he has been cleared.  You can read the extremely brief letter from the Acting US Attorney here and Perata’s statement here.

What we did have a problem with was Perata transferring $1.5 million dollars from a campaign account intended to help elect Democrats and push party issues to his own legal defense fund, one day after the election.  The move was not illegal but certainly unethical – if he needed legal defense money he could have raised it for that purpose, and instead he raised money for one ostensible purpose and then used it for himself. (NOTE: Perata also took $450,000 from the California Democratic Party for his legal defense fund as well.)  I was quoted at the time:

David Dayen, an elected Democratic State Central Committee member from Santa Monica, blogged angrily this summer about his party’s contribution to Perata’s legal defense fund, contending the money would’ve been better spent on legislative races. The same goes for Leadership California’s money, he said Wednesday; despite a Democratic presidential candidate carrying California by the largest margin since 1936, Democrats netted only three more Assembly seats and none in the state Senate.

“Every time I asked the California Democratic Party about getting more active and involved in local elections, they said the state Senate and the Assembly control those races … and we don’t have a lot of flexibility. So Perata, at that time, and Nunez or Bass had the authority to run those elections,” Dayen said. “Now we see what happens when you vest power in these closed loops – suddenly self-interest becomes more important than the good of the party.”

He believes this is why Perata didn’t step aside as Pro Tem earlier, as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez relinquished his post to Karen Bass in May: “Darrell Steinberg was sitting there ready to go … and we were all like, ‘What the hell is going on?’

“We speculated it had to be that he still needed the leverage to make the calls to raise money for himself.”

So, now that this legal case has wrapped up, let me pose the question – Will Don Perata return the money left in his legal defense fund to accounts intended to elect Democrats?  Both the membership of the California Democratic Party and scores of anonymous donors to Leadership California unwittingly seeded his legal campaign.  If Perata used all $1.5 million between November and today, I’d like to see the receipts; no court case was ever filed, no depositions taken in the intervening 7 months, no movement whatsoever.  Either some lawyers got rich on having donuts or there’s a lot of money left over.  What’s more likely, of course is that Perata will now siphon that money from the legal defense fund into his campaign account for his run to be Oakland’s next mayor.  In the end, it’s all about Don Perata.

That would be a betrayal, and a disservice to those who donated, expecting to help Hannah-Beth Jackson win in SD-19, or to help defeat Proposition 11, the redistricting measure.  There’s not much of a way to contact Don Perata anymore, though I’m assuming his Oakland Mayor campaign will ramp up soon.  He needs to be asked about this pot of money, and why it cannot now be used toward its intended purpose.

UPDATE: Thanks to Josh Richman for updating this:

UPDATE @ 5:25 P.M.: David Dayen at Calitics wants to know if The Don will give back the $1.9 million he diverted from his Leadership California committee – ostensibly created to support Democratic campaigns and causes – into his legal defense fund late last year. (And hey, what about the $450,000 he got from the California Democratic Party?) Fat chance, David… looks as if it’s all gone into lawyers’ pockets by now. At least the Fair Political Practices Commission has now cracked down on these smelly transfers.

I can’t believe he blew through all that money.  Look out, City of Oakland Treasury!  Clearly he was paying off years’ worth of debts with that fund.  Wow.

The SEIU donated $500,000 to the No on 1A campaign, the first truly major expenditure by any group against the ballot measures on May 19.  The No on 1A campaign now hold about $1 million in their bank account.  While this is dwarfed by the money dumped into the Yes campaign by, among other groups, the CTA, billionaires like Jerry Perenchio, and Chevron, given the attitudes of the electorate even a little money on the No side could be enough to stop the onslaught and tip these measures.  Politicos understand this fairly well:

“It just got a lot harder,” said Dan Schnur, director of the University of Southern California’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and a former Republican strategist.

“The biggest advantage the proponents have had all along is the lack of a well-funded opposition,” Schnur said. “Historically, you don’t need to outspend ballot measures to beat them, and in a low-turnout election this is a decent amount of money.” […]

“Right now there’s a tremendous tendency to reject anything out of Sacramento,” said Republican strategist Dave Gilliard.

Good for the SacBee, by the way, for pointing out that Prop. 1A “has a long-term impact and would not directly alter the budget until 2011.”

I’ve been speaking at a lot of grassroots Democratic groups against these measures, purely on the public policy merits, and the overriding sentiment I’m seeing out there lines up with what Dave Gilliard says there.  The disconnect between the establishment and the grassroots is truly striking.  People don’t feel like their concerns have been met, either this year or for the last thirty, really.  They see another layer of budget dysfunction forced upon the voters that fails to get at the structural problems.  And now, they’re starting to see their voices manifested with action, as well as the mother’s milk of California politics, money.

So the first quarter of fundraising for the 2010 cycle ended, and this week the reports were filed.  Swing State Project has a good roundup.  Here’s what I found interesting:

• In CA-48, Beth Krom had an unusually strong quarter, considering she entered the race in the middle of it.  She raised $63,000 for the quarter, actually beating the incumbent, John Campbell, who raised $55,000.  Now, in 2008 candidates like Nick Leibham and Debbie Cook beat their incumbent counterparts in fundraising repeatedly, but had major disadvantages in cash on hand because the incumbents had assembled war chests from prior fundraising.  And that’s the case here too – Campbell has $300,000 CoH, while Krom has $61,000, a 5-to-1 advantage.  But to beat Campbell so early in the cycle shows a lot of potential.

• Debbie Cook, Charlie Brown and Bill Durston basically raised no money in the quarter, dampening any expectation that they will run again in their respective districts.  Durston raised $9,000, but that was probably all before he hinted at dropping out due to medical troubles.

• In CA-44, Bill Hedrick may be getting national attention, but he’s not raising national numbers, and if he continues to put up $14,000 for a quarter, the D-Trip will either walk away or look for another challenger.  I respect the hell out of Hedrick but he’s got to do better than that.

• CA-37 is absolutely ripe for a primary challenge.  Noted deadbeat Laura Richardson raised a paltry $28,500, as an incumbent, and her $39,000 cash on hand is dwarfed by $363,000 in debt.  We deserve better than Laura Richardson in that very blue district.

• Jerry McNerney put up a $275,000 quarter in CA-11.

• His numbers weren’t spectacular, but Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet is drawing some attention for his challenge to Mary Bono Mack in CA-45.  This is another “Obama Republican” district, and Pougnet, a gay father of two, has an interesting profile for the district and a proven record in the community.  This one bears watching.

The establishment in both parties continue to close ranks around the May 19 special election, even as the grassroots continues to reject it.  Today Antonio Villaraigosa endorsed all six ballot measures, asserting that they will “bring stability back to California’s budget system,” like any artificial spending cap that forces spending $16-$20 billion dollars below initial baseline estimates during an economic crisis where state spending is needed urgently tends to do.  Without question, Villaraigosa, a potential candidate for Governor, sees that giant pot of CTA money being tossed around in support of the measures and figures one of the candidates could draft off of that nicely in the primaries.

At the local level, more and more Democratic clubs are opposing the ballot measures, because unlike the establishment, they have read them and calculated that they would put the state in an objectively worse situation, and they are unmoved by the idle threats of Armageddon casually tossed out by the Governor and his minions.  The dichotomy is both interesting and revealing.

Meanwhile, in maybe the lamest online initiative effort since the invention of Compuserve, Abel Maldonado’s tears have created  “Reform For Change,” a site dedicated to the petty, self-righteous, useless Prop. 1F measure that would eliminate raises for lawmakers and staff during an economic downturn.  In the silly video accompanying the site, Maldonado’s tears tell us that “we can fundamentally reform California and change it forever,” through apparently passing a .0001% change in funding for state lawmakers that is dealt with through an independent commission and not “the legislators themselves” (one of many lies on this site).

Sigh.

UPDATE: Apparently Antonio said this today – “If we don’t pass these initiatives CA will go into bankruptcy.”  That’s just ignorant fearmongering.  These people should be ashamed of themselves.