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‘Tis the season of scorecards

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‘Tis the season of scorecards.  First we had the California League of Conservation Voters, then the Sierra Club California.  Now Capital Weekly has produced one that purports to measure the voting performance of the state legislature on a Conservative – Liberal continuum.

Some comments below the fold.

It is interesting that the oft maligned (at least on Calitics) Able Maldonado has a more liberal voting record than several Democrats… notably Roderick Wright and Gloria Negrete McLeod.  That is a likely reflection on the makeup of their districts. That confirms the CW bias for contested districts and centrist legislators.

For all of its imperfections, once again, we found this scorecard to be a worthy exercise. Terms like “liberal” and “conservative” are crude political shorthand, but we think the results give a pretty fair representation of the ideological makeup of the Assembly and Senate.

Also, our scorecard reflects what most Capitol observers know to be true: Democrats in contested districts like Alyson Huber and Lou Correa earn more centrist marks than those lawmakers in more solid, partisan districts.

As for the environmental scorecards, the two major ones scored differently.  In some cases, they took the same position. e.g. AB 64.  Others, they were on opposite sides of the questions, most notably on the Special Session Water Legislation, where the Sierra Club scored SBX7.1 and SBX7.2 (oppose) and the CLCV did not include it.  Since this was the most publicly fought over ecological legislation of the year, it looks like the CLCV took the political stance of ducking hard choices, though they have put a lot of energy into promoting those two bills.

Typical of the results was a 100% score from the CLCV for Jared Huffman (AD-6) while the Sierra Club only gave him 12/15, reflecting his strong support of the water legislation.  

Election 2010

Sacramento “experts” fail at analyzing Oakland mayoral race

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(Cross-posted at Living in the O.)

Yesterday, I checked out Capitol Weekly, as I do every Thursday and was excited to see that one of their weekly features focused on the Oakland mayor’s race. Well, I didn’t stay excited for too long. In “Experts Expound,” they asked a bunch of Sacramento “experts”:

 “Don Perata is running for mayor of Oakland — a job he’s always wanted. Can he beat Ron Dellums? Why or why not?”

As any Oaklander would know, this is an absurd question to ask. Dellums isn’t running! Perata made this clear in his media interviews this week. And if Dellums ran again, Perata would crush him – it would be embarrassing.

After getting over the fact that this question was basically pointless, I browsed through the answers, some of which were pretty funny:

He can win.  He’ll make the voters an offer they can’t refuse.

He will have all of those FBI agents following him when he walks precincts. People in Oakland will like this. It is his Posse. Perata wins.

Oakland Punchline – Ron Dellums is soooo bad that even Don Perata can beat him.

And then there was this answer, which was even more out of touch with Oakland politics than the initial question:

It will be close. Dellums has the same name I’d and an equal number of supporters.

Really? Has this person ever picked up a local paper or talked to anyone who lives in Oakland? Or maybe the person who said this has been out of the country for the past two years and missed Dellums’s descent.

Maybe Capitol Weekly and it’s Sacramento “experts” should stick to what they know, state politics, and stay out of Oakland politics. Either that, or they should consult some Oaklanders next time.