A Monkey Wrench in the Democrats’ Plan to Win an Assembly Super-Majority
Next to electing Barack Obama President of the United States come November, Assembly Democrats biggest dream is picking up the six assembly seats needed to achieve a two-thirds super-majority and, therefore, no longer needing Republican votes to pass a state budget or increase taxes.
But Assembly Speaker Karen Bass might have thrown a monkey wrench into that effort.
To achieve their super-majority, Democrats must not only pick up six assembly districts currently held by a Republican – a tall order by itself – but must also hold on to the sole competitive assembly district that is currently held by a Democrat, which is the 30th Assembly District (AD30) represented by Nicole Parra.
This is the same Nicole Parra that had her office thrown out of the Capitol building (an historic first) as well as all all bills she had pending killed by Speaker Bass as punishment for refusing to vote aye with other Democrats on last weekend’s proposed budget — because they would not agree to put a water bond on the ballot.
Day 1 at the DNC: Winds of Change
[[ Please welcome Lisa Gritzner to the Fox&Hounds blog. Lisa is a consultant with a background in state and local government affairs, and she will be reporting for us this week from Denver as our correspondant at the Democratic National Convention. -Joel ]]
Greetings from the mile high city. I’ll be here in Denver sharing my thoughts on the convention, the issues, the city and whatever else I come up with along the way. I hope you will enjoy my maiden voyage into the blogosphere.
My first day in Denver has been a political junkie’s dream. I started Sunday like many Americans – with Tom Brokaw, Bob Schieffer, George Stephanopolous – except I wasn’t watching the morning political shows. I was a guest at a brunch hosted by the Shorenstein Center of Press, Politics and Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard moderated by Judy Woodruff. It was a fascinating look at the role of media in the ’08 election.
It was amazing to be in the room – the audience members – Arianna Huffington, Gwen Iffle, and bloggers like Mickey Kaus – were just as interesting as the panel. But, I gotta be honest, the conversation was a bit underwhelming. Most notably, NOT ONE panelist talked about Joe Biden or their thoughts on his selection as VP and, even more disconcerting, was Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendel’s (a guest speaker) seeming inability to get beyond the "Hillary issue" as I fear I may be calling it this week.
Is it Time for a State Constitutional Convention?
With frustration exhibited in many quarters about the difficulty to govern California, I wondered if anyone would call for a state constitutional convention to re-work government from the ground up. Somebody has. Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council business group published an op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle suggesting just that.
Spurred on by another late budget, Wunderman is promoting the idea of a constitutional convention to change a California government he says suffers from “drastic dysfunction.”
Opening up the Constitution is fraught with dangers. California’s only effort to overhaul the constitution in a convention occurred in 1879. Delegates from the Workingman’s Party and the Grangers captured that convention. They were able to produce a document that put into the constitution their agenda, which included regulation of the railroads, new tax policies and restrictions on Chinese from owning property or holding certain jobs.