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”.

On the flip, one will find the Californa Blog Roundup for today, if one is so inclined. Teasers: Absolute disaster with McPherson voter registration database, Reiner resigns, CA-50 polling and Busby immmigration policy, Arnold’s new consultants and their classiness, lots of immigration, a little Doolittle, Some CA-2 and CA-11, Kid Oakland, and a good lawyer.

• State Senator (and candidate for Secretary of State) Debra Bowen responds to the godawful voter registration database problems in Bruce McPherson’s Election Division — 43% new voters rejected in LA County, 26% statewide. Simply unacceptable. Seems to me that this kind of thing is a good argument for a change in the Secretary of State. The Brad Blog has a good explanation of how it happened and exactly how insane it is.
• The California Observer breaks the news that Rob Reiner resigned from the California Children and Families Commission. Arnold still digs Reiner, though.
• Chris Bowers of the mighty MyDD has a look at the latest Survey USA poll in CA-50. Francine Busby seems to have a surprisingly large plurality. San Diego Politics reports that Move On is mobilizing for Busby. Also, they’ve got a report of Kaloogian’s weak weak response to the photo fiasco.
• Down With Tyranny points us to Francine Busby’s immigration proposal, which sounds, well, sane. That’s a nice change from the Republican House, at least.
• Alliance for a Better California has more on the Schwarzenegger consultants, who are clearly from the Bush-Rove school of campaigning. Unsurprisingly, Matthew Dowd sees no distinction between the Schwarzenegger campaign and the California government. This is a core insight of the Rove-driven Republican Party, which we are now seeing replicated in California.
• As Seen from Just Above Sunset excerpts a great piece from an author in New Mexico concerning what it is to be American and Latino.
• Leftcoast at Best of the Blogs argues for an official language as consistent with liberal values. Mark Kleiman makes a similar argument, and throws in some reference to the Know-Nothings and Mickey Kaus as a nice historical context. History may not repeat itself exactly, but it does tend to rhyme.
• Jeanne D’Arc from Body and Soul thinks that the official language idea is not so good. Beautifully written, as always.
• Marc Cooper continues his series on immigration, illegal and otherwise, with a personal story. The comments are fun too. Bill Bradley makes several appearances, as does Mark York.
• left i on the news: it’s funny because it’s true.
• Nite Swimming continues the series on John Doolittle’s money-laundering through his helpmeet. Is a shame lobotomy mandatory, or just recommended, in order to become a Republican House member?
• John Drzal of NorCal Progressive has a profile of the Democratic candidate for CA-2, running against Wally Herger.
• PomboWatch wants to know wny Richard Pombo, head of the House Resource Committee, never did anything for the piñeros.
• I was sure the CA-33 blog was dead, but its proprietor has reported on a Culver City Council race. Click through, and show him some love and encouragement.
• Bouphonia has the funniest response to the Kaloogian photo fiasco I’ve yet seen.
• Kid Oakland finds this century disappointing, at least so far.
• Lies.com has a great story in which some lawyers do some good. I’ve met the Fenwick partner who went to bat for the blogger in this story, and by all accounts he’s a good guy. I’m glad to see him using his skill set this way.