While perhaps not a sign of the better side of our politics, the money race in California politics is crucial. This is especially true for the Governor’s race, where the campaign has been mostly fought via air war in the last few elections.  Thus, it is time for a Calitics look at the money situation in some of the statewide races.  We’ll start with the Governor’s race, and within the next few days, I’ll post information on some of the other races of note.

So, let’s get right to it. First, the Republicans:

Meg Whitman

Ending Balance – $4,962,065.61

Debts – $295,175.64

What isn’t included in this report, however, is that Whitman donated a bit of money to her campaign.  You know nothing, major, just $15,000,000. Yes, you read that right. Whitman has now donated over $19 million to her campaign. Money will be no issue for the Whitman campaign. There is a litany of problems for Whitman, both with the Republican primary electorate as well as with the general election voters.  However, if she has an overwhelmingly large a lot of money, she might simply be able to drown out any message that isn’t exactly to her liking. It is a bit worrying, despite all the fun that you can have with Meg Whitman.

Steve Poizner

Ending Balance – $3,701,993.79

Debts – $176,186.66

Steve Poizner hasn’t dumped the kind of money that Whitman has into her campaign. He’s getting some decent level of grassroots support from the right-wing, as there has been no real hard-right McClintock-esque type of candidate. Poizner doesn’t have quite the wealth of Whitman, but he can afford to drop a few million into his campaign if he begins to get overrun by the Whitman machine.

Tom Campbell

Ending Balance – $317,381.69

Debts – $0

Poor Tom Campbell.  Not that Campbell is a poor man, but compared to the other two, he simply cannot donate to his campaign. He cannot get the right-wing grassroots support as he has consistently ticked off the right-wing with his positions on Prop 8 and taxes.  At some point unless his fundraising picks up steam rapidly, you begin to question whether this is a serious campaign and not some platform for him to talk about the budget. If that’s the case, well, it’s a fairly good tack, and would give him some power over the discussions in the campaign.  He’ll need to raise a lot more to actually be competitive in the Republican primary though.  

On the Democratic side, it’s starting to look like an un-fair fight.  Attorney General Jerry Brown (and supposed candidate for that race again) has a lot of money heading into the Democratic primary,  SF Mayor Gavin Newsom had a fairly disappointing first half of the year for fundraising, considering he was the only announced candidate. Running for Governor also allows a substantially higher maximum, so Brown can go back to a lot of his maxed out donors when (if?) he declares for the Governor’s race.

Brown

Ending Balance – $7,386,669.12

Debts – $0

Brown has been extremely thrifty, with his staff very limited. His wife, Anne Gust, is doing much of the day-to-day work, and Joe Trippi is doing a bit of consulting. But, there just hasn’t been much money flowing out of his campaign. If he goes back and double-dips to his other contributions, he’ll have even more money.  This is a train with a lot of steam now.

Newsom:

Ending Cash – $1,244,919.85

Debts – $334,482.67

In years past, these numbers wouldn’t have been terrible. But costs have gone up, and you simply need a lot of money. With the exodus of Eric Jaye and the now unquestioned authority of Garry South, it is a fairly safe assumption that there will be a big push on traditional fundraising methods over new media and grassroots fundraising. Whether Newsom will succeed with such methods is still an open question.

UPDATED at the top, as the Governor lays off 5,000 state workers, the perfect thing to get California working again.  He’s basically borrowing from the Whitman playbook here.  See below for why that’s crazy.

It’s a long way until the 2010 Governor’s race, but I think Calitics needs to do our part in pointing out that Meg Whitman is frequently full of crap.  She’s seized on this idea that California’s problems can merely be solved by firing all the state employees.  Now, first of all, California has the second-lowest rate of state employees per capita in the entire nation, a conveniently forgotten fact by eMeg and the rest of the swinging corporate raiders in the Yacht Party.  Next, as Josh Richman explains:

“We haven’t looked hard enough at where we can cut. We can lay off 20,000 to 30,000 state employees while prioritizing public safety and teachers,” Whitman told the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce. “We shouldn’t have to lay off teachers, we need to lay off bureaucrats.”

Fact is, “cut the bloated bureaucracy” has been a GOP rallying cry for decades, and yet whenever the study, the audit or the blue-ribbon commission report comes back, we’re suddently talking about far less “waste, fraud and abuse” than they’d implied. Is there some fat to cut? Sure. Should we? Probably. Will it fix this deficit? Not even close.

The budget deficit now looks to be about $21.3 billion; it would be about $15 billion if voters approved Propositions 1C, 1D and 1E next week, but that almost certainly ain’t gonna happen. And $21 billion isn’t 30,000 jobs, as George Skelton so eloquently put it back in February:

According to the state budget document, there is the equivalent of 205,000 full-time jobs controlled by the governor. There actually are more workers than that because some are part-time. Do the math based on 16 months, since that’s now the time frame of the projected deficit, assuming a balanced-budget package could be implemented by March 1.

You could lay off all those state workers – rid yourself of their pay and benefits – and save only $24.4 billion.

Meanwhile, you would have dumped 160,000 convicted felons onto the streets because all the prisons were closed after the guards and wardens were fired. There’d be no Highway Patrol because all the officers were canned. State parks would be closed because there were no fee-collectors or rangers.

Truth is the savings wouldn’t even add up to $24.4 billion because some of those employees are paid out of small special funds that are self-sustaining.

If these people were in an empty trash bin, they’d still clamor to “cut the waste.”

Let me again commend Chris Kelly’s Meg Whitman week on the Huffington Post, he’s doing an oppo research job that should practically ensure him a spot on any number of campaign staffs.  I particularly like the part detailing the $1.78 million she stole from Goldman Sachs, which for all I know might make her a folk hero.

Next year oughta be fun.

…by the way, I’m not letting other Yacht Party gubernatorial hopefuls off the hook either, like Tom Campbell.  He predictably dissembles about California’s low per-pupil spending on K-12 education, making the same debunked “hey, the schools have plenty of money” claim that Dan Walters likes to peddle.  Allow me to introduce them both to Julia Rosen circa April 2008, which by the way is before the even deeper cuts to schools made in the February budget agreement.

…And if you want to laugh, read this “we’re winning, and the fact that everyone makes fun of us PROVES it!” op-ed from Whitman senior adviser Jeff Randle.

In her unending quest to ensure that she fits in with the Yacht Party Extremists, Meg Whitman goes for the red meat: immigration. Carla Marinucci was able to catch up with “eMeg” at the Moscone Center in, ahem, San Francisco.

Whitman was questioned on her comment this week on Neil Cavuto’s Fox TV show, regarding sanctuary cities. She told the Fox host that in San Francisco, “there is an ordinance on the books that protects illegal aliens and criminal illegal aliens. We have to stop that.”

Asked how as governor she would do that, Whitman said: “Of course, immigration law is a federal law..we need to work with the federal government to actually change those laws in San Francisco.”

“We have to prosecute illegal aliens and criminal illegal aliens in all of our cities, in every part of California ..which is consistent with federal immigration law.” (SF Gate Politics Blog 5/7/09)

Now, Whitman hasn’t actually thought about the ramifications of “working with the federal government to change these laws in San Francisco.”  I assure you, as an active participant in San Francisco politics, that the Board of Supervisors will not be changing the sanctuary city policy. Not only does that violate a slew of federalism doctrines, but the political reality of San Francisco.

Whitman might also want to take a step back from her San Francisco bashing to notice that SF isn’t the only city in the state with a sanctuary city policy. The list also includes cities that you’d expect like Los Angeles, Long Beach, and San Jose, but also a slew that she might be a bit surprised by. San Diego, and Fresno, perhaps.  The reason why all of these cities are sanctuary cities? Well, I’m sure much of it is about the basic human rights questions.  But beyond that there is just the practical matter of having a whole underclass of people that will not report crimes. It’s like an invitation to the every would-be criminal to perpetrate their crimes in those communities, as there would be no enforcement of our laws.

As if just to throw down another little symbol of her unfamiliarity with government, apparently there is $16 Billion in the state budget that can be cut through the use of technology alone. Huzzah for magic faeries!

Maybe we should make April Fool's Day into a week, or maybe even a month.  I know that I enjoyed the hilarious attempts by staid news organizations to try to be the Onion for a day. Everybody gets into the act, but my fave was the Economist Magazine's Amusement Park idea.  Boy, I wish we could just have that everyday! Anyway, to the links:

•  Steve Poizner is already attacking Jerry Brown, pointing out that he, gasp, has been in public office for a long time.
• Asm. Anthony Portantino's AB 53 salary freeze measure moved out of the assembly's public employees committee.
• California Backward Forward endorsed all 6 ballot measures for the May 19 ballot, and I can't think of a better reason to vote against them all than that.
• I know that most of us here style ourselves as much better budgeters than the legislature. Now we can prove it. Over at Next10 you can take the “California Budget Challenge” and try to balance California's books yourself. The fun of an online game like Doom with the subject matter fit for long subcommittee hearings on 5-year projections of discretionary spending. What's not to like?
• Ooh, decentralized leadership in the GOP? Well, isn't that something.
• California Blue Dog, who's a complete moron, thinks it very untoward to have Executive Secretary Treasurer of the LA County Labor Fed, Maria Elena Durazo, deliver the Democratic weekly radio address. Neglecting, of course, that Durazo's late husband, Miguel Contreras, worked with Chavez, and was a Founding Member of the Chavez Foundation. So CalBlueDog's beef, as I understand it, is “person with knowledge of Cesar Chavez shouldn't deliver address about Cesar Chavez.” Anyone know which Sacramento consultant this tool is?
• Asm. Fiona Ma's bill, AB 223, to force San Francisco to reinstate JROTC made it out of committee with thanks to Republican votes.  I don't care how you feel about JROTC, but the state forcing one school district to offer one specific elective is not a good idea. In fact, San Francisco's other Assembly member, Tom Ammiano said the bill was an attempt to “bully a local school board.”  Hopefully, this bill will see be buried in the Assembly and never make it across the hall.
• And finally, apparently even the uber-rich ride Southwest Airlines. Capitol Alert informs us that Poizner and Whitman were on the same Southwest flight this week. I bet they paid for BusinessSelect.

I’m thoroughly unsurprised that Steve Poizner has joined Meg Whitman in an effort to out-anti-tax one another through opposition to Prop. 1A.

Specifically, the politicians don’t want you to know all the facts when it comes to Proposition 1A.  This is the ballot measure that would impose a state constitutional spending limit – a concept that is supported by an overwhelming majority of Californians.

However, if the measure passes, it will also extend the huge tax increases recently approved by the legislature. Passage of Proposition 1A means that the near-doubling of the car tax, the 1 cent statewide sales tax increase, the income tax hike and the reduction in the dependent tax credit would continue for an additional two years.  That adds up to an estimated $16 billion in higher taxes.  It’s no surprise these taxes are not supported by the majority of Californians.

That’s why our state legislators want to keep the truth from you about Proposition 1A and they’ve stacked the deck in their favor.  So when you read the official ballot description of the measure – what should be an objective description on what is being voted on – you will see no mention of the taxes.  The legislative leadership wrote the ballot description themselves and intentionally omitted any reference to the tax increase extension.  They made sure what you read is biased.

The Yacht Party has been so consumed with tax ideology, as if the only role of government is to decide what not to tax, that they fail to see the spending cap forest through the trees.  Which is fine with me, because as Anthony Wright notes, this cap would painfully ratchet down services and make any economic revival in California extremely difficult.

The revenue forecast amount established by Proposition 1A, which limits spending from the state’s existing tax base, would be significantly below the Governor’s “baseline” spending forecast, a forecast that assumes that the cuts proposed by the Governor in his New Year’s Eve budget release continue. For example, in 2010-11, the first year when the Director of Finance would be required to calculate whether the state has received “unanticipated revenues,” the revenue cap would be an estimated $16 billion lower than the Governor’s “baseline” spending estimate for the same year. The gap would widen in 2011-12 and 2012-13 to $17 billion and $21 billion, respectively.

By basing the new cap on a level of revenues that is insufficient to pay for the current level of programs and services, Proposition 1A would limit the state’s ability to restore reductions made during the current downturn out of existing revenues […]

Proposition 1A limits the amount that can be used from the reserve in “bad budget” years to the difference between anticipated revenues and prior year’s spending adjusted for population growth and the CPI. It does not allow the reserve to be used to support a “current services” or “baseline” budget, even if sufficient funds would be available in the reserve to do so. The discrepancy arises from the fact that the CPI – the inflation measure used by Proposition 1A – is designed to measure changes in the cost of goods purchased by households, not governments.

Thus, the CPI does not accurately measure the year-to-year increase in the cost of delivering the same level of public services. Specifically, the CPI does not take into account the fact that government spends a larger share of its budget on items – such as health care – for which costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation. Between 1990 and 2007, for example, national per capita health care expenditures more than doubled, rising by 164 percent, while the CPI for California, which measures inflation in households’ purchases, rose by just 61 percent.

The particular concern for health care is noteworthy. If the formulas in Prop 1A don’t take into account medical inflation, an aging population, or other impacts–like the erosion of employer-based health coverage–then existing health programs are threatened.

Read the whole thing.  These are the guts of this awful deal, what you won’t hear when you call your legislator and they use buzzwords like “rainy day fund.”  At a time when the health care system in California frays at the edges, this spending cap would ultimately stop any progressive reform on anything that costs money, bottom line.  The executive under 1A gets all kinds of new powers to make cuts, and absolutely none to raise revenues.  It’s Prop. 13 on steroids.  That’s why the Governor likes it so much.

But 1A has been structured to sidestep vigorous opposition through a series of bribes, particularly to the teacher’s union.  Prop. 1B, which would repay $9.3 billion dollars to schools starting in 2011-2012 can only pass if Prop. 1A passes.  This has led the CTA to support all six budget measures on the May ballot, severing the united front that labor used to beat Arnold’s special election measures in 2005.  Interestingly, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) will only support Prop. 1B, and in a pique of schizophrenia, denounced 1A as a “power grab” by the Governor.

Of course, the CFT is substantially smaller than CTA.  And while the California Nurses Association’s opposition to the whole special election ballot is noble and appreciated, ultimately some of the stakeholders with money will need to enter the arena.  We leave a shameful legacy to the children of this state if the spending cap passes.

(Dave here.  I wrote this.  There isn’t someone named “Open Thread” who writes the open threads.  The conspiracy of the “guy who forgets to log out of one account and into another” solved!)

Two polls were actually released today on the 2010 California Governor’s race.  The Field Poll did an extensive poll of the race, including favorability ratings, and Lake Research, a Democratic firm, did their own poll which included some head-to-head matchups.

Field’s poll included Dianne Feinstein and I don’t think the results were all that great for her.  In the primary she polls well under 50%, compared to earlier polls which had her closer to that number.

Dianne Feinstein: 38%

Jerry Brown: 16%

Antonio Villaraigosa: 16%

Gavin Newsom: 10%

John Garamendi: 4%

Steve Westly: 2%

Bill Lockyer: 1%

Jack O’Connell: 1%

Undecided: 12%

Considering she’s the most well-known figure in California politics, and that there won’t be that many competitors in the final field, that’s not a runaway at all.  Plus, her net favorables with the electorate (+23) are less than Jerry Brown’s (+25), despite her being more well-known (Among just Democrats, her unfavs are slightly higher than Brown’s but so are her faves).  If anything, this shows that she would have a tough race, maybe too tough for her to want to try it rather than luxuriate in her position whitewashing Bush’s war crimes on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Without DiFi in the race, it’s a packed field.  Here’s Field’s poll:

Jerry Brown: 26%

Antonio Villaraigosa: 22%

Gavin Newsom: 16%

John Garamendi: 8%

Steve Westly: 2%

Bill Lockyer: 2%

Jack O’Connell: 2%

Undecided: 22%

DiFi’s votes are, then, basically evenly distributed.  Lake’s primary poll (they didn’t poll with DiFi) was similar:

Jerry Brown: 27%

Antonio Villaraigosa: 20%

Gavin Newsom: 14%

John Garamendi: 8%

Steve Westly: 3%

Jack O’Connell: 1%

Undecided: 27%

Big undecideds there, and obviously Villaraigosa is benefiting from being the only SoCal candidate in the field, although given his re-election performance he may have some work to do with his southern base.  As for everyone else, there’s time, but they’re all pretty far back.

The Republican primary?  Nobody’s heard of any of the candidates, and the undecideds are off the charts, but it’s early.

Meg Whitman: 21%

Tom Campbell: 18%

Steve Poizner: 7%

Undecided: 54%

Surprised to see Campbell that close, but it’s probably just name ID; he’s run statewide before.  At least 63% of all voters, and at least 67% of Republicans, have no impression whatsoever of any of these candidates.  Their favorables are miniscule.  Given that, Poizner and Whitman will have to spend a lot of their millions just to introduce themselves to the public.

Finally, Lake Research did some (selected) head-to-heads.

Brown: 41%

Poizner: 30%

Undecided: 29%

Brown: 43%

Whitman: 27%

Undecided: 30%

Newsom: 38%

Poizner: 29%

Undecided: 33%

Newsom: 40%

Whitman: 25%

Undecided: 35%

Long story short, DiFi wouldn’t have a cakewalk, Villaraigosa appears to have strength based on geographic isolation, Brown looks well-positioned, nobody knows the Republicans, and any Democrat can win.