This week, Abel Maldonado held a news conference announcing a statewide effort to repeal the realignment program.  Proof of the dangers of realignment: the heinous murder of Mary Beth Blaskey.  Jerome Anthony Rogers has been arrested and charged with the murder.  Rogers, 57, has a lengthy criminal record, but was last in prison in 2003.  

Got it?  The last time he was in prison was 2003 and Maldonado is using this case as an example of how realignment is failing.  Realignment came last year, not 10 years ago.

Why would Maldonado use a case that has nothing to do with realignment to promote an effort to repeal realignment?  Because there is no such case within the realignment universe.

I had imagined, when realignment was first announced, that there would be some horrible crime coming from the release of inmates that would become an emotional issue.  It hasn’t happened.  Maldonado’s fail has demonstrated the opposite of what he was trying to show: Alignment has been relatively successful.

Senate Majority Leader urges Schwarzenegger to move on with Maldonado’s fate “dicey at best”

SACRAMENTO – With the Assembly’s reconsideration vote of Senator Abel Maldonado’s confirmation as Lieutenant Governor pending, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) issued the following statement:

“As the Assembly waits to take up the confirmation of Senator Abel Maldonado for reconsideration, I think it’s time for the Governor to begin working on Plan B on the Lieutenant Governor nomination.  No matter how much the Governor stomps his foot, crosses his arms, threatens legal action, cries partisanship or commands the legislature to ‘obey,’ Maldonando’s nomination looks dicey at best.”  

“The Governor operated sloppily throughout the entire process and has created a governing mess.  Spending months on court battles is the last thing Californians want from their Governor.  Giving Maldonado a handshake and then quickly moving to Plan B is the Governor’s best option at this point.”

‘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.  

The Fresno Bee editorial blog seems to be suggesting that of the two names left on the Governor’s short-list, Abel Maldonado is far more likely than Cogdill. KQED’s John Myers agrees in this tweet.

I’ve thought Madlo would be the nominee unless the Legislature just told Arnold that they wouldn’t take anyone, or that a Democrat should replace a Democrat. But, we know this Legislature isn’t prone to taking tough stands, are they?

This does have some interesting (if you’re a Cal Politics junkie anyway) ramifications in an interesting race for an assembly seat.

Currently, AD-33 (San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Paso Robles) is held by minority leader Sam Blakeslee, who will be termed out in 2010. He has already filed papers to run for SD-15 when Maldonado terms out in 2012, but an imminent special election would make things interesting.

When Blakeslee originally won election in 2004, he defeated far-right candidate Matt Kokkonen (who is also running for AD-33–he’s always running for something) by trying to appear not as far to the right. There are currently four Republicans running campaigns for the GOP nomination in AD-33. They come from different geographical regions of the 33rd and from different ends of the narrow GOP spectrum. I would not be surprised to see one of them (Kokkonen, especially) take a shot at SD-15 in a special election where anything can happen.

There is currently only one Democrat in the race, Hilda Zacarias. The AD-33 voted for Obama in 2008, so there is an opening here. SD-15 is much bigger, stretching from Santa Maria all the way up to Santa Clara county. My sense is that it is a more red district, but, in an election with two or three Republicans who might split the vote and Scozzofava each other, if the Democrats can agree on one person only, they might have a chance to pick up a senate seat, at least for 2 years. I would suggest that this not be done at the expense of the more doable AD-33 win.

It’s all speculation based on rumors based on speculation, but that’s what makes political blogging so fun, right?