Here’s some tidbits from the campaign trail with 12 days out:

• CA-03: Bill Durston and Dan Lungren debated last night, and it was a predictable affair, says Randy Bayne:

Nothing new, no fireworks, no knockout punch, no excitement of any kind was reported by either MyMotherLode.com or the Stockton Record. Just what we already know – Durston wants us out of Iraq, doesn’t like No Child Left Behind, and thinks the bailout is the wrong solution. Lungren supports the occupation, favors No Child Left Behind, and voted for the bailout.

If you’re looking for change from eight years of down the toilet policy, and you don’t want to continue flushing our future down the crapper – vote for Bill Durston.

If the registration stats cited by anecdotal reports are at all accurate, we’re going to be very close to registration parity in this seat by Election Day.  Lungren may be acting positive in public, but inside the campaign they must be terrified.  They probably didn’t expect Durston to run a credible campaign.

• CA-04: Tom McClintock has caught a bit of trouble for relating gay people to dogs in a roundabout way.

“Lincoln asked, ‘If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one,'” McClintock said in a statement. “And calling a homosexual partnership a marriage doesn’t make it one.”

I’m pretty sure that means nothing at all, but California’s Alan Keyes has had to distance himself from the comment.  Meanwhile his much bigger problem is lacking the funds to run a proper campaign.  He’s now taken to relying on cheap robocalls, and Charlie Brown has immediately called on him to stop.  Dirty trick robocalls that appeared to be coming from the Brown campaign were a major factor in John Doolittle’s narrow re-election in 2006.

• CA-46: I didn’t get a chance to post Debbie Cook’s amazing closing statement at Tuesday’s debate.  Here it is.

The OC Register has a story on this race today.  These “Challenger hopes to upset incumbent” stories have a familiar feel to them – the pose of surprise that the race is competitive, the quote from the shallow CW fountain like Allen Hoffenblum explaining why the incumbent is probably still safe, and the overall sense of shock, which would be natural if you weren’t paying attention for the last 18 months, like, um, us.

• Assembly & Senate: Art Torres and Ron Nehring had a debate yesterday, and I think Torres needed to be prepped a little better.  He claimed that Democrats could grab a 2/3 majority in the legislature but then couldn’t come up with a simple list of what seats are in play.  He should be reading more Calitics.  Nehring replied with a lot of bunk and a little truth.

None of that adds up to 54 and 27, of course, and Nehring said Torres’ boast “just doesn’t pencil out.”

He noted that Democratic efforts to oust Sen. Jeff Denham via recall failed miserably this year and the party ended up with no opponent to challenge Sen. Abel Maldonado in Santa Maria, a district believed to be winnable by a Democrat.

On the Assembly side, Nehring said, Republicans “have a great shot at holding on to” the 15th and “have a number of strategic advantages in the 78th (because) the Democrats have nominated the most liberal candidate (Marty Block) they possibly could.”

In the 80th, the Democratic candidate (Manuel Perez) “is getting hammered on … social issues which are important to many people in the Latino community,” Nehring said.

“I don’t know how can you be serious about trying to have a two-thirds vote in the Legislature,” Nehring told Torres, “when you blow so many of these opportunities.”

I’ll go bottom to top on this.  Manuel Perez is going to CRUSH Gary Jeandron, and if anyone’s being hammered, it’s the Republicans.  The IE money is pretty one-sided in the state.  Between that and the registration gains, it’ll take more than just spin to dig your party out of its self-created hole, Mr. Nehring.

However, on one point I will agree with you.  The Denham recall and Maldonado disaster have indeed stopped the potential forward momentum in the Senate.  Of course, Torres couldn’t say the plain truth – that Don Perata is among the worst leaders in recent Democratic Party history, and has completely set back the state in major ways by his blunders.  He is an embarrassment.

Obviously, with just over two weeks to go, there’s quite a bit going on.

• CA-46: The Daily Pilot, a local paper in the district, writes about Debbie Cook:

Neither campaign would release its polling numbers, but both acknowledged that the affluent, heavily Republican coastal district that has primed Rohrabacher for victories in excess of 20 points in every election for the last decade will not be quite as friendly to the GOP candidate this year.

General frustration with the Bush administration, which has overseen the rapid deterioration of the American economy, is one of the biggest factors in heralding the turnaround for Democrats, according to UCI political science professor Carole Uhlaner.

“Given the combination of a strong, well-known current official with good funding and the change in the national tide there’s a chance that Rohrabacher could lose,” Uhlaner said.

And our pal Todd Beeton of MyDD writes up the great event for Debbie I attended yesterday.  But the pivotal moment of the campaign might be tomorrow at 11:15am.  Dana Rohrabacher and Debbie Cook will debate for the only time in the campaign.  We all know that when Crazy Dana opens his mouth, bad things happen for him.  We’ve seen on a national level what can happen to candidates with loose lips and an extremist ideology – ask Michelle Bachmann.  So we’ll be monitoring the debate tomorrow.

• CA-03: For some reason, Bill Durston is taking very seriously the Sacramento Bee’s endorsement of Dan Lungren.  Through his outreach to supporters, the letters to the editor in the wake of the endorsement were entirely on Durston’s side.  I don’t think these newspaper endorsements mean much, but it is something incumbents can use in their advertising, so it does have an impact.  And frequently these local editorial boards are pushing a conservative agenda that is resistant to change.

Speaking of debates, Lungren and Durston also have one tomorrow.  So there should be a lot of post-debate highlights to discuss.

• CA-04: I tend to think that this story, flagged by Dante over the weekend, is just devastating for Tom McClintock, so I’m going to post it again.

Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican in a Democratic-dominated state Legislature, is the only state lawmaker to fail to shepherd a single piece of legislation into law in the last two years.

Not that he seems to mind […]

“I came to the conclusion a long time ago that minority legislators have a choice,” said McClintock, who has served for 22 years in Sacramento. “One is to tinker at the margins and win very minor victories on unimportant matters and the other is to try to drive the public policy debate on major issues, sacrificing legislative victories for broader policy victories.”

I think America has had just about enough of obstructionist ideologues with no interest in governing.  If the Brown campaign plays this right, McClintock is toast.  This invalidates his entire candidacy.  It doesn’t surprise me that wingnuts are trying to wrap social issues around Brown’s neck to try and distract from this.  But at a fundamental level, Tom McClintock is telling the voters of CA-04 that he won’t lift a finger in Congress for them.  Since the Democrats will retain the majority, McClintock as a Congressman would be a press release machine without even trying to pass legislation.  It’s not his job, he thinks.  

That is a death rattle for McClintock.

• AD-15: If Dianne Feinstein is popular anywhere, it’s out in districts in the Central Valley like AD-15, and so her endorsement of Joan Buchanan is notable, also because she’s a habitually lazy campaigner and doesn’t do much for Democratic candidates historically. She’s also endorsed Fran Florez in AD-30 and John Eisenhut in AD-26.  This is the region where her endorsement can have the most effect.

• AD-36: Here’s a good piece from Dick Price about Linda Jones, the longshot candidate out in this district in the Antelope Valley.  She is a special ed. teacher in Palmdale and a board of Trustees member, looking to become the first Democrat to represent this area since 1974.  She sounds good to me:

Indeed, after putting up token opposition in recent races and losing by landslide margins, Democrats have finally leveled the playing field, narrowing the difference between Republican and Democratic registration to just 1.6%, according to the Jones campaign. Earlier this year, the Antelope Valley Press reported that 74% of new voters were registering as Democrats, compared to just 4% as Republicans, with the remaining registering as “decline to states.”

The region’s dramatic growth has not come without costs.

“Jobs here are either in aerospace or retail, so often people have to go into Los Angeles for work,” Jones says. “A third of the people are commuting downtown-that’s hard on people, their families, their marriages, their pocketbooks, their health.”

In Sacramento, Jones would work for a “Green Jobs” initiative, diversifying the Antelope Valley workforce, for example, by fostering much-needed solar and wind power industries that would create good-paying local jobs so fewer people would have to undertake the brutal commute downtown.

It would be incredible to win this seat.

• AD-10: The Sac Bee thinks that the race between Alyson Huber and Jack Sieglock will come down to turnout:

The game-changer for Alyson Huber or Jack Sieglock could be voter turnout to cast presidential ballots, said Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of California Target Book, which handicaps legislative races.

“How they vote for Obama probably will be the most important factor,” Hoffenblum said of 10th District residents, who tend to lean to the right – but by a dwindling margin.

The GOP’s edge in registered voters has fallen the past four years from 6 percentage points to just 2, giving Democrats an outside chance of an Assembly upset if Obama’s draw is decisively higher than McCain’s, Hoffenblum said.

Well that’s just devastating to Sieglock, because the excitement gap is much higher for Obama.  Then again, he won’t be doing a lot of GOTV in California, so Huber’s going to need to run a strong operation of her own.  The two candidates are even in fundraising, but Huber is getting major IE help.

• AD-80: Great new ad from Manuel Perez:

• SD-19: The money is pouring into this race, as it’s the only one contested on the Senate side.  Tony Strickland has outraised Hannah-Beth Jackson by about $3 million to $2 million, but 53% of Strickland’s take is from business PACs.  Meanwhile, Strickland dropped an illegal mailer:

Tony Strickland has reached a new low in his dishonest campaign against Hannah-Beth Jackson. Yesterday, voters in the 19th District received a mailing from Strickland’s campaign titled “Hannah-Beth Jackson’s Economic Plan.” Inside, the mailing contained Strickland’s predictable false charges about Hannah-Beth Jackson and taxes.

The mailing was clearly designed to look like it was coming from Hannah-Beth Jackson’s campaign.

Expect an ugly last two weeks.

There are two arguments against Prop. 11.  One is that in 60% of the regions of the state, no amount of gerrymandering is going to create a competitive seat (and that’s all this redistricting measure would accomplish – gerrymandering under another name).  I live in Santa Monica.  I have yet to get a legitimate answer about how to incorporate my 70-80% Democratic city into a contiguous region and make it competitive.  You go South and there’s Venice and the South Bay, and by the time you get to a Republican pocket the district is too large to include them.  You go north and there’s Malibu and the Palisades and blue cities up the coast.  You go east and there’s Los Angeles, with liberals everywhere.  You go west and you’re in the ocean.

The other argument is that the other 40% of the state actually has the potential for competition, and the district boundaries are indeed not constrictive.  Demography is destiny but it is not static.  People die, people are born, people achieve voting age.  People move into cities, others move out.  This demographic shift has been occurring for a while now, with the eastern counties moving back to the Democrats, and it’s reaching a critical mass in 2008.

Until recently I considered the drive for a 2/3 majority in the Assembly and the Senate to be a two-year project, culminating with a new Democratic governor in 2010.  That is still true in the Senate, thanks to Don Perata’s bungling of races in SD-12 and SD-15.  Honestly, he should be indicted for his failed leadership, forget the corruption.  But in the Assembly, we absolutely have the chance to get a 2/3 majority, and everyone is starting to recognize that.

SACRAMENTO – The sliding economy and other factors are giving a lift to Democrats in key legislative races that are coming down to the wire, according to consultants working with those races.

In polls that ask whether likely voters would vote for a generic Democrat or Republican in five state Assembly districts with open seats, Democrats get the nod in all five.

What’s more, in two seats held by Republicans – Assembly Districts 38 and 63 – a generic Democrat vs. Republican race is a dead heat, according to the consultants, who hosted a background briefing for reporters Tuesday.

That would be seven races, and six seats are needed for 2/3.

This has been increasingly clear over the past several months.  Manuel Perez has been pulling away in his race in AD-80 against Gary Jeandron with his transformative message of social and economic justice.  Marty Block has been outspending his opponent John McCann in AD-78 by over 8:1 in TV advertising, although McCann is benefiting from IEs, including, bizarrely enough, the California Dental Association.  Between those two plurality-Democratic seats, and the competitive race in AD-15 with Joan Buchanan, 3 seats looked like a good haul.

At this point, Republicans ought to pull out of those 3 seats altogether and put up a firewall.  Because Alyson Huber is looking very strong in AD-10.  And the unions are throwing down for John Eisenhut in AD-26.  And there are wild-card seats that are starting to look incredibly attractive.

The Antelope Valley, the vast open land between Los Angeles and San Bernadino counties typically isn’t very hospitable territory for Democrats for the legislature. It’s the home of the hard-right couple of George and Sharon Runners, who, between them, have occupied the 36th district Assembly seat for more than a decade. No Democrat has held the seat since 1974.

This year, things might be a little different. Democrats have nearly evened the registration gap, down to just a two percent GOP advantage compared to eight points just two years ago.

Enter Linda Jones, a Westside Union School District trustee and a Vice president of the Antelope Valley School Boards Association, who is making a hard run for the seat. She is taking on Palmdale City Council member Steve Knight, a former LA police officer.

Jones is no sacrificial lamb. She’s been running full throttle for months, backed by labor, educators, and African-American groups. Knight, a former LA police officer, is a cookie-cutter Republican running on illegal immigration, a no tax pledge, and a strong opponent of gun control.

We can win that race.  Eric Bauman tipped me off to it three months ago.

AD-37, with Ferial Masry running against Audra Strickland, is winnable too, especially if she gets a draft off of Hannah-Beth Jackson’s overlapping State Senate race.  And AD-63 is even on a generic ballot, according to Democratic consultants.  And AD-66 could be a surprise on election night, thanks to a strong candidate in Grey Frandsen, a former employee of Russ Feingold.  If you add that up, you’re talking about 9 of the 32 Assembly seats held by Republicans in play, over 30%.  So does that sound like gerrymandering to you?  A progressive wave makes redistricting talk look ridiculous.

Alberto Torrico is giving the soft sell, but this is a great opportunity.  It’s a wave election, and every new voter that Obama turns out in California is a likely candidate to vote the Democratic ticket.  Every new voter registered by a Congressional candidate might vote for a Democrat in the Senate and Assembly.  And it’s not as easy for Republicans to play defense in such an environment.  They have the dismal national economic picture and the state budget crisis to contend with, and they’re out of money.

If there was no excuse yesterday, there’s REALLY no excuse now.  This is the time.  If the laws of the state government are designed to prevent change, if they force us to meet “unreachable” goals, then we reach them.  

Do everything you can to get 2/3.

More from Louis Jacobson.

This Politico story confirms what I’ve been saying for 18 months – California has a serious opportunity at the state and federal level this November.  The idea that the delegations are somehow fixed is a crutch that defeatist operatives use to explain why they lose year after year.  The truth is that, in a time of financial crisis and economic uncertainty, multiple seats are up for grabs regardless of the district-level makeup (and that’s swinging to Democrats as well).  Why else would the NRCC be riding to the rescue of longtime California incumbents?

Darren White and Erik Paulsen were prized Republican recruits, House candidates poised to be the new face of the GOP on Capitol Hill.

But as the two head into the homestretch of their campaigns, GOP operatives say they’ll probably have to win – or lose – on their own. The money national Republicans earmarked for White in New Mexico and for Paulsen in Minnesota will likely go instead to protect GOP incumbents who once looked like locks for reelection.

GOP Reps. John B. Shadegg of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, Henry Brown Jr. of South Carolina and Dan Lungren of California are all fighting for their political lives, a reversal of fortunes that has caught even the most astute campaign observers by surprise.

By the way, the man who gulped the hardest reading those paragraphs was Dean Andal, who will similarly become roadkill for the NRCC as they run screaming from his train wreck of a campaign.

Those “astute” political observers, by the way, haven’t been paying attention.  Lungren’s CA-03 was clearly the most movable in the state and has been for the entire cycle.  The demographic shifts are identical to CA-11, and the exurbs are exactly the regions that are switching to the Democrats this cycle.  There will be no difference in registration in that seat on Election Day, mark my words.  And other seats are winnable in the state as well.

In California, Republican operatives have noticed some troubling trends.

Two years ago, Lungren – who is completing his seventh term in Congress – beat physician and Vietnam War veteran Bill Durston by 21 points. But the economy has taken its toll, and Lungren’s district has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. In a newly released Democratic poll, Lungren leads Durston by just 3 percentage points.

Former GOP consultant Allan Hoffenblum said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and other California Republicans, including Reps. David Dreier and Brian Bilbray, are also at risk.

“The Republican base is not sufficient by itself to elect a Republican in those [California] districts; they still need the independent vote,” Hoffenblum said. “In the past decade, they have been reliably voting Republican for president and for Congress. … There are a lot of angry and scared voters out there. This is not your traditional environment.”

After eight years of George Bush, it was NEVER going to be a traditional environment.  People can’t stand him, and the economic crisis threw the failures of his Presidency into sharp relief.  Being a Republican is TOXIC in this political milieu.  Ken Calvert in CA-44 is running mailers calling himself “An Independent Voice Working for You.”  Ken Calvert!!!  No incumbent with an (R) next to his name is safe, to put it mildly.

So folks, understand that the road to salvation this year does NOT go through the eastern parts of the state and into Nevada to canvass for Barack Obama.  He is going to need a progressive Congress to keep him honest and make sure he exercises bold leadership in dealing with the mess George Bush will leave him.  California needs your ATTENTION.  The progressive wave crested well before hitting the Pacific Ocean in 2006.  We have a half-dozen candidates for Congress, and another half-dozen for the state legislature, that can absolutely win if they have the money and the volunteers to get their message out.  If you want progressive legislation, if you want California’s perpetual budget crisis to end, if you want a government that cares about improving people’s lives, STAY IN CALIFORNIA and find one of these races.

CA-03: Bill Durston

CA-04: Charlie Brown

CA-26: Russ Warner

CA-45: Julie Bornstein

CA-46: Debbie Cook

CA-50: Nick Leibham

CA-52: Mike Lumpkin

SD-19: Hannah-Beth Jackson

AD-10: Alyson Huber

AD-15: Joan Buchanan

AD-26: John Eisenhut

AD-30: Fran Florez

AD-78: Marty Block

AD-80: Manuel Perez

There are more than this, too.  More on that tomorrow.  You have absolutely no excuse.  Go  find the campaign nearest you and lend them a hand.  We can build that wave as high as we want.

((I’m told that Act Blue is back up and running, so you can donate now.  And we’re almost to our goal! $180 left! Who will put us over the top?) – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

Thanks to everyone who has supported our five candidates in the Calitics Match thus far.  We’re past halfway to our goal, and Debbie Cook has well surpassed our $500 match (way to go!).  

Today is crunch time.  It’s the final day before the end of the third quarter, which is the reporting deadline for federal candidates.  This is the best opportunity to make your donations the most meaningful; the quarterly fundraising announcements are key to gauge support, and money put into field and messaging now will pay bigger dividends in the future than a quick cash infusion at the last minute.  Please support these candidates and Calitics will match you dollar for dollar.

The Yacht Party Republicans still think you’re stupid.  They believe they can hide behind the gated communities they’ve created through gerrymandering, and that Sarah Palin’s presence at the top of the ticket will lift their hopes.  No, really:

A statewide poll this week underscored the effect Palin has had on the Republican base. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, GOP satisfaction with their presidential choice has doubled since Palin joined the ticket. Unfortunately for McCain, that has not translated into gains against Democrat Barack Obama in California, which has gone to the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four presidential elections.

Still, state Republicans were rejoicing at the possibilities. Thomas G. Del Beccaro, the state party vice chairman, said new volunteers were streaming in faster than at any time since the 2003 recall election. Republicans, he said, were hopeful that a resulting increase in voters would help the party in legislative and congressional races where they might not have been as competitive otherwise.

This is bravado.  The wingnut base wasn’t going to stay away from a Presidential election.  It’s the growing decline-to-state base, along with increased Democratic registration statewide, that has the potential to sink the Yacht Party just as Sarah Palin’s favorable ratings have sank as voters face the terrifying prospect of her in a position of power.  This is the real shift in the electorate:

Since the two parties largely settled on presidential nominees in April, voter rolls have increased by roughly 19,500 – or 2 percent – in Placer, El Dorado, Sacramento and Yolo counties, according to new figures from the California secretary of state’s office. Democrats accounted for 10,500 of those new voters. Just 2,400 were Republicans. Most of the others declined to state an allegiance.

The regional numbers mirror a statewide trend. California’s Democratic voter rolls have increased by 181,118 since April while the number of Republicans grew by 6,823. Republicans saw a net loss of registered voters in 25 counties, including a loss of more than 15,000 in conservative Orange County. Similar trends are playing out nationally, in several battleground states.

You can see the data for yourself.  Particularly in this financial crisis, Californians are ready for a new direction away from failed conservative policies.

All that stands between our five candidates and victory in November is making sure they have the resources to compete.  We can help provide that today.  Please visit the Calitics Match Act Blue page and give what you can.  We’ll double your donation to make it that much more meaningful.