Doug LaMalfa–the North State GOP Congressional candidate (CA-01) who made national headlines in mid-September when he claimed falsely that abortion causes breast cancer–is back with another good one.
Jenny Espino of the Redding Record-Searchlight has reported that LaMalfa’s campaign manager David Gilliard told her Mitt Romney was “right” to dismiss a vast swath of Americans as unworthy of GOP attention because they rely on government benefits. He admitted that Romney may have painted with “too broad a brush.” How much too broad? Half, he said: half of the 47% haven’t “chosen” to receive benefits, but receive them “because of their circumstances.” He went on, “Those are the people Republicans should be talking to for sure.”
In other words, LaMalfa’s campaign thinks 23% of the 1st District isn’t worth listening to, and is freeloading off the government just because they feel like it. (Disclosure: I work for the campaign of LaMalfa’s Democratic opponent, Jim Reed.)
Interstingly, LaMalfa is the recipient of nearly $5 million in federal farm subsidies. He’s evaded the $100-some thousand annual cap by splitting the farm into multiple holdings–held entirely by various members of his family.
Was that a choice? Or did circumstances force his hand?
The Record-Searchlight story is here (scroll down to the third item).
Change continues as map-related changes continue to settle
by Brian Leubitz
Wally Herger’s new district, CD-01 is not really a toss-up district. It leans Republican pretty heavily, with a 43-31 Republican registration advantage. Herger has never really been a real power broker of the House, but he has won reelection by at least 15 points since his first election in 1980. But, he has been there for a while, and at 66, he’s deciding to hang it up.
Herger is your typical rural conservative Congressman, and will likely be replaced by another typical rural conservative, state Sen. Doug LaMalfa. It is hard to imagine too much will change policy wise, except maybe LaMalfa might be a little more cautious about calling a self-described “right-wing terrorist” as a great American. Not because LaMalfa won’t agree with the sentiments, but you know, he probably saw Herger get stung by that one.
Some other Congressman are considering retirement as well. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) is now in a toss-up, tilt Democratic seat that he may not wish to fight out at the age of 77. Others might still be coming in the next month or so.
On the Senate side, Bob Herzberg, who still draws Willie Brown’s ire for falling down on the job on the term limits measure as Speaker, is mulling a run for state Senate against Fran Pavley in the newly drawn 27th district. Of course, that is only if the current maps hold for the June election, as there is still substantial doubt. Sen. Steinberg has already endorsed Pavley, an incumbent used to running in a more Dem-friendly seat.
While the 27th will still lean Dem with a 6 pt reg advantage, it also could end up with something of a fight. Tony Strickland, who also lives in the new district, is expected to run for the seat of retiring Elton Gallegly’s CD-26 in Ventura County against a field of candidates that has not yet really distilled into anything cohere. Asm. Cameron Smyth has been rumored to be considering the SD-27 seat as well. Quite the merry-go-round.
Anyway, Herzberg, a friend of the good government moderates and a co-chair of California Forward, will run to the right of Pavley. The question is how this will work with the Top-2. If Pavley is able to build a coalition of progressives, and there is a strong Republican (Smyth??), she could be in a strong position to be in a one-on-one with the Republican. If no strong Republican gets in the race, and she’s in a one-on-one with Herzberg in November, she would be in more trouble. Either way, the Ventura County senate race just got a lot more interesting (and annoying.)
The merry-go-round has to stop at some point, but until the uncertainty about the Senate maps ends with some resolution from the Supreme Court, don’t expect any real resolution.
If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you’ll see a “Rock the Vote” Voter Registration Widget. Why did I put it at the bottom where nobody sees it? Well, mainly because you can’t really register to vote. Rather, you can get somebody to send you a filled out form that still requires you to sign and return it. It’s convenient, but not all that effective. But real online voter registration? That would be great.
It’s not often that I praise Senator Ron Calderon, but I’ll give him credit for putting forward SB 381, a bill that would create real online voter registration. The bill would use the signature from your driver’s license or other DMV issued ID card as signature confirmation, if necessary, at the polling place. In addition, you’ll have to enter your driver’s license #, DOB, and the last four digits of your social security number. That’s quite a bit of information, but the old process of voter registration remains available offline.
A few Republicans even supported the measure. It’s typically not a very Republican-ish idea to welcome new voters, but in the Elections committee, Ams. Niello and Adams decided that with all the security measures they could get behind it. Not so for the Appropriations committee, where the vote went party-line style. Asm. Doug LaMalfa goes back to the voter fraud meme in order to get in on the voter suppression act:
“My main concern is that voting security is not tight enough as it is and allowing online registration won’t help,” said Assemblyman Doug La Malfa, R-Biggs (Butte County), who voted against the bill in committee. “We should set a high bar for people looking to vote and there are already a lot of fake IDs out there.”(SF Chronicle 7/30/08)
And there’s your fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans realize that the greater the voter turnout, the worse the results for them. Democrats, on the other hand, want to facilitate the process of democracy by allowing California citizens to vote. The choice is clear: build walls or escalators. I think it’s clear that for the process of democracy, we should be building those escalators to the voting booth.
The only remaining question is if we can do this, why can’t we do same-day voter registration? Same-day registration has worked in seven other states. And guess what, the top five states in voter turnout are among them. I understand that it would cost some money to implement, and take some time. But, who can really be against making it easier for us to vote? Oh that’s right, Doug LaMalfa doesn’t want to welcome new voters, he wants to build some nice gated community walls around our polling places.
