The Bratquake Decoded

The loss by Eric Cantor to Dave Brat is indeed a political earthquake with aftershocks still rippling through the congress. Is the Tea Party resurgent?  What are the implications for California?  That depends on candidates. But it depends more on the electoral reality. Cantor lost because he was a terrible candidate—distant, dismissive, arrogantly believing his money and […]

Kashkari Win Good for GOP

The Republican primary math is interesting: Neel Kashkari 18.70% Tim Donnelly 14.90% Andrew Blount 2.30% Glenn Champ 1.90% 37.80%  

Direction of CA Rep Party Could be Set by Tuesday’s Election

Where is the California Republican Party headed after Tuesday? That depends on who wins the right to face Jerry Brown and what they do with that opportunity. There are two answers, one if Donnelly wins, another if Kashkari wins, but the answers are political equivalents: decide between healing the rift and moving forward or annihilating the […]

SF Transit Needs More Balance

In San Francisco, conservatives, moderates and (yes Martha) even liberals are fighting back against the anti-auto fervor of the hard core progressive left. A coalition of pissed off voters has formed to field a non-binding ballot resolution against a juggernaut of zealous greens who have been trying for decades to destroy private transportation in favor […]

Charles Munger Jr.’s Positive Influence on Rep Party

If the anonymous blogger cloaked behind the site www.mungergames.netever comes out from behind the curtain, perhaps we could have a public debate about Charles Munger, Jr., the donor who paid my filing fee here in San Francisco. I was not “outed” as one of Munger Minions in the recent hit piece styled, “Whose Filing Fee […]

An Immigration Breakthrough?

The latest Pew Hispanic poll is an eye opener.  According to Pew Hispanic, 55% of Latino immigrants will settle for a green card that allows them to work but not vote.  As a group, Latino immigrants aren’t particularly interested in US citizenship. In fact, Mexican LPRs (legal permanent residents) have the lowest rate of citizenship […]

Grow Elect Must Challenge the GOP

At the recent CAGOP convention, GrowElect– the new Republican political action committee to elect GOP Latinos– held a successful panel discussion workshop featuring GOP Latino electeds from all over the state. As former Congressman Ernie Konnyu describes it in the San Jose Mercury News: “Sitting around a quadrangle set of tables in a Hispanic leadership […]

Donnelly vs. Maldonado

Abel Maldonado is the 2014 gubernatorial standard bearer for a new, pragmatic-moderate coalition emerging from obscurity within the CAGOP.  But Tim Donnelly is also running for CA governor, and last week, former congressman George Radanovich (R-Fresno) threw in his hat.  We only lack a Silicon Valley libertarian to have each GOP faction within the larger, […]

Maldonado Should Go All Out for Governor

Reports that Abel Maldonado fired his campaign team is welcome news.  Campaign shakeups are a game of sharp elbows.  But tales of Abel’s “reluctance” to raise money sound like the carping of pri-madonnas who expect the principle to keep the coffers full, so they can draw fat salaries even for grossly flawed work.  Maldonado’s disastrous […]

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, Part 3, Newsom or a GOP initiative?

In Part 1, I compared Hyperloop to other ETT (evacuated tube transport) systems and note that in 2011 a Chinese prototype achieved a 700 MPH model speed, proof of concept.  In Part 2, I considered Musk’s crowdsourcing strategy, his stick in the eye of CAHSRA and the tech geek kids who are already building the […]