Irrelevancy may not be so bad.  California Republicans are still smarting from their ignominious meltdown at the polls on November 6, but for many Republican legislators, this may be a liberating turning point. For at least a decade, Republican Caucus unity was used to deny the Democratic majority the ability to increase taxes or make [...]

California’s new election ground rules have turned Congressman Henry Waxman’s campaign for a 20th term in the House into an interesting bit of political theater that may be a coming attraction for future races. The top two Primary system and new district lines have forced Rep. Waxman to wage a vigorous re-election campaign against a [...]

Critics of the initiative process, like me, are always pointing to the unintended consequences of well-intentioned  measures.   Proposition 13 centralized fiscal decision-making in Sacramento.  Term limits have dumbed down the legislative process.  The three strikes laws has stuffed our prison capacity.  Proposition 98 has made rational budgeting impossible. The list goes on and on.  This [...]

Nothing gets nastier than intra-party politics.  Exhibit A is the runoff between Congressmen Howard Berman and Brad Sherman in the newly drawn 30th Congressional District.  In a debate last week, Sherman blew a gasket and grabbed Berman roughly and seemed to be challenging him to duke it out in the playground.  A deputy sheriff intervened [...]

Two “reforms” –the top-two primary and redistricting by commission–have created a whole new ballgame for legislative and Congressional district elections in California.  Proponents of these electoral changes were aiming to make races more competitive and to provide more opportunity for centrist candidates.   It will probably take another four or five election cycles to begin to [...]

Former Republican State Senator Bill Campbell once joked that if you laid all the economists in the country end to end, it would be a good idea.  Today, we have political and economic prognosticators  mired in trying to come up with conclusions on what’s happening with the economy between now and Election Day and what [...]

There has been a dubious bit of “conventional wisdom” that has been floating around for the past couple of years.  “No President has been re-elected when the unemployment rate has topped 8%” goes the mantra.  Well, looking at the elections since World War II, that is true.  It is also true that no President has [...]

It is amusing to watch the anti-tax lobby and self-styled reformers  crying foul because  Governor Jerry  and  legislative Democrats maneuvered to place the Administration’s tax plan first on the ballot as Proposition 30.   Well, despite opponents’ protestations, that is exactly where the Brown tax measure belongs. We should stipulate from the beginning that there are [...]

The race for the newly drawn 30th Congressional District in California has drawn national attention.  Two long-time Democratic incumbents–Howard Berman and Brad Sherman–are pitted against each other in what promises to be one of the mostly hotly contested and most expensive contests in the country. Why all the fuss? On the surface, it wouldn’t seem [...]